year-end recaps – Page 3 – Shouts From The Couch

The Year in Games – 2012

This post should’ve been finished already. Sure, time has been limited of late, but it’s always crazy in December, and in years past I’ve always found the time to work on it. But, well, in this post-Newtown era, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m feeling a little down about games. And it’s hard for me to reconcile what I enjoyed playing this year back when I was actually playing those games with what I’m currently feeling.

So, before I begin, I need to link to Rock Paper Shotgun’s incredibly interesting, spoiler-heavy interview about Far Cry 3. There’s a lot to unpack in that interview – the questioner echoes a lot of my own feelings about the game, what it’s appearing to say, and how successful it is in that regard – but I’m specifically linking to it to highlight this one question, which never quite gets a satisfactory answer.

You talked about how in previous Assassin’s Creed games you questioned themes and tropes, and have gone far farther with that Far Cry 3. Do you think it’s a fair criticism to say, why not make a game that doesn’t make all these mistakes? Why set out to highlight the mistakes or the laziness, or the issues, or the laziness in the players – why not set out to make a game that’s really good?

And to follow that up, I also want to link to Leigh Alexander’s fantastic, devastating piece of her post-Newtown thoughts, because she gets right to the heart of the matter:

Obviously there is no causal relationship between Newtown and video games. But I have played the damn things since I was a very small child and only in the last few years have I, as an adult woman, begun to feel profoundly uncomfortable with their unapologetic celebration of gun violence. I kill things in games every day, and sometimes I even shoot people in the face, but even I have begun to’ve had enough. It feels dark.

Something is wrong with my country.

Any games writing that questions that right to bear virtual arms with joyful impunity is often accused of having some irrelevant political agenda, of ruining the fun, of refusing to accept the all-important fact it’s just a game. Like disassociating ourselves from any intellectual consideration of the content we consume or any emotional response to it is a basic requirement for participation in this community.

I can’t accept that.

The top-grossing games of all time are about marching in a straight line and shooting people. I’ve felt confused and sad about that for a few years now and I feel moreso this week.

This sadness I’m feeling about the hobby that I’ve been passionate about for over 30 years (?!) is very hard to shake. Games used to be about more than shooting and death. Games used to have more imagination than that. And it was, ironically, easier to lose yourself in the worlds those games provided despite how limited they were in their graphical and technical resources.

And so it’s hard for me to sit here and reflect about what I played this year and find cause to celebrate, since a great deal of what I did involved shooting and killing, which are activities that I’m having a hard time finding the fun in these days. “Shooter fatigue” does not just refer to the fact that every game is a shooter, or that the act of shooting everything stopped being a novel concept about 10 years ago; it’s that I’m tired of having “shooting” be my only option when I pop in a game.

When was the last time you played a game and experienced joy?

* * * * *

Anyway. The raw data:

Strictly limited to consoles/PC, I played 43 games that were released in 2012; I also spent the bulk of January playing 2011’s The Old Republic (up to level 40 or so), Assassin’s Creed Revelations (which I only got an hour or two in before wanting to set it on fire), the PSN HD remake of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, and a few intense sessions of Renegade Ops, an XBLA dual-stick shooter that got a lot of love in the Giant Bomb year-end podcasts. (My iOS purchases were considerably higher in number, but I think it’s also fair to say that I only really focused my attention on around a dozen of them.)

GAMES I FINISHED:

Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning (main story, at least – still plenty of side stuff I never got around to; probably too much, actually)
Mass Effect 3 (but none of the DLC – I may yet try some next year, though)
Journey (multiple times)
Max Payne 3 (twice, on 360 and PC)
Diablo 3 (3 times, stopped playing on highest difficulty)
Dear Esther
Walking Dead (well, sorta. this will be finished before year’s end.)
Spec Ops: The Line
Zuma’s Revenge (xbla – the game’s actually quite short)
Quantum Conundrum
Darksiders 2
Sleeping Dogs
Mark of the Ninja
Borderlands 2
Lego LOTR

GAMES I DID NOT FINISH: looking at my Google Doc, which was kept, more or less, in chronological order, it appears that I finished none of the 11 games I started in between completing Borderlands 2 (last weekend of September) and completing Lego LOTR (2nd weekend of December). Now, 2 of those games include Forza Horizon (which is just massive) and XCOM: Enemy Unknown (which is super-intimidating and which I’ll address in further detail in a bit). But other games in that particular window of time include games that I actually sunk a fair amount of time into, including Resident Evil 6 (why?), Assassin’s Creed 3, and Dishonored. This category actually needs to be broken down into further sub-categories, for reasons that will become self-evident. (There’s also an embarrassing amount of stuff I bought during various Steam sales that will get its own specific list – I’m not even sure I even installed half of them.)

Did Not Finish, But Would Like to Finish Someday:

Dishonored – I did get pretty close…
XCOM
Dust: An Elysian Tale
Hotline: Miami
Papo & Yo
Dyad
Soundshapes

Did Not Finish, Couldn’t Get Into (But Still Respect):

Minecraft (xbla)
The Darkness 2
Torchlight 2 (this really bums me out, too. I loved the first one and was really looking forward to this one; I think I’d played too much Diablo 3 to give this one a fair shake. Maybe I’ll give it another look in 2013.)
Asura’s Wrath

Did Not Finish, Do Not Want to Finish, But Still Sunk Some Time Into:

Resident Evil 6
Assassin’s Creed 3
Halo 4
CODBLOPS 2
Final Fantasy XIII-2
SSX
Far Cry 3

Played for 5 Minutes or Less:

Twisted Metal
Ghost Recon Future Soldier
Dragon’s Dogma

Games of Note that I Did Not Play:

Star Wars Kinect (my wife played this, though. she’s a HUGE star wars nut, and if this game was built for anyone, it was her. she hated it within 5 minutes of turning it on.)
Prototype 2
Rock Band Blitz
Fable The Journey
007 Legends
Syndicate
Medal of Honor: Warfighter
Dance Central 3
Hitman: Absolution
Tokyo Jungle – this needs to be corrected
Unfinished Swan – this, too, even though I don’t have the Move controller
anything for the 3DS, the Vita, or the WiiU

GAMERSCORE: I am no longer the shameless Achievement Whore I used to be, but I do keep track of this stuff for some reason. I started 2012 at 77580. I am currently at 85485 (as of 12/19/12), and if that number goes up it’s only because I’m forging ahead in Lego LOTR, Batman Arkham City (on my PC), or Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which I just inexplicably rented from Gamefly. Also, I do plan on finishing Walking Dead Eps. 4 and 5 over the holiday break, so there’s that.

Favorite Achievement: There isn’t any one particular Achievement that stands out to me – not like when I found the last orb in Crackdown, or when my wife and I did the Endless Setlist in Rock Band 3 – but I suppose I’m the proudest of whatever I was able to accomplish in Fez without using a walkthrough.

iOS GAMES OF THE YEAR: I’m not sure that these are all amazing games, but they were certainly absorbing, and addicting as all hell, and made my subway commutes hassle free (except for that one morning when I was so focused on Chip Chain that I missed my subway stop). Also of note: not a single gun.

Chip Chain
Rayman Jungle Run
10,000,000
Puzzle Craft
The Room
Punch Quest
Dream of Pixels
Super Monsters Ate My Condo
Puzzle & Dragon
SpellTower
Pocket Planes

So, yeah. Steam sales. Even though this section isn’t necessarily about the Best Games Of The Year, it’s still relevant because I found myself playing more games on the PC this year than ever. And because the notion of a “Steam Box” is suddenly sounding incredibly sexy. And if anyone’s going to be able to compete for the living room with Microsoft and Sony (and Nintendo, if the WiiU is for real), I think Valve has the best shot. And, as I’ll be a new father in a few months with a much tighter leash on my disposable income, the fact that I bought everything below for under $60 COMBINED is perhaps one of the most significant things that happened to me this year as far as my game-consuming habits are concerned.

THE STEAM SALE HAUL (Summer):

Galactic Civilizations II (super pack) – [why did I even bother? I saw “turn-based strategy in space” for under $8 and couldn’t help myself. have I played it yet? of course not!]
Bulletstorm – [#10 on my Best-of-2011 List. looked AMAZING on my PC, and was even better the 2nd time around.]
Alan Wake (complete pack) – [I played and sort-of liked the first game on the 360. I tried the first few minutes of American Nightmare on the PC; it’s a little ridiculous.]
Quantum Conundrum – [I’d written a huge review of this that I’d intended to post, but when I re-read it it felt so negative that you’d never understand why I even bothered to finish it. The short, nice version – it’s a charming game with some really unique puzzles, but it’s also got some flaws that are hard to get past. And it’s never going to be as brilliant as Portal.]
SOL: Exodus – [This space combat-ish game got a lot of talk earlier in the year on various podcasts, which is how I presume it wound up on my wishlist. I tried the first 10 minutes or so; it’s promising.]
Legend of Grimrock – [I was sorta hoping to wait for the iPad version, but the sale price was too good to pass up. I played the first few minutes; I need to spend some serious time with a tutorial to figure out just what the hell I’m doing.]
Saints Row the Third [which I’ve already finished on the 360 – but how could I pass it up for 75% off? ]
Indie Bundle 2 (Botanicula, EYE, Universe Sandbox, Oil Rush, Splice) – [bought this only for Botanicula, which I haven’t yet played.]
Anno 2770 – [as with GalCiv2 above, I have no idea why I bought this. I opened it up and played the first 5 minutes and didn’t know how to do anything.]

THE STEAM SALE HAUL (Thanksgiving):

Tropico 4 – [they had it for $7. And I’d always been curious about this franchise, even if I don’t understand what it is or how it’s played.]
Yesterday
Thirty Flights of Loving
Resonance
Batman Arkham City GOTY
Dishonored

OK, let’s get back to the awards!

BEST GAMEPLAY MECHANIC OF 2012:

Dishonored, “Blink“. This might be the easiest category of all, when I think about it. I had some significant problems with the game as it went along, but I never got tired of zipping around the environment; whether for strategic purposes in plotting out how to attack an area, or simply to speed things along, it was an immediately satisfying maneuver, and I used it at every opportunity. In fact, when I eventually tired of the game and started playing other shooters, I found myself missing being able to Blink. (It certainly would’ve come in handy in Borderlands 2 and Far Cry 3.)

MOST TIME SPENT IN GAME:

TIE: Borderlands 2 / Diablo 3. I’m not sure the numbers are accurate, but raptr says I spent 56 hours in Borderlands 2, and I’m pretty sure I was around that amount (if not more) in Diablo 3. The key difference, though, is that I didn’t hate myself when I played Borderlands 2.

BEST MOMENT:

TIE, again: Mass Effect 3, visiting the temple (with the Prothean in my party) / Journey, the sand-skiing level. There’s a pivotal scene late in ME3’s campaign where, after a lengthy firefight, you’re exploring the ruins of an ancient Asari temple. Some pretty amazing things are revealed. The first time I played this scene, though, I didn’t have the Prothean team member in my party, and I realized that if anybody could shed some light on what I was seeing, it would be him. It was worth it to reload my save and hear his commentary; what he added changed everything. As for Journey; well, I’m not a good enough writer to describe what happened to me during the sand-skiing level. But when I asked the question above, about the last time you played a game and felt joy? That moment was it, for me. Sheer exhilaration, wonder, awe.

B3ST GAM3 With a 3 in the TITL3: There have been plenty of franchises that have made it to a 3rd game, but it wasn’t until last year that it started to get a little ridiculous. In keeping with the tradition, this year’s nominees are:

Far Cry 3
Max Payne 3
Diablo 3
Assassin’s Creed 3
Dance Central 3
Mass Effect 3

I was fully prepared to give this to a different game, but as I was writing the Best Moment section above, I had a change of heart. Even though Far Cry 3 has a lot of things going for it, I’d be crazy to not give this to Mass Effect 3. If the ending wasn’t as great as we’d wanted it to be, it was still an extraordinary experience, and a fitting conclusion to one of the most important intellectual properties of this generation.

BEST NEW IP:

Mark of the Ninja. One of the finest stealth games ever made, with great writing and a fantastic art style. While the story has a definite conclusion, thus making a direct sequel somewhat narratively tricky, I would absolutely play more of these in the future.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT:

Need For Speed Most Wanted. I was afraid of this, to be honest; I was afraid that when EA bought Criterion, they’d prevent Criterion from doing what it does best. What Criterion does best is making Burnout games, with Burnout rules, and with the freedom of destruction that having unlicensed cars provides. Need For Speed is a franchise that EA is desperate to make relevant again, and so by buying the Burnout developer and preventing them from actually making Burnout games, but sort-of letting them shoehorn some of the Burnout magic into a completely different IP, they’ve managed to please nobody. I had hoped that Criterion could trascend this; alas, the game feels rushed, though it does feature some of the most frustrating rubberband AI in the history of the medium. (Honorable mention goes to another failed EA reboot – SSX.)

FAVORITE FRANCHISE THAT I’M MORE OR LESS READY TO GIVE UP ON:

Yet another TIE: Tiger Woods / Assassin’s Creed. I’ve been threatening to quit on these franchises for a while now, and this year’s entries did nothing to dissuade me from that attempt. The putting game in Tiger is maybe more frustrating than the rubberband AI in NFS:MW, but the fact that almost half the game’s courses are locked behind a paywall is unforgivable. Meanwhile, Assassin’s Creed had managed to subvert the curse of annualized release dates for a little while until last year’s dreadful Revelations, and this year’s edition, while a little bit better, was still an embarrassing mess.

