The Big One: 2009 Game Of The Year

The time has finally arrived to announce my choice as 2009's video game of the year.  This is a decision that I struggled with up until the very end for reasons I will get into later in this blog.  For the uninitiated, I nominated 6 games for GOTY:

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
2. Batman: Arkham Asylum
3. The Beatles: Rock Band
4. NHL 10
5. Borderlands
6. Assassin's Creed II

I also posted a disclaimer about how these games were chosen and why some other games were not eligible for these awards.  I'll repeat that once again here:

1. I have not played (and will not be playing) some of the biggest releases of the year such as Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Forza Motorsport 3. As such, these games are not eligible for GOTY or any of the other awards I am giving out.. I know this makes these awards meaningless for some people but COD:MW2 and L4D2 are mainly multiplayer games and I am not much of a multiplayer gamer, so there is no sense in me spending money on these games. Pete also reminded me recently that I did not play Infamous.  That bears mentioning as well, as that is a game that got almost universal acclaim from everyone I know that played it.  If you can handle these games being ineligible, then you may find these awards worth browsing. 
2. These awards are for Xbox 360 and PS3 games only. I am not into the Wii, DS, PSP or PC gaming.

I gave out awards for other categories just a little while back.  If you care to see those awards, simply scroll further down the blog or click here.


With the formalities out of the way, let's get into it.  I will place the games in reverse order and talk a little bit about each game until we get to the final 2, when I will explain why I went the way I did.  As I mentioned earlier, it was not an easy decision.  The top 3 games all garnered very serious consideration for the top spot.


6th place: NHL 10.  EA's NHL series has been getting better every season for the past 3 years and this year's version added board play and finer user-based tuning.  This game does so many things well, from the vast number of teams and leagues available to the addictive Be A Pro mode and General Manager mode.  Playing offense is extremely satisfying while playing defense (for me anyway) was better than it had been in years past.  I felt like I was more in control of my defensemen.  The game also looks gorgeous and has great arena sounds and play-by-play.  I subtracted some points because General Manager mode is still buggy in places and there is no on-line co-op mode.  Still, this is a killer sports game.


5th place: Batman: Arkham Asylum.  This game exceeded my expectations.  Most superhero games up until this point have been a poor joke.  This game turned that old convention upside down.  First rate all the way, this is a classic beat 'em up game that comes stocked with some great Batman toys as well.  The control is excellent too, a vital ingredient for a game such as this.  The production is first rate: the graphics and audio is top of the line stuff.  Particularly impressive is the voice acting, which takes advantage of several of the big names from the animated Batman series.  It's got plenty to do, a decent story and it keeps you coming back for more.  My only caveat is that once I finished the game, I had no desire to go back and play it again.  That is a rarity for me when I play a game that I consider truly excellent.  Batman fits that bill, but for some reason, I was not compelled to return to it any time soon.


4th place: The Beatles: Rock Band.  My most awaited game of the year and it did not disappoint in the least.  It's everything I could have hoped for (well, maybe a larger number of songs) and then some.  I got the limited edition that came with the Hofner bass (which is just a real thing of beauty), the drums and a microphone.  Playing and singing at the same time is where it is at; there has not been any moment in gaming this year that has been more thrilling.  The obvious love that the creators have for The Beatles matches my own love for the band.  I really thought this would be my game of the year.  But when I looked at it objectively, without my Fab Four colored glasses on, it was still basically just a Rock Band game.  The only truly new wrinkle (and it was a doozy) was the ability to sing background vocals.  It fits in perfectly with The Beatles, but still it's just 1 innovation.  In my own worldview this game would score about a 9.8 on a 10 scale.  But I'd score it at about a 9.25 for everyone else.


