Year in Review: The best games of 2010

Above: Not even a game of the year nod can make Ethan Mars smile.

We're wrapping up our recap of the year that was. Today: the best games of 2010.

We've saved the best for last. You can click through to the feature on thephoenix.com to read all the blurbs. Here's my list of the 10 best games of 2010.

1. Heavy Rain
2. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
3. BioShock 2
4. Rock Band 3
5. Red Dead Redemption
6. Dance Central
7. DeathSpank
8. Halo: Reach
9. Bayonetta
10. Final Fantasy XIII

That about wraps it up for 2010. As always, thank you so much for reading. Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year. We'll meet right back here in 2011.

Year in Review: The worst games of 2010

Above: "It's just me getting killed by a giant spider for an hour and a half. It cost 80 million krone."

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: The worst games of the year.

As I keep darkly alluding, I found this to be a challenging year in a lot of ways.* Nowhere was this more apparent than with all the supposedly great games I struggled to play. Every year there's crap, and everybody agrees it's crap, but this year, more than any I can recall, there was crap that people kept telling me was an ice-cream sundae.

In chronological order of when I played them, here are the games I liked the least in 2010:

Army of Two: The 40th Day: I was sad to see this game go in the wrong direction, because I thought the first Army of Two showed a lot of promise. But the sequel ditched the humor, kept the monotonous duck-and-cover shooting, and added a terrible checkpoint system to boot. Nothing was worse than laboriously customizing your weapons, dying in the next firefight, and finding that you had to do it all over again. Ugh.

No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle: This is where we're talking about disappointing sequels, right? I loved No More Heroes so much, and I thought the sequel wasn't fit for the tissue box next to Travis Touchdown's easy chair. I can't even talk about it. It makes me sad.

Aliens vs. Predator: Never wrote about this one. In fact, I'd forgotten I played it until I saw it on somebody else's worst-of list. Whoever that was, damn you for reminding me of this awful game.

God of War III: Mechanically, God of War III was sound, but it was the moment when Kratos stopped being cool. Dude needs to get over it. He's like the guy who shows up at his 20th high school reunion wearing the same leather jacket he wore in the twelfth grade. It's embarrassing at this point.

Splinter Cell: Conviction: I get what Ubi was trying to do here. It just didn't work. Even if the aggro-stealth concept had worked, we'd still have had to deal with Fisher's motormouthed antagonists. Who the hell signed off on them?

Crackdown 2: We are drowning in awful sequels right now. Pinpointing the failure of Crackdown 2 is difficult, because in every way that matters, it is exactly the same game as its predecessor. Except the first game is still one of my favorites of this generation, and the second one is... not.

Limbo: Man, I don't even know. To me, this seemed like just another too-difficult indie platformer with delusions of grandeur.

Mafia II: Not without its charms, I still wonder what sane person would keep playing through this game's terrible action scenes unless somebody was paying them. It still wasn't enough for me!

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: This, not Limbo, is the game where I feel the most like I missed something. I read too many positive things from too many people I respect to discount it as simply a crappy game. But that's what it felt like to me: lousy camera, bad controls, dumb story. I can't get past these things.

Medal of Honor: If there was a more generic, mediocre shooter out there in 2010, I didn't play it.

Tomorrow: The best games of 2010.

*I'm just trying to seem dark and mysterious, for the ladies.

Year in Review: Honorable mentions

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: 2010 honorable mentions.

Rough as this year was, there were still plenty of games that I played and enjoyed, even if they didn't end up making my list of the best games of the year. In chronological order of when I played them:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2: I don't think I ever wrote about this game. I am generally tired of military-themed shooters, but I dug the big maps and the vehicles, and I want to apologize to the dozens of teammates I inadvertently murdered whenever I was driving.

Alan Wake: A terrific-looking shooter with a decent gameplay gimmick and a nice sense of pacing. If only this bestselling author hadn't been such a terrible writer.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: Even if I find myself reaching the "it's not you, it's me" stage with a lot of these Nintendo games, the quality is undeniable. You still can't screw with Super Mario.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane: A super-fun throwback arcade racer for Xbox Live Arcade. I really, really liked this game. It almost made my top 10 for the year.

Metroid: Other M: Uneven, especially where the storytelling was concerned, but Other M was a fun and fast-paced update to the Metroid universe. I just wish it hadn't gotten better after it ended!

NBA Jam: I almost forgot it existed, but I had fun with this game while it lasted. God, is that the most mild praise you can imagine, or what?

Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!: My first review for Joystiq was also my biggest surprise of the year. This game's reach doesn't exceed its grasp; it accomplishes everything it sets out to do.

Donkey Kong Country Returns: Rock-solid 2d platforming marred only by -- what else? -- shoehorned waggle control. Apparently there's a classic controller mode available, which probably would have helped to know when I was playing it.

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom: Another surprise. I predict that, a year from now, one of two things will happen: either you'll be able to get this game for five bucks from every bargain bin in the country, or you'll have to get it for a hundred on eBay. Both outcomes seem equally likely.

Mass Effect 2: All right, you bastards. You win. I like Mass Effect 2. Sure, I still find the moment-to-moment play excruciating, just trying to accomplish the simplest tasks, and the plot isn't that good. I've pretty much lost track of the whole thing at this point. The non-stop recitation of alien races and planets is stupefying. And, come on: The Illusive Man? Seriously? WTF kind of lazy storytelling is that? He smokes so mysteriously! And where the hell is he? Is there a bathroom on his solar observation deck?

