World premieres planned for December 12 video game awards show

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Excitement surrounding the 7th Spike TV Video Game Awards is mounting, as the first big awards show of 2009 has been securing a number of first-look preview trailers to air as part of its December 12 program. Already confirmed are Crackdown 2, Halo Reach, the next Star Wars game, reboots to Medal of Honor and Tron, and two mysterious and previously unannounced titles.

The Xbox 360 exclusive Crackdown was a runaway success upon its release in 2007, catapulting Scottish developer Realtime Worlds into the public eye, whilst Halo Reach was a surprise announcement at this summer's E3 conference and there are scant details about actual gameplay developments vis à vis current entries in the successful series.

The new Star Wars game preview is thought to be for the new online multiplayer adventure Star Wars: The Old Republic, while the Tron video game is a tie-in for Walt Disney's December 2010 film Tron Legacy, sequel to the 1982 original Tron. Electronic Arts have only just confirmed the modern-day reboot of their World War II Medal of Honor franchise slated for a third quarter 2010 release.

The two unnamed exclusives remain shrouded: one is a post-apocalyptic shooter from 2K Games set in the ruins of modern-day Dubai, with some news outlets erroneously calling it "Mystery World" after the online video teaser title "Mystery World Premier," and the other appears to be a police thriller set in Hong Kong, for which the few seconds of teaser footage indicate that it could well be a resurrection of Activision's cancelled project Black Lotus.

The Viacom / MTV Networks-owned Spike TV cable channel and website's viewer-vote-fuelled December 12 awards show - to be broadcast via its cable channel and for free online - is a bit ahead of the pack as most of the top gaming websites that produce a similar rundown of the year's best releases usually wait until at least the third week of December, as previous weeks are often given over to holiday gift guides.

Spike TV Video Game Awards 2009
December 12, 8 PM EST
December 13, 1 AM GMT/UTC
http://vga.spike.com
http://www.spike.com/event/vga2009