BEST / WORST TREND:

Kickstarter. The incredible success of DoubleFine’s Adventure Game must have appeared to be a glorious, watershed moment for indie developers – finally, a way to subvert the traditional publisher relationship and have a direct relationship with the consumers! Sure enough, eventually it seemed that there was a new high-profile developer making a Kickstarter pitch every other week, and for a while we all got pretty excited about the possibility of crowd-sourced development funding. But it’s started to get a bit out of control, and there’s a growing concern that a lot of these projects, already behind on their delivery dates, may never get released.

2010’s MOST-PLAYED GAME OF 2012:

Pinball FX2, which is the gift that keeps on giving; its steady stream of quality DLC tables has kept it in my rotation for pretty much the entire year.

THE “SACRED 2” MEMORIAL AWARD FOR THE MOST TIME PLAYING A GAME THAT I ACTIVELY DISLIKED:

There’s a distressingly high number of games that fall into consideration for this category, when I think about it. But the thing about naming this award after Sacred 2 is that I actually finished Sacred 2, even though there was so much to hate. And in that regard, while I can’t say I hated Diablo 3, I did eventually start to hate myself for playing it to death. I finished it 3 times, eventually getting stuck on the hardest difficult level, where my level 60 Monk never managed to survive past Act I. And grinding Acts 4 and 5 of the lower difficulty’s tier began to grow very tiresome. The best loot I ever got in the game was from the Auction House, not from a drop – not even from a drop while having 5 sets of Nephalim Valor or whatever the hell it was called. Diablo 3 is an incredibly well-made game, to be sure, and I did have a lot of fun for a while, there. But eventually the experience became monotonous and repetitive and the fun gradually faded, even as I continually left-clicked my enemies to death.

FAVORITE GAME THAT EVERYBODY ELSE SEEMED TO DISLIKE:

Max Payne 3. I have no idea where all the hate for this game came from; I loved it. When Steam offered it along with a free copy of L.A. Noire, I immediately downloaded it even though I’d already beaten it on the 360, and had already beaten L.A. Noire, too. It’s the best-looking game Rockstar’s made, but more importantly, it was true to the franchise’s roots. The trademark slow-motion gunplay was still fun as hell. Sure, the story gets a little ridiculous and melodramatic, and Max can be a bit of a downer (to put it mildly), but I thought the campaign was really well designed, and the multiplayer was arguably better than Red Dead Redemption‘s. (I say that possibly because it’s one of the few competitive multiplayer modes that I’m not completely terrible at, but hey – it worked for me!)

BEST GAME THAT I DIDN’T FINISH, EVEN THOUGH I WANTED TO:

With apologies to The Walking Dead, which I have every intention of finishing this holiday weekend, this award must go to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It’s maddeningly difficult and intimidating as all hell, but it’s never unfair; I learned from each of my mistakes, even at the expense of one (or more) of my soldier’s lives. I do need to get back to this one; I put it down only because the pressure got to be too much. It’s so goddamned tense! Each turn of play has the potential to go horribly awry! Even thinking about now makes my blood pressure rise.

THE BEST EXAMPLE OF AN HD REMAKE THAT MAKES YOU QUESTION YOUR MEMORY:

With apologies to the remake of Jet Set Radio, which I only played in demo form, I have to give this to Tony Hawk HD. I was really looking forward to this release, as I played the original THPS1 and THPS2 games to death on the Dreamcast, and I’ve missed the purity of those original games’ design and intent. Alas, the HD remastering only revealed that the levels weren’t nearly as interesting as I remembered them being, and that my skills were somewhat lacking. As of this writing, I have not yet purchased the “Revert” DLC, but I’m not sure I want to; I’m already a little sad that I didn’t love this game as much as I’d wanted to.

THE BEST EXAMPLE OF AN HD REMAKE THAT RESTORES YOUR FAITH IN YOUR MEMORY:

I still need to play more of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath on the PS3; I got a few hours into it and then got distracted. But man, that game is still fun as hell, and it looks absolutely fantastic in HD. Here’s hoping that the HD remakes of the original Abe’s Oddysee and Exoddus are as good as this was. (Supposedly there’s a remake of Munch that’s either out or is arriving shortly, but I don’t think any amount of HD tweaking will fix what was wrong with that one.)

* * * * *

THE TOP 10 GAMES OF THE YEAR

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Sleeping Dogs – maybe the most pleasureable surprise of the year; certainly one of the better GTA clones ever made.
Trials Evolution – one of the best XBLA titles gets an even better sequel.
Walking Dead – I reserve the right to amend my top 10 list once I finish this. I’ve heard from everyone who’s finished it that it has one of the best endings in videogame history.
Diablo 3 – despite my self-loathing, it’s still a really well-made game.

10. Max Payne 3. See above. I know it has problems, but I found it an engrossing experience, with action just as flashy and enjoyable as the originals.

9. Fez. This was near the top of my most-wanted list for years, and while it wasn’t quite the game I expected it to be – it was less of a 2D/3D platforming puzzle game and more of an abstract code-breaking journey – it was still a remarkable, singularly unique experience.

8. XCOM Enemy Unknown. I am afraid of this game.

7. Darksiders 2. I had an absolute blast with this one. This was, for a long part of the year, my top pick for GOTY. It wasn’t quite as good in New Game + mode, but I can’t hold that against it; the first time through, it was a great time.

6. Forza Horizon. If I was shocked at how disappointed I was in Need For Speed Most Wanted, I was just as shocked at how much I enjoyed this one. I fully expected this to be a cheap cash-grab, but instead it was a full-featured racer that took the best qualities of Forza and added a gorgeous open world, a satisfying variety of race types, a fun and engaging driving model which straddles the line perfectly between sim and arcade, a dynamic leaderboard that encouraged you to best your previous marks, and even some side stuff that gave you something else to do while soaking in the scenery. I need to get back into this one; there’s still a lot I left unfinished.

5. Mark of the Ninja. As noted above, this is perhaps the best set of stealth mechanics in the entire genre, be it 2D or 3D. The art direction and writing are top notch, and there’s plenty of replayability to be found after finishing the story.

4. Far Cry 3. This was almost my #1, to be honest. I’ve written too many words about it this week to give it its proper due in this post; it’s a fantastic game with some remarkable voice acting and a gorgeous open world to explore, but it’s also got a troubling narrative that threatens to drag it down, which is a very kind way of putting it. As it stands, I’ve chosen to not finish it, and instead spend the rest of my time with it finding all the relics and hidden items; what I’ve read of the ending sounds distasteful, and in any event, I’ve still gotten my money’s worth. Despite the writer’s intentions, I found the game I wanted to play in it, and I’m grateful that the game designers allowed me that much.

3. Mass Effect 3. At some point next year, I’m going to go back and replay this one. In each of the earlier games in the series, I played through twice – once as a paragon, the second time as a renegade. Alas, I never got around to the renegade playthrough for this one, and so, when I do, I’ll also have the benefit of seeing some of the DLC that’s supposedly enhanced the experience for the better. In any event, this is a remarkable entry in one of the most outstanding technical achievements of this generation – I’m still impressed at how it managed to do what it did. It’s a shame the side quests were so poorly conceived and executed, but whatever; the main story was engaging, the larger universe was a joy to explore, and the overall experience was nothing short of incredible.

2. Borderlands 2. My shooter fatigue has developed into a troubling malaise with videogames in general, which is a real bummer for a number of reasons; but if this is the last pure shooter I ever end up playing, I think I’ll be OK with it. It kept everything that was great about the first game, threw out everything that sucked, and then made everything funnier and more colorful and bigger and better and etc. I will continue to check in on this game’s DLC, as I’m glad to have any opportunity to drop back in and see this world. The violence is plentiful and gratuitous, to be sure, but it’s also very silly and cartoonish; the game is never taking itself all that seriously, which is refreshing in this day and age of gritty, visceral realism. There’s still not very much to do in this game, when I think about it; to re-quote Leigh Alexander, it’s still ultimately about marching in a straight line and shooting people, but at least it’s having fun while doing it. I might finish a session of Borderlands 2 and be exhausted, but I’m not emotionally drained.

1. Journey. I finished this game very quickly the day it came out, and I was so taken with it that I sat my wife down the following day and watched her play it. Soon enough, a stranger arrived in her session – with one of the longest capes I’ve ever seen – and showed her around, helping her get through tricky platforming sequences, leading her to a bunch of hidden, secret stuff that I hadn’t found in my own playthrough, and staying with her throughout the entire game, right through the heart of the mountaintop. That this random stranger was able to do all of this without uttering a single word is truly remarkable. It’s true that the sand-skiing sequence is one of the most beautiful, joyous experiences I’ve ever had in a game, but it’s also true that the entire game itself filled me with wonder and emotions that I still can’t quite explain. There is no dialogue; there is no “story”; there is no violence; there are only two actions – move and jump. You are compelled to move forward and explore. That this game could be made in this day and age is something to be celebrated. That the game is so fucking good is something else entirely. I wasn’t expecting to give this my top slot; indeed, when I started writing this post, I was still pretty sure that Borderlands 2 was going to take it. But the more I think about it, the more I want to go back and play this game; I want to feel those feelings again; I want to be reminded that there will always be more to do in this medium than simply killing something. You can be touched. You can feel joy.

moving past murder

I’m in the beginning stages of working on the 2012 GOTY post, which is normally a fun and exciting thing to work on. This year’s edition is a bit tougher to put together than years past, though; it wasn’t a particularly strong year, for one thing, and I’ve been hard-pressed to find one title standing head and shoulders above the rest. My top 10 feels very flimsy to me – I’ve tried several different orders and none of them feel right. In previous years, there’d at least be a clear top 3-5 to choose from, with the bottom of the order eventually settling into place. Right now, I’ve maybe got a clear top 2, but I haven’t even finished one of them yet. (Hint hint.)

As I think about what I played this year, though, I’m a little troubled. And maybe it’s because I’m going to be a father in the spring, and I’m suddenly going to have to be very aware of what I play and what I let my little boy see – I mean, I’m going to be changing diapers and getting 2 hours of sleep right when Bioshock Infinite and GTA5 come out; and maybe it’s because “shooter fatigue” is a real problem for me, even if I’m loving the hell out of Far Cry 3.

I guess I’m just concerned about how much virtual murder I’ve committed this year. If I have the time (and I probably won’t), I’d like to check out the stats of each game I played and see just how many people, aliens and animals I killed. Even if I just take into account that I hardly did any multiplayer gaming this year, and even if I also take into account that there were quite a few games that I didn’t even finish, I’m guessing I killed at least 10,000 things. I’m pulling that number out of my ass, to be sure, but I did kill over 700 people just in Uncharted 3 last year, and this year I played Diablo 3 to completion 3 times – I might’ve killed 10,000 things in that game alone.

And of all the games I played, only Spec Ops: The Line had the flat-out balls to ask if all that killing was fun.

New consoles are probably coming out next year*, which means, among other things, that AAA games will be much more expensive to produce in order to look as good as they’re expected to; and as such, there’s probably not going to be a whole lot of risk-taking in the development of new IP. And the truth of the matter is that shooting still sells better than anything else. Sure, there’s always Madden, and there’s lots of non-murdering happening in the downloadable spaces like PSN and XBLA and iOS. But nothing’s making money like Halo and Call of Duty, and you’d better believe that this console generation’s swan song, GTA5, is going to sell at least 20-40 gazillion units next year. That’s a lot of virtual bullets yet to be fired.

I hope, though, that there will be developers courageous enough to create game experiences that are not focused around killing. (The Mass Effect franchise, which I adore, is certainly not only about killing, but most of the missions involve killing in order to get from point A to point B. I might also add that my favorite ME missions have almost always been the ones that don’t involve killing, but rather focus on exploration – if only because they’re such a refreshing change of pace.) Games like Journey and Fez had no death, no end-state, no obliteration – only you and the environment and a goal to achieve, and they were magical experiences unlike anything else I’d played this year. I’ve played the hell out a bunch of games on my iPhone and iPad this year, and almost none of them involved the firing of a gun, and they were all, for the most part, absorbing and interesting.

It CAN be done, is the thing. There is an audience for this kind of game experience. It might not be as large as the millions of people who play shooters all the time, but it’s certainly there, and I think it’d really be something if game designers could evolve along with the technology they’re working with to create experiences where winning doesn’t necessarily have to mean killing.

________________________________

* There’s rumors now that a Steam Box is actually happening, and if it is, that might very well end up being my console of choice. If it comes with a blu-ray drive? Sold.

The Year So Far

My desire to one day be a professional game journalist is tempered by the fact that, well, sometimes there just ain’t very much to write about. And I’m trying to figure out how to maintain a semi-regular content stream here without it simply being a diary of what I’ve been playing. (And let me tell you, this current release lull that we’re in – the cocktease of Sleeping Dogs and Darksiders 2 coming out on the same day, followed by a month of nothingness until Borderlands 2 – is not helping. Indeed, I finished Sleeping Dogs over Labor Day weekend and now I find myself doing a New Game+ of Darksiders 2, because why the hell not.)

I’ve toyed with the idea of updating this blog more frequently with links to other articles I find interesting, but Patrick Klepek already does that quite well with his weekly “Worth Reading” column, and in any event reblogging is a lot easier on Tumblr than it is on WordPress.

I’ve similarly toyed with the idea of a “What I Would Have Said” column, wherein I respond to certain topics of interest in various game-focused podcasts. (Indeed, I still might do that – this week’s Giant Bombcast features a brief digression from Jeff (who never, ever, ever goes off on tangents) (j/k) about game reviews and their relevance/purpose in today’s game media, and I (as a consumer) have certain things I’d like to say about that.)

