Year in review: The best games of 2009

Above: I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Ain't no rest for the wicked awesome.

We're wrapping up our recap of the year that was. Today: the best games of 2009.

At last we come to it. You can click through to the feature on thephoenix.com to read the blurbs for each game, but for easy reference, and with all the usual caveats, here's my top 10 of 2009:

1. Borderlands
2. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
3. Batman: Arkham Asylum
4. Shadow Complex
5. Flower
6. Left 4 Dead 2
7. Red Faction: Guerrilla
8. Dead Space: Extraction
9. Street Fighter IV
10. Prototype

That concludes our coverage of 2009. We're not turning the lights out for the holidays here at Insult Swordfighting, but posting is likely to be light until the new year. As always, thank you for reading. Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year!

Quiz: The year in swooning

Match each of these games with the breathless excerpt from its review.

1. The Beatles: Rock Band
2. Batman: Arkham Asylum
3. Killzone 2
4. Resident Evil 5
5. Red Faction: Guerrilla
6. Street Fighter IV
7. inFamous
8. Brütal Legend
9. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

A. "...one of the most memorable video games ever created. Not because it is particularly innovative, but because the mixture of shooting, climbing, creeping, thinking, laughing and simple astonishment works perfectly."

B. "There are very, very few games which truly make me sit back and go 'wow'. Among the slew of games that I’ve reviewed this year, there are only a couple that I really enjoyed playing, and continue to do so. [This] is one such game – even though I aced my Public Speaking and English Literature classes, words only slur together when I try to describe this game."

C. "This is simply a superb genre defining experience with two unforgettable endings."

D. "This action-adventure is so smart, so well-written, and delivered with such an obvious love for its source material, I daresay it is both the best licensed game ever made, and arguably the best game of its kind in our current console generation."

E. "...provides a transformative entertainment experience. In that sense it may be the most important video game yet made."

F. "The gorgeous graphics, the superb sound, the great (if sometimes twitchy) AI of your partner and the jaw-dropping gameplay take everything that was brilliant about [its predecessor] and ramp it up to the next level, making for one of the best gaming experiences ever!"

G. "This game deserves a place on everyone's shelf, from the most casual fan... to the most hardcore. No matter your personal skill level, you owe it to yourself to buy this game. [Its] incredible art style, rock solid gameplay, and infinitely compelling multiplayer make it stand out as one of best games of this generation."

H. "A fantastic game that sucks you in and doesn't let go... a seamless merger of technology and story telling that raises the bar for the industry."

I. "...the best console first person shooter ever. It will be bested one day, and that is as it should be, but this game has set the proverbial bar so high we reckon it'll be the king for a good long while... Hail to the king, baby."

1. E (New York Times)
2. D (Gamespy)
3. I (Playstation Official Magazine Australia)
4. F (AceGamez)
5. H (Gaming Nexus)
6. G (ZTGameDomain)
7. C (Play)
8. B (MEGamers)
9. A (Cynamite)

Friday afternoon tidbits

Whoa, quick week. Can't believe it's time for the links already. Let's get to it!

-Hit Self-Destruct is no more. The last post went up this morning. I highly recommend you read it, along with the archives. Duncan is one of the best game writers out there -- maybe the best. It's a shame to see him move on. There may be more to say about this later.

-Recently, Edge's "Time Extend" feature took a look back at the superb Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, one of my very favorite games from the PS2 generation. I'm glad to see that they didn't merely focus on the gameplay, as terrific as it was. They're correct in observing that the storyline and characters were atypical for the genre, smarter and more heartfelt. The Prince of that game was cunning and roguish, and his inner monologues were genuinely funny -- not at all like the angst-ridden prefab Prince of Warrior Within. No wonder it didn't sell very well.

-Newsflash: Video games are not recession-proof. Is this a surprise? Not really. But it does help to explain why so many publishers are pushing games into 2010. It's not about polishing or revamping. They're afraid nobody will be buying. They may be right. I still think this fall represents a golden opportunity for gamers.

-On the Fall 2010 front, Bill Harris's console posts are always worth reading, especially when he drops in a fact like this: This fall, there are five music games coming out in the span of eleven weeks. We reached saturation point on these things long ago, didn't we? Especially with news that Rock Band revenue has been dropping precipitously, you have to wonder who they're still marketing the instruments to. Consumers would be much better off if they released this new games as digital downloads, as well as physical media.

-Sparky Clarkson does one of my favorite things a writer can do: takes a video game seriously. He looks at the storyline versus the mechanics of Red Faction: Guerrilla. I admired this game quite a bit, as you may remember, but it's hard to do anything but smile sheepishly when I read a criticism like this:

Although 'guerillas' often show up when you need a hand, nobody ever attacks a convoy or hijacks a truck without your assistance, this despite the EDF's tactic of regularly sending lightly-protected, high-value convoys to destroyed bases in territories it no longer controls.

That's dead-on. It's the sort of thing you can ignore when the gameplay succeeds on its own terms, as this game's does. But Sparky is right that the world of Red Faction is not one that is believable in its own right, not in the way that something like Far Cry 2 or Fallout 3 was (my comparisons, not his). Still a blast, though!

Fall down go boom

Above: Red Faction is smashing!

My review of Red Faction: Guerrilla is up now at thephoenix.com.

One thing I've said repeatedly is that I'd prefer a game to do one thing exceedingly well, rather than attempt a million things and not quite get there with any of them. All of Red Faction centers on knocking shit over. There are missions overlaid on that, and a storyline, and an economy system, and so on, but at its core this game would live or die by how much fun it is to demolish everything in sight. And it is so much fun.

The explosions are great. The feedback from the sledgehammer is great. The number of different ways you can take down buildings is great. I don't know how many times I sabotaged my own mission objectives because I couldn't resist stopping and trying to knock out a guard post, but I also don't care.

Even with that said, the design is still pretty smart. The biggest concern of the developers didn't seem to be to show off their considerable chops, but to focus on the player experience. And so you can fast travel, and sprint endlessly, and change the difficulty mid-stream. If your vehicle overturns, you can flip it back over as though it were weightless. One of my early complaints in the game was that my character couldn't climb onto ledges, but then I realized that I should be smashing through them.

Recently I discovered that this game was my go-to example for not one, but two different posts in which I critcized the culture of hype: once while ho-humming the announcements at GDC 2008, and once while bashing screenshot dumps that allege to be news.

I think this proves my point.* I had no expectations for Red Faction, and it was awesome. I learned this partly by word of mouth, and partly by taking a chance on the game. Not because I've spent a year and half street teaming for THQ. That's how it should be. Right?

*"This just proves my point" © Jonah Goldberg, idiotic political pundit.