Game “Premieres”

Jack Black not only hosted the event, but also starred in a "world premiere" title.

This year’s VGAs promised to provide huge announcements and game premieres -- events more in line with a trade show than an award show. To Spike’s credit, they delivered...sort of. Depending on how high your expectations were, the announcements and premieres were either totally awesome or totally disappointing.

For starters, Epic Games promised a similarly epic Gears of War 2 announcement, which turned out to be a fairly small map pack. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that it was available hours after the show aired was great, it’s just that for the amount of hype the announcement received prior to the show, the less jaded in the audience probably expected something more substantial.

The world premieres were also hyped up beyond belief. Among the games shown at the show for the first time were God of War III, the Grand Theft Auto 4 expansion The Lost and Damned, and Uncharted 2.  And while it’s great to finally see more of these games than just the logo, I think everyone in the audience would have liked to see more than just an extremely brief collection of cut scenes. As Busta Rhymes asked, aren’t we all tired of game trailers that include nothing but CG?  Yes, Busta, yes we are. So why did every trailer shown neglect to show even a second of gameplay footage?

Speaking of gameplay...