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rhombus

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Best of 2009

**DISCLAIMER** I don't own a 360, so no 360 games on the list (though I'm pretty damn sure Shadow Complex would be on there if I had one). 
 
2009 was quite possibly the year of open world gaming, and even though I'm a total sucker for the genre, in the end all the great open world games probably just divided the base and stole votes from one another. Out of the Assassin's Creed 2, Prototype, inFAMOUS, Red Faction: Guerilla, Saboteur (yes, I actually really liked The Saboteur), GTA: Chinatown Wars tangle, only Assassin's Creed 2 managed to backstab its brethren and wallclimb into the Top 10.
 
It's also been a fantastic year for digitially distributed games, from the aforementioned Shadow Complex to the Tales of Monkey Island episodes to Torchlight, Fat Princess, Trine, the Bit.Trip games, Shatter, Gravity Crash, Comet Crash, PixelJunk Shooter, Trash Panic, Splosion Man, and many others. Two digitally distributed games made my list, but even though I played and enjoyed a bunch of them, there's just too damn many for a single Top 10.

List items

  • Uncharted 2 may have hit higher highs, but Dragon Age: Origins wins for its insane amount of content and customization. Bioware's latest epic offers more gameplay both upfront and down the road, and that's without even taking mods and expansions into account. I've been playing Baldur's Gate 2 for a full-on decade now and I very well may do the same with <s>Baldur's Gate 3</s> Dragon Age: Origins.

  • We might want to pretend that the fourth Indiana Jones movie never happened, but unfortunately it did. Fortunately Nathan Drake, Nolan North, and the Uncharted games have stepped in to fill the requisite quota for charming archaeo-adventuring in the post-Indy era. Uncharted 2 is among the most cinematic games ever created, and improves on its predecessor in every conceivable way, including an amazingly fun multiplayer that even fans of the games weren't expecting. Hell, Uncharted 2 is so damn good I basically needed a disclaimer to explain why it didn't rank #1.

  • It's probably abundantly clear from my top three that I'm a big fan of games with quality writing. Bowser's Inside Story manages to surpass the already high writing standards set by the previous games in the Mario & Luigi franchise, all of which get bonus writing points for their top notch localization jobs. Quite possibly the funniest M&L game to date, with the always upROARious Bowser onboard. Get it? Bowser? Roar? See what I did there? Yeah.

  • Giant, realistic, organic feeling Renaissance Italian cities? Check. Smooth as silk gameplay, controls, and character animations? Check. Da Vinci cameoing as crazy gadget guy? Check. Lute smashing? Check. Nolan North? Check. Assassin's Creed 2 just may have done for HISTORY! what the Fallout games did for SCIENCE!

  • This game combines two of my favorite things: Batman and Metroid Prime style gameplay. Actually no, this game combines THREE of my favorite things: Batman, Metroid Prime style gameplay, and a shit ton of 'roided out crazy people. It also takes basically everything I loved about Batman: The Animated Series—Paul Dini, Kevin Conroy, and Mark Hamill—and distills it into a neat little stealth-exploration-brawling package.

  • There ain't no rest for the wicked...or for those addicted to Borderlands. Despite this game having several noticeable flaws, and some especially glaring and maddening interface and technical issues on the PC, I just keep coming back and probably will as long as they keep adding more enjoyable DLC.

  • Few games make use of the gyroscopic sensor in the PS3 controller. While this is undoubtedly a good thing, it's always good to know that imaginative game designers like Jenova Chen can take advantage of all the technology has to offer. While short, the gorgeous visual design and innovative controls make flower a truly unique experience. In fact, flower is so energetic and alive that one might possibly think it's FUELED BY THE DEW.

  • Excerpt from a conversation on Steam chat:<br />

    me: sorry guys, can't play any Team Fortress 2 now<br />

    other guy: why not?<br />

    me: uh...<br />

    rhombusx is now playing Plants Vs. Zombies<br />

    other guy: wtf! again?! what's so good about that game?<br />

    me: what ISN'T?

  • This game could very well have placed higher on the list if not for its... well... Eastern bloc-ishness. Though actually other than its uber-bugginess, this surprisingly well-polished survival shooter avoids the usual presentation and gameplay shortcomings that so often plague its Soviet comrades. Cryostasis makes excellent use of lighting and water effects to transform what could have easily been a mundane industrial setting into a detailed yet sensory-deprived environment, where the cold, darkness, and claustrophobia are constant. The game offers up a n interesting and unique story, delivered in an intentionally vague and disjointed manner, some satisfying puzzles, tense and well-done shooting, and a truly intense and creepy atmosphere. I'd say that Cryostatis: The SLEEP of Reason is the SLEEPER hit of 2009, but I've already used up my allotment of terrible puns. Oh wait...

  • Cryostasis may be Ukrainian, but Silent Hill: Shattered Memories truly embraces the Soviet mentality: you don't play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, it plays you. This is one of those interactive experiences that the "games as art" goons are always clamoring for - a game that uses the technology to transcend the narrow and well-defined limits of both video games and storytelling. Of course that's also an elaborate euphemism for saying the gameplay falls somewhere on the interactivity scale between changing the channel on your remote control and pointing along to Phoenix Wright's objections in an Ace Attorney game, as you control such mindblowing tasks as making cell phone calls and pointing a flashlight.
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