Christmas has come and gone, so as seems to be the custom here is the start of my look back at 2009, and I’ll start with gaming.
On the face of it 2009 wasn‘t a great year for gaming, after all a lot of the big name games that a lot of us were no doubt looking forward to were delayed so as to avoid competition with Modern Warfare 2. But when you think about it we really did have a good gaming year. Not only game wise either, for 2009 was the year that the PS3 became a major competitor in the console wars with its price drop and redesign. Even I bought into this and now am a somewhat proud owner of a PS3.
But enough about the technicalities and onto the games. Taking my cue from a good friend of mine, SegaZoom (who can be found at http://allandavison.co.uk/blog) I’ll do this in a list format. Easier to write and easier to read. And so in alphabetical order let us begin.
Batman: Arkham Asylum: If you’ve read any of my gaming blogs before you’ll know that I’m all about a solid single player experience, an experience that sadly seems to be dying. But Arkham Asylum tries to remedy this by focusing entirely on single player. An incredible amount of fun from start to finish, and even beyond in the case of collectables and riddles, Arkham Asylum never fails to entertain for fans of the action/adventure genre. The stealth sections are handled expertly, never as unforgiving as say Splinter Cell but never feeling shoved in either. Combat wise it can get repetitive, but the only time you should really notice this is after you’ve completed the bulk of the (superb) story.
Borderlands: A surprise hit for me this year, Borderlands is an MMORPGFPS. It plays like a mix of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The gunplay is tight and accurate (unlike Fallout 3 which I believe to be a great overhype, but more on that at a later date) and the open world environment is never boring to traverse. The missions (or quests) are always of a standard MMO fare, basically go here, kill this, collect so many of these, but when tackled as a group of up to 4 people this is immensely fun. Just be ready to argue over who gets what loot.
Killzone 2: Hyped as the PS3 exclusive that would bring the end to Halo’s reign as the benchmark for console shooters, Killzone 2 was never going to be able to live up to the hype, but in its credit it does a very good job. The single player is ample and different from most console shooter fares, everything that you do has a weight to it, that is to say you feel like everything you do has an effect on the world, every bullet seems powerful, every reload is a tense moment, and even the superbly implemented first person cover system makes the whole experience a finely crafted exercise in the standard go here shoot this genre. But it still doesn’t have that fun factor that other shooters have. Until you get into the frankly excellent multiplayer. While not on the same page as MW2 the way every objective transitions into the next on the fly is in a word brilliant, each game lasting roughly 30 minutes you’ll wish they went on longer. MW2 may be perfectly balanced but Killzone 2 shows what multiplayer should evolve into.
Modern Warfare 2: I believe I don’t really need to say much about MW2, seeing as it was touted as the biggest release in media entertainment history, but there are a few things I’d like to say. First of all single player wise it’s short, shorter and easier than even the original Modern Warfare. But while it last it is immense amounts of fun. Basically a playable version of a Michael Bay blockbuster, expect set pieces, plot twists and explosion at every turn. But the main reason anybody would really p[lay this game is for the multiplayer, which as always is superb and refined, rewarding you for spending time with it but never making the new-old experience gap too unbearable. Competitive multiplayer at its finest.
Prototype: Sandbox New York, super powered protagonist. Sounds a lot like the Spiderman games. And it was a lot like the Spiderman games, yet it was a lot more enjoyable (apart from Spiderman 2). You played an anti-hero that rampaged his way through the city destroying the military and the infection that had consumed the city itself. Both a hero and a villain. The story kept you hooked through an intriguing consume and discover mechanism, where you would absorb someone who knew about what was going on and you would gain their memories. All in all an excellent sandbox hero game.
Resident Evil 5: Personally I absolutely loved RE5, It was RE4 but with a friend. But it wasn’t without its faults. When you weren’t in fact playing with a friend you would have to babysit the AI, which on the higher difficulty settings made the game almost impossible, especially when their death would cause a game over. But when playing with a friend the game was a masterpiece of third person survival shooting. Many people belittled the controls (indeed the year previous Dead Space had shown us that a game exactly like this could have standard controls and still be exactly as intended) but the controls that were implemented were very much part of the experience, being unable to strafe and shoot while you moved allowed the slow paced enemies to pose an actual threat. My recommendation would be to pick this up if you had someone you could sit down with and play with, because that’s an awesome experience, but with the AI it’s pretty much an avoid.
Scribblenauts: A potentially fun little DS game, Scribblenauts would take my award for most disappointing game of the year if I was to give one. Yes it is fun to make things fight each other for five minutes but the novelty soon wears off and the actual missions can be easily solved by only a couple of items. Not much I can right about this game because in all honesty I couldn’t bring myself to play it much.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: It took me a while to finally play this game, in the end I had to lend it off SegaZoom, but it wasn’t because I wasn’t interested, it was because I was always involved with something else this year. When I finally got around to playing it I found an immensely satisfying hack and slash game that followed the story of the film somewhat faithfully but even expanded upon it in a logical and believable way. How many tie-ins can you think of that did the source material good and even expanded upon it to make an awesome experience? Never as deep as ninja gaiden or as ‘epic’ as God of War, Wolverine was consistently enjoyable, never too hard, never too easy. One of the best film tie-ins ever produced.
Uncharted 2: Out of alphabetical order but I had to save the best till last. Being perfectly honest I will be unable to give Uncharted 2 the praise it deserves here. Its gaming excellence, hall of fame worthy, and indeed one of my top 5 games of all generations. The single player is beyond comparison for cinematic excellence, perfect pacing, brilliant voice acting and general direction. You can always control the camera in UC2 but at times I found myself never touching the stick for the camera always found the perfect shot if what was going on, and the set pieces have to be experienced. The first 30 seconds of UC2 gave me more good feelings than the whole of Arkham Asylum, and I loved Arkham Asylum. All I can say is that Uncharted 2 really is worth buying a PS3 for, even more so than Metal Gear Solid 4, and if you know me then you know just how much that means. Uncharted 2 is without hesitation, without a doubt my game of the year 2009. Play it, if you don’t have a PS3 find someone who does and play it with them. This is the argument that games are art. This is the argument that games are the films. This is the argument that single player is better than multiplayer. This is gaming perfection. Oh and did I mention that this also has an awesome multiplayer component to rival Killzone and Modern Warfare?
In conclusion I would like to say that some games are in fact missing form this list because either I haven’t played them (I’m even now still trying to catch up with 2008) so if your game of the year 2009 isn’t here worry not, it just means I was unable to experience it this year. But even so I stand by my statement that uncharted 2 is better than it. Seriously, it’s just that good.
-DiehardSpook, feeling dirty for calling a PS3 game the best of the year
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