Favorite Games of 2009
Most console generations continue for five months relevancy before new hardware takes over, but this was the first generation that lasted for longer, and the results are a bunch of amazing games.
List items
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Naughty Dog knows how to create a fun story, and that’s partly because they created a great, likable character with Nathan Drake. Most games have characters, of course, but so few have characters fleshed out enough to have an enjoyable story built around them. It helps that Uncharted 2 is a fun game on its own right, but I’m not confident that the shooting is strong enough to sustain players without that strong narrative hook pulling them along. Regardless, Uncharted 2 is a hell of an adventure.
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There’s no band more deserving of their own game than The Beatles, and Harmonix crafted an amazing tribute. The main “story” is wrapped in distinct periods in the band’s short history, featuring not just the music but the clothes and iconic locations. Except their time in the Abbey Road Studio, that is. Instead, players are brought into “dreamscapes” inspired by the songs, and many are truly a sight. This is not only a lovingly crafted tribute to an amazing group, but an amazing game on its own.
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With many online first-person shooters adapting an RPG-like progression with unlocks, being able to jump fresh into a random map and hold your own has decreased. Battlefield 1943 gives just three classes to choose from before dropping players onto the map, and this approach keeps things casual and competitive. The group with the higher level, and by extension, better equipment doesn't have an instant advantage over the newcomers with a bare weapon. It just feels more balanced. Plus, it’s always fun to watch an enemy scurry into a building before using a tank to blow up the wall he’s hiding behind.
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At times, Halo 3 felt too predictable and suffocated beneath the lore that Bungie had created over the course of years, so the best thing that Halo 3: ODST did was to create a side-story largely detached from Master Chief’s adventures. As “Rookie,” a silent ODST, you find weaker than the Chief, forcing caution during your travels through New Mombasa. This change is ultimately for the best as running into a pack of enemies and shredding them is no longer a viable option, which makes the entire game feel less like a comic book.
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For years, Guitar Hero felt a step behind Rock Band. By Guitar Hero 5, developer Neversoft finally created a sequel that could stand alongside Rock Band. It’s such a shame then that the addition of a virtual Kurt Cobain (of Nirvana) that could be used to sing any song (not in his own voice, of course, outside of Nirvana’s own songs) became such a disaster. Remove that and you have a great Guitar Hero, especially with the addition of Party Play, which launches immediately and doesn't penalize for missing notes. While it doesn't dethrone Guitar Hero 2, GH5 is the best post-Harmonix Guitar Hero.
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Unlike many, I’m not going to say that Dragon Age: Origins was an amazing experience. I nearly dropped the Xbox 360 version entirely after taking a shot at the warrior and rogue classes, but when I created a female elf mage, something clicked. But again, it wasn't all roses as the dwarf-populated Orzammar, not to mention the Deep Roads, tried my patience with unexciting quests and boring caves. Even so, other parts of the adventure were more enjoyable (including the much-criticized supernatural realm called the Fade), and I grew attached to my fellow adventurers (except for Sten). By the end, Origins won me over, but not without issues.
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I’m pretty sure I mentioned in my write-up of MechAssault that there’s a simple, almost animal joy in random destruction, which is exactly what the Red Faction series has been about. Guerrilla brings destruction to buildings, allowing players to, for instance, take out a major support beam and watch the roof cave in. Then tear down one of the walls and see it crash onto the ground. As I said, destruction is a simple joy that helps mask that this is a generic third-person shooter set in a boring open-world Mars.
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No, LEGO Rock Band doesn't get bonus points for being a LEGO game. It gets the extra points for the cutscenes, which offer the same chuckle-inducing hijinks that Traveller’s Tales put into virtually every LEGO game they create. Otherwise, LRB isn't so different from Band Hero: it’s a re-skin made for a younger audience and lacking features found in the most recent installment, The Beatles: Rock Band. And instead of three Taylor Swift songs, we get two Queen songs, which is a huge improvement right there.
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It’s my understanding that Spirit Tracks isn't the most beloved entry in the Zelda franchise, but it made for an easy re-entry into a series I lost interest in after Twilight Princess. Traveling across predetermined paths brought a more guided adventure while the touch screen controls offered something new, a twist on the usual Zelda gameplay. And I don’t know how everybody else feels, but ghost Zelda is surprisingly adorable.
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Sega has made it difficult to be a Phantasy Star fans. Fans of the original RPGs suffer because the series has moved away from being a traditional RPG, while fans of Phantasy Star Online deal with Sega’s inability to create a decent successor. (PSO2 was apparently good, but it never came out in North America or Europe.) Phantasy Star Portable, offering PSO’s dungeon crawling without the online, won’t make either camp happy, but I enjoyed it despite myself. That last boss was hell, though.
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