videogames
Best & Worst Video Games of 2009
I don’t play anywhere near as many video game as I see movies so I’m not going to do an in-depth list and there’s a high likelihood that there are better games from this year that I didn’t play. But of the handful I did, here’s what I came up with:
Best of 2009
1. Batman: Arkham Asylum: This is the Batman video game I always imagined and the Batman movie that can never exist. It’s dark, violent, but has Batman doing more than just punching people, although the fighting mechanics are superb. There was just no great satisfaction for me in gaming than perching on a gargoyle, waiting for a henchman to pass by underneath, and stringing him up in less than a second. Oh wait, there was a greater moment: every time a mad man charged you and you timed it right to just take him down with a strong punch to the face.
2. The Beatles: Rock Band: There was no way this game could disappoint. It’s my favorite band of all-time paired with one of my favorite games of all-time. It’s visually spectacular and will (hopefully) introduce a new generation to The Fab Four. The only reason this game doesn’t edge out Arkham Asylum is because it does live or die with it’s Downloadable Content and Rubber Soul was a letdown on bass and guitar.
3. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars: About a billion times better than Grand Theft Auto IV because it was…oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, right: FUN.
4. X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Add this to the short list of videogames that are better than the movie they’re based on. There’s no way the awful movie could ever match the violence of the game (in the first stage you rip a pilot out of the cockpit and shove his head inside the blades), and while the story is just as weak, video games tend to have lousy stories anyway. At least the game was loads of fun, which is more than I can ever say about the movie.
5. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story: These games are always fun. They mock the Mario universe rather than just pile on it. The gameplay is also solid and while I wish there were more sidequests and less touch-screen controls (which almost always feel shoehorned into just about any Nintendo DS game), it was a DS game that wasn’t a disappointment (unlike The World Ends With You, which didn’t come out this year, but I did play it back in January and I hated it; if your game is still give you tutorials ten hours in, then it’s more complicated than it needs to be).
Worst of 2009
1. Brutal Legend: “Disappointment” is not a strong enough word. This is a game that didn’t even believe in itself. When I played the demo, I thought it was going to be one of the best games of the year. But the demo left out what Brutal Legend actually was: a real-time-strategy game. Not only does that kind of game bore me, but I felt tricked. I thought it would be a fun hack-n-slasher from the guy who made Psychonauts, one of the all-time great video games. If Hollywood made R-rated animated films, Brutal Legend would be fantastic. But since video games actually require fun gameplay, it was failure.
2. Scribblenauts: This is how you trick journalists at E3: you offer them a game that supposedly offers 20,000 words which allow you to imagine just about everything, and then see how they think it’s fun to pit God against a kraken. That is fun. For about five to ten minutes and if you sat down and actually devoted time to play the game (which the journalists clearly didn’t have time to do), you would see that it has appeal for a few hours before you realize that it does limit your imagination and it probably only has a few thousand words and then uses them for the same item. “Box” and “Crate” produce the same item, but so what? It’s a trick to make you think that 20,000 words means 20,000 items. But it doesn’t really matter because the game has very specific items it wants you to use to achieve your objective. Oh, and the controls suck, so good work on that one.
3. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions: Yes, it didn’t come out this year, but it was also a massive disappointment. I don’t get the love for this game. It’s not a strategy game because strategy allows you to plan. FFT forces you to choose your units and position without knowing the terrain or which enemies you’ll be facing. Then it just falls to grinding your characters’ levels, because it’s not about who positions their units the best, but who gets lucky. Luck is the opposite strategy. And yet this is one of the highest rated PSP games on the market. Then again, most video game critics are worthless so why am I not surprised.
Trailer #3 for THE BEATLES: ROCK BAND
I’m not sure if it’s possible to make a bad trailer for a game revolving around playing “Beatles” songs. Either way, the trailers for “The Beatles: Rock Band” have me trying to accelerate the motion of the earth so it will be September 9th already.
Oh, and they finally give a brief look at the one song I wanted in a “Beatles: Rock Band” game: “Helter Skelter”.
Opening Cinematic From THE BEATLES: ROCK BAND
This opening cinematic is better than all of Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe”.
Reviews – 3/20/09
Bonus Videogame Review: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Videogame News That Just Made Me Climax a Little
Today it was announced that Square-Enix will release one of the best videogames ever made, Chrono Trigger, on the Nintendo DS. I still own the original Super Nintendo cartridge which is worth more than you. While they’re not remaking the game in 3D like they’ve done for Final Fantasy III and IV, it’s Chrono Trigger returned. If you’ve ever played this game then this game gives you a reason to survive until the holiday season when it will be released.
Axe’d
Today was a day of guitar woes.
It started off as a pretty chill day. After going to Piedmont Park for a friend’s birthday party, I went back home, worked on my Final Destination 4 set visit article and then kicked back with a little Rock Band, playing the guitar on solo. Even though it’s a wired controller and not made by Red Octane (who made the controllers for the Guitar Hero games), I’ve warmed to EA’s Fender Statrocaster. I tried to ignore the conventional wisdom that they’re more fragile than a newborn baby and you’ll have to return it to EA for a new one sooner rather than later. I was just enjoying kicking back and strumming out some tunes.
So of course, today it started fucking out on me. I was playing “Go With the Flow” and going through some fast notes and the game no longer registered the strumming of the guitar. And that’s all there is to it.
But look! There’s a silver lining! While I’m waiting for my Stratocaster to return, I can go pick up Guitar Hero III which as a wireless guitar and which I wanted to pick up anyway! And that guitar works with Rock Band! Oh boy!
Oh no. I picked up GHIII and the wireless guitar, which I remember loving when I used a friend’s over at his house, is now too small and the buttons are too far apart. My Stratocaster has spoiled me. But those are minor complaints. The big complaint is the tilt sensitivity. In GHIII, it’s a hair-trigger. The guitar picks up that the Earth is rotating and thus activates Star Power, completely removing any strategy and timing in building up Star Power to deploy during a solo. But in Rock Band, I have to spaz out on the thing in order to make the game kick into Overdrive. Either way, it hurts the gameplay and it hurts my soul.
Tomorrow, GHIII goes back to Best Buy. Aside from the defective guitar, the game, were it called anything other than “Guitar Hero” would be bashed and dismissed as an imitator of the superior previous games. Song selection is such an important piece of these games. The first song in the first two sets I’m even excited to play is “Bulls on Parade”. Somehow, “Talk Dirty to Me” and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” do absolutely nothing for me. I’m not saying Rock Band has the market cornered on great songs, but at least the majority are worth playing. It also has frequent download content, unlike Activision, who still haven’t figured out this whole durn online sales business.
Playing both games, it’s clear that the true sequel to Guitar Hero II isn’t Guitar Hero III but Rock Band. And if they hadn’t made it so easily breakable, it would also have the superior guitar.
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