Gaming in 2009

Before I start, i need to say that I’m not actually a very avid gamer, and I can’t always afford to get the most current games. This article is about the games I enjoyed most in 2009, and some of them may be from 2008, but that’s just how I roll. I won’t be declaring any “best of 2009’s” because I haven’t played enough of the good games this year to make that decision.

If you look at some other gaming sites, you’ll notice that most of their “best of 2009” games were released in the past few months. It makes sense, since there really are a lot of good games that just came out, but this might also be evidence that these recent games are simply still on peoples’ minds. As far as I can tell, though, the best game this year that I haven’t played is certainly Uncharted 2. I’ll have to get on that. I don’t have much love for any sorts of online multiplayer games, so things like Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 can only hold my interest so far. I will give L4D2 a shot someday, but it’s not a priority. Assassin’s Creed 2 probably doesn’t have the kind of content that would keep me playing to the end. And what did I play, of the general “top picks” of this year?

There’s Dragon Age: Origins, first, which I received on Christmas. I don’t usually like RPGs, western or not, but I got this game because... everyone said it was awesome. I don’t really know what got me excited for it, but after receiving it, I almost didn’t want to play it right away. Then I did. Now, it’s actually a higher priority for me to replay that game than it is to finish Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Of all the games I’ve played that came out this year, this is definitely the one I’ve... beaten...

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a game I’ve been excited to play since the demo came out, but never bothered to actually get it until it occurred to me that I could ask for it for Christmas. So I did. And then I played it for 6 hours straight. The game is dangerous. The most accurately I’ve heard it described is to say that it is a Batman game, made for Batman. Other superhero games are most often an established game type with a name tacked on, shipped out the door too soon because of a movie release date. This is a game made with only Batman in mind... and it works really well. I’ll post about it again once I’ve finished it.

Zelda: Spirit Tracks never really caught my attention, in spite of it being a Zelda game, until some of the conceptual story was explained in marketing. It takes place 100 years after Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass, in a land steeped with reference to those events and characters, but not without its own mythos and villains. The train concept works surprisingly well to enhance the scale of the world, and it helps that it feels a lot less like a generic overworld map than Phantom Hourglass did. This is another game I’ll discuss more once I’ve beaten it, but like any Zelda game, I highly recommend it. Oh, and the music. The music... is unlike anything. It reminds me of how I felt when Wind Waker first introduced that Celtic flair to the Zelda theme... this is just like, holy crap... Koji Kondo, you lovely man.

I was underwhelmed by New Super Mario Bros Wii when it was first announced. It seemed like they had just thrown together a game that would hold us over until Galaxy 2 came out. But, I was wrong. It’s fantastic. People who complain about it being too hard aren’t playing with nice people.

Scribblenauts. Interesting concept, gets old in an hour. Of all the thousands of words you can enter to help solve a given puzzle, only a handful of them will ever actually be useful in ways other than chomping, jumping, stopping, or swimming. The game was good, and I played through the whole puzzle section, but it got stale.

That’s it for the games that came out this year, but nowhere near the amount of games I played this year. Of those, my favorites are as follows.

Fable 2. Peter Molyneux has a huge chip on his shoulder, but it gets things done. Fable 2 is a really interesting game for its scale, and while it certainly has some ineptitudes, it is an enjoyable game experience. The end was fantastic. I don’t mean that whole blah blah you have to choose bit, I mean the part right before that. I will never say it, but it’s almost worth playing the game just for that. I’m definitely looking forward to Fable 3, and I might even grab the first game sometime soon.

Tales of Vesperia is evidence of this odd anomaly in my gaming tastes. I really don’t usually like RPGs, and yet somehow I was able to complete Tales of Symphonia back in the day. I picked up Tales of the Abyss, expecting similar magic, but I wasn’t in the mood for it, or something. Then a friend got Vesperia, and somehow it got me hooked enough to put 30 hours in. I still haven’t beaten it, but I intend to.

Psychonauts is a fairly old game by now, 2004 or so, I believe. It was Double Fine’s last game before Brütal Legend, and it was fantastic. Adventure platformers usually don’t do a lot of variety to the table when it comes to gameplay, and Psychonauts isn’t exactly an exception, but it does bring enough of its own flavor to the genre to stand apart from others. Not only is it hilarious, at times gut-wrenchingly so, it’s so highly absurd that it’s just a thrill to play. It’s like playing through a Cartoon Network show, back when they were good, like Courage the Cowardly Dog, Dexter’s Lab, Johnny Bravo... The game is only like $15 now on steam and XBLA, so you should play it.

I also played a lot of WoW. That was fun. But now, it’s not. I don’t want to be yelled at for not having perfect gear yet. I’ll try it again once Cataclysm comes out.

World of Goo - this is the best puzzle game I’ve played in a long time. It didn’t even feel like a puzzle game! It has a really well paced learning curve, and just when you think it’s about to get really hard, it changes the formula somehow to keep it fresh and simple. This is a game I’ll be going back to pretty often.

Not every game I played this year was awesome, unfortunately. Notably, there’s Sonic Unleashed, which I knew would be bad when I bought it. I figured, hey, it’s only half terrible because of those werehog parts, but then there’s a traditional Sonic runforall in between, right? Little did I realize the werehog parts suck so much that I would quit the game outright after the 3rd world. A shame, too. I used to love Sonic...

Then there was Overlord 2. I’ve never played Pikmin, and I intend to someday, but I’m told Overlord is like evil Pikmin. It was fun, for a while, and I do plan on returning to it someday soon, but it hurts a little. I like to be a completionist when I can, especially when the game shows you a list of quests you have yet to complete. Except, in this game, some of those quests are really hard to do! There’s one where I’m supposed to lobotomize every member of a town of 100 people so they’ll serve me, but it’s impossibly hard to find every one of those people! I stopped playing when I hit a glitch that made me redo this annoying boat section, but I’ll get back to it. I guess this game did actually come out this year, but I wouldn’t recommend it, so we’ll keep it down here.

Braid. Everyone loves Braid. Braid this, Braid that. Indie game of the year, original concept with artistic nods to other games. First, Jonathan Blow is a douche. He gets up on a soap box about how indie games are awesome, it’s just whatever. Braid, the game, as fun as it was to begin with, has this difficulty curve that is far from kind. Some people like that, I’ll admit. I did get a sense of accomplishment upon completing the final level, so he’s got me there. But, when it comes to those achievements, I just die a little inside. I really wanted to get them all... but there’s one that requires you to wait around for literal hours. It’s just not kind. You should play it!

I replayed Banjo-Kazooie on XBL, and I loved it. I got all 200 achievement points from it, and I might even play it again for speed completion. Then, I played Nuts and Bolts, the new 360 game, and put a lot of time into it. It’s fun, for sure, but it does get a little stale. I want to go back and beat it, but I need to be in the mood to sit around for a few hours tweaking the perfect vehicle to accomplish similar sorts of goals. BUT THEN, I played Banjo-Tooie on XBL, and... it didn’t age... greatly. I know I’ve enjoyed it a great deal in the past, but something about playing this now... it feels like a chore. It’s very heavily concerned with completionist tasks that push my stamina without much reward. A friend of mine will probably yell at me for saying it, but Banjo-Tooie just wasn’t a very good game.

That’s it, I think. There’s a few other games I played this year, but didn’t complete, and I like them enough to not berate them. I’ll probably mention each of them at some point in the future, when they’re good and beaten. 2009 has been a rather good year, though a lot of the games that came out don’t jump out as “best of all time” quality. It’s hard to expect that, though, since there’s already been a lot of greats. Well, anyway, happy 2010!