But, on the other hand, my renegade FemShep is awesome. I like her dark humor and her clear-eyed take on things. She doesn't do the things I would do in her position, but neither do I feel like the game is forcing my hand. I'm trying to get inside this character's head. There are times when it seems like this is exactly what a roleplaying game is supposed to be.

Now let's never speak of this again.

Some Games I Wish I Had Played: Split/Second, Blur, Metro 2033, Joe Danger, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Pac Man CE DX

Can't win 'em all.

Tomorrow: the worst games of 2010.

Year in Review: Year-end superlatives

Above: A winner is you, everyone.

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

Welcome Trend: Critical Non-Consensus

With the annual "Year in Swooning" quiz, I'm trying to point out how carried away game sites often get when it comes to the flavor of the week. But there is some progress in this regard. This year, I felt like there actually was legitimate, respectful disagreement about some of the highest-profile games, both indie and major-label.

Consider:

• Deadly Premonition, a game with a Metacritic score of 69, nevertheless becomes a cult hit, thanks to word of mouth and the work of impassioned critics.
• Heavy Rain, a game with a Metacritic score of 87, nevertheless is savaged mercilessly in Boston's second-biggest newspaper.
• Some idiot calls Limbo "the worst sort of art-for-art's-sake garbage."
• Even Seth Schiesel doesn't like something.

I think it's a sign that gamers are feeling more self-confident that we don't have to band together all the time. This is a good thing!

PR Knuckleheads of the Year: Gabe and Tycho

Count me among those who thought the original comic was not only hilarious, but took aim at a worthy target. But the followup was a disaster. When some readers objected, Gabe and Tycho could have taken the criticisms in the spirit they were intended. A simple apology would have done nicely. At the very least, acknowledge the complaints respectfully and move on. Hell, ignoring them would have been better than what actually happened.

Instead, Gabe and Tycho doubled down with a comic that not only mischaracterized the complaints, but essentially said that the people who were offended are stupid. And then followed that up by selling Dickwolves merch.

All this was uncharacteristic for two guys who are so generous and inclusive, both with PAX and with Child's Play. These are the guys who banned booth babes from PAX, with the blessing of a majority of their readership. So I certainly don't doubt their motives. To their minds, a joke is a joke, but a bunch of their readers disagreed and I think they they did real damage to their brand by assuming a defensive posture instead of listening. To this day I don't think anything approaching an apology has come out, not for the first comic or for the followup.

For myself, I don't think they would have needed to apologize for the original strip, but they could have dealt with it in a better way than becoming the latest and most ironic exemplars of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory.

Game Blog of the Year: Gamer Melodico

Barely one year into it, Kirk Hamilton and company have already made a big impact with Gamer Melodico. They did it all: good-natured jabs at obnoxious game design; satire; finding inventive ways to comment on topical subjects; round-table discussions that make you feel like you're sitting in a coffee shop with the writers.

All of it's done with a good attitude, a healthy sense of humor, and keen minds. I can't sum up the site any better than they did themselves: "Gamer Melodico is a blog about games, written by friendly people who like to play."

(And, what the hell, an honorable mention for Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits. Paddon's not on-target all the time, but, in the words of Han Solo, "I must have hit real close to the mark to get her all riled up like this, huh kid?")

Developers of the Year: Ex-LucasArts dudes

No big-budget studio jumped out at me this year. Rockstar San Diego did great work with Red Dead Redemption. Retro Studios successfully rebooted Donkey Kong Country. Quantic Dream accomplished most of its very ambitious goals with Heavy Rain. 2K Marin not only stunned me by releasing a worthy followup to BioShock, but by all accounts the "Minerva's Den" DLC was even better (unfortunately, I didn't play it).

But I have to give a shout-out here to two people that I am always rooting for, who found their voices this year with downloadable games. Ron Gilbert, via Hothead Games, brought us the hilarious DeathSpank, which was followed almost immediately by a surprise sequel. And Tim Shafer's DoubleFine Productions rebounded after the disappointing Brutal Legend to release Costume Quest, a funny and light downloadable game that's gotten plaudits from a lot of people whose opinions I value. 2010 was a good year for both of these guys, and they're two of the best we've got.

Publisher of the Year: Nintendo

Even though I still struggle a bit with a lot of the newer Nintendo games, it's hard to argue that Nintendo isn't the big-name publisher that is consistently putting out the highest-quality products. On the Wii, Super Mario Galaxy and Donkey Kong Country Returns were both worthy of their names, and Metroid: Other M was respectable. On the DS, a little game called Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem! was my biggest surprise of the year. Maybe sales of the Wii are flagging, but year in and year out, Nintendo never disappoints on the software side.

Game Console of the Year: Xbox 360

We've long since reached the point at which everybody has made up their minds on this generation of game consoles. Five years into it, the Wii's star has started to fall a bit, the PlayStation 3 has never gotten on track, and the Xbox 360 has almost defaulted to the head of the pack, massive hardware failure rates notwithstanding.

