Most Baditude
Everybody on the planet knows at least one person who suffers from the debilitating disease that is baditude. The symptoms are immediately recognizable: the hackneyed "in your face" attitude, the relentless desire to prove how "street" or "cool" you are, and an annoying tendency to put everything in quotes. However, the insidiousness of this disease reaches far beyond the occasionally obnoxious person--it can just as easily infect our games.
Think of the nominees of this category as the Mountain Dew commercials of gaming. These are the games that try much, much too hard to prove how extreme they are, and ultimately end up just being very, very banal. Whether it's a Persian prince who went from a storybook hero to a Godsmack-listening action-hero wannabe, or a handheld MMO that can't go six seconds without making some kind of "L33T Sp34K" comment, these are the games that define everything we hate about baditude:
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Anyone who's ever seen Brooke Burke in Wild On knows she's pretty far from "street." So why did the writers of NFSU2 insist on having her throw out tired catch phrases like, "You have to race tight, dawg"? And don't get us started on the irony of Snoop's "Riders on the Storm" remake and how it relates to the supposed underground theme of the game.
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As if the first game weren't already trying too hard by dressing Peyton Manning and Brian Urlacher in FUBU-style gear, EA returns with NFL Street 2, which attempts to get even more in your face by casting Pimp My Ride host Xzibit as your friendly guide to the hard-knock life of street football. Whatever.
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Strippers, gratuitous violence, and golf. It's a good mix, right? Right? Outlaw Golf 2 is redeemed on some level by the fact that it actually plays a decent game of golf, but it's somewhat insulting to golf fans that any developer would think they need to stoop to bawdiness and ribaldry to sell a golf game.
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Someone let a 9-year-old Internet brat scribble in the design document for this game. When you see fantasy-style characters busting out with "LOL" and "PWNED" as part of their dialogue, you know something has gone terribly wrong. Still not convinced that Pocket Kingdom belongs here? The game's leaderboard is called the "All-Time Owners Board." Case closed.
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Last year's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time featured an endearing protagonist and a unique sense of style. For this year's sequel, the once-charismatic prince turned into a one-liner-spouting action hero, and the previous game's feel gave way to that of a generic action movie. Luckily, the game turned out great, otherwise.
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And the Winner is...
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