eGamer Awards 2012: Bastard Of The Year

This year has been an awesome one of games, but it certainly hasn’t been without its fair share of controversies and bastardly deeds. Join us as we take a look at the most bastardly things of the year, and determine which was horrifying enough to earn our bastard of the year award.

 

The Bastard of the Year Award is what we give to someone who did something so bastardly and evil that we will hold secret or public hate for it until the end of time – or until its bastardness is taken away. Alright, maybe that’s only in extreme cases. It could even go to something that continuously did bastardly things and has gotten itself quite the rap sheet. Anyone and anything can be nominated, whether its about screwing over or deceiving gamers, consistently irritating us, insulting the community or just general evil-doing. But keep in mind that even the good guys can get nominated, as long as they qualify during the year. This award will be given to the overall biggest bastard of the year.

 

Capcom

Capcom, the bastards ever ready to increase the world’s disliking for them. Since last year, they seem to have begun a siege on their own franchises, systematically destroying them. There was Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, you know, that unbalanced thing, then there was the fiasco with releasing Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 six months after the original game yet making it better in so many ways. And now this year they destroyed the Resident Evil series with the latest game, and earlier they got into major trouble with fans when Street Fighter X Tekken contained twelve characters on the disc locked off to players, as well as had bonus costumes and gems as purchasable items. Capcom also tried to argue earlier this year that it doesn’t believe there is a difference between DLC and locked disc content. Then what else they did was announce that Virgil was a playable character in DmC: Devil May Cry, a game that already has a very troublesome reputation, and then announced that it would be downloadable content. They even showed a trailer for it, and since the game is only releasing in January, this means once again they were working on DLC before the game finished.

 

BioWare

We’re sure you don’t need to be told why BioWare made this list. Delivering Mass Effect 3 to us this year, one of the most hyped and anticipated games of this generation, and making it one hell of an amazing ride only to blow it all up and ruin it in the final ten or twenty minutes of the game with arguably one of the most poorly written and badly executed endings in a top franchise to date was just almost impossible to swallow, and sent the entire gaming community into an uncontrollable shit storm. Not only did the ending completely go against the point of the franchise, and take all story control out of the players’ hands, but the developers themselves also blatantly lied about the content of the ending before the game’s release, and this added untold amounts of fuel to the rage fire. BioWare definitely made some bastardly mistakes this year, and their reputation took one hell of a plummet. Sure, there was that extended cut DLC, but that only cools the heat a bit, and doesn’t change what happened.

 

Activision Blizzard

Over a decade we waited for Diablo III, and what did we get? Always-on DRM, launch issues so bad that paying R500 didn’t let you even play the game, dumbed down mechanics and oversimplification, a time sink of a game and our biggest disappointment this entire year. It’s like Activision corrupted Blizzard or something, and we just expected a far, far, far higher quality from the former champions in our industry. Yes, Diablo III was enough reason to nominate Activision Blizzard. Really, it was.

 

Spec Ops: The Line

Why Spec Ops: The Line? Aside from spitting all over the modern war genre and its glorification of war and hoo-rah honour, no other game this year made us feel like bigger assholes. It was seriously mean to us. We felt bad. If Spec Ops: The Line was a person, we wouldn’t like him or her at all. They’d be the kind of person that makes you feel like a sponge-head quack and like you should be ashamed of yourself for liking something a large majority of people do. You know, like Justin Bieber. Good on you, Spec Ops: The Line, be that dude. You bastard. You made it real easy to nominate you.

 

In a year with many notable bastardly things, one bastard stood above the rest and we have a nagging suspicion that you already know who that is. Spoiler alert. It starts with a “C”, and it’s not carrot. So, since you absolutely don’t know who our loser is, you’d best head on down to find out.

 

The LOSER of eGamer’s Bastard of the Year Award of 2012 is.. (click to reveal)