RagingLion: Best of 2009
I haven't even played 10 games this year that were released in 2009 but for those games I have played, here they are in order (hint: they're all really good). Note that as a PC-only owner some new games I played were released earlier than 2009 on other platforms.
How do you top L4D2 when that game has some of the most satisfying gameplay I can ever envisage being created? Clearly such a game would probably have to have some element to it that surpassed what games are normally able to aspire to through just mechanics. Braid is just such a game for me. It's puzzles are beautifully crafted and ingenious, but that is not what makes this game special. It is the perfect marriage of this gameplay with the moving, slightly cryptic story behind it that sets it apart. It creates a unique and special atmosphere which culminates in an incredible ending with a twist that changes everything. Even beyond that it seems the story might hold greater significance than you first think, adding extra weight to it whatever the truth is of what it might be a metaphor for. This is almost my perfect game. I mean it to be more than mere hyperbole when I say it transcends almost any other game ever made.
I will end up spending for more time on this game than I have thus far but having played eeach campaign though a couple of times it is evident that this is one of the most challenging, fun, hectic, adventurous, team-building and downright satisfying games out there. It helps that I have friends who normally from the posse that I travel with since the sense of teamwork is certainly one of the best aspects of L4D2. The campaigns are really inventive and immersive and this game might hold my moment of 2009 when I played the Hard Rain campaign the first time and it just completely true me in with a sense of immersion that I may never have really experienced before. Fighting back through torrential rain added a sense of unity and endeavour to the whole adventure that was really special.
This is an absolutely beautiful game and I definitely appreciate beautiful visuals. The gameplay is really solid and constantly interesting and it was a great and lengthy adventure that I felt I'd gone on by the end of the game, having traveled through many varied and stunning environments. I love the tone of the game: it somehow manages to pitch itself as feeling genuinely magical, and despite traversing some seemingly dark environments I always felt uplifted and entranced by it - that might be its most special achievement.
Yep, this slipped itself in at the last moment having been completed on the 31st December. I had to rush the ending slightly for convoluted reasons which may mean I didn't appreciate that segment as much as I would otherwise if I hadn't been forced into relying quite a bit on a walkthrough. But this is a great game. It's genuinely funny and creative in the outlandish adventure which it features (Hitler's the villain btw ... who else). I'm a sucker for some fourth-wall-breaking and this game uses a comic sledgehammer at times. And I've never had so much fun opening and closing a drawer before which is quite some achievement.
I'm working on the basis that this counts as a 2009 game because the 'Special Edition' was released this year and that's what I played. Counted as an absolute classic by many I finally got to see why that's the case. I was somewhat surprised and equally delighted by the fact that not all the gameplay was pure traditional point-and-click but that the gameplay was changed up on occasion. The humour is still great - there were a few moments that had me properly laughing out loud for a while. I really enjoyed it from start to finish. It comes higher than those games below simply because I find an adventure game so much more immersive and satisfying than other types of games.
Sometimes I need the adrenaline boost that comes from a simulated experience telling me I'm going really really fast. Burnout Paradise does this really well. It's a huge world and there's a lot of content in the game. I loved just racing away and the Marked Man event was particularly good. This gave me more than enough to get my racing fix and I can see myself coming back to it whenever I feel in the mood for some racing.
Time Gentlemen, Please should really be in this list as from everything I've heard ZombieCow's full-length game is very impressive and would probably place higher on this list [edit: and it made it...just - see above]. However, even the few hours it took to play through this terser effort sets it out as a very imaginative and genuinely funny game. If you're a fan of adventure games you should play this without hesitation.
A very fun game which has great humour in all of its elements, from the plants and the zombies themselves, to Crazy Dave and the notes from the zombies. It also has a lot going on in it from the normal campaign to lots of mini-games and puzzles. I find it fascinating that I feel like placing this ahead of Defense Grid since in many ways the latter is a better game and more challenging and therefore interesting. However, PvZ's presentation simply meant that I had more fun while playing it.
This is a really good game. Very well executed and (crucially for this genre) really well balanced with a smooth learning curve. I sunk a lot of hours into this and found it great fun as well as being a real challenge. It places no higher simply because the experience isn't greater than the sum of its gameplay parts.
