At the end of each year, there's the temptation to identify a common theme among the games that were released. That won't wash in 2009. Yet though we didn't get any truly visionary or paradigm-busting titles, this year did give us one solid game after another in a range of genres. Shooters, RPGs, sports games — you name it, there was something for everyone, across platforms as diverse as the PlayStation 3 and the iPhone. So maybe 2009 was the year that gaming finally, truly went mainstream: nobody was playing the same thing, but everybody was playing something.
So, what did the 10 games that stood out to me as the best of the year have in common? Nothing! That's what I liked about them.
10. Prototype (Activision)
Let's start by acknowledging that Prototype (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC) does run out of steam. But not till it's delivered several solid hours of gleeful, unapologetic, anarchic gameplay. Unlike inFamous, another open-world superhero game that came out around the same time, Prototype doesn't get bogged down in questions of morality, or ask whether with great power comes great responsibility. It's too busy letting you eat people to assume their physical form, commandeer a tank to blow up a mutant hive, and shapeshift so that your limbs become hammers, claws, and whips. You gotta love a bad boy.
Related:
Review: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Review: Assassin's Creed II, Review: Left 4 Dead 2, More
- Review: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
The staggering commercial success the folks at Nintendo have achieved in recent years has made it easy to overlook their more unfortunate habits.
- Review: Assassin's Creed II
Assassin's Creed II is a macabre Italian getaway
- Review: Left 4 Dead 2
When Valve announced a full-priced sequel to Left 4 Dead only one year after the original, 40,000 frustrated gamers joined an on-line boycott. The boycotters had a point, but they'll miss out if they stand on principle.
- Review: The Saboteur
When Pandemic Studios was shuttered on November 17, it seemed less another casualty of the economy than a mercy killing.
- Greatest video-game tragedies of the last decade
Here are some of our favorite anti-victories of the past 10 years, in rough chronological order.
- Review: Army of Two: The 40th Day
When I reviewed the original Army of Two , I found myself in the unfamiliar position of being the guy who liked something everybody else hated (as opposed the guy who hated something everybody else liked).
- Super 8-Bit Brothers | Brawl
It's easy to forget how annoying certain pop-culture artifacts were in their heyday.
- Review: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
You're standing in an elevator with men wearing bulletproof vests and wielding machine guns. "No Russian," the leader reminds you, as the doors open to reveal a line of persons waiting at the airport security gate.
- Photos: Gross Thanksgiving food to avoid
Thanksgiving is a time for gorging on food and hanging out with family, but really it's mostly about the food. There are some dishes that take it too far, however, and we are here to help you steer clear of those.
- Injustice for all
Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.
- Alternative universe
In the 1930s and '40s, Boston painters developed a moody, mythic realism. They mixed social satire with depictions of street scenes, Biblical scenes, and mystical symbolic narratives, all of it darkened by the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.
- Less
Topics:
Videogames
, Entertainment, Technology, Culture and Lifestyle, More
, Entertainment, Technology, Culture and Lifestyle, Games, Hobbies and Pastimes, Video Games, Video Games, Arts, Heath Ledger, Mark Hamill, Less