7th's Dementia: 7thDementia's Off-Kilter Awards of 2011 Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Alrighty, let's continue. Next up are the voice actor/actress awards. I had to split them up into four separate awards because there's more to it than just naming a winner, especially if you want to give heavy recognition when it's deserved. You'll see what I mean. Also, with my two fanservice categories, the first one is like, what you'd normally consider fanservice, like stripperific female characters and the like. The second one (“Capcom” because they defined it) is more like fan-pandering, like throwing in fan-favorite characters and stuff like that.

Best Voice Actor Performance for a Playable Character: Troy Baker as the default Protagonist in Saints Row: The Third. Everything that the Troy Baker Boss says is hilarious. Usually I don't like playing a male character, you know that, but my GOD, this makes up for the fact that male characters in SR:TT technically have less clothing options. He's easily one of my favorite Bosses.

Runner-Up: Steve Blum as Grayson Hunt. Again, Grayson's easily one of my favorite characters.
Best Voice Actress Performance for a Playable Character: Laura Bailey as Female Protagonist 1 in Saints Row: The Third. Originally, I was a little off-put by the fact that the original Female 1 Boss from SR2 didn't come back. Then I played her. The Laura Bailey Boss is just as funny and deadpan as the Troy Baker Boss, and I was cracking up as much as I did in SR2.

Runner-Up: Tara Platt as the Russian Female Protagonist from Saints Row: The Third. Alright, I'm reaching. But the majority of my friends tend to go with this voice.
Best Voice Actor Performance for a Non-Playable Character: Mark Hamill as the Joker in Batman: Arkham City. C'mon, who else would I give it to? Hamill gave voice to the Joker one final time for this, and IT. IS. GLORIOUS.

Runner-Up: Burt Reynolds as Mayor Burt Reynolds in Saints Row: The Third. I'm as much as a Burt Reynolds fanboy as the Boss is.
Best Voice Actress Performance for a Non-Playable Character: TIE: Tara Strong as Harley Quinn in Batman: Arkham City and Ellen McLain as GLaDOS in Portal 2. Alright, some of you may be crying foul over it being Tara Strong and not Arleen Sorkin in Arkham City. You do realize that Ms. Sorkin may have been busy at the time, right? Tara did an amazing job and it deserves to be recognized. And not just because she voices Twilight Sparkle. As for Ellen McLain as GLaDOS? Awesome as always. The fact that she sounds more “human” in Portal 2 makes us realize that GLaDOS is just misunderstood. I couldn't choose between the two, so I made it a tie.

Runner-Up: Jennifer Hale as Trishka Novak in Bulletstorm. Trishka pretty much is a foulmouthed version of FemShep. And it is GLORIOUS.
Best Soundtrack: Saints Row: The Third. Power was just the beginning. You have an entire channel of Adult Swim songs, like Sports from Tim & Eric, the Venture Brothers theme song, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force theme, and more. There's a electronica station for those of you who like that sort of stuff, and an 80's/90's station for nostalgia. Rockstar would never have the cojones to put Funky Cold Medina in GTA.

Runner-Up: The Binding of Isaac. Just like with Super Meat Boy, the soundtrack by Danny Baranowski is appropriately old-school with a mix of new-school. It's totally worth it.
Best Traditional Fanservice: Saints Row: The Third. Alrighty, I had to think about this one, and it's the only game that fits the definition. And that's if you dress the FemBoss slutty on purpose.

Runner Up: Uh... let's say Bulletstorm?
Best Capcom Fanservice: Batman: Arkham City. There really is no way to describe it other than this: it puts all of the best elements of the Batman franchise in a blender and creates like a smoothie of awesomeness.

Runner-Up: Dead Rising 2: Off The Record. Okay, the box art is bad, but the game is awesome.
Pleasantest Surprise of 2011: Spacechem. You wouldn't think that a game about chemistry would be fun. You'd be wrong. Not only is the game fun, but it's kinda educational as well. If you've never played the game, you're missing out. It's quite addicting.

Runner-Up: Dungeons of Dredmor. It's a hilarious cross between a dungeon crawler, an RPG, and a little bit of Doom. (Seriously, look at the status bar.)
The “Why Do They Keep Pumping These Out?!” Award: The Sims expansion packs. Seriously, if you have Origin, look at how many there are. Hell, they're all on Steam too! Not to mention, the majority of them are still FORTY DOLLARS. WHAT THE FUCK, EA. The base game is down to thirty. WHY ARE THERE NEW EXPANSION PACKS EVERY SIX MONTHS THAT COST FORTY DOLLARS? WHY?!

Runner Up: The Sims stuff packs. PUT THEM IN THE DAMN GAME FROM THE BEGINNING! Jesus!
Best Worst Game: TIE: Dead Island and Duke Nukem Forever. Both were heavily hyped. Both were delayed, one longer than the other. Both were considered disappointments when they came out. Both are enjoyable if you turn your brain off, as if you were watching the movie Commando. I know about the heavy misogyny of DNF. They fucked up there. Why do you think I couldn't give DNF Best Traditional Fanservice?

Runner Up: RAGE. It looks pretty once the Texture pop-in stops.
The “I Don't Want to Live On This Planet Anymore” Award: Fanboys considering a NINE OUT OF TEN to be “proof” that a reviewer doesn't like a game. GamesRadar uses their full scale of one to ten. 1 is “No Value,” 2 is “Broken,” 3 is “Wounded,” 4 is “Flawed,” 5 is “So-So,” 6 is “Decent,” 7 is “Good,” 8 is “Great,” 9 is “Awesome,” and 10 is “Incredible.” I partially based my rating system on theirs, but using values of 0 to 7, 0 being “Fuckin' Horrible” and 7 being “Fuckin' Awesome!”. I use the full scale as well. GR goes into better detail over this in their Anti-Awards, but it's pretty much common place on other sites as well.

Runner-Up: People are still taking Tim Buckley seriously. This is just me ranting, though.
Best Gaming Webcomic of 2011: Nerf Now!! by Jo Pereira. OKAY, I'M BIASED, SUE ME. The art's good, the writing's good, the running gags are good. What's not to like? (Unless you aren't into fanservice/think Rule 63 Engie is a bad idea.)

Runner-Up: Penny Arcade by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. How many years is this now? 14? The ONLY nitpick I have are the mouths, specifically the teeth, but otherwise, it's still a consistently good comic.
Best Non-Gaming Webcomic of 2011: The Lounge by John Joseco. It's one of my favorite comics of all time, and it's been going on for 11 years. Now, if you only know Joseco's work from the MLP fanart he's done, you're doing yourself a HUGE disservice by not reading it because of that reason. It's basically the ongoing adventures of Italy Ishida and the staff at the comic/game store she runs called The Lounge. I'd put some of his other work here too, but it's extremely NSFW. You can find it yourself.

Runner-Up: Er.... RUN AWAY! Worst Gaming Webcomic of 2011: Ctrl-Alt-Del by Tim Buckley. Oops, I forgot to tell a joke! And I used a paragraph of text to convey it! And my art is getting worse! Seriously, though, it's still pretty bad. The only reason I'm still current with it is the Something Awful CAD Mock Thread. They make some pretty cool stuff.

Runner-Up: That one with the horrible art and shitty writing. Yeah, that one!
Worst Non-Gaming Webcomic of 2011: Dominic Deegan by... fuck it, I can't spell his name. It's just basically Slayers with terrible art, a shitty story instead of the Slayers story, no backgrounds, no effort to improve, no effort period, and 90% self-insert characters. If you're a fan, go read The Lounge now. THAT'S how you do a comic.

Runner-Up: Everything Brooke McEldowney does, from 9 Chickweed Lane (even though it's technically still a newspaper comic, but papers are dropping it like flies) to Pibgorn. It's all self-masturbatory self-fulfillment that's horribly drawn and has no sense of anatomy. I DRAW BETTER. Brooke cannot draw a female with curves properly. He tends to focus more on legs, making the rest of the body look WRONG. He didn't win the award because that means showing you the art. You would hate me for showing you.
The Backyard Sports Award for Best (Worst?) Jumping The Shark: The Sims 3. I used to like The Sims series, man. I still have all my Sims 2 stuff (I didn't get the Ikea Home Stuff Pack for that, though. I thought it was stupid.). I have up to Sims 3 Generations, but I don't have all the Stuff Packs. It's just oversaturation of products that don't add as much as the previous Sims 1 and Sims 2 expansion packs did. I want more NEW stuff, not old stuff that should've been in the base game from the get-go, like Pets and seasons. Take the time to add them in, don't release it just because you have a release schedule.

Runner-Up: Impulse being bought by GameStop. Now it's just a Steam wannabe that's in third place thanks to Origin. Sorry, has to be said. I had high hopes for Impulse. It got completely shat upon.
The “Yeah, I Hate It, But I Want to Play it To See The Hype” Award: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Again, go watch the Dick Figures episode Modern Flame War 3. It sums up EVERYTHING I hate about it. If the single player campaign were longer, similar to the length of Bulletstorm which is about 10 hours but easily replayable, and had a protagonist that made comments while you played, I'd want to play it a bit more. If you're making a game that has both single-player and multiplayer, don't focus on the multiplayer and set the single-player aside and make it short. Otherwise, just make it multiplayer only. Maybe I'm just an old crank at 24 about video games; I don't know. I do want to play it, though. I've been reading up on it in preparation for this article, and realized... I can't give this Worst Game of the Year. I was ready to... but I can't. Weird, huh?

Runner-Up: Uh... LOOK OVER THERE, IT'S KEVIN SPACEY!
Worst Game of The Year: Blackwatch. Fuck. This. Game. Propaganda for an actual mercenary company accused of war crimes?! What... what were they thinking?! Not to mention, it requires Kinect and has horrible Kinect controls! And it's shorter than Modern Warfare 3?! What other game could I give it to?

Runner-Up: TIE: Railworks 3: Train Simulator 2012 and Call of Juarez: The Cartel. The first one because they have over three thousand dollars worth of DLC. The second one because... well, Extra Credits puts it better than I can.

And there ya have it. Those are my awards this year. Hopefully there will be nothing like the Worst Game of the Year this year. Though I know it won't happen, it'd be nice.