[I’m also very much wanting to talk about the new Xbox360 dashboard, which I received access to a few weeks ago (along with half the world, probably), but I don’t know if talking about it here violates an NDA. I will say this, though – even before the update, everything moves so. goddamned. slow. And they’ve made it too hard to find the stuff I want.]

Here’s the thing, though. Most of the time, I do this blog in my down time at work; this down time is infrequently spaced and full of constant interruption – I started this post around 3 hours ago – so it’s hard to really buckle down and focus and write something engaging and interesting.

So, since my time to blog here is so limited anyway, and since I’m wanting to talk about something even though my brain is whirring in a million different directions which makes talking about something of actual substance an exercise in futility, I’m going to take the easy way out and simply do a preemptive Best Games of 2012: So Far column. Because, well, let’s face it – the rest of the year looks pretty bleak, and it’s highly probable that there will be few substantive changes between the list I make today and the list I make in December. Seriously – check out my Fall Preview column from July – as far as this console generation goes, this holiday season has got to be one of the saddest. (Like I said there – I have high hopes for Borderlands 2 and for ~~Burnout Paradise 2~~ Need for Speed Most Wanted, I expect the Firaxis XCOM game to be great (and I expect that I’ll play it exactly once, on the easiest difficulty setting, before being too intimidated by it), and I’d like to think that Dishonored will live up to its hype. I don’t really know what to expect out of Resident Evil 6 – I’m one of the few people I know who will admit to liking Resident Evil 5, and I’m definitely one of the only people on the planet who thought that RE4 was incredibly overrated, so I’m clearly not the target demographic. I have less than high hopes for Assassin’s Creed 3, though I’ll play it; I don’t really care about Halo 4, though I’ll most likely play that as well; CODBLOPS 2 and Far Cry 3 are things I’ll rent if I’m bored.)

So, then. My Top 10 of 2012 so far- not counting iOS stuff, although iOS has been more miss than hit lately, too – looks something like this:

Mass Effect 3
Darksiders 2
Journey
Fez
Trials Evolution
The Walking Dead
Max Payne 3
Diablo 3
Sleeping Dogs
Spec Ops: The Line

First off – I’d be surprised to see Sleeping Dogs and Spec Ops still on this list at the end of the year, frankly. I enjoyed those games quite a bit, and was pleased to see that they had ambition and effort and weren’t just cookie-cutter experiences, but I don’t know that I’d call them capital-G Great.

Secondly – I’m also not entirely sure that ME3 will stay in the top spot; I just don’t know what I’d put there. I didn’t hate the ending the way other people did, but my problems with that game weren’t really about the ending anyway. I don’t know if Darksiders 2 will remain that high, either; right now it’s up there because I’m still enjoying the hell out of it after playing the hell out of it for 30 hours or so. I don’t know that I can put Journey in the top spot, because while I found it exhilarating and intoxicating during my time with it, it didn’t really stay in my bloodstream for very long after I finished it (though that sand surfing sequence is something special). Honestly, the game I spent the most time with in terms of raw hours is probably Diablo 3, and I’m at the point right now where I don’t even want to think about that game anymore.

If anything, I might move Max Payne 3 up a few slots. I’ve been replaying it on the PC during this lull period, and there’s a certain quality about it that I find really intoxicating. I’ve been finding that I’m playing it better on the PC (even though I’m still using a 360 controller) – I’m using the slow-mo and the jump dodge a lot more, and killing dudes in that spectacular way still feels fucking incredible. Max 3 got a bit of a bad rap, and I guess I can understand why, but it’s struck a chord in me – similar to the way L.A. Noire did, in spite of all its flaws. (Maybe I’m too much of a Rockstar fanboy to be truly objective, though.)

What about you guys? What am I missing? What did I forget? What else should I play before the year runs out?

The Year In Games – 2011

I know I’m prone to excessive hyperbole on occasion, but I really did think that 2011 would go down as one of the best years of all time. Last December, I did my usual Lust List and my predicted top 5 looked like a Murderer’s Row of kick-ass:

Uncharted 3
Portal 2
Skyrim
Batman
Mass Effect 3

Now, as it happens, that Top 5 isn’t totally off the mark. While it’s true that Mass Effect 3 ended up moving to 2012, those other 4 wound up in my Top 10. That being said, when I look over the year now, I think it’s clear that this was not the mega-fantastic year that I thought it’d be. Truth is, we’re near the end of this console cycle, and so developers are reluctant to do anything terribly risky. (Exhibit A – 8 of my Top 10 games are sequels.) Graphics have improved, certainly, but there’s only so much more that developers can do in that regard. Frankly, I spent far more time whining this year about how nothing was coming out than I did praising all the good stuff that I was enjoying. And I developed shooter fatigue in a big, big way. Still, all things being equal, this was a pretty solid year. The big blockbusters delivered, more or less, and pretty much everything I played this year had something worth experiencing.

As for the nitty gritty:

I used to start these year-end recaps with a count of all the games I played. Last year that count went a bit askew, because I’d included iPhone games in the total. Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that despite my OCD tendencies when it comes to keeping track of this stuff, I kinda went a little bananas with iPhone games this year. And I should also say that Steam killed me this year; I bought way too many games for my PC because of rampant Steam sales, and I hardly played any of them. (Furthermore, a lot of those Steam games were games I’d already played on consoles. I am a whore.)

So I think it’s more accurate to look at the games that I actually sat down and played, like, for real. This isn’t to discount the iPhone as a platform, though. In fact, fuck it – let’s just get to the iPhone section.

The biggest thing I came away with, when reviewing 2011, is that I clearly do not have any need for a 3DS or a Vita. I am done with Mario and Zelda, for one thing, and there’s no indication that Nintendo is interested in moving beyond their core IP, ever. And anyone who bought a 3DS in its current form is a sucker, regardless of the insane price cut Nintendo was forced to apply; everyone knows that v.2 is coming next year with a 2nd analog stick. (Is there any compelling software yet, though? That doesn’t have Zelda or Mario in the title, I mean? No? OK.) The Vita is a bit more intriguing, certainly, but since it isn’t a phone or a tablet, it’s 100% dependent on killer software, and I just don’t know if the killer software will ever show up – it certainly didn’t for the PSP.

Meanwhile, the iPhone continues to be the coolest gadget I’ve ever owned, and I am totally OK with it being my handheld gaming device. I’ve grown accustomed to being able to listen to music or podcasts while I mess around with a game. And I’ve gotten really accustomed to paying $1-3 for an engrossing experience, and splurging for Infinity Blade 2 at, like, $7 is worth it. The fact that I’ve currently got a nice-looking, playable port of GTA3 in my pocket is awesome.

So, yeah, OK, let’s do my iPhone GAME OF THE YEAR: I am still obsessed with Tiny Tower, as it is a remarkable outlet for my aforementioned OCD tendencies, but the game that I enjoyed the most is probably Jetpack Joyride, the best iteration of the popular “non-stop runner genre” on the iOS platform. (Surely there’s a better name for it than that?) The objective is still, generally, to keep moving while avoiding obstacles, but there are also numerous sub-objectives that constantly shift how you play – whether it’s high-fiving scientists, or rubbing your head on the ceiling, or reaching a certain distance without picking up any coins. It’s got a great sense of humor and whimsy, and Halfbrick has been great about providing a steady stream of updates to keep the game fresh.

Honorable Mention:

Sword & Sworcery
Quarrel
Slam Dunk King
Tiny Tower
Infinity Blade 2

OK, as for the consoles. I played around 55 games or so, spread around the Xbox360, PS3 and PC. (As noted above, I bought a lot of games through Steam’s numerous sales, but I’d either (a) already played them on consoles, or (b) didn’t really spend more than 30 seconds with them, and so I’m not really counting those.)

I “finished” 22 games this year, although this list is in no particular order:

ICO
Portal 2
L.A. Noire
Batman Arkham City
Deus Ex: HR
Mortal Kombat
Stacking
Bastion
Dead Space 2
Bulletstorm
Dragon Age 2
Gears of War 3
Uncharted 3
Modern Warfare 3
Little Big Planet 2
LEGO Pirates of the Carribbean
Resistance 3
Rage
Killzone 3
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Infamous 2
LOTR: War in the North

GAMERSCORE: I started 2011 at 64607. I will most likely finish it at around 77200, depending on how Achievement-hungry I get in Skyrim. Speaking of Achievements:

FAVORITE ACHIEVEMENT: This is silly, but I have to give this to Rock Band 3, “Well Connected.” All I did was link my virtual band to the Harmonix website, which netted me 6 points; more importantly, it got my total Achievement score back to 0s and 5s. This had been driving me crazy for years, people. I’ve stopped being so insane about chasing Achievements, but it’s very, very nice to have round numbers in my life again. And speaking of numbers:

BEST GAME WITH A 3 IN THE TITLE: (Apologies to Tim Rogers and this Kotaku feature.) Certainly didn’t think this is the way it would go down at the beginning of the year, but I have to give it to Saints Row the Third, and it’s not even all that close, surprisingly enough. I’ll have more to say about Saints Row a little later on, but for now it’s fair to say that this franchise should be Exhibit A when it comes to the right way to develop sequels. Each game has been markedly better than the last, while still keeping the series’ roots intact. And considering what the “roots” of this series are – i.e., being as completely insane as possible – it’s a pretty remarkable accomplishment.

Honorable Mention:

Uncharted 3
Dirt 3
Gears of War 3
Modern Warfare 3
Killzone 3
Resistance 3
Serious Sam 3

RANDOM OBSESSION: I got fiercely addicted to Plants v. Zombies over the summer, and I played it on pretty much every platform it’s available for. No idea why, actually – that game is (1) old, and (2) stresses me out.

DID NOT FINISH, WOULD LIKE TO FINISH SOMEDAY: There’s no excuse for me not having finished Trenched / Iron Brigade. I was having a blast with that when it came out – some of the most fun co-op I’ve ever had.

Honorable Mention:

Driver: SF
Yakuza 4
Serious Sam 3

DID NOT FINISH, COULDN’T GET INTO (BUT STILL RESPECT): Quite a few of these, actually, but the winner is The Witcher 2. Enough people gushed about this to make me feel guilty for giving up on it. I tried it both pre- and post-patch, and while I appreciated the patch’s new tutorial, I still had a hard time getting sucked in. It’s absolutely gorgeous and I can see why people love it, though.) I also really feel bad about not getting into Dark Souls, and every time Amazon’s had it on sale lately (which is a lot), I keep thinking about splurging for it.

Honorable Mention:

Dead Island
Dark Souls
Shadows of the Damned

DID NOT FINISH, DO NOT WANT TO FINISH: The winner of this category immediately follows the runners-up.

Crysis 2
Alice: Madness Returns
Burnout: Crash

WORST GAME / MOST DISAPPOINTING GAME: I feel bad just admitting that I bought it, frankly. But I was home, sick, and Duke Nukem Forever had finally launched on Steam, and in my delirious state I went against my better judgment (and all the advance reviews). I had been a huge Duke 3D fan back in the day, and ultimately that won out. What a huge piece of shit this turned out to be. Let’s move on.

THE 5-MINUTES-OR-LESS ALL-STARS: You know how you can just tell that a game isn’t for you, right from the beginning? Yeah, there were a few of those.

Shift 2 Unleashed
Dungeon Siege 3
Metal Gear Solid HD. I’m just not sure I’m ever going to get what’s so great about this franchise.

DID NOT PLAY:

NBA2K12
Need for Speed: The Run
Battlefield 3
Zelda
Minecraft
Catherine
Halo Anniversary
Once Upon a Monster
Nintendo 3DS

OK, let’s move on to the good stuff.

BEST NEW IP: There really wasn’t much to choose from, actually, which is sad. That being said, while it had its fair share of problems, I really enjoyed L.A. Noire. That facial tech is pretty extraordinary, and Team Bondi did a pretty spectacular job at recreating post-war Los Angeles. (It’s a shame that there wasn’t all that much to do in it, but it was really nice to explore just the same.) I think Rockstar could clean it up a bit and put out one hell of a sequel, the way they did with Red Dead Redemption.

Honorable Mention:

Bastion
Bulletstorm
Rage
Dead Island

BEST SOUNDTRACK: I don’t know if it’s because I’m a composer and am therefore inherently snobby, but I generally don’t really pay that much attention to soundtracks – be it game or movie or what-have-you. There’s only been two times where I’ve seen a movie and needed the soundtrack as soon as I walked out of the theater (Rushmore and Ocean’s 11), and it’s never happened for a game. That is, until this year. Surprisingly enough, the game in question is an iPhone game. I never did end up finishing Sword & Sworcery, but I fell in love with the soundtrack immediately, and bought it on iTunes (where it actually costs more than the game, I think – and it’s worth every penny).

Honorable Mention:

Rayman Origins
L.A. Noire

BEST TREND: This isn’t necessarily a 2012 thing, but we saw lots of HD remakes of classic games, and I’m all for it.

BEST HD REMAKE: Alternately, this is the Most Anticipated HD Remake: Ico/Shadow of the Colossus. And I haven’t even finished Shadow yet! That said, it was really nice to finally experience some of the most talked-about games ever made. Definitely on board for The Last Guardian now.

Honorable Mention:

Beyond Good & Evil HD
Metal Gear Solid HD

GAMES I’D LIKE TO SEE GET THE HD REMAKE TREATMENT: I know this isn’t strictly a 2011 category, but while we’re on the topic, a boy can dream:

Skies of Arcadia
Grim Fandango
Rayman 2
Crash Bandicoot 1-3 / Crash Team Racing

GAMES THAT ARE GETTING THE HD REMAKE TREATMENT IN 2012 (that I’m aware of, and that I’m totally psyched about):

Tony Hawk Pro Skater (sort of)
Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee / Exoddus (judging from the Stranger’s Wrath screenshots, these games should look fantastic)
Rayman 3
Final Fantasy X

MOST-PLAYED 2010 GAME: Pinball FX2, whose steady stream of quality DLC kept it in my rotation for pretty much the whole year.