So why choose the Xbox 360 as the game console of the year? For one thing, the only hardware this year that even approached the level of buzzworthy was Kinect. The jury's still out, but it's got a lot of potential. It was the Xbox that once again had the lion's share of big exclusives, both in retail and download. And, price hike or not, Xbox Live continues to be the best online gaming option around. That's why I bought my second Xbox 360 this year.

That, and my first one red-ringed after almost five years. It was like the death of the last living World War 1 veteran.

Tomorrow: Honorable mentions.

Year in Review: The best of the blog

Above: Actually the best of Insult Swordfighting.

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. First up: the best of Insult Swordfighting, 2010.

It's been a strange year. My output was lower than usual. I spent a couple of months without playing anything at all. When I did play games, I often felt uninspired, or even gloomy. Without making things weird between us, I'll just say that a lot happened this year, personally and professionally, that made me question the role of video games in my life. But it's all good. As we head into 2011, I'm excited about the way things are going, and I'm looking forward to playing and writing a lot more.

Without further ado, here are some of the better Insult Swordfighting posts you may have missed from 2010:

January: Bayonetta. How is it possible for one game to be so awesome, yet so embarrassing?

February: I returned from the disabled list. If you're wondering, I have made nearly a full recovery. The doctor and my occupational therapist both told me that it's extremely rare for people to heal so well from this type of injury.

March: I made the first of many impassioned defenses of Heavy Rain. And I spent way too much time writing about PAX East. Speaking of which, I still haven't gotten my pass for the next one.

April: I was about to vanish from blogging for awhile. One reason was Peggle.

May: N/A

June: What's with the collectibles in Alan Wake? Plus, my banned review of Splinter Cell: Conviction finally saw daylight.

July: I think a lot of people thought I was trying to stick it to Ebert, but actually this post was about how much I disliked Limbo, and the critical conversation surrounding it.

August: Seriously, I didn't like Limbo.

September: Why did Metroid: Other M wait until after the closing credits to get good?

October: 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die is released, becomes a runaway bestseller, and revenue from its sales through my Amazon Associates account makes me an instant millionaire.

November: "The Year in Swooning" is always fun.

December: My vendetta against BioWare knows no bounds. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I stayed up until 4:30 AM on Sunday playing Mass Effect 2.)

Tomorrow: Year-end superlatives.

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!

Year in review: The worst games of 2009

Above: "It's just me hitting orcs with an axe for an hour and a half. It cost 80 million dollars."

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: The worst games of the year.

For some reason, every year when I go back over the reviews I've written, I'm much more picky about what to include on the list of the worst games than the best. I'm not sure why. I think it stems from a genuine desire to respect other people's opinions. Even though I'm comfortable panning something popular, it seems like a dick move to take the next step and declare something to be definitively bad, especially when I'm in the minority. It's a good thing when people hold different opinions about games, isn't it?

Even so, the only thing people like arguing about more than a list of the best games of the year is a list of the worst games of the year, so here you go.

First, there are the games that undeniably had their merits. Not necessarily badly made, they were lacking in some crucial area.

New Super Mario Bros. had the classic level design that fans loved, not to mention graphics and sounds that put anybody over the age of 20 on the express train to Nostalgia Land. Thanks to insanely frustrating co-op play, it also nearly caused me to have to spend the night on the couch. Hot tip: Don't play video games with me unless you enjoy profanity.

I covered Brütal Legend already, in the superlatives post, so I won't say much more about it here, except that no game this year disappointed me more, because I expected so much. My own fault, I guess.

Scribblenauts is a terrific idea that works sporadically in a toy-like way, but didn't make for much of a game. I would definitely play whatever 5th Cell does next, but I hope they listened to some of the criticisms of this game.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate was actually a fun way to spend an afternoon, but you've got to be kidding me, charging $60 for a five-hour game that has no multiplayer. I'm all for keeping your game short if the quality is high, but at some point you're just showing contempt for the consumer. (By all accounts, it sounds like Rogue Warrior is a much worse game, and is only half as long, so I kind of wish I'd played it, if only for this list.)

Next are the games I really didn't enjoy, to the point where I actually couldn't understand why people liked them. inFamous is chief among these, with a robust Metacritic score of 85, and many vocal fans. There was almost nothing I liked about it. I thought it was self-serious, I thought the magnetic platforming was sloppy and intrusive, and I thought the combat was dull. Prototype was far superior.

Like its predecessor, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix was a great idea with a horrible execution. The Nintendo DS version especially was ugly, slow, choppy, and all around unpleasant to play. None of the problems from Challenge of the Warlords were rectified. I won't be playing the next one.

Arcade-style sports games are a great idea, but The Bigs 2 was a terrible one. Although the home run derby made for a passable side game, the problem with the main game was that, with all its exaggerations and hyperbole, it lost sight of the spirit of baseball. NBA Jam was great because it took what's enjoyable about basketball and amplified it. The Bigs 2 took what's enjoyable about baseball and threw it in the trash.

We're really into the dreck now. The Godfather Part II would have been nothing more than a lousy GTA clone, if it weren't carrying such an august name. Badly made games are a dime a dozen, but games that crap all over the legacy of one of the greatest American films are rare indeed. Frances Ford Coppola would be furious about this, if he were still alive.

But the worst game I played this year was also the first game I played this year. Lord of the Rings: Conquest was a viscerally unpleasant game to play. It was just bursting with bad decisions. Believe me, I take no pleasure in knowing that a lot of people lost their jobs when Pandemic closed down recently, but if you want to know why it happened, this game is a good place to start.

