With only hours to go before the 2008 Video Game Awards my excitement is almost unbearable.

As a video game critic, watching the awards is something that I will do at any cost. I'm very curious to see if the almost recession-proof video game industry has "bought" this year's winners, or if truly the best games of 2008 will acquire a deserved award.

This year will actually be Spike TV's 5th annual Video Game Awards and in all honesty I was not aware of this event until a few days ago when the New York Times ran an article about this award ceremony. The article focused mostly on Jack Black who just happens to be this year's host, but Jack Black will not be the only celebrity making appearances tonight. Between the publishers, celebrities, the fans and the advertisement companies this should be a show to remember.

After doing a little bit of digging in the past I did not stumble across any ancient ruins, buried treasures or even a dinosaur bone, but I did run across some controversy over some of the past winners. I know Wikipedia is not the most reliable source on the Internet, but some of the comments posted by some users sounded really disturbing. For example, one person notes: "I seem to recall last year that they released the nominees (or perhaps winners.. can't quite remember) before some of the games had even been released." Another person posted the following: "Their Anti-Nintendo policies were basically proven as fact when Super Mario Galaxy wasn't nominated for Game of the Year, even though it was the second best reviewed game of all time, scoring higher than all the other games on the list by most critics." The video game companies have not bought me, so I'm counting down the minutes to the start of the show when I can find out for myself if there is any merit whatsoever behind such awards.