There was a lot to choose from this year. I’ve played a lot of games and it was tough to narrow it down to a list of ‘favorites’, especially to only a couple as Keen and I planned. After much deliberation, I managed to narrow it down to my top five favorite games. Here they are:
Another great Bioware game. It was supposed to be a spiritual successor the the Baldur’s Gate series, the kind of game they used to make, and it king of lived up to that. While it had a lot of depth, it didn’t have the depth of Baldur’s Gate 2. I played the probably “inferior” Xbox360 version and the visuals were not that great as a result. It lacked the overhead camera view you could toggle in the PC mode. It was still a great game and I had a lot of fun with it, even to the point of playing it three times through and achieving all but the last 2 achievements because they bugged out for me. There is a lot of replayability in Dragon Age: Origins.
I remember the first time I saw this game was during this last E3. I saw a video of it and I was absolutely floored. The concept looked interesting and I knew right away it was a game I would enjoy. This is one of the few games that I felt a lot of excitement over and then actually had that excitement delivered at release. It was sometimes a hard and frustrating experience and it’s a game that you have to go into knowing that you’re going to get beat down a lot, but that’s what makes succeeding at it so much better. It had a really interesting multiplayer experience built into the singleplayer game. You can leave hints behind on the ground to help other people in their games by pointing to treasure or telling them to avoid a trap or you can even be malicious and leave a note that leads them to their doom.
If you die in Demon’s Soul form you can go into another player’s world and help him defeat a demon. If you help him defeat that demon you can get resurrected again. It even had a unique experience where you can actually get summoned to be the boss during a boss fight against another player.  Incredibly unique game. I hope other games take a similar path and that this one gets a sequel.
Continue reading ‘more’ for the rest of my Favorite Games of 2009.
It might not be on some people’s top list but I’m a huge Ghostbusters fan and this is the first time I was really able to feel like I was a Ghostbuster go around catching ghosts. The whole game was fun and a fantastic experience. I’m really hoping we get a sequel. It had a really fun multiplayer mode and it’s a bummer that it’s pretty much dead now. It would have been great if they made it so that you could play cooperatively throughout the campaign. My dream would be a Ghostbusters game in the formula of Left4Dead. Regardless, I played through several times and loved it.
Like with Ghostbusters, I’m a huge Batman fan. I love Batman. He’s my favorite superhero. I was really excited for this game to come out. I had the collector’s edition pre-ordered and picked it up at midnight. The combat looks fantastic with the free flow system. It was easy to play but more difficult to get some higher up combos. I was worried at first that the setting was confined to Arkham Asylum, but it turned that it worked really well and that limiting the space and scope probably helped the game considering most Super Hero games try the big open world and it doesn’t work out too well. I loved that they had the voice actors from the animated series (That I own on DvD!). To me, Mark Hamills’s voice is the difinite Joker. I’m thrilled that they’re doing a sequel.
Naughty Dog (the developer) made one of my favorite series Jack and Daxter so I’ve been a fan of the studio for a while. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was great and the second is definitely just as good if not better than the first. It features some of the best visuals of any game to date. The story is interesting in that characters and dialog are believable. The multiplayer seems solid. The gameplay is like a really good cinematic experience. You have levels where you’re running on the top of trains across the countryside, levels where you’re trying to escape a train car hanging precariously on a cliffside, and all of these really great moments that you get to actually play through to offer a really fun and unique experience to Uncharted 2.
I’m playing Dragon Age atm (PC version) and i’m having an incredibly good time. I played Baldur’s Gate 2 and i remember a lot of features that i was always thinking “hmmm, they should add this or that” and they actually did… To me, DA gives me a better experience. Also, it feels good to play some more “classical” fantasy game, i’m sometimes tired of my templar with wings or the goblins and the zepelins 🙂
Uncharted is awesome, man: that’s cinematic story telling, i enjoyed every minute except the final boss… i swear if i hear once more “you think you can stop me?!”, i break a fuse…
Oh, and BTW, i’m first on the XMAS post :p
Personally I didn’t like the overhead mode in Dragon Age, I just used third person through the whole game for PC, helped with immersion. Plus seeing an overhead of the battle actually limits your view, because theres tons of enemies who will attack from faaaar out of your visible range, quite annoying. Fun game, bad combat, bad AI!
I watch Graev play a lot of games. If I had to pick a game that I enjoyed watching him play the most in 2009 it would be definitely be Assassin’s Creed 2. Such an awesome looking game. I’m shocked it wasn’t in his top 5.
DAO is fantastic!
DAO for me too I think.
As a PC owner who very rarely buys console games (I do have an XBox360) I have yet to play AC2.
DAO is fun, but even in “Nightmare” mode the non-boss fights are too easy. Maybe that is because I am playing with 3 AoE hard hitters, my blood mage, Morrigan, and Shale, but all I have to do is preset an area (that doesn’t even have to be in sight) with 4 AoE’s and only rarely does anyone get through to my front lines; if they do there got some cone effects spells to hit them before they even touch my players. It gets repetitive, but the story line is amusing.
Playing through DAO now and it’s a pure awesome. There are a few things in it that really bug me but the core gameplay is solid and the RP factor is through the roof.
How did you get that much out of DAO?
Once you played through it once, and do all the origins, theres no real drive to keep playing the story over.
I think you can play through the story at least twice and have it be fun and interesting. Origins, gender, race, and how you treat people can really change a lot of the dialogue. Not only that, but the important plot choices influence a different ending. My third pkaythrough, however, did feel a bit redundant and, at some parts, tedious.