Year in review: Honorable mentions

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: 2009 honorable mentions.

We may never see another year like 2007 again, when we were treated to one astonishing game after another. But 2009 was no slouch. Like last year, quality was generally high, with just a few stinkers, and even those often suffered more from understandable fatal flaws than from all-encompassing ineptitude. No doubt about it, I played a lot of good games this year.

In chronological order:

Skate 2: Still extremely challenging, Skate 2 improved upon its predecessor mostly by giving you the ability to walk up steps, which was very necessary.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin: A mish-mash of styles that didn't all work together, this game had enough high points to be worth playing.

Killzone 2: Graphically impressive and with a fun, team-based multiplayer mode, it wasn't one of the best FPSes ever made, even if you do have a functioning brain. But it was a good one.

MadWorld: Sort of a better idea than it was a game, MadWorld was striking and unusual, and comically violent.

Guitar Hero: Metallica: I'll be honest with you. This, not The Beatles, was my favorite music game of the year.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena: This would be here if it were only the high-definition remake of Escape from Butcher Bay. The Dark Athena chapter is not quite as good, but actually better than I thought people gave it credit for.

Punch-Out!!: Absolutely worthy of the name. Extremely fun. Also controller-throwingly difficult. (But what isn't, really?)

Ghostbusters: The Video Game: Funny, breezy, colorful -- the definition of good but not great. It's also my nephew Sam's favorite game to play with me, besides X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Which reminds me...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: I never wrote about this game, but I played it a little and found it to be a fun, good-looking beat-'em-up with some neat cinematic events. It's also unbelievably gory. Did I mention Sam is four years old?

Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal: Telltale is doing a fine job with the LucasArts relaunches. Not so fine that I sought out the subsequent episodes, but hey, I'm a busy man.

'Splosion Man: Another challenging throwback to the sidescrolling era, this played like Sonic the Hedgehog mixed with the "Barrel Blast" level of Donkey Kong Country.

Fat Princess: A surprisingly relaxing take on competitive capture-the-flag gaming.

The Beatles: Rock Band: Well, it is the Beatles, after all.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: A really slick package.

Assassin's Creed II: It takes a good eight hours to get to the point where this game is fun. Once there, it can be, at times, brilliant, but it still gets in its own way too much.

Tomorrow: The worst games of 2009.

Fat Princess: Low stakes, tasty cakes

Above: Just more of her to love.

Video games are supposed to be fun, but with some notable exceptions, this does not conform to my experiences with them. Playing video games is tense, hectic, and draining. Video games make me angry. They make my heart beat fast. They frighten and excite me. They seem, while I'm playing them, like the most important thing that anybody in the world is doing right at the moment. But fun? I don't know. It's hard to have fun when the stakes are so high.

That's why Fat Princess is so much fun, and also why I'm not finding myself called back to it despite my enjoyment. The rules are standard capture-the-flag fare: You need to rescue your own princess from the opposing team's castle, and prevent them from retrieving theirs. Once you hold both princesses in your castle for a short period of time, you win. But this isn't the fast-paced CTF style I remember from my obsessive Quake 2 period. There is combat, which is mostly automated. You lock on to a nearby enemy with the left trigger, and press one of two attack buttons. Little skill seems to be involved.

Where Fat Princess diverges is in its jobs system. At any time, your elf can pick up a particular hat to change his class. Not all classes are suited for storming the opposing castle. At the beginning of every match, most people on the team grab the engineer hat, then head out into the forest to cut down trees for the lumber they need to upgrade the castle and equipment. These upgrades eventually result in each hat granting its wearer more powers: the archer gets a musket, the warrior's strength increases, and so on.

It doesn't take long for everything to be fully upgraded, and at that point the game opens up a bit. And unlike more tactical FPSes, Fat Princess seems to encourage players to go their own way. You can pick a job to do, and keep at it regardless of whatever else is happening on the game board. But -- and here's the key -- doing so still helps your team. Bringing the Princess cake will cause her to gain weight, making her harder to carry out of your castle. If you want to spend an entire round humping slices of cake across the board, instead of taking a traditional attack or defense role, you can do that.

There is something satisfying about working behind the scenes in a team-based game such as this. Let everyone else take the glory -- I'm quite happy to repair the castle door. Still, that does eliminate those one-in-a-million moments that mark the best multiplayer games, when you bank a grenade just right, or capture the flag with a sliver of health remaining. The quotidian flavor of Fat Princess makes it an easy game to dive into and enjoy, without ever forcing you to take notice.