Failure in Trailers at the Spike Videogame Awards

Game designers catch a lot of flack from outside the industry for often creating what amount to second-rate films sexed up with limited interaction. In many cases, the haters have a point: few titles insist on exploring the medium’s unrealized potential.

Given the industry’s herd instincts, it’s no wonder so many ads skew heavily cinematic. This year’s Spike Videogame Awards boasted loads of  trailer debuts, all for unreleased titles. Had they featured truly photo-realistic graphics and more recognizable voices (Terrence Stamp can only be in so many places at once), the previews might easily have moved some of the over-medicated thespians in attendance to text their agents in pursuit of future roles. While I don’t expect much from any awards show airing on a self-described “channel for men,” most of these 90-second bidget-busters surprised me with their lack of individuality.

Given that one reviewer got away with calling Grand Theft Auto IV the “Godfather of videogames,” what’s to stop me from referring to upcoming expansion Lost and Damned as the medium’s Stone Cold or Roadhouse. Even though I have yet to play the biker-themed 360-only DLC, I can already tell my comparisons hold more water than the one made to Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece.

With very little  boxing footage, Fight Night Round 4 depends almost entirely on showcase fighters Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali. for its allure. Although it may revive a few Sunday afternoon “what if” discussions (especially now that “Jason vs. Freddie” is forever wrecked), the trailer reveals nothing suggesting franchise progress. Round 4 smells like just another sequel.


Skip to 0:37.

Not surprisingly, the trailer for industry icon Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend stands out like a giant emerald among cowpies, if only for its inclusion of relevant gameplay footage.

A humanoid creature gets a cross rammed into its forehead just before “go to hell” appears on a pitch-black screen? Think Dante’s Inferno might be, uh, “loosely-based” on its source material?  After sitting through the trailer, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game had an an armor-clad Dante taking cover behind broken pillars and yelling “Yo, Virgil! Toss me another clip!”

EA, FYI: Either of these trailers for David Fincher’s Se7en make the seven deady sins seem more terrifying than your quick cuts and clips of babies with butter knife arms.

Gears of War 2’s trailer for the new map pack doesn’t count because…well…it’s a map pack. Nonetheless, I give it points for showcasing level individuality and  featuring narration from the Cole Train.

Judging by the scenes depicted, Watchmen: The End is Nigh mostly features a Batman wannabe and his friend (let’s call him “Mr. Browncoat”) flying low over bodies of water in a bug-eyed spaceship. From time to time they land to electrocute some of a nearby metropolis’s citizens and bash their faces in with crowbars. I think we’re meant to question the duo’s behavior, but right now it sounds pretty awesome.

Thanks largely to a picture-perfect recreation of 1930s America, the original Mafia showed that Grand Theft Auto-styled, open-world games could provide a strong narrative experience. As the late 1940s seem equally well-represented in the trailer for Mafia II, I think it succeeds, but just barely. (All footage looks pre-rendered.)

Terminator Salvation belongs to the movie tie-in club. As I said in the first paragraph…

When it’s eventually released, God of War 3 will almost surely be one of the best selling titles on the “sinking ship” (think: PlayStation 3). Everyone’s expecting more of what made installments one and two so popular, and, for better or for worse, the trailer delivers.

Atypically free of “creative” fonts, Hollywood voiceovers, and objectified women, the video for Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2 appropriately reflects protagonist Nathan Drake’s devil-may-care attitude .  It also makes most of the awards ceremony’s other trailers look like over-produced, viewer-insulting garbage.

Despite being pre-rendered and well over a year old, the powerful imagery, first-person perspective, and inclusion of particular game elements make this trailer for Bioshock one of the medium’s best. Anybody still wonder why creator Ken Levine bailed on Hollywood?

This entry was posted by Kyle Stallock on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 10:22 am and is filed under Gaming, Industry, Multimedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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