Well, the 2008 Spike TV Video Game awards aired tonight, and I watched the whole thing.  Can I have my 2 hours back?  Please?  Yeah, it was basically a big joke, once again.  The only reason I even watched any of it was to see the "world premiere" footage of God of War III and Brutal Legend.  Anyway, I took some notes during the show and here are some of my thoughts on it:

- Jack Black was the host, and he did a good job whenever he was on stage.  I guess he kinda has an excuse since he's a voice actor in Brutal Legend, but most of the other people they had as presenters, had no reason being on stage at all.  Jack Black was only on stage like 4 or 5 times though, so he didn't even feel like the host.  They just had guest presenter, after guest presenter each time.  The opening to the show was really funny, but if you had shut the show off about 5 minutes in, you wouldn't have missed much.  There was an interesting bit with Jerry Stiller where Jack Black said "shit" after Jerry Stiller said it, and the second one got by the censors.  I'm sure someone got in trouble.  The very last bit they had with Jack Black and Tim Schaffer was freakin awesome, mainly cause they brought out Rob freakin Halford!  Plus Jack Black had a working flamethrower

- They had several musical guest performers; LL Cool J, All American Rejects, 50 Cent and Weezer.  I could care less about all of those bands/people except for Weezer.  Weezer "headlined" the "show" with an interesting performance complete with a choir.  It was interesting but I didn't like the song much.  I haven't listened to Weezer since Maladroit, and I have no idea what song they played.

- The God of War III footage was nice, but EXTREMELY short.  I think they showed maybe 15 seconds of footage.  I hope they show more soon.

- Peter Moore came out on stage to promote Fight Night Round 4.  I could care less about the game, but seeing Peter Moore again makes me wish he still did the presentations for Microsoft at E3, TGS, GDC, etc.  He has a great stage presence.  They also trotted out Mike Tyson to promote the game.  I couldn't believe how childish he sounds.  He literally sounds like a 4 year old.  I'd heard people make fun of his voice before, but I had no idea how he really sounds.

- The first award went to Gears of War 2 for Best Shooter.  Big surprise there.  They also said that it also won best 360 game, but they never announced the nominees.  WTF?

- The second award went to World of Goo for best Indy game.  This presentation had Neil Patrick Harris doing a bit with some "fan" in the crowd.  The fan makes fun of Mr Harris for being Doogie Howser.  Then he pulls out a fake (realistic looking) gun and "shoots" the fan.  That was an extremely stupid bit, and all it really does is promote gun violence.  It says to children that may be watching this program, "have a problem?  Solve it by pulling out a gun and shooting someone."

- Keifer Sutherland was given an award for his work in Call of Duty: World at War.  I have no idea WHY he received that award, there were no other nominees.

- I should note that after the world premiere trailers were shown, there'd be a little advertisement for GameStop that says "head to gamestop and preorder this game NOW."  Enough with the fucking pre-orders GameStop.  GO AWAY.

- The next world exclusive was for Dante's Inferno.  The game looks pretty interesting, but I'd like to see some gameplay footage and know what character you play as.  Seems like either a survival horror game, or just a straight up action game.

- Wil Wright received a lifetime achievement award.  He certainly deserves it.  His speech went a little long, but I didn't care.  He could talk for hours, and I would gladly listen.

- GTAIV: Lost and Damned looks like you will be riding around on Motorcycles the whole time.  Great.  I hate driving around in motorcycles in GTA IV.  They are extremely hard to control and I crash all the time in them.  Consider me not interested in this DLC.  The heavy metal playing in the background in the trailer was great though.  I wonder if they will release new music with the DLC?

- Best RPG went to Fallout 3.  It is certainly deserving.  The other nominees were Fable II, Warhammer Online (um, why?) and The World Ends With You.

- Next was an Uncharted 2 cutscene.  It looked nice but I would have rather seen gameplay footage.

- Then they showed a Terminator Salvation trailer.  Looks pretty good.  I was getting a Gears of War vibe from it.  It seemed to use a similar cover system.

- And then a Mafia II trailer - No gameplay footage again.  Not interested.

- After watching Silver Dollar....wait, I mean "50 Cent" do his thing while I had the TV on mute, a Watchmen trailer was shown.  The game looks alright but I don't think this game is going to turn out well.  I've never read the Watchmen (shame on me, i know), but somehow I feel like that graphic novel doesn't exactly translate into a video game well.

- Next was the award for Best Music game.  Rock Band 2 won, but the most shocking thing is that they nominated Wii Music.  Why nominate a toy?  They mentioned Rock Band 2 also won for best soundtrack, but what were the other nominees?

- Next was Studio of the Year.  This award confuses me.  What are the requirements for being nominated?  Do you have to put out more than one game in the year?  It seemed like just another game of the year award.  MediaMolecule won for LittleBigPlanet.  They also mentioned it won for best PS3 game.  Again, WHAT THE HELL?!  What were the other nominees?  Where is MGS4?

- At this point in the show, they played a video montage of like 10 or 15 different awards that were apparently given out, but none of the developers were given any praise, and none of the nominees were even announced.  WTF?!  I saw an award for best driving game (went to Burnout Paradise), best fighting game (Soul Calibur IV) and a couple awards for best voice actor/actress, but most of them I missed.  What is the point of even having an awards show when you're only going to give out 5 or 6 awards live on air, and then run a video reel of like 15 more awards??  Couldn't you have just put out a 15 minute video on your website or something?  Really, really lame.

- Next was the Brutal Legend footage, and the little bit with Jack Black, Rob Halford and Tim Shaffer I mentioned earlier.  The game seems like something I'd really enjoy (since I'm a big metalhead), but I'm a bit worried by the trailer.  The trailer showed a LOT of driving sections in the game.  Like half of it was you driving a car.  I hope that is just one level and it is not representative of the whole game.

- Game of the Year went to GTAIV.  Not a big surprise, but I was expecting them to give it to Gears 2.  Out of the choices they had, I would have given it to Fallout 3 easily.  Of course Dead Space didn't even get nominated for anything.  At least not that I saw.

So yeah, overall this awards show was basically a waste of time.  It's late, I need to get to bed.  I'd go into more detail about this awards show and why it sucks in its current form, but I'm just too damn tired......*snore*