MOST FORGETTABLE: This was a pretty dismal year in terms of quality driving games, and so I give this out to both Motorstorm Apocalypse and Test Drive Unlimited 2, both of which were also quite terrible.

MOST OVERLOOKED: I’d never played the first two Resistance games, but I ended up trying Resistance 3, and it was really, really good. Certainly one of the best weapon arsenals I’ve ever messed around with, and the leveling up system was smart and well-implemented – it encouraged you to play with everything. (Unlike Gears of War 3, where I used the Lancer from start to finish.)

MOST OVERRATED: I’m not sure there’s a game that came out this year that was truly “overrated”, as I tended to agree with the general critical reception of any particular game. If I had to award this to anything, I’d probably give it to Crysis 2, which got so incredibly stupid towards the end that I started getting angry. It featured some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard, and in service of a nonsensical story. It looked great, sure, but there’s only so much stupid I can take. I know that creating an engaging narrative is not necessarily priority #1 in today’s games, but this was just ridiculous.

THE “SACRED 2” AWARD FOR MOST TIME SPENT PLAYING A GAME THAT I ACTIVELY DISLIKED: I didn’t hate it the way I hated Sacred 2, but I only played Lord of the Rings: War In the North to completion because I was home sick for two days with nothing to do. And boy, that’s a lot of time that I’m never going to get back.

THE BEST ARGUMENT BOTH FOR / AGAINST USING HEAVY DRUGS DURING THE CREATIVE PROCESS: The Japanese are weird. And Shadows of the Damned is fucking weird. And I don’t do drugs anymore, and so I’m not sure I’m ever going to understand what all the fuss was about. Still, it’s hard to deny that there was a pretty fierce vision behind this one.

BEST IMPLEMENTATION OF A “SEASON PASS”: The Season Pass is a somewhat controversial topic these days, but when it’s done right, it’s a thing of beauty. The Season Pass attached to L.A. Noire was worth every penny; it kept me engaged in that game for months after its release. Sure, it felt like the cases were “deleted scenes” from the game proper, but it was still fun to play.

BEST SYNERGY BETWEEN WRITER, PERFORMER AND ANIMATOR: This is a complicated way of saying that while Stephen Merchant’s performance as Wheatley in Portal 2 was perhaps the greatest voice performance I’ve ever heard in a game, credit must also go to the incredible dialogue and the remarkably humanizing animation, considering that Wheatley is a talking sphere. Apologies to the cast and crew of Uncharted 3, but holy shit.

BEST GRAPHICS: If I’m being honest, there was a lot more to Rage than a killer graphics engine; it did fall apart in the end, but for the most part it was a really enjoyable experience. But WOWEE ZOWEE, I didn’t know my Xbox could look that good. (As noted above, I didn’t play Battlefield 3, so, you know.)

Honorable Mention:

Uncharted 3
Skyrim (kinda)
Rayman Origins

I WISH I DIDN’T SUCK AT FIGHTING GAMES: I did eventually finish Mortal Kombat, but only on the lowest difficulty setting. Clearly, that’s one of the most complete packages ever released, and if you’re a fan of the franchise, you probably already know that.

DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR: You know how happy it makes me to give this award to DoubleFine? So happy. It looks like they’ve finally found their niche, with these delightful downloadable titles. 2010’s Costume Quest, Stacking and Trenched – er, Iron Brigade – were all wildly different from each other, and all had a ton of charm and were fun as hell to play. All were memorable, distinctive, and unique. And I would’ve played the Sesame Street game if I had a kid. (Still might, eventually.)

OK, let’s do this.

GAME OF THE YEAR, Honorable Mentions.

You Don’t Know Jack
Dragon Age 2
Resistance 3
Killzone 3
Little Big Planet 2
Dead Space 2

10. Bulletstorm. I said before that I experienced some serious shooter fatigue this year. That certainly wasn’t Bulletstorm’s fault, which did every goddamned thing it could do to stay interesting and distinctive. And colorful! Who knew that it was still possible to have colors other than brown and gray in a shooter!

9. Gears of War 3. It’s the best Gears game yet, despite that ridiculous football fantasy sequence. I didn’t spend enough time with the online stuff as I suppose I should’ve, but the end of the year sorta got away with me.

8. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I had such low expectations for this, and I can’t tell you how happy I was to see that this wasn’t a total piece of shit. Indeed, it totally wiped away the sour taste that was still lingering after all this time from Deus Ex 2. Even though the bosses were kinda shitty, and even though the ending was only rivaled by Rage in terms of least amount of effort applied, this was a great game, and I do plan on playing it again eventually.

7. Uncharted 3. OK, the combat grew tedious and tiresome. OK, the “story” was just something they patched up after they came up with their setpieces. OK, the spiders didn’t make any sense. Still, the things that this game does right, it does better than anyone else. I still prefer Uncharted 2, but this was not too shabby.

6. Bastion. Seems like every year there’s an XBLA darling that makes an appearance on my list, and Bastion is a worthy entrant. Remarkable music, gorgeous art direction, simple and intuitive gameplay, and a compelling story.

5. L.A. Noire. Everything I said earlier applies here. But I was also pleased to see that they implemented Red Dead’s combat system (to the extent they could), which means that it’ll most likely appear in GTA5, which is good news for everybody.

4. Batman: Arkham City. What was nice about the first game was that it left me wanting more. Arkham City gave me so much more that I felt a little overstuffed, frankly. But that’s hardly enough reason to complain. It’s still the best melee combat system in the business. The side missions were a great diversion. And I was totally hooked by the story – and that ending!

3. Saints Row The Third. You can’t talk about Saints Row without talking about GTA, but it’s really nice to see that Saints Row has truly embraced its own thing. The game is completely insane, and it’s also really well made. I wouldn’t mind seeing GTA borrow some of its innovations – like the new GPS system, which keeps my eyes focused ahead instead of in the corner, trying to make sense of a tiny map. It’s not an open world – it’s a sandbox, through and through, and they give you so many toys to play with that they’re almost daring you to get bored.

2. Skyrim. According to my profile at raptr.com, I’m 55 hours in. Some of that is from extended pauses, but still – that’s definitely the most I’ve spent with any game this year. And I only hit level 30 last night. There is SO MUCH MORE TO DO. I could see this game taking me straight through to February.

1. Portal 2. This is my friend (and sometime SFTC contributor) Gred, who says it better than I ever could:

When I think about the “best” games of the generation, the thing about Portal (and Portal 2) that I keep coming back to is that I cannot honestly think of a way the games could be better, that they could execute better on what they are trying to do. Furthermore, they are doing plenty of new and ambitious stuff. So it’s not simply a matter of executing a genre game perfectly, it’s a matter of inventing a genre, and then executing it perfectly.

Skyrim is excellent. But ultimately I feel like its existence was inevitable. It is the living D&D video game you pictured as a kid in the far-off future. It is a bigger and better Oblivion. It is still unique, because no one has dared to try this on anything approaching the scale Bethesda has tackled here. But Bethesda or not, there would have been a Skyrimish game eventually. Maybe not this generation, maybe not this good, but its newness derives mostly from its insane scope (including its wonderfully deep ecosystem and all its component moving parts). True, that lends itself to insanely varied and complex gameplay experiences, while Portal will play much the same for everyone. But the existence of Portal, to me, is a gift in a way that the existence of Skyrim, while very, very welcome, was a matter of time.

Thanks for reading, everybody.

The Year In Games – 2010

On a scale of 1-10, I give 2010 a 7. There were 2 genuine classics, and the rest of my top 5 feels very solid. But I’ll be the first to admit that my 6-10 is all over the place. The high points probably felt a bit higher than they normally would, if only because the rest of the year felt a bit lackluster. (But I feel much the same way about the year in music, so maybe I’m just old and grumpy.) I really tried to play everything that mattered – there’s only 3 “big” games that I didn’t play, and that was by choice. So who knows. That being said, I have a good feeling about 2011.

I played 110 games this year, in some fashion. That number is a little misleading, though – most of the games on PC were short sessions with stuff I bought because of massive Steam sales. And I can’t really explain the iPhone stuff. I bought the thing and went into a weeks-long frenzy, which I’m only now sorta getting out of. So, yes, I’ve downloaded 47 games on my iPhone – I’ve really only cared about 5 or 6. (Also – in the interest of brevity, I’m calling it an iPhone, when in reality I only own an iPod Touch.)

DS – 3
Wii – 4
PS3 – 6
PC – 9
360 – 42
iPhone – 47

Achievement Progress: I started 2010 at a little over 50K; as of 12/6, I’m almost at 64,200, which is far higher than I thought I’d be. My hunger for Achievements is not what it once was, and since I didn’t have high hopes for this year’s releases I assumed I’d end up at around 57K. But a lot of that is because, for whatever reason, I finished a lot of games this year.

Games I Finished: According to my GoogleDoc, I “finished” 32 games this year – by which I mean to say, I played a single-player campaign through its conclusion. This is absurdly high, for me – I “finished” 32 games in 2008 and 2009 combined. You’ll notice that this list includes Pinball FX2, which probably shouldn’t count (since you can’t really “beat” a pinball table), but I’ve played every table you can get for it, many many times, and this is my year-end list, so whatever. If it helps, just know that I can’t get back the 40 hours of my life I spent with Crackdown 2 and Dark Star One, and that’s far more time than either of those games deserved.

Afterburner
Alan Wake
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
Bioshock 2
Civilization V
Costume Quest
Darksiders
DeathSpank 1
DeathSpank 2
Enslaved
Fable 3
Final Fantasy XIII
Game Dev Story (iPhone)
God of War 3
Halo Reach
Helsing’s Fire (iPhone)
Lara Croft & Guardian of Light
Lego Harry Potter
Limbo
Madden 11 (1 full season, including Superbowl)
Mafia 2
Mass Effect 2 (still sort of in the middle of my 2nd playthrough)
Picross 3D
Pinball FX2
Prince of Persia
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Puzzle Quest 2
Red Dead Redemption
Splinter Cell Conviction
Split/Second
Star Wars: Force Unleashed (2009 – didn’t play this year’s sequel)
Sword & Poker 2 (iPhone)

Games I Finished That I’d Been Looking Forward To, But Were Disappointing

Final Fantasy 13
Alan Wake
Fable 3
BioShock 2
Mafia 2
Professor Layton & Unwound Future
Splinter Cell: Conviction
Puzzle Quest 2

Games I Finished, But Can Barely Remember

God of War 3
Prince of Persia
Splinter Cell: Conviction

Was Sort of Enjoying at First, But For A Variety of Reasons Couldn’t Bother to Finish

Heavy Rain
Singularity
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Kirby’s Big Yarn

Games That I Haven’t Finished, But I’m Working On It

Pac Man
Shank
Gran Turismo 5
Super Meat Boy

Never Even Touched

Call of Duty: Black Ops [or, as I will now call it forever, CODBLOPS]
Medal of Honor
Fallout: New Vegas

The 2010 “10 minutes or less” All Stars, because I have no patience anymore:

Just Cause 2
3D Dot Game Heroes
Dead Rising 2

Best New IP – Obvious Franchise Starter: Was there any new IP this year? I’m looking at what I played this year and it seems that pretty much everything in it either has a 2 or 3 after the title, or is a reboot of an existing franchise. To that end, I’d have to give it up for Split/Second, which came out of nowhere and ended up being one of my favorite summer releases – even if it’s not exactly an original title.

Best New IP – Hopeful Franchise Starter: This is a tie between Enslaved (which felt a lot like Uncharted) and Darksiders (which felt a lot like Zelda).

Most Addictive: Sword & Poker 2. As mentioned above, I downloaded a ton of games when I finally got my iPod Touch, and this one more than any other turned me into a puddle of mush. This is certainly saying something, as Angry Birds is pretty goddamned addicting, too.

Worst Game of the Year / Biggest Disappointment of the Year: Crackdown 2. I was such a huge fan of the first game – I didn’t care about the Halo 3 beta, I wanted the game itself. And C2 was half-assed in every sense of the word. Graphics were somehow worse, the city didn’t really feel all that different (and certainly wasn’t as much fun to explore), and even the Orb Chase wasn’t as fun as it used to be.

Game I Did Not Finish Even Though I was Really Looking Forward To It, and Do Not Feel Bad About Not Finishing: Heavy Rain. The title reminds me a little too much of “Chubby Rain”, from Steve Martin’s overlooked Bowfinger. Also, it was more than a little ridiculous. And I did everything I could to keep an open mind; I was looking forward to this game and could not have been a more supportive player, at least at the start. That being said:

Best Game Command: Heavy Rain, “Press X to Jason.”

Best Game(s) That I Didn’t Finish, Even Though I Wanted To: This goes to pretty much everything on the Wii, but specifically Super Mario Galaxy 2, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong and Disney Epic Mickey. Two reasons for this. I’ve developed a carpal tunnel issue in my right wrist, and it makes the “shake the controller up and down” motion very painful. And, also, I’m not 8 years old. Which reminds me:

Clearest Example that I Am No Longer A Target Demographic: This has to go to the Kinect, a remarkable piece of technology that was clearly not meant for a 35-year-old male, no matter how many fitness programs they throw at it. To be fair, Microsoft was pretty up front about that; the Kinect is meant to be something for the non-gamer to get excited about, and to that end it succeeded – my wife is not a gamer and she loves it… when she gets around to using it, which is not very much. (At the time of this writing, she has not yet tried Dance Central.) I would love to try the Video Chat, except I don’t know who else on my friends list has it, and in any event, once the novelty of saying hello in person to an internet friend wears off, there’s not much else to do. If the recent youtube videos of Kinect hacks are any indication, there’s tremendous potential for the device; that stuff just needs to make it into the retail space.

Best Game I Couldn’t Get Into No Matter How Hard I Tried: Starcraft 2. I tried, I really did. A friend hooked me up with the 7-day trial, and I gave it my best shot. But it only took maybe 1 or 2 hours of the very beginning of the single-player campaign before I became overwhelmed; I forget exactly what it was I was having trouble with, but it was something incredibly basic like being able to select a certain group of dudes. Anyway, once that started happening, it was pretty much downhill from there. It is clearly a well-made labor of love, and people clearly love the hell out of it. I wish them good luck and godspeed.

Favorite Game That Everyone Else Seemed To Dislike: Deathspank. Only the first one, though. The second game arrived too quickly on the heels of the first and offered nothing substantially different, and I could certainly see why people didn’t like the first one based on the problems of the second. I loved the first one, though. I thought it was exquisitely well-written, from the dialog all the way down to the names of items. Great voice acting as well. And I adored the art design; I loved how the world rolled around – certainly reminiscent of Animal Crossing, but with its own visual flair. I got all 200 Achievements for it and had a ball in the process.

Best Game That I Didn’t Play Enough Of: Rock Band 3. I’ve been trying to rectify this in recent days, but unless my wife decides to get into it again – or we have another RB party – it is unlikely that I’ll get any substantial time with this any time soon. Which is a shame, as it’s clearly the game with plastic instruments that money can buy, and considering the state of the industry, possibly the last. And I still haven’t even tried the keyboards yet! Gah!

Biggest Discrepancy Between Enjoyment of Demo and Enjoyment of Actual Retail Release: Blur. And this came as a huge shock, especially since the reverse ended up being equally true – I didn’t like the demo for Split/Second, but I loved the final version. Both games were coming out at around the same time, and I felt like I had to pick sides since I couldn’t very well own both. The Blur demo felt like a grown man’s Mario Kart, which appealed to me greatly; the retail release was certainly true to that vision, but it just felt kinda… blah. On the flip side, the driving in the S/S demo felt sluggish, and I don’t recall the demo providing any of the jaw-dropping course deformations that the final game had. (One can’t necessarily blame the developers from pulling this particular punch, but still.)

Biggest Discrepancy Between Anticipation For Rerelease of A Beloved Older Title and Actual Time Spent Playing Said Title: NBA JAM HD. The game isn’t bad; it’s just meant to be played with a friend on the couch, and the only person I knew who would play this with me is my younger brother, who lives hundreds of miles away. We played it together a few weeks ago for about 20 minutes, late at night, and we loved the hell out of it. And then he left, and I had no reason to keep it, and so back to Gamefly it went.

Biggest Discrepancy Between Pre-Release Hype and Post-Release Reality: I was tempted to give this to Gran Turismo 5, but the truth is that any and all hype for GT5 was coming from Sony fanboys, and the pre-release discussion around GT5 was mostly about why the hell it was taking so long. But along those lines, I’d have to give this to Alan Wake, a game that also spent a hell of a long time in development. There’s a lot to admire about Alan Wake, certainly from a technical standpoint; it looks fantastic and it can be creepy as hell. And it’s also fiercely devoted to telling a story, which is somewhat admirable. It’s a shame, then, that the story is so incredibly convoluted and incomprehensible. You can tell that the ending was meant to be this big, stomach-punching reveal/cliffhanger, but it didn’t make any sense. At all. I ended up trading it in before I tried any of the DLC, but I’m not sure it would’ve made much of a difference.

Favorite Achievement: Lego Harry Potter, Get All Gold Bricks – 70 points. I have a soft spot for the Lego games, and I enjoyed the hell out of this one. This was the closest I’ve ever been to getting 100%, and I suppose that if I really wanted to, I could go back and get everything pretty quickly. But getting the gold bricks was the main thing – first time I ever even came close. I suppose that means it’s pretty easy to do, but whatever.

Best Trend: Smart leaderboard integration. Even for misanthropes like me who don’t really play online all that much, it’s nice to feel connected to your friends, and it’s really nice that developers have figured this out and started to do cool things with it. At this point, it sticks out when it’s done poorly, like in the new Pac Man game. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit is taking this to a completely new level.

Most Forgettable: It usually takes me around 5 minutes to remember what the hell Singularity was, and then I remember – oh yeah, it was that weird game about Russia, and it looked an awful lot like Bioshock – and then I forget.

Most Overlooked: Sword & Poker 2, if only because everyone else with an iPhone was playing Angry Birds. Also: Pinball FX2.

Most Overrated: This is a stretch, because I certainly enjoyed my time with it. But Limbo was not the world-changing, paradigm-shifting classic that it was made out to be at the time. People were in such a rush to find the next Braid, and this seemed to fit the bill – nothing else looked like it, and it had a unique spin on the 2D platformer, and it had great atmosphere and was unexpectedly graphic. It’s certainly very good, but it’s not an instant classic. Runner-up: God of War 3.

I Have No Skillz: Super Meat Boy. But everyone finds this game incredibly difficult, so at least I’m not alone. I definitely need to get back into this, when I’m ready to start hating myself again.

Most Time Spent Playing a Game that I Actively Disliked: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, which for some reason I felt compelled to finish, but didn’t actually feel like playing, so I ended up finishing with a walkthrough, which completely ruins the purpose. I know. I’m an idiot. Runner-up: Fable 3.

The Best Argument Both For/Against Using Heavy Drugs During The Creative Process / The Japanese Are Weird: Bayonetta. I do regret only being able to get through Chapter 5, but there’s only so much craziness/unintentional racism/vertigo I can take. By far the most batshit insane experience I had this year, for better or worse.

The Forgotten Reboot: Prince of Persia. According to my notes, I actually kinda liked this one; it had the best combat the franchise has ever seen, which is a big deal considering it’s the one area of the franchise that’s most troublesome. Graphics were great, especially the finale. But it also appeared to be uninspired and lacking any vitality. It was most likely trying to capitalize on the success of the movie, when it should’ve been the other way around. Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted have more or less taken up the parkour mantle now, and I wonder if we’ll ever see this franchise again.

Best Graphics: For the first time in a long time, there’s no obvious answer here. 2009’s Uncharted 2 still reigns supreme, and I’m not entirely sure that anything in 2010 even came close. I could certainly make a case for Red Dead, Mass Effect 2, and Split/Second; I could also make a valid case for Limbo, and I could make a similar case for DeathSpank, both titles working with not a lot of horsepower but an incredible eye for design; I could also argue for the iPhone’s Rage HD, which really needs to be seen to be believed. I can’t give it to Heavy Rain, because the uncanny valley factor is off the charts. I didn’t think God of War 3 was as jaw-dropping as everybody else. I’m tempted to give it to Super Meat Boy because why the hell not. Ultimately, I think this has to go to Red Dead Redemption. As long as you were outdoors, everything you saw was beyond gorgeous.

OK, I guess it’s time to start getting into it.

Honorable Mentions:

Darksiders
Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4
Lara Croft: Guardian of Light
Pinball FX2
Rock Band 3
Game Dev Story
Helsing’s Fire
Angry Birds

Top 10:

10. Deathspank. As noted above – great writing, great art direction, great fun.

9. Enslaved. See, Heavy Rain, this is how facial animation should be done. Hell, this is how storytelling should be done. There’s more said in a character’s face here than in 20 overwritten lines of dialog. The relationship between the two lead characters was thoroughly believable and authentic.

8. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. This was originally going to be Split/Second, but the more I think about it, S/S is somewhat of a one-trick pony – it’s an exceptionally well-done trick, but there’s only so much you can do with it. NFS is just as exciting, but it feels a little deeper – and the Autolog is now an essential leaderboard feature for all racing games going forward. If nothing else, this is as close to a new Burnout game as we’re going to get.

7. Sword & Poker 2. I said my piece above, but it bears repeating – this is a must-own if you’ve got an iPhone. An ingenious poker puzzle mechanic that’s easy to learn and which is addictive as hell.

6. Picross 3D. And while we’re on the topic of handheld puzzle games, this is maybe the best title on the DS. It uses the DS in a novel and intuitive way, and it eventually felt less like puzzle solving and more like sculpture.

5. Halo Reach. Even though I dropped out of the multiplayer scene a little bit too quickly, I can’t deny that this is a complete package. I’m not a die-hard Halo fan, but I had a blast with the campaign, and what I played of the multiplayer was fantastic.

4. Civilization V. I didn’t play much on the PC this year, but this game made me glad to own a PC powerful enough to run it at close-to-top specs. It strikes the perfect balance between the hard-core Civ IV and the dummy-proof Civ Rev. I haven’t played this enough, but that’s because I like going to sleep at reasonable hours.

3. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. I had low expectations for this. I didn’t think they’d come out with a quality title so soon after the last game, and I definitely had no desire for a multiplayer side. That this turned into the best title in the franchise is a huge, wonderful surprise.

2. Mass Effect 2. Bioware has made huge leaps with this RPG, the most important being that this actually feels like a literal role-playing game – I feel like I have a visceral connection to this universe based on the decisions I’ve made and the personal relationships I’ve chosen to cultivate (or destroy). I truly feel like the commander of the most kick-ass spaceship in the universe, and I absolutely cannot wait to continue the adventure.

1. Red Dead Redemption. Here’s what other awards this game would’ve won, had I decided to make this post twice as long as it already is:

Best voice acting.
Best script.
Best ending, maybe of all time.
Best sequence (riding into Mexico).
Best thunderstorms.
Best horses.
Best GTA clone that’s arguably better than any GTA game.

And then there’s surprisingly good multiplayer. And the quality DLC that they keep putting out. And, of course, the ambient challenges, which sucked me so thoroughly into the world that I had trouble getting out. This game has raised the open-world bar so high that even GTA5 must take notice. An absolute masterpiece.

Games of the Decade

It’s year-end recap season, obviously, and even if the decade isn’t technically over until next year, these are certainly the end of the 00s, which means it’s decade recap season as well. (In case you’re curious, here are my decade recaps of music and books.)

It occurs to me that my personal decade recap of videogames is, in part, a eulogy. I can call up any album I’ve ever owned on my iPod, and I’m already well on my way towards acquiring a similarly era-spanning library on my Kindle, but I’m not entirely sure I could play Crazy Taxi on my HDTV without having to run out and buy an appropriate set of cables; hell, ever since I got the original Xbox back in 2002, my Dreamcast has been sitting in a box in a closet, and right now I’m not sure that I even have my original Xbox anymore. And, of course, whenever I play a PS1 title on my PS3, it takes me a little while to get used to how fuzzy and low-res everything is. When I played Final Fantasy VII earlier this year, I had a very difficult time believing that this was (at the time) the most beautiful game ever made.

The point is, with a shortage of cabinet space and in the absence of backwards compatibility (and/or pirating/hacking), a lot of my favorite games in the first half of the 00s are games that I’m probably never going to be able to play again – and even if I could, I’m not entirely sure that I’d want to. Let’s take FF7 as an example again – I never played it when it originally came out, so I have no original glow of memory to compare it to. But even by today’s JRPG standards – a genre that is incredibly reluctant to evolve in any truly significant way – it’s a bit antiquated. Sure, you can still play it, but it’s missing features that I’ve grown accustomed to. Similarly, an FPS like Quake 2 – one of my personal favorites, a game that I’ve played through numerous times – just feels dated now. Graphics have changed, sure, but so too has storytelling.

Which is a long way of saying that a 10-year recap of videogaming, especially considering the technological advances of this particular decade, is somewhat problematic. Videogames, as a medium (dare I call it an art form?), have evolved almost to the point of being unrecognizable. I now take 1080p, wireless controllers and online voice chat for granted, and I’m more or less ready for digital distribution to be my primary method of acquisition – hell, I’ve already been doing that with Steam on my PC for years. And these are all things that never would have occurred to me 10 years ago as being necessary.

That being said, there’s a nice symmetry for me here. While I was rabid about videogames when I was a little kid (the Atari 2600 era), I wasn’t really agog until my friend bought a PS1 in 1998, with which we played Oddworld and Crash Bandicoot almost every single night. And I didn’t own my own console until December 1999, when my then-girlfriend bought me a Dreamcast as a birthday present. So in many ways, the last 10 years have been all I’ve ever had to go on.

So: please pardon any obvious gaps in the ensuing post. I’m doing my best with what I have.

CONSOLE OF THE DECADE. This is undoubtedly the PS2, and here comes the first aforementioned obvious gap – I never owned one. I loved my Dreamcast fiercely, which took me through the first few years, and when the opportunity arose (on 9/11/2002, as a matter of fact) I opted for the Xbox, specifically because of Munch’s Oddysee. (Really.) But I’m not an idiot. The PS2 still sells upwards of 100K units a month these days, and I’m not above admitting that I’ve considered getting one just so that I could play all the great PS2 games that I missed – FF10, FF12, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, etc. (The recent release of the God of War Collection, however, has sated that need for the time being.)

BEST STORY. I should probably mention here that these categories and their respective winners are of my own personal choosing; I’d originally intended this post to be a larger, collaborative effort between me and some friends, but for whatever reason that kinda fell apart. That being said, there was a considerable amount of debate over certain categories, this being one of them. Fellow SFTC scribe Gred felt that this was Half-Life 2’s category, and I can certainly agree that Valve’s approach to storytelling has always been unique and innovative. That being said, I’ve played all of the Half-Life saga multiple times, from the original game and its expansion packs up through HL2 Episode 2, and I’m not sure I’d ever really be able to articulate what’s going on beyond the basic Humans v. Combine conflict. Ultimately, for me, this category falls between two distinct titles, and I’m giving it to Grand Theft Auto 4. Niko’s story is by turns tragic, hilarious, nihilistic and redemptive, and it features some of the best dialogue and voice acting the medium has ever seen. For once in a GTA game, the story was every bit as impressive as the technology.

FAVORITE “WOW” MOMENT. I could easily write a 1000-word post on this category alone; there’s almost too many to choose from. To be honest, though, a lot of those “wow” moments stem from graphical showcases – pretty much all of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Bioshock and Uncharted 2 would fall into that category. Certainly almost every car crash in every Burnout game has generated an audible “wow”, as well as the first few times I played with Half-Life 2’s gravity gun – and then, similarly, the first few times I played with the Portal gun. There was a part of me that was tempted to give this to GTA3 – not because of any particular bit of mayhem I had caused, but rather that I was able to find a quiet seaside cliff and watch the sun rise over the ocean, and that it was beautiful to see and hear. But there’s really no question that this particular moment goes to the plot twist reveal in Knights of the Old Republic, which is the only time that I’ve ever literally dropped the controller from my hands and had my jaw drop involuntarily. I still get chills when I think about how that went down. I had played as a light-side Jedi the entire time, and I’d really gotten absorbed in the story and the characters, and when it was revealed who I actually was…. wow.

MOST OVERLOOKED/UNDERRATED GAME. It’s funny; when I was putting this post together, this was one of the first categories I came up with, and Voodoo Vince was going to be my winner. It may have been just a shallow platformer, but it had a great visual style and one of the best soundtracks I’d ever heard. But then I remembered Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, and it occurred to me that I can’t logically award this category to the first game that pops into my head. (And while I love it dearly, I never considered Beyond Good & Evil for this category – it was overlooked and underplayed, but it was also (and still is) a critical darling, which O:SW never was.) O:SW was a truly unique first-person shooter in so many ways – the live ammo concept was brilliant, and it took full advantage of the Old West setting. But it also had a great story, a quirky (if somewhat juvenile) sense of humor, and utterly fantastic production values from top to bottom… and almost nobody bought it. It more or less sunk Oddworld Inhabitants as a game developer, and it made EA pretty wary of original IP for a few years.

MOST UBIQUITOUS FEATURE THAT HAS GROWN TIRESOME: Take your pick from the following:

celebrity voice acting
Nolan North (great voice actor, but he’s in friggin’ everything)
light bloom
cloth physics
“open world sandbox”
amnesia in JRPGs
post-apocalyptic wastelands
game titles with colons
zombies
Nazis
the Unreal engine
Quick-Time Events
expensive, oversized peripherals with limited usage (i.e., plastic instruments, everything that isn’t the standard Wii remote)

The one that’s starting to grate on me the most, though, is the overuse of moral choices. It was genuinely interesting in KOTOR, but now it feels a bit almost like a cop-out on the part of the developers, freeing them up from having the responsibility to tell an actual story – and considering that most games have dumb stories to begin with, it feels even more lazy. I’m all for branching paths, customization and games that change based on the decisions you make, but more often than not these moral choices are really just “be nice” or “be a jerk”, and then you turn slightly more blue or red, and maybe you’ll get a few new powers, and then at the end you’ll see a slightly different cutscene. I’d like to see games in general improve their storytelling, since it almost always feels like an afterthought, and they can start by having some balls and committing to a plot.

BEST YEAR. This has to go to 2007, doesn’t it? Consider: Mass Effect, Bioshock, Portal (and the Orange Box), Call of Duty 4, Super Mario Galaxy, Halo 3. And that was all more or less in the second half of the year. That’s INSANE. 2008 is pretty close, and 2010 looks to be pretty amazing as well, but those 6 games I listed above alone put 2007 over the edge; I’m sure there’s at least 10 more hidden gems that I’m not recalling.

BEST GAME I NEVER ACTUALLY FINISHED. I first played Grand Theft Auto 3 on my PC; then I bought it as part of the Double Pack for my original Xbox; and then, during a lull, I played it again on my 360 just to see if there was any discernible difference in graphical fidelity. I’ve probably spent more cumulative time with GTA3 than any other game this decade (and if not, it’s certainly pretty close). And yet, after how many hours (probably 150 or so), I’ve still never seen the ending. And I’m probably never going to – as fond as I am of that game, the controls are beyond archaic, now, and the punishment for failing a mission is too severe.

BEST FRANCHISE. Certainly there’s a number of big-name nominees for this – Halo, Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty, Gears of War (and some personal favorites like Burnout and Uncharted) – but none of them had the seismic impact that Grand Theft Auto did. GTA changed everything. It might not have invented the concept of non-linear gameplay, but it certainly made it the most fun, and it easily reached the biggest audience. It fundamentally changed not only how we played games, but our expectations of what a game was capable of doing. I’m going to quote Caro here, from our behind-the-scenes discussions – this was actually from her “Biggest ‘Wow’ Moment”:

I’m not sure anything compares to the moment I first took control in GTA3. My jaw literally dropped in amazement. I couldn’t believe it. Never before and never since have I been so aware of experiencing something that was going to change games–and, to some extent, our wider culture–forever. After spending my whole life in games whose environments were ripped from science fiction and fantasy, here was a world that bore a dark resemblance to my own, a grimy, dirty city that really felt alive. Music played on the radio. Rain fell from the sky. I could run over old ladies walking down the street. It was exhilarating. It was extraordinary. It was as if it was something I had always craved, without realizing it.

And now, my FAVORITE GAMES OF THE DECADE, in chronological order.

But first, some HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Batman: Arkham Asylum. My #2 game of 2009, and one that I can’t wait to play again.
Crackdown. Orbs, how I love thee.
Mass Effect. Maybe it wasn’t the true KOTOR sequel I was hoping for, but it was a fully realized sci-fi epic which lived up to its ambitions, elevators be damned.
Mercenaries 2. Of all the GTA clones, this was the best, and it did a lot of things better than GTA itself did.
Metal Gear Solid 4. In spite of how completely in(s)ane the story is, the gameplay is legitimately thrilling.
No One Lives Forever. It’s a shame this never saw a console port; more people might have played it. This game oozed style and was genuinely funny.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Yeah, the combat sucks. But everything else about it is glorious.
Psychonauts. I don’t even mind the Meat Circus, to be honest.
Skies of Arcadia. Still my favorite JRPG.
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. This was the best of the original Xbox games, with graphics that are still jaw-dropping.
SSX 3. The best snowboarding game ever made, for whatever that might be worth (probably not much), but an exhilarating experience all the same.
Super Mario Galaxy. I haven’t finished it, but I can’t deny that it’s an incredible experience.

Rayman 2, Dreamcast, 2000. According to Wikipedia, this came out in the Spring of 2000, which means its eligible. I’m going to call it – this is my favorite 3D platformer of all time. It was genuinely charming, which is all the more impressive considering the game featured a lead character with no limbs and a language that was entirely gibberish. It had a save-the-world story but it was told with genuine pathos, and the world you were saving was filled with lush detail and was absolutely joyous to behold. It was easy to pick up, it never got frustrating, and it was expertly paced. Even now, all these years later, I can’t help but smile whenever I think about it… and I get genuinely bummed out when I see what’s become of the franchise. (Not that Raving Rabbids isn’t fun, or whatever, but, I mean… come on.)

Knights of the Old Republic, Xbox, 2003. I’ve already spoken of its plot twist, but the game underneath it is not too shabby, either; this was not only the best Star Wars property since the original trilogy, but it’s one of the best RPGs ever made. It took the concept of a “role playing game” quite literally, which is partly why the aforementioned plot twist hit me so hard – I was thoroughly involved in my character’s development from the get-go, and I never saw it coming. Every character in the game is richly drawn and expertly acted; the worlds you explore are rich with detail. You feel invested. I’m having a hard time remembering just how the combat worked, but it worked well enough that I didn’t ever have a problem with it (unlike, say, Dragon Age). Yeah, the frame rate bogged down every so often, and you couldn’t really look up; but that was besides the point; for 40 hours, I was a Jedi.

Burnout 3, Xbox, 2004. As far as I’m concerned, Burnout 3 changed the driving genre forever. It was faster than anything I’d ever seen; hell, it was the most spectacular game I’d ever seen. It took the main obstacle from other driving games – crashing – and made it an explosive, interactive, integral part of the experience. And the fact that it could be played online… I’ve still never played as much of a game online as I did with Burnout 3.

World of Warcraft, PC, 2004. I wasn’t originally going to include WoW; I’m a little ashamed of it. I lost more hours of my life to WoW than I care to admit; I took sick days from work, I missed band rehearsals, I stopped hanging out with my wife. And I never even hit 60! Let’s move on.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Xbox, 2005. I’ve written too much about GTA in this post alone, so I’ll keep this brief. Each entry in the GTA franchise has been a landmark experience, and what’s truly remarkable is that even though they’re all similarly designed, each one has a unique and distinct personality. If I had to pick one, though, I’d pick San Andreas, which was so stuffed with things to do that they actually scaled back for GTA4.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Xbox 360, 2006. I’m not entirely sure how much time I spent playing GTA3, but my save file for Oblivion tells me I spent 110 hours with it; I got every Achievement for it and played all the DLC for it. And I still have quests I never finished!

Portal, PC/360, 2007. I wish I had graduated from high school in 2007, just so that I could have used “The cake is a lie” as a yearbook quote. Anyway, I don’t know what to say about Portal that hasn’t been said a hundred times better by a hundred different writers. There was something truly special about this game, and I think that’s why it keeps getting talked about; nobody had ever seen anything like it, and we’re all still waiting to see anything approach it. It took enormous risks in its narrative, and yet it seems so effortless because of how hilarious it is. It slowly taught you how to play it, and then it threw everything out the window and tried to kill you. I can’t possibly imagine what Valve must be going through as it develops the sequel (and you are developing a sequel, right, Valve?); I have absolutely no idea how it can be topped or improved upon.

Bioshock, Xbox 360, 2007. Certainly one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played; the graphics and art design are certainly top-notch but it’s the sound design that really puts this one over the top. “Would you kindly” never quite got the same traction that “The cake is a lie” did, but it certainly resonates deeply with those who were taken by surprise. And count me as one of the many whose belief was firmly suspended for the entire ride; after I finished the game I read a number of articles by smart writers who ripped the game apart for certain plot holes and contrivances. Maybe I’m dumb. But I fell for this game, hard.

Rock Band 2, Xbox 360, 2008. As a musician, I’ve always been a little skeptical about music games; as a NYC resident, storage space is at a premium, and I can’t necessarily justify having plastic instruments lying around my apartment. But as a human being, there are few greater thrills than feeling like you’re playing your favorite song with your best friends. There’s a reason why cover bands still get paid these days; people like hearing their favorite songs. Similarly, there’s a reason why an evite with “Rock Band?” as a subject will get immediate affirmative responses.

Uncharted 2, PS3, 2009. My #1 game of the year, but also just a staggering achievement from top to bottom. If I had known back in 2000 that games could eventually look and play like this, I’m not entirely sure I know how I would have managed to cope with all the bullshit I’d have to play in the interim.

The Best Games of 2009

If I’m being completely honest, 2009 was a bit of a let-down, and not just because it followed the staggering heights of 2007 and 2008, or that so many high-profile titles eventually slid to a 2010 release. Case in point – Resident Evil 5 was my #1 title, purely by default, right up until August.

August, of course, is when Batman: Arkham Asylum was released, and from that point on it seemed that every week held something of promise. And what made 2009 so special is how so many of the good games seemingly came out of nowhere. Uncharted 2 certainly lived up to its hype, but who could have foreseen how good Borderlands would turn out to be?

Here’s my take on the year that was, starting with some raw data.

I played 76 games that were released this year. Of those:

42 were on the 360 (including the 2 bits of GTA4 DLC);
15 were on the PS3 (not including 2 PS1 titles which were made available on PSN in 2009);
8 were on the DS;
7 were on the Wii;
4 were on the PC; and
0 were on the PSP, which is just as well, since I traded it in towards the WiiPlus remote in July.

I “finished” 19 of those games. That doesn’t mean 100% complete; it means that I finished a game’s main single-player mode. In alphabetical order:

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
Assassin’s Creed 2
Batman AA
Beatles Rock Band
Borderlands
Flower
Ghostbusters
God of War Collection (both 1 and 2)
InFamous
The Maw
Modern Warfare 2
Outrun Online Arcade
Peggle PC
Peggle DS
Resident Evil 5
Sacred 2
Shadow Complex (twice)
Uncharted 2
Uno Rush

And now for some arbitrary superlatives:

BEST NEW IP: Can Batman: Arkham Asylum count, even though it’s based on an existing IP that everybody in the world already knows about? No? Even though it felt remarkably fresh and exciting? OK, then it goes to Borderlands, which maybe lacked in story but certainly made up for with art design, mechanics, and sheer feel.

MOST CRACK-LIKE: Here we go, I’m about to lose whatever cred I might have had. It’s true that I got hooked on Borderlands this year, but if I’m really being honest with myself, I have to acknowledge the diabolical combo of Facebook’s own Farmville / Bejeweled Twist. Bejeweled I can at least explain: when work gets boring, Bejeweled is a great way to get through the day, and Twist features some great stat-tracking and leaderboard integration. But Farmville? I don’t even like real farming, or even going outside. There’s no enemies in Farmville; there’s no real challenge. And once you plant your garden, there’s nothing to do until everything’s finished growing. And yet I’ve logged into it pretty much every single day since I got started with it earlier this summer, and I’ve even spent real U.S. currency on stupid power-ups for it. I am currently at level 37, which means there’s no new seeds for me to unlock. I have “beaten” Farmville, and yet I’m only #2 amongst my friends. Zynga, I have no idea how you do what you do, but I have succumbed to your will and there is nothing I can do about it.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: To be fair, I only played Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for about 30 minutes, but that was long enough for me to know that this was never going to be as joyously awesome as MUA1. I’m not enough of a comic book nerd to appreciate whatever changes they might have made to the roster; I just wanted some kick-ass beat-em-up RPG action. MUA2 felt clunky, under-polished and soul-less. I had very high hopes for MUA2 – I’d hoped it would get me through the summer doldrums, and instead it got send back to Gamefly and I ended up being productive with my life.

MOST DISAPPOINTING PLATFORM: PSP. The Wii was pretty inessential this year, to be sure, but at least it tried. The PSP, on the other hand… I don’t even know where to begin. Wait a minute, yes I do. It had no games. It didn’t even have any bad games that I could at least rent as an excuse to dust the damned thing off. I traded in my PSP and the 7 (old) games I had for it towards Wii Sports Resort in July, and even if I’d accidentally set Wii Sports Resort on fire before I’d made it home from making that transaction, it would have been worth it.

WORST GAME OF THE YEAR: And maybe this is because my expectations were far too high, especially for a puzzle game. But let me be clear: I bought and played the original Puzzle Quest on both DS and XBLA and loved the hell out of them, and was looking forward to Puzzle Quest Galactrix with an anticipation that bordered on rabid. Galactrix was a mess on pretty much every conceivable level; it looked ugly, it had an unacceptably shitty frame rate (it’s a fucking PUZZLE game!), and it took forever to load. And, of course, the actual puzzle itself was completely unintuitive and featured an enemy AI that cheated even worse than the original Puzzle Quest, which is saying quite a lot.

BEST GAME I DID NOT FINISH: This is a tie between two of the DS’s best: GTA Chinatown Wars and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. While I can’t remember why I eventually put GTA down, I do know that I got stuck in M&L right near the end. Chinatown Wars was quite an accomplishment – it really felt like GTA, even with the DS’s hardware limitations, and the little touch-screen minigames were clever and engaging. Mario & Luigi, on the other hand, was as good as I’d expected; maybe it tried a little too hard with the humor, but the mechanics were as solid as ever.

FAVORITE NON-LINEAR ACTIVITY: Driving around the heavy-metal landscape of Brutal Legend. I never was able to get past (or even into) the RTS business, which is a shame because as a result I never got to see the rest of the world, and the world of Brutal Legend is as fantastic and unique as any game I’ve ever seen. I did as many side quests and found as many hidden collectibles as I possibly could, and that never stopped being entertaining. The Deuce Coupe was a pleasure to drive. Runner-up: grinding on rails in InFamous.

BEST GAME I COULDN’T GET INTO NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRIED: Tie between MLB09 and Street Fighter 4. MLB09 is absolutely the greatest videogame adaptation of baseball I’ve ever seen, and I’m terrible at it. I can pitch decently enough, but I can’t hit to save my life, even if I tweak the options so that it’s more or less slow-pitch softball. Likewise, I can appreciate Street Fighter 4’s artistry and charm, and it certainly brought me back to my childhood playing SF2 with my brother on his Genesis, but I couldn’t win more than 2 matches against the computer even on Very Easy.

BIGGEST INCONGRUITY BETWEEN EXCITEMENT FOR THE RE-RELEASE OF A BELOVED OLDER TITLE AND TIME SPENT PLAYING SAID TITLE: The XBLA release of Secret of Monkey Island. I made it out of the first town, saw the opening cutscene that opened Part 2, put it down, and never got back to it. I’m such an idiot.

MOST UNFAIRLY DERIDED / BIGGEST SURPRISE: Resident Evil 5. I’ve been seeing this pop up on a few “Worst Games of 2009” lists, which is odd, because I seem to recall it getting pretty good reviews when it was first released. Anyway, I can’t speak to the multiplayer, which I never tried. And I can’t compare it to RE4, which I tried playing on the Wii for about 20 minutes before wanting to break it in half, such was my frustration with the controls. What I can say is that I played the shit out of this game. I played it enough to unlock infinite ammo for the super bad-ass Magnum, which in technical terms means “a lot.” The game’s mechanics are awfully contrived and yet they still worked, and some of the game’s levels are truly wonders to behold – I’m thinking of the ruins of Chapter 4, specifically. I went into RE5 hoping that it would be engaging enough to get me through a dull winter; I emerged with it as one of my favorites of the year.

BIGGEST GAME THAT ENDED UP BEING SOMEWHAT OF AN AFTERTHOUGHT / MOST OVERRATED: Considering how drastically it altered the release calendar, as most publishers moved their big titles to 2010 Q1 just to get out of its way, it’s more than a little interesting to see how far down the radar Modern Warfare 2 has slipped for me. The game’s multiplayer strengths are without peer, certainly, and the SpecOps co-op mode is truly something to savor, but the single-player campaign ended up being somewhat ridiculous, derivative, and just plain weird. The “No Russian” level was as controversial as advertised, but perhaps not for the reasons the developer may have anticipated; similarly, the game’s constant attempts at shock value and upping the ante ended up being nearly comical, if not simply incomprehensible.

MOST ANTICIPATED GAME THAT I HAVEN’T PLAYED NEARLY ENOUGH OF: Without a doubt, this goes to Left 4 Dead 2, which I’ve played exactly twice. There’s no excuse, other than that my preferred group of friends to play it with live in different time zones and it’s hard to get everybody together at the same time.

FAVORITE ACHIEVEMENT: Unlike in years past, I can’t really recall one particular Achievement that stood out from the rest. So I’m going to give it to whichever Achievement it was – presumably in Assassin’s Creed 2 – that put me over 50,000.

BEST TREND: Quality DLC. And I’m including regular XBLA/PSN arcade titles in this as well, because there were a LOT of great games that emerged without corporeal form. Remember how everybody fawned over Braid a few years ago? A lot of that was because there wasn’t really much else for it to be compared with. This year saw the release of Shadow Complex, Trials HD, Flower, Pixeljunk Shooter, The Maw, ‘Splosion Man, and Shatter; and while they might not have been as artful and meditative as Braid, they were all really well made and loads of fun to play. But to then add GTA4’s 2 DLC campaigns, as well as most of Fallout 3‘s DLC and Borderlands, and it’s clear that DLC is for real.

MOST OVERLOOKED: InFamous. I keep forgetting how much I enjoyed this one. At first glance it felt more or less like a Crackdown clone, but it had a lot of personality and a remarkable level of polish. Perhaps it felt a little, I don’t know, small; it didn’t take that long to finish the story and all the sidequests. But it’s definitely in a good place for the inevitable sequel, which I suspect is going to be stupendous.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY I SPENT SO LONG PLAYING THIS GAME, CONSIDERING HOW MUCH OF IT THERE WAS TO DISLIKE: I actually finished Sacred 2‘s single-player campaign, which in retrospect I feel like I ought to have won some sort of medal for. That game did not deserve the 40+ hours I sunk into it, especially as I generally played it with the sound off, because it featured the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard. But that’s the Diablo formula for you; mindless hack-and-slash action never seems to get old. This is proof positive that the first half of 2009 was severely lacking in quality content.

THE 2009 “10 MINUTES OR LESS” ALL-STARS: These are all the games I played in 2009 that, for one reason or another, I played all I was ever going to play in 10 minutes or less:

Halo 3:ODST. I’m officially done with the Halo franchise; I just don’t care anymore. I’ll probably try Reach, but out of curiosity/boredom, not out of need.
Lego Indiana Jones 2. Not sure this warranted a second iteration, considering how terrible the 4th movie is.
Super Mario Brothers Wii. I rented this and tried to play it with my wife; we both eventually ran out of lives and didn’t really care one way or the other.
Prototype. I stopped playing this because it sucked.
Wolfenstein. It didn’t necessarily suck, but it felt awfully by-the-numbers and uninspired.
Fuel. I think Codemasters did this, which is why I rented it in the first place – I’m a huge fan of DiRT, and thought GRID was OK. Maybe Fuel needed more capital letters?
Henry Hatsworth. I rented this thinking it might be something to keep me occupied on an upcoming weekend holiday, saw that it wouldn’t, and sent it back.
MX v ATV Reflex. Talk about uninspired! These games are usually worth at least a couple hours of screwing around; this just had nothing in it for me.
Onechanbara. Not really sure why I rented this one; it was pretty horrible.

THE “I REALLY NEED TO FINISH THESE GAMES” LIST: These are games that I was enjoying and got distracted from, or games that I just never had enough time to get into but still want to revisit.

Left 4 Dead 2.
Demon’s Souls. Maybe this shouldn’t be on this list. I played it right up until I died for the first time, saw how much I’d have to do in order to get back there, and decided to send it back to Gamefly. But I think that’s only because I was impatient and didn’t really have the time to truly punish myself; I can see why this game has supporters.
Ratchet and Clank. This (and others on this list) were victims of the Gamefly Curse, so named because if something else was coming up right behind it, I either had to play it enough to buy it or send it back immediately so that my Queue wouldn’t get screwed. I liked the first PS3 game, and while this one wasn’t necessarily knocking my socks off it was still pretty good, but I had to make way for something and it just wasn’t good enough to keep.
Dragon Age: Origins. If this list were being ranked in order of regret, this would be right at the top. I just haven’t had the time to get immersed in it, and the 360 version is just clunky enough to make it difficult to get into.
Little King’s Story. I’m not much for strategy games, but this Wii title was engaging and charming and had some interesting things going on. I may yet re-rent it and give it another go.
Red Faction: Guerrilla. I finished the first “world”/”area”/”section”, drove around a little bit in the second area, and for whatever reason got sidetracked and never picked it back up. It wasn’t amazing, but it was certainly entertaining.
Scribblenauts. Once I heard about the magnet/vending machine glitch, I kinda stopped caring. But enough time has gone by where I could probably give this another go with some fresh eyes.
Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. I generally do most of my DS playing right before bed. I was somewhat enjoying this one – I got right up to the part where your train gets a cannon, so obviously I’m not that far in but I still had enough of a taste to know what was in store. But then I got a Kindle as an early birthday present, and as a result I’ve been reading before bed instead of DS-ing.

THE GAMES I CURRENTLY HAVE OUT FROM GAMEFLY THAT I REALLY WANT TO PLAY BUT HAVEN’T REALLY GIVEN ENOUGH TIME TO, WHICH PROBABLY WON’T AFFECT THE TOP 10 BUT YOU NEVER KNOW: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Dead Space: Extraction. I’ve given Silent Hill about an hour or so – the chase sequences are a bit wonky but the rest of it is exactly what I’d want out of the Wii controls, and it truly feels unique and exciting. I have not yet tried Dead Space, and I’m hoping to do that before the end of the week.

And now, without further ado, THE TOP 10 GAMES OF 2009.

10. Flower. I am not necessarily all that interested in debating if games qualify as art anymore; there are plenty of shitty films, books and albums that come out every year that shouldn’t qualify as art, either, and yet the Earth continues to not crash into the Sun. That said, Flower is as close to playing a dream as anything I’ve ever experienced, and for that I am in awe. It uses the PS3’s motion controls better than anything else on the platform; it should be the last game on the system to use them, frankly, until the wand comes out in 2010.

9. Torchlight. I said it before in talking about Sacred 2 – mindless hack-and-slash never gets old, and when it’s really well done it’s positively narcotizing. I haven’t yet finished Torchlight, but it’s not like there’s a story – I’ve left- and right-clicked enough to know that this game is well worth its price tag. Also – I miss gaming on my PC. My PC is 5 years old and struggled to run World of Warcraft 3 years ago at an acceptable level; Torchlight scales remarkably well and it runs like a dream on my ancient machine.

8. Resident Evil 5. I talked about it before, but I didn’t mention how fantastic the game is at encouraging multiple playthroughs; the rewards for doing so are quite thorough and worthwhile. It’s definitely archaic, and the series could definitely do with a reboot, but I’m of the opinion that it went out with a thoroughly enjoyable bang.

7. InFamous. Again, probably the most overlooked gem of the year. I have high hopes for the sequel.

6. Shadow Complex. I played through it twice, the second time opening 100% of the board, and I loved every minute of it. Outstanding.

5. The Beatles: Rock Band. Well, this certainly lived up to my expectations, even if I never successfully guessed the set list. Aside from being a remarkable adaptation of the Rock Band formula, the game featured oodles of cool miscellanea for the true Beatles nerd; never-before-heard studio banter, photographs, biographical information – all of it presented with tender loving care. I’m not sure any other band will manage to cause the same stir with their own vanity imprint; once again, the Beatles got there first and did it better than anyone else.

4. Borderlands. This came out of nowhere and became an instant favorite; it outdid Fallout 3 at its own game. Fallout 3 certainly had a better narrative, but its combat was always clunky and slow-paced, and the world was oppressively brown. Borderlands took the Unreal engine and finally did something truly cool with it – indeed, it’s the first cel-shaded game in years that really matters. But most importantly, it absolutely nailed the combat. Shooting just felt right; guns felt suitably powerful and each minute change in weaponry had a tangible impact in the field. I’m on my 2nd playthrough – I think I hit level 41 the last time I played, and I’m going back and forth between the Zombie Ned DLC and the regular game world.

3. Assassin’s Creed 2. Had I given an award for most improved sequel, this would’ve been it. It kept everything that worked in the first game, got rid of everything that didn’t, and then added a ton of cool stuff that made it even better. I was worried that it would end up getting swallowed up by Modern Warfare 2’s immense shadow, but as it turned out it held its own quite admirably. I enjoyed virtually every minute I spent playing it; the only reason it’s at #3 is because the games at 1/2 were that much better.

2. Batman: Arkham Asylum. I went back and forth with it, but putting this at #2 shouldn’t mean it’s any less deserving. I was genuinely astonished at how good this game turned out to be, and when I played it last week it still felt as good as it did when I first tried it out. It’s a complete package; a good story, fantastic voice acting, immersive graphics, intuitive and thoroughly satisfying hand-to-hand combat, challenging puzzles, and a world that is detailed and littered with things to do and see. But most of all, it makes you feel like you’re Batman. When you set up a trap, turn on your nightvision and swoop out of the darkness to knock out a thug, you feel like a badass. It’s a remarkable achievement and one can only hope that next year’s sequel (!) is given the same amount of time and care that went into this one.

1. Uncharted 2. I saw Avatar this weekend; I kept my expectations low. All I really wanted out of it was to see something I’d never seen before, and to that end I was thoroughly satisfied. The movie itself was pretty good; a little hokey, a little cheesy, but certainly good enough to justify the absolutely mind-boggling visuals. And, dear God, those visuals were astounding. Uncharted 2 had similarly mind-boggling visuals, at least for its medium, and from beginning to end I saw stuff I’d never seen before in a game. But to its credit, U2 is far, far more than its good looks. The game’s got charm. It’s got charisma, and it’s got personality. And it’s also got pathos. Nathan Drake is as 3-dimensional as an action hero can get, and considering that he’s completely polygonal, that says quite a lot. U2 might not be the paradigm-shifter that Bioshock or Portal might have been, but that’s not giving it enough credit for being what it is, which is the best interactive roller coaster ever made. It is absolutely reason enough to own a PS3; it is an experience that needs to be seen to be believed.

>Scrabble, Rock Band, and some personal inventory

>Some quick hits:

1. I am somewhat of a Scrabble nerd. Which is not to say that I’m very good at it, but rather that I very much enjoy playing it. I was a huge Scrabulous fan on Facebook, and I’ve even succumbed and started playing the EA-sponsored OFFICIAL SCRABBLE Facebook app. Hell, me and Gred and our other friend Jongre started the BAD SCRABBLE HANDS page, which still gets quite a lot of traffic even if we haven’t updated it since 2001. I’ve had my eye on the upcoming US release of the DS Scrabble game, which has been out in the UK for a while – I very nearly bought a copy when I was in London earlier this year. (Or maybe it’s not the same thing?) Anyway, this story cracked my shit up.

2. Via the excellent Offworld comes this interview with Alex Rigopulos, the man behind Rock Band.

3. Just for shits and giggles, I scoured my old GS blog and found my year-end recaps for 2004, 2006 and 2007. I’m not entirely sure I know what happened to 2005.

2008: The Year That Was

I’ve been blogging in one form or another since March of 2001, and I think it’s fair to say without getting into too much detail that quite a lot has changed since then. But at least one thing has stayed the same: I love doing year-end wrap-ups.

I’ve been looking forward to writing this particular post since I left the GameSpot forums and started SFTC back in January; I got even more excited about it when I realized I could cover all the major platforms this summer. I’ve been rocking a goddamned EXCEL SPREADSHEET for this post for the last 3 weeks, people.

And of course, here I am, finally writing it, and I’m writing about how excited I am instead of getting on with it.

ENOUGH.

Here’s the raw data.

I played 73 games that were released this year. Of those 73:
I purchased 48 (13 of which are XBLA titles);
I traded in 9 of those titles towards other games; and
I rented 25 games.

Per platform:

360: 52 titles (including XBLA)
DS: 6
PS3: 5
PSP:5
Wii: 3
PC: 2

I “finished” 13 games. This is a tricky criteria, though, because the idea of “finishing” certain titles can be misleading. I finished the story in Grand Theft Auto 4, but I only completed 75% of the game; likewise, I beat Fable 2 but that game can be played forever. I beat one campaign in Left 4 Dead, but there are 3 others that I haven’t started. Should that count? In Civilization Revolution, I finished 3 different campaigns as 3 different races – and on both the 360 and the DS – but there’s a bunch of other races that I never played as, and even then, I only ever finished a campaign in one specific manner. Sports games are a different matter; I finished an entire PGA Season in Tiger Woods 09, and that took me a rather considerable amount of time, but I didn’t finish the Tiger Challenge. Anyway. The games I “finished” are:

GTA4
MGS4
Prince of Persia
Gears of War 2
Fable 2
Tomb Raider Underworld
Professor Layton
Braid
Penny Arcade Adventures Vol. 1
Lego Indiana Jones
Lost Odyssey
Bond 007: Quantum of Solace
Tiger Woods 09

Likewise, I count 10 titles that I didn’t play long enough to really get a sense of at all; these were either rentals that I took a quick look at and then bounced back to Gamefly ASAP, hoping to free up my queue for releases that I was more excited about, or XBLAtitles that I knew I wanted but didn’t have time to dive into. They include:

Banjo-Kazooie (xbla re-release)
Battlefield: Bad Company
Bionic Commando
Chrono Trigger
Midnight Club: LA
Penny Arcade Adventures Vol. 2
Resistance 2
Star Ocean: First Departure
The World Ends With You
Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise

And now, on with the business.

—————————————————————

Best Action (Platformer): Little Big Planet (Prince of Persia, Mirror’s Edge, Tomb Raider Underworld)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read that the platforming genre is dead over the last few years. I feel like the platformer might be coming back, and people just don’t know it yet. Super Mario Galaxy might be what people have in mind when they think of what platforming means these days, but they’re discounting stuff like Assassins Creed, Prince of Persia, Mirror’s Edge and Tomb Raider Underworld which for all their 3D trappings are ultimately just as faithful to the tried and true conventions of the genre (go from point A to point B, collect stuff, engage in mindless combat). That said, Little Big Planet is on another level entirely. Leaving aside the part of the game where you create your own levels, the actual pre-packaged game that arrives on the disc is bursting with creativity and joy. And the best part is that your incentive for collecting random doodads is that the doodads end up being stuff you can use to build your own levels with. Maybe my biggest regret of 2008 is not spending enough quality time with this one; every time I play it I end up smiling.

Best Action (FPS/3PS): Metal Gear Solid 4 (Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, God of War: Chains of Olympus)

Nobody is more surprised than me to see this game win in this category. I fucking HATE Metal Gear Solid games, and some of the cutscenes in this game could qualify as the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. But here’s the thing; this game, when you were done listening to crazy people saying crazy things and actually playing it, was fucking badass. I think Snake’s OctoCamo suit might just be the coolest stealth gadget I’ve ever seen, and it couldn’t ever exist in something like Splinter Cell because it’s completely ridiculous.

Best Puzzle: Braid (Professor Layton, World of Goo, Peggle Nights, Poker Smash)

Believe it or not, this was one of the hardest categories for me to choose a winner. The one knock against Braid is its lack of replayability, but the first time through was a truly mesmerizing, jaw-dropping experience.

Best Horror: Dead Space (Silent Hill: Homecoming, Condemned 2)

I’m not really one for horror games, but I must give credit where credit is due: Dead Space is excellent. I’m reluctant to really call it a horror title – it’s startling and creepy, but it doesn’t really inspire feelings of dead – but that’s the genre in which it was marketed and I’m not going to argue with marketers. It features outstanding production values and rock-solid mechanics.

Best RPG: Fallout 3 (Fable 2, Penny Arcade Vol. 1, Sonic Chronicles)

I haven’t finished Fallout 3; I think I might be intimidated by it, actually. But what I’ve played of it – I’d say I’ve put in 8-12 hours – is staggering.

Best JRPG: Lost Odyssey (Crisis Core: FF7, Infinite Undiscovery)

It got tedious near the end, but let’s be honest – JRPGs are nothing if not tedious. You can’t play something for 70 hours and not suffer from fatigue. It’s a credit to what Lost Odyssey gets right, however, that it’s worth sticking with it for that long. Excellent design, interesting combat mechanics, and those stunning written cutscenes more than compensated for the grating music and cheesy script.

Best Family Game: Rock Band 2 (Boom Blox)

I don’t feel right making this my GOTY if only because I never played the first one and everything I’ve heard indicates that RB2 is basically just a better, more polished iteration of that. Still, I had 16 people in my apartment this past weekend and we played RB2 for about 6 hours, and it might have been the best party ever.

Best Sports: Tiger Woods 09 (MLB09, Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds)

Best Tiger game yet. I spent an absurd amount of time with this game over the summer.

Best Driving: Pure (Burnout Paradise, Mario Kart)

This game came out of nowhere, and I feel badly that I stalled out on it about halfway through. Excellent graphics and track design.

Best Graphics: Gears of War 2 (Metal Gear Solid 4, Pure, Little Big Planet, Fallout 3, Braid)

Every time I think I’m sick of the Unreal engine, Epic comes along and reminds everybody how awesome it is.

Best DS: Professor Layton (Sonic Chronicles, Civilization Revolution)

Remember when the DS was getting all these awesome, innovative games? Those days were great.

Best PSP: God of War: Chains of Olympus (Crisis Core: FF7)

Remember when the PSP looked like this awesome handheld system with crazy amounts of untapped potential and not at all like a waste of $150? That week was great.

Best XBLA: Braid (Geometry Wars 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Poker Smash, N+)

XBLA had absolutely fantastic year. I feel a little bad about not giving PSN titles and WiiWare titles their own winners, but there wasn’t a tremendous amount to get excited for on those titles, and I only had so much time, cash, and hard drive space.

Best 360-exclusive: Gears of War 2 (Fable 2, Lost Odyssey)

I might have played the most games on the 360 this year, but I’m a little surprised at how few of those games were 360-exclusive. (I’m not sure Left 4 Dead should count as a 360 exclusive, either, since a lot of people are enjoying it on the PC.)

Best PS3-exclusive: Metal Gear Solid 4 (Little Big Planet)

I use my PS3 primarily as a BluRay player, but it’s nice to be reminded every once in a while that I can do other, awesome things with it.

Best Wii-exclusive: Boom Blox (Mario Kart)

I think I’m giving the Wii until next summer to start releasing games for the serious gamer (or, at the very least, start teasing release dates). I can’t believe how quickly I soured on it; within 3 weeks of owning it I was already bored with it. Boom Blox was a lot of fun until my wife and I both started waking up the next morning with tired arms. I feel bad about not giving Okami more credit, but I only ever got around to spending but a few hours with it before getting distracted and moving on.

Best Multiplayer: Left 4 Dead (Rock Band 2, Boom Blox, Gears 2)

I’ve written a lot about L4D lately, and I’m reluctant to repeat myself.

Best Soundtrack/Voice Acting: Grand Theft Auto 4

You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you? You didn’t think I was going to get through my entire awards without giving GTA4 something? I’m going to be honest here – I cheated and deliberately omitted GTA4 out of most of its applicable categories because otherwise this post would get awfully repetitive. These particular categories, however, had no clear runner-ups; GTA4 had the best soundtrack, the best voice acting, and the best dialog out of any game this year, and it wasn’t even close.

GAME OF THE YEAR: Grand Theft Auto 4

Top 10:

GTA4
Rock Band 2
Fallout 3
Left 4 Dead
Braid
Metal Gear Solid 4
Professor Layton
Little Big Planet
Geometry Wars 2
Civilization Revolution (360)

—————————————————————

Publisher of the Year: EA (which is astounding for me to admit)

Best New IP (maybe the hardest category to grade): Left 4 Dead
Nominees:

Dead Space
Little Big Planet
Professor Layton
Boom Blox
Left 4 Dead
Lost Odyssey
Too Human
Mirror’s Edge
Pure
The World Ends With You (I know I didn’t play it very much, but too many people loved the shit out of this one)

Most Crack-Like: Civilization Revolution

Most Disappointing: Mercenaries 2

Worst Game Of The Year: MLB2K8

Most Disappointing Platform: PSP/Wii (tie)

Game Design Shortcut That Needs to Stop Being Used: QTE Events (which also is a redundant phrase)

Best Moment: Playing drums in Rock Band 2

Worst Moment: Messing up the progress in an Achievement hunt for Tiger 09

Best Game I Did Not Finish: God Of War: Chains of Olympus

Shortest Time Spent With A Game Because It Sucked: MLB2K8 (10 minutes)

Shortest Time Spent With A Game Not Because It Was Bad But Because I Did Not Care: Resistance 2 (10 minutes)

Maybe I’m Not Such A Whore After All (I Didn’t Buy This Game, Despite Being a Huge Fan of the License): Strong Bad games

Just Kidding, I Am Totally A Whore: Penny Arcade games

Most Time Spent With A Game: Grand Theft Auto 4 (36 days, according to 360voice.com)

Most Overlooked: Saints Row 2

Best Multiplayer Mode: Gears of War 2: Horde

Biggest Douchebag: Drebin (MGS4), Prince (PoP), the entire cast of Devil May Cry 4 (tie)

Biggest Game I Didn’t Play: Spore

Favorite Achievement: Wax Off – Geometry Wars 2

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: