The "No One Wants to Fuck the Fat Chick Again" Award

The Winner - Precursor Games for two failed crowd-funding attempts for their Eternal Darkness sequel.

Eternal Darkness never may have been much to look at it, but it was a fun game. Naturally we'd all love a sequel right? Apparently not. In 2013 the remnants of Silicon Knights, Precursor Games, created two separate Kickstarter campaigns to fund Shadows of the Eternal, a spiritual sequel to Eternal Darkness. Both attempts failed miserably. They weren't even close. The first attempt generated less than 10% of the goal amount, and the second attempt with a much lower goal didn't do much better. The masses have sent a very clear and direct message to Precursor, and that message is "Go fund your own fucking game!" Either that or "WE WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR TOO HUMAN!!!" Eternal Darkness may have been a fun ride once, but no one wants it again.

The "We're Not Impressed With Your Hot New Girlfriend" Award

The Winner - Konami for replacing David Hayter with Keifer Sutherlin as the voice of Snake.

Sometimes shaking things up is a good thing. Taking familiar games and trying them in a new genre or dimension can be beneficial. And then sometimes there's shaking things up because someone in charge has their head up their ass. Konami says "Hi." This summer Konami announced that Jack Bauer would be the new Snakey character in MGS:V. Why? No one really knows. Was the guy who was pretty much beloved as the voice of Solid Snake for the past 15 years no longer good enough? Probably not. Was he asking for more money than an A-list Hollywood actor? Highly unlikely. Seems like it was just a way to raise the profile of the series now that it's going multi-plat. Because all those millions of X-box owners have probably never heard of Metal Gear before, right? Morons. You know what Konami? Keifer may be the bigger celeb and the "hotter girlfriend" in this case, but we all know he can't suck a dick the way David Hayter could.

The Lifetime Achievement Award for Being a Bitch

Winner - Hideo Kojima for not walking away from Metal Gear.

Since 2009, Kojima has complained about wanting to do do other projects than Metal Gear. He announced MGIV would be his the final Metal Gear project he'd be involved in. And then he followed it up by working on MGS: Peace Walker. Then he complained some more and went on to produce Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Then he bitched some more and announced MGSV: The Phantom Menance or Pain or whatever it's called. But this time it's really going to be the final Metal Gear game he works on because at the 2013 GDC he said it again but this time followed it up with "and this time I mean it."  Seriously, just shut the fuck up, make something new, and take a smaller fucking paycheck you whiny bitch.

The "ENGLISH MUTHAFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?" Award

Winner - Square-Enix for not doing Western releases anymore.

Over the past few years Square-Enix has been badly mismanaged. There's no direction other than putting everything they have on mobile platforms. But no series shows their lack of interest or lack of a clue more than Dragon Quest. In the past two years they've released the following in Japan: Dragon Quest X, Dragon Quest VII remake, Rocket Slime 3, Dragon Quest Monsters 1 remake, and Dragon Quest Monster 2 remake. And what of them have been released in the West? None....  Jesus Christ you idiots! DQ 9 sold over a million copies in the West. Over a million copies on one of the most hacked gaming systems of all time. ONE MILLION COPIES!!!!!  Does that not mean shit? After nearly 20 years DQ finally achieved a real measure of success in the West and what do you follow it up with??? Nothing! Not a god damned thing. Fuck you all to hell. And keep your fucking mobile releases of the first 3 games. We don't want to play anymore 20 year old software you fucks!!

The "Salty Blast of Hot Karma In Your Mouth" Award

Winner - Ubisoft for the delay and multi-plat release of Rayman Legends.

The Rayman franchise is like an ugly ass hooker. A talented hooker mind you, but one that's missing a couple teeth, has a mustache, a couple bullet scars, mishapened boobs, etc. The point is no one wants to pay full price for it. Rayman Origins did sell a million copies, but it was only after price dropped to $20. And like a blind pimp, Ubisoft doesn't seem to understand that the price is a big key to the success. But Rayman Legends on the Wii U looked like it had a chance for success. By February the Wii U audience was like a sailor on shore leave, and Rayman looked like it finally had a chance to get double and triple teamed at full price. Unfortunately due to Zombie U not selling like hotcakes, Ubisoft decided not to take a chance on the Wii U audience and opted to delay the game for 6 months to make it multi-plat. The result? Bad press, bad feelings from Nintendo, extra development cost....and still no one bought it.

The "Even the Guy Everyone Loves Is Fucking Someone Over" Award

Winner - Gearbox for Aliens: Colonial Marines

Everyone loves Gearbox right? They make the Borderlands games! They listen to feedback their fans give them. They've made charitible contributions, and done wonderful things for sick Borderlands fans. Who couldn't love these guys? Well, Sega for one. And possibly fans of the Aliens series. In 2013 Gearbox delivered on Aliens: Colonial Marines for Sega, and the game was complete and utter ass. Four years of development and the end result was shit. Herpes has a higher Metacritic score. How did this happen? They haven't entirely admitted it yet, but Gearbox essentially took Sega's money, funneled most of it into Borderlands 2 development, and outsourced the Aliens game out to a couple joe blow devs. A true asshole move by everyone's favorite developer that took serious balls to do.  

Anyway there's your list for 2013. Enjoy it or don't, but whatever you do be sure to fuck yourself.

Love,

Dark Robio