Controller1.com’s top games of this past year.
Sleeper of the Year (aka The game that came out of nowhere, the one you expected to ignore but couldn’t because of the great word of mouth)
RED FACTION: GUERRILLA. Volition and THQ’s third RF game came out of nowhere to be one hell of a blast of supercharged entertainment. Sure, Volition misunderstood the difference between easy and insane. But the core mechanics of