VGX 2013: All the news from Spike’s video game awards

Whether they loved it or hated it, more than one million people from more than a hundred countries tuned into Viacom’s evolution of the Spike TV Video Game Awards earlier this month, Viacom officials tell Polygon.

Those 1.1 million viewers spent an average of nearly 32 minutes watching the stream and helped the VGX trend in the U.S. and around the globe on Twitter, according to Viacom’s numbers.

The video, called “Channeling the Primal,” features in-game footage of the stealth assassinations, thievery and lock-picking that make up the core gameplay of the title. It also introduces Garrett’s fellow thief Erin who is shown falling into the primal vortex.

A new trailer for massively multiplayer role-playing shooter Tom Clancy’s The Division shows off the capabilities of the game’s Snowdrop engine.

The video above explains how the game’s environments are impacted by a “dynamic” day and night cycle. The Division will also feature a light probe system to capture light realistically, procedural destruction for in-game objects and changing environmental factors.

A new trailer for Destiny, Bungie’s sci-fi “shared world” shooter, debuted at today’s Spike VGX awards presentation, offering another look at the interplanetary action coming to consoles next year.

Rather than focusing on a specific feature or new revelations about how Destiny plays, Bungie shows the breadth of the game’s content. The new trailer highlights the many weapons, characters, enemies and worlds of Destiny, as well as its music.

The studio previously showed off the Atlas class, an agile unit. The Titan known as the Ogre is equipped with heavy armor and is more of a slow, lumbering beast. In the video, you can see the Ogre’s finishing move: ripping off a Titan’s arm and using it as a weapon. Respawn also teased one of the story elements of Titanfall: Hammond Robotics, the corporation that manufactures and maintains the Titans.

Titanfall will be released March 11, 2014, on Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Windows PC, and according to publisher Electronic Arts, it will remain exclusive to those platforms “for the life of the title.”

In addition to showing new gameplay content from Xbox One game Quantum Break, developer Remedy Games unveiled a new iPad game during the VGX award show, an action strategy game called Agents of Storm.

Remedy’s Johannes Paloheimo showed a brief gameplay demo of the iOS title, calling it a “reverse tower defense action-strategy game” in which players will build bases and a fleet of ships, and apparently attack island bases.

Cranky Kong will be a playable character in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Reggie Fils-Aime announced today during VGX.

In a short demo during the show, Fils-Aime demonstrated how players can team up Cranky with Donkey Kong. When players fill their meter, they gain the power to call on the Kong Pow and cooperatively take out enemies.

Players will be able to access leaderboards, read in-game newspapers and notes and track their progress. The player’s details will be updated as they play the game. This full app will launch alongside the game in North America on Feb. 25.

Eidos Montreal will also be releasing a “light” version of the app before the game’s launch. This app aims to whet players’ appetite through character bios, background stories, trailers, news and game artwork. The app will be free when it launches.

Telltale Games, the developers behind episodic point-and-click franchises The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, is teaming up with Gearbox Software to release Tales from the Borderlands, as announced during The VGX 2013 today.

Tales from the Borderlands will feature new and old characters from the Borderlands world in an episodic, story-driven game. According to Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford, the game “will play like a Telltale game.” The first episode will launch in 2014. Watch the game’s trailer below.

A listing on Amazon for Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition suggests that a remake of Tomb Raider “re-built specifically” for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One could be released in 2014.

According to the listing, the Definitive Edition features all of the game’s downloadable content, a digital art book, six outfits for Lara and a digital comic. The game is listed for $59.99 on both PS4 and Xbox One and has a release date of Jan. 28, 2014.

Spike TV’s annual video game awards event kicks off tonight at 6 p.m. ET, but don’t worry — you can watch The VGX right here.

The three-hour event will include awards for the best games of the year, musical performances, world premieres and news on Broken Age, Titanfall, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and more. We’ll be covering the event live, so be sure to keep an eye on our news.

This year, Spike TV is doing things a little differently for its annual Video Game Awards event.

There’s something inherently sexy about revealing your game on a big screen in front of a roaring crowd, surrounding by flashing lights and industry big-wigs. And Spike TV’s award show has never spared the sexy; last year alone fans salivated over a handful of new clips from BioShock Infinite and The Last of Us and more — when they weren’t laughing at clips of host Samuel L. Jackson pasted into video game segments.

The annual Spike Video Game Awards — rebranded this year as VGX — announced its 2013 nominees today, a list of video games led by titles like BioShock Infinite, Grand Theft Auto 5, The Last of Us and Tomb Raider.

Up for the Game of the Year award are BioShock Infinite, Grand Theft Auto 5, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider and Super Mario 3D World.