Tomorrow: The best games of 2009.

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.

Year in review: Year-end superlatives

Above: A winner is you, everyone.

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

Today, we're handing out accolades to the games, systems, and people who made the year so interesting.

Welcome Trend: Co-op for All

Cooperative gameplay isn't exactly new. It's almost as old as video games themselves. But the past year seems to have shown an increased emphasis on multiplayer games that are less about competition and more about cooperation. We're seeing more and more games that want to give groups of players a chance to write their own stories. The Left 4 Dead games may be the ultimate example of this. Borderlands is another. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, though I didn't appreciate it, is another. From Resident Evil 5 to Uncharted 2 to Modern Warfare 2, co-op is everywhere.

There was a time when I preferred single-player gaming to any other type. Today I'm finding myself always looking for the next great co-op experience. Keep 'em coming, developers!

Noble Failure of the Year: Brütal Legend

Everybody roots for Tim Schafer. He seems like such an awesome guy, and his games, especially for LucasArts, are uncommonly literate, funny, and character-driven. Brütal Legend is, too, but unfortunately it's not so fun to play. I was thinking about Schafer's Full Throttle recently, and how much the two games have in common. A beefy protagonist with a strict code of honor, who feels like the world is passing him by. A fascination with a dark but principled subculture. And gameplay segments that feel shoehorned in, and which don't work at all.

In Full Throttle, it was the highway duels, and in Brütal Legend, it's -- well, everything, really. If this game had been a beat-em-up or an open-world action game or a real-time strategy game, and Double Fine had taken the time to polish it, it might have been spectacular. Instead, it's all of them, and it's none of them. I have read that this game is too awesome to be confined in something as simple as genre, but I've said before and I'll say again that I'd rather a game do one thing well than several things badly.

It's too bad because the story is so great, and because I want people like Tim Schafer to succeed. But it can't be a good sign when you're hurrying through the gameplay segments so you can get to the next cutscene.

PR Knuckleheads of the Year: Infinity Ward

Let's first say that Bobby Kotick should probably win this award every year, but since we gave it to him last year, we'll retire him from consideration.

Maybe it's because my memory only goes back six weeks, but even when I think of other noteworthy controversies from the year, I feel like the companies involved acquitted themselves pretty well. Capcom's reps did a decent job of defending Resident Evil 5 from racism charges (even if the game itself didn't), Chair made it clear that they do not hate gays, and so forth. Infinity Ward could only offer lame excuses in defense of the silly things they did. Which, in case you forgot, were:

• Making a level where you kill a bunch of civilians, and then being proud of it
• Dropping dedicated servers for the PC players
• Releasing a viral video with homophobic slurs

I don't envy Robert Bowling having to defend this stuff all the time, and it's not like he was responsible for any of those things, but pretending not to notice the acronym in the grenade spam video was pretty weak. Compare IW's response to any of these things to the way Valve handled the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, and you start to see what I'm talking about.

I'm sure this post will have everybody at Infinity Ward crying themselves to sleep, on top of a pile of money.

Game Blogger of the Year: Ben Abraham

In the past, this has been an award for an individual blog, but Ben's work across two sites this year deserves notice. On his personal blog, Ben's Permanent Death saga was both a feat of storytelling and a penetrating look at a great game, Far Cry 2. The 391-page PDF, with full-color screenshots and a forward by Clint Hocking, is a terrific package.

Ben also launched Critical Distance, a site devoted to spotlighting the best games writing from around the web. Each week, Ben rounds up entertaining and thoughtful work on a variety of subjects. A spectacular group of writers contributes critical compilations, which are comprehensive lists of links about specific games, and spotlights, which are in-depth looks at individual writers. This is a great site, and long overdue. We're at the point now where the problem isn't a lack of good writing -- it's how to find it all. Ben is doing the leg work.

Developer of the Year: Rocksteady Studios

Here's why: who the hell is Rocksteady Studios? You know what to expect from Valve and Insomniac and Naughty Dog and Infinity Ward and Gearbox. They're all developers that have a track record, and whatever you think of the games they make, they are consistent. Before this year, Rocksteady had exactly one game to their credit: Urban Chaos: Riot Response, a game with a weak 73 Metacritic average, and which I am willing to bet you had not heard of, let alone played.

How they followed that up with Batman: Arkham Asylum, a rich and fully-realized action-adventure game that can fairly be compared to Metroid and BioShock, I have no idea. And how Eidos, DC Comics, and whoever else that needed to sign off on this thing saw the potential in them to make Arkham Asylum is a sign of uncommonly good judgment all around.

Let's put it this way: Will you be paying attention to whatever Rocksteady does next? Of course you will.

Publisher of the Year: Sony Computer Entertainment

That's right. I'm about to dump some more praise on these guys in a minute, so we'll keep this quick. From MLB 09 to Uncharted 2 to Ratchet and Clank, they kept standards sky-high for their most important properties. Well-received exclusives like Killzone 2 and inFamous set the table for future sequels. Games like Flower and Fat Princess and PixelJunk Shooter helped PlayStation Network stand toe-to-toe with Xbox Live Arcade. No doubt about it, Sony had a very good year.

Game Console of the Year: PlayStation 3

Honestly, there were times I thought Sony would have to pull the plug on the PS3. The first few years were a disaster. A company with less deep pockets probably would have given up long ago. But Sony persevered, and in 2009 things fell into place for them. They made a necessary price cut, to $299. They released a true killer app, Uncharted 2. They launched a marketing campaign that people actually like. And all the things that had kept the flame flickering for the beleaguered console -- great downloadable games, stellar first-party properties, Blu-ray -- just kept burning brighter.

Sure, much of what Sony has done this year can be found on other platforms (it's not exactly a coup that the PS3 streams Netflix), but they've finally put their system on solid footing. This was the first year since they announced a $599 launch price* that people have discussed either Sony or the PS3 without using the word "fucking." And the debate -- Xbox 360 or PS3? -- has never been further from a resolution.

Tomorrow: 2009 honorable mentions.

*Yes, that really was the first Insult Swordfighting post.

Year in review: The best of the blog

Above: Actually the best of Insult Swordfighting.

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. First up: the best of Insult Swordfighting, 2009.

Another year has come and gone, and with it have gone a crapload of blog posts. I continue to be amazed that anybody reads these posts at all, never mind commenting and linking to them. But you do. This year, Insult Swordfighting surpassed 1,000 subscribers, which is a thousand more than I ever would have expected. As of this writing, the count is over 1,100. I'm honored. Thank you for reading.

In the interest of not having to produce any original content, here's a look back at Insult Swordfighting's highlights from the past year.

January: Achievement points are awesome. Fallout 3 is also awesome, as evidenced by posts here, here, here, here, and here.

February: A plea for reader questions from readers results in the multi-part Request Hour series, which I should probably do again sometime. Plus, the argument about Guitar Hero that I never want to hear again, parts one and two.

March: Screw modesty. I think the best post I've done might be "Using the sniper rifle in Killzone 2: A photo tutorial." I'm surprised how well the photographs of my television came out. In March, I also attempted to explain why Resident Evil 5 isn't scary, a post I'm pretty sure Tycho responded to in a Penny Arcade newspost without linking it or mentioning me by name. Not that I am bitter.

April: The problem with casual games isn't that they aren't about shooting people and blowing stuff up, it's that the people who make them don't give a toss about user experience.

May: Have you ever wondered how to make your company's awesome new video game stand out from the competition? Here's a handy guide to writing a killer press release.

June: Morality in games is a great idea, and more and more titles are giving you a chance to decide what kind of hero you'll be. So how come it hardly ever works?

July: My friends got together to play a bunch of old video games. I detailed the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of a nostalgia binge.

August: I ensure that Game Informer will never offer me a job. I meant what I said, and I'm glad I said it. (They did a nice job with the redesign, though.) Also in August, a heartfelt defense of the traditional gamepad.

September: Only seven posts in September. What the hell was I doing all month? Oh, that's right: closing in on the end of an epic fantasy baseball season.

October: The second annual "Year in swooning" quiz is hilarious once again, and it doesn't even include a Modern Warfare 2 blurb! Plus, Borderlands is a blast, even when you're the most useless person on the team.

November: Re: Dragon Age, I throw myself on the mercy of much smarter gamers. Also, praise for level progression in Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2.

December: The games of the decade series just refuses to end.

Tomorrow: Year-end superlatives.

The Year in Review: The Best Games of 2008

Above: This is the one.
(Note to Harmonix: "This Is the One" would make excellent DLC.)

We're wrapping up our recap of the year that was. Today: the best games of 2008.

If you want to read the blurbs, you'll have to read the feature at thephoenix.com. But for discussion, here's my list of the top 10 of 2008:

1. Rock Band 2
2. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
3. Braid
4. Far Cry 2
5. Left 4 Dead
6. Fallout 3
   
7. No More Heroes
8. Grand Theft Auto IV
9. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2
10. Yakuza 2
    

A couple things should go without saying. First, yes, I am aware these were my favorite games of the year and not objectively the best. Second, there were more than a few 2008 releases that I missed, although thanks to my cram session I think Fable 2 might be the only serious contender there. But who knows, maybe I would have loved something that got tepid reviews elsewhere, like The Force Unleashed.

I do feel that 2007 was a much better year for games overall. Not that it matters what the calendar says. You could reframe the debate and come out with a much different-looking list, as Iroquois Pliskin does in suggesting that video games completed the Tiger Slam from August 2007 through August 2008. What the heck -- we all enjoy these year-end lists, even if bitching about them is also fashionable. It's nice to take a minute and reflect on what we already have, before rushing headlong onto the next thing. Isn't that what the holidays are all about?

With that, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

(Posting is likely to be light until January 5.)

The Year in Review: The Worst Games of 2008

Above: "It's just me throwing a glaive for an hour and a half. It cost 80 million dollars."

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: The worst games of the year.

To start with, let me say that I played nothing this year as cynical, calculated, or insulting as the two worst games of last year. The generally acceptable level of quality in 2008 extended to the weaker games, most of which were at least competently executed, and only lacking imagination in some crucial way or another.

Take Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. It was exactly like a (marginally) interactive version of the television program, which I enjoy. But it turns out that it is not fun to (barely) interact with a TV show, or to (almost) affect its storyline. Even when the jokes are good. Who knew?

And when I say that Dark Sector was one of the worst games I played this year, part of the reason why is that it could have been really good. I loved using the glaive, at least at first, and for the first couple of hours of play I was convinced that this game would turn out to be a real sleeper. But then I started getting bogged down in all the little annoyances and aggravations, and it became harder to appreciate what the game was doing well. Ultimately, I think there were too many possibilities left unexplored. Why could you only electrify the glaive in designated hotspots? Why couldn't you shoot out a lightbulb and electrify it that way? If that would have messed up the play balance, there's a simple solution: make an enemy that's invulnerable to electricity. There you go.

Similarly, The Bourne Conspiracy was a great game to look at, but that was all you could really do: look at it. Its total reliance on quicktime events meant that you'd have about all the fun you were going to have with it by the time you'd reached the first driving level. Matt Damon was right when he said they could have made a better Bourne game by trying to be more cerebral.

Look, I just don't find Super Smash Bros. Brawl fun in any way. I apologize. I'll accept that I'm wrong about this. But to the guy who commented on that review at thephoenix.com to make sure everyone knew that I was an idiot and it was a surefire game of the year contender: how are you feeling about that prediction now?*

But there was one game this year that soared well beneath the rest. A game that was not just poorly conceived, but actually physically painful to play. I speak, of course, of Guitar Hero: On Tour, whose non-ergonomic peripheral was even more agonizing than listening to the hot licks of guitar legends like Maroon 5, Smashmouth, and Los Lonely Boys. As I said, on one level I'm amazed they could even put together a Guitar Hero game for the Nintendo DS, but otherwise there was nothing good to come of this. Easily the worst game I played this year.

*Note: After writing this post, I recorded the Brainy Gamer podcast with Spencer Greenwood, who actually did choose Smash Bros. as his game of the year. So much for that zinger.

Tomorrow: The best games of 2008.

The Year in Review: Honorable Mentions

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: 2008 honorable mentions.

If you hear me complain that 2008 was a blah year for games, it's not to suggest that we lacked quality software. Quite the contrary. Rarely did we have to go more than a month or so without finding something decent to play. But so often, that's all these games were: decent, especially compared to last year's standouts. This year, nothing I played was as purely fun as Crackdown. Nothing moved me as did The Darkness. Nothing blew my mind like Portal (well, maybe Braid). And nothing synthesized everything I like about games into one superb package, as did BioShock.

Then again, it's not anybody's job to make exactly the game I want to play, and I'm happy any time I play something I like, even if I don't love it. And this year, there were a lot of those. In chronological order:

Burnout Paradise: Wasn't perfect, but nobody does high-octane racing with spectacular crashes like the folks at Criterion.

Army of Two: Again, not perfect, but I played through the whole thing and it kept my interest. I thought the topical references were ballsy, the interplay between the leads was hilarious, and the Aggro system actually worked.

Ikaruga: Glad I finally got to play this cult classic, even if I ran away from it in terror once the review was finished.

LostWinds: Cute, with a winning aesthetic and a fun, innovative control scheme. I just wish I had known going in that it was only episode 1.

Ninja Gaiden II: I was far too unskilled to get the most out of this game, but even playing it as a button masher made for a gory good time.

Space Invaders Extreme: Raise your hand if you saw this coming.

PixelJunk Eden: Thanks to the Serious Games Journalist Network of Pretension for turning me onto this one. It was just a nice, relaxing game that you could lose yourself in without realizing how taxing it actually was.

Dead Space: A triumph of execution, with excellent graphics, sound, and play control. I spent a lot of time harping on the negatives with this game, but it was a polished shooter that was well worth playing.

Silent Hill: Homecoming: Atmospheric and creepy. I thought this was the better horror experience, compared to Dead Space.

Gears of War 2: I wrote, scheduled, and published this post without remembering to include Gears of War 2, even though it was better than most of the other honorable mentions. Partly, that's because the top 10 list was touch and go for a while there, but I think it also goes to show how GoW2 made less of an impact than its predecessor. Horde mode is awesome, though.

Prince of Persia: It's as if the folks at Ubisoft Montreal made a list of everything that's annoying about platformers, and one-by-one excised each item from their game. The result feels a little bit like an extended QTE at times, but the newest Prince of Persia is beautiful to look at and a pleasure to experience.

Tomorrow: The worst games of 2008.

Friday afternoon tidbits

We're approaching holiday zero hour, and that means parties and presents this weekend. Plus we're supposed to get hell of snow this weekend, so I may end up being housebound. Fine by me -- I'll take any excuse to get back to the Capitol Wasteland.

-I was just tickled to get an honorable mention in part 1 of Simon Parkin's roundup of the best games writing of 2008, for the "Sex, violence, and video games" piece. Thanks to him for the acknowledgment, and also to whoever nominated the story in the first place.

-Of the many great "year in review" pieces to come along, Iroquois Pliskin's "The Year of Being There" is one of the best I've read. It's true: this year's games took us to some amazing places, and many tried hard to stretch the possibilities of interactive settings. But there were definitely some growing pains involved.

-Also worthy: RPS's take on Far Cry 2. Jim Rossignol and Kieron Gillen both have excellent takes on the game. This seems like a game that's going to stick with people for a long time, despite its flaws.

-Shoe argues against reviewers trading or selling promo copies of games. This is something that feels wrong to me, too, but I could never figure out exactly why. Shoe doesn't really answer the question, either. He seems to take it as a given. For myself, I don't attempt to profit unduly from the free goods I receive once I'm finished with them -- I don't sell them for cash, and I often give them to friends who would enjoy them -- but I don't see any problem with trading stuff in for other work-related items. For example, I just traded in some games for Prince of Persia, which I'm reviewing, and Fallout and Yakuza, both of which I wanted to play before putting together a top 10. Still feels kind of dirty, but... why?

-Even though I'm a newcomer to Fallout 3, I'm glad to see that others are still writing some good stuff about it. Check out Tom Cross's column at GSW, CrashT's at Groping the Elephant, and Travis Megill's at The Autumnal City.

-Hardcasual's posts about David Schwimmer's WoW chatlogs really made me laugh.

The Year in Review: Year-End Superlatives

Above: A winner is you, everyone.

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

Today, we're handing out accolades to the games, systems, and people who made the year so interesting.

Welcome Trend: Downloadable Content for Consoles

Downloadable content is nothing new, but 2008 was the year it matured. If you wanted to play the most interesting and innovative games, you had to download them. The Wii finally branched out from Virtual Console re-hashes and offered original content like the charming LostWinds, the much-loved World of Goo, and Mega Man 9, which I couldn't in good conscience have played on any other system. Sony continued to quietly turn the PlayStation Network into a high-end boutique with games like PixelJunk Eden, Echochrome, and Wipeout HD. And, of course, Xbox Live Arcade was the videogame equivalent of the 1927 Yankees when they released Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2, Braid, Bionic Commando, and Castle Crashers all in one month's time.

Noble Failure of the Year: Mirror's Edge

But we're not talking about this anymore.

PR Knucklehead of the Year: Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard

As quoted in MTV Multiplayer:

The games Activision Blizzard didn’t pick up, he said, “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now.”

Not that it's anything we didn't know already, but usually they're a bit more tactful than that. Get ready for more awful Guitar Hero games, everybody!

On the other hand, maybe we should be giving this guy points for honesty.

The Donut Hole Award: Fairway Solitaire

Ineligible for this year's top 10 list because it was a 2007 release, and left out of last year's because I didn't play it in time, Fairway Solitaire was nevertheless one of the most fun and addictive games to come down the pike in quite some time. You really need to try this one. I guarantee that the 60-minute demo will convince you to buy the full game.

Game Blog of the Year: Hit Self-Destruct

Put simply, nobody else I know of is doing what Duncan Fyfe is doing at Hit Self-Destruct. He's a superb writer, whose narrative approach to writing about games is insightful and often very funny. He can take a subject like the old practice of naming your save files and make it sound both wistful and hilarious, while still making a good point about the player's role as co-author of the gameplay experience.

Publisher of the Year: Microsoft Game Studios

I say this not because of its major console releases, although Gears 2 was very good and an awful lot of people seemed to love Fable 2. In a year when Xbox Live Arcade beat the doors down, Microsoft deserves a little love. They published Braid and Castle Crashers, both independent productions made with a lot of love by their creators. Surely these weren't massive expenditures, but it still shows their appreciation for a creative vision. (Bonus points: Microsoft even put up with Dennis Dyack, which is prize-worthy all on its own.)

Developer of the Year: Harmonix

Rock Band and its sequel are both spectacular right on the disc, but Harmonix is special because of its commitment to supporting their games after its retail release. The breadth and quality -- not to mention the value -- of Rock Band's ever-expanding DLC is staggering. This company treats its property, and its customers, with care and respect.

Console of the Year: Xbox 360

Hey, didn't the Xbox 360 win this last year? Yep, well, there was no clear alternative for 2008. The Wii phenomenon is well beyond the limits of my understanding at this point, but a same-old, same-old sequel and a fitness trainer are not what I'm looking for out of my game console. The PS3 did better for itself than in years past, but its biggest exclusive title was a massive disappointment. Even the 360's exclusives weren't quite as great as in years past, but it did have more of them, and better, too. It continues to be the system you've got to have if you self-identify as a serious gamer.

(Oh hey, remember when the most consistently innovative games were coming out for the Nintendo DS? What happened there?)

Monday: 2008 honorable mentions.

The Year in Review: Best of the Blog

Above: Actually the best of Insult Swordfighting.

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. First up: the best of Insult Swordfighting, 2008.

I don't mean to get all introspective and self-centered on you, but on a personal and semi-professional level, this was a great year. I started tracking this blog's subscribers and page views last December. Since then, daily page views have more than quintupled, and the number of feed subscribers has increased more than tenfold. My thanks to all of you.

Just as satisfying was finding so many great blogs that I had no idea existed a year ago (and some of which didn't even exist a year ago). We are heading in the right direction, all of us, and I'll look forward to seeing what 2009 brings.

For those of you who are newcomers to Insult Swordfighting, here are some of the highlights from the past year.

January: The New Taxonomy of Gamers launched. I'll leave it to N'Gai to tell you that it was "the year's most essential blog series." I wouldn't go that far, but I am proud of it. It's the first thing I'd tell somebody to read on this blog, if they asked.

February: Some excellent discussion arose here and elsewhere regarding No More Heroes. I had too much to say about it to confine it to a review, so I wrote a blog-only review to supplement the Phoenix piece, which also triggered an interesting chat with the Brainy Gamer about the auteur theory in games.

March: A look back at sinking ships in games was not the greatest post ever, but it remains one of the most popular pages on this site for Google searches. Plus I have to pick something for March -- which was, if I'm to be honest, a pretty lackluster month, filled mostly with updates on the status of my Wii repairs.

April: Does relying on nostalgia help or hurt games? Is using familiar settings and characters a crutch, or an opportunity to enhance our appreciation for the classics? I looked at the contrasting approaches of Super Smash Bros. and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Also in April: a big-ass think piece for the Phoenix about video games and social responsibility.

May: Oh hey, another weak month, but I think a post about when a game is finished raises some ideas that should be explored more. Not by me, of course. I have Gamestop users to make fun of.

June: Metal Gear Solid 4 broke my heart. The dialogue and the cutscenes were just too much. If you were to chart my enjoyment of the game as a function of time played, it would look like one of those waterslides that drops straight down.

July: ...right until the the conclusion, in which I stopped trying to convince myself I was enjoying MGS4 on any level.

August: I went temporarily insane, thanks to an overdose of Geometry Wars 2, poring over the leaderboards like somewhere in there was hidden the true name of God. Also in August: what I thought was a pretty good post about user experience never gained much traction.

September: Mega Man 9 has much the same impact as Metal Gear Solid 4, causing me to question my love for the franchise.

October: The year in swooning quiz brings chuckles, guffaws, and, presumably, the undying hatred of everybody mentioned.

November: In a post almost as self-indulgent as this one, I say hello to an old friend, and goodbye to his kick-ass Super Nintendo games.

December: I answered some of the questions in Shawn Elliott's reviews symposium. Man, it seems like that happened just yesterday.

Tomorrow: Year-end superlatives.

The Year in Review: Year-End Superlatives

All this week, we've been recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

To finish up our look back at 2007, we're handing out accolades to the games, systems, and people who made the year so interesting.

Noble Failure of the Year: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Every year there's at least one game that should be great, and that I still kind of like in spite of itself. This year, it was Puzzle Quest. The premise -- a fantasy role-playing game in which battles take the form of a gem-swapping puzzle game -- is truly inspired. Thoughts of what the game could have been kept me playing long after it was clear that the game mechanics weren't nearly tuned enough, and my computer opponents were plainly cheating. I never went back to this after I filed my review, but I haven't had the heart to trade it in, either.

PR Knucklehead of the Year: Jack Tretton, Sony

The fine folks at Activision made a late run for this award with their monumental pettiness regarding guitartroller interoperability, but nothing beat Jack Tretton's bizarre, continued pronouncements from Bizarro World about the earth-shattering success of the PlayStation 3. His opus came in February, when he declared: "If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it." Now that's chutzpah!

The Donut Hole Award: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

If I had played it in time, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin would have been a lock for my top-10 list of 2006. It may even have had a shot to place on this year's list if it had been eligible. So consider this my formal apology to a fantastic game, and a strong recommendation for a worthy addition to any Nintendo DS owner's library.

Game Blog of the Year: Dubious Quality

It is a cruel irony that the best video game writer I know of isn't really a video game writer at all -- which is to say that Bill Harris doesn't write about games for a living, and if he does any freelance work he doesn't mention it in his blog. He doesn't even run ads on Dubious Quality. The pearls he continually hands down are proffered free of charge, whether that means crunching the NPD numbers so we don't have to, or delving more deeply into the black heart of EA Sports than any mainstream publication would ever dare. No matter the subject, Dubious Quality is essential reading.

Publisher of the Year: 2K Games

With most publishers piling onto the mini-game bandwagon like it's the last helicopter out of Saigon, 2K Games this year was the paragon of where I'd like to see games headed. Both The Darkness and BioShock were thought-provoking, complex adventures that questioned the very nature of playing games (The Darkness did so implicitly, BioShock explicitly). Both games have stuck with me months after finishing them. Seeing that pitiful Duke Nukem Forever teaser only drove home how much more subtle and complex games have become, and nobody demonstrated that better in 2007 than 2K Games.

Developer of the Year: Valve

Valve had a shot at being the Publisher of the Year, too, but ultimately I decided to focus on their astonishing efforts on the development front (plus, I never use Steam for anything). Valve doesn't just develop games -- they develop talent. No game this year was more inventive than Portal, and Gabe Newell and his band of merry men deserve credit for identifying and nurturing the Portal team, which began as a group of ambitious students at DigiPen. Kudos to them also for taking the time to get Team Fortress 2 right, and for orchestrating one of the most thrilling battle sequences in history at the end of Half-Life 2 Episode Two.

Console of the Year: Xbox 360

Really, what other choice was there? The Wii had its moments, but many of its signature games fell short (Wario Ware, Metroid Prime 3). As for the PlayStation 3, it rebounded quite nicely toward the end of the year with price cuts and some strong first-party titles, but that wasn't enough to make up for all that had come before. No other system could boast the quantity and quality of software that graced the 360.

Publishers churned out fantastic games all year, from Crackdown in February, to Guitar Hero II in April, to The Darkness in June, to BioShock in August -- all traditionally dead times on the release schedule. Even with the apparently catastrophic hardware failure rate of the 360 (mine's still going strong -- knock on wood), it'd be hard to suggest another system to somebody who's looking to buy only one.