3rd place.  Assassin's Creed II.  This game is huge.  Epic.  It was right up there for the GOTY nod.  The ability to go just about anywhere on the huge maps is just amazing.  The fighting is very well done and despite the frequency it never really felt redundant.  The small RPG elements work well, the story is exciting and well told and the graphics and the voice acting are superb.  You can spend hours upon hours playing the game and once you finish the main quest there are still tons of things to do.  My only complaint is that the controls got me once in a while.  While scaling huge buildings I would try to go one way and sometimes instead I would see myself jump off the building to my death in the street far below.  This happened more than a few times.  If you had invested a lot of time to reach a certain point only to see your character jump off in a totally unintended direction, it could be frustration city.  There were also a couple of timed missions, which I have a huge distaste for.  I was able to complete them, but I just hate them in general.  Other than those 2 items, this game is an A+ all the way.


Now onto the final 2 games.  And this is where my hesitation came in.  It took me long enough to eliminate Assassin's Creed II from consideration as GOTY.  When it came down to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves or Borderlands for GOTY, I was of 2 different minds.  Was the Game Of The Year the game I considered the best quality or was it the game I enjoyed the most?  Because they aren't always 1 in the same.  Take movies for example.  As any loyal reader knows, my favorite movie of all time is Jaws.  And there is no real competition for that spot.  And while I will argue until I am blue in the face that Spielberg's shark story is an A+ movie and a bona fide classic, I will not spend a single moment saying it is the BEST film I have ever seen.  That honor would go to Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (or perhaps Kobayashi's Human Condition trilogy, but that is a huge discussion for another day).  So there is a difference, it is very real, and it pertains to this discussion because this year, unlike the past 2, my favorite game and the game I considered "the best" are in fact different.  In the end, I spoke to several people about it in very general terms.  But most of the discussion was with myself.  And to me it boiled down to this: if I could only play one game from 2009, which would it be?  And so I made my decision.


2nd place: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. What a stellar game this is.  Once in a while, and it's not very often, a game will come along that is so good at what it does that I consider it a work of art.  2007 had Bioshock and now 2009 has Uncharted 2.  Without a doubt, of the games I played this year, this was the highest quality game of them all.  Everything about this game was unreal.  The graphics?  The best.  The voice acting?  Even better than Batman.  The story?  As good as anything Hollywood has churned out in years.  The list goes on an on.  The characters, the score...everything is terrific.  The gameplay itself is improved from the first Uncharted game, especially the gun play.  There is a moment or 2 when you wish the platforming in an area wasn't so lengthy but overall the gameplay is tight as can be and best of all, fun.  The real joy is moving along through each chapter to see where the story takes you.  You really get caught up in Nathan Drake's world of adventure and danger.  If you have a PS3, by all means, get this game.  And if you don't, this game is good enough to be a system seller.


2009 Game Of The Year: Borderlands. In the end, the decision came down to which game I had the most fun with and which game I spent the most time with.  And that was Borderlands.  While not the absolute technical marvel that Uncharted 2 is, Borderlands is no slouch.  The unique cell-shaded look of the game is fantastic and fits the desolate world of Pandora to a T.  The audio is also a treat and the control is perfect.  Of all the first-person games I have played on a console, none controls any better than this.  What truly sets Borderlands apart from the rest is the unbelievable addictiveness of the game.  By adding RPG elements to the first-person-shooter genre, Gearbox has created a real corker, something that kept me coming back like no other game this year.  From the insane number of weapons that you can unearth (upwards of 17 million supposedly) to the new skills you can add to your player, nothing beat leveling up in Borderlands.  With 4 unique character classes to choose from, there is definitely extra incentive to go back and play through the game again.  But I'll be honest: I don't need any extra incentive.  I have gotten my character leveled out to the max and I still play with him, hoping to find new and better weapons to take on the super bad guys that inhabit Pandora.  Some day I will play with a different character class (and level him/her all the way up!) but for now I am content to keep littering the wastelands with corpses while I continue my search for more bad-ass weaponry.  Add in a killer co-op mode and you are talking major, major replayability which means major, major bang for your buck.



Here's hoping you all had a good time gaming in 2009.  It looks like 2010 is shaping up to be a stellar year as well, with the 1st quarter looking especially strong with Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2 and God Of War III.  Let's hope they can all live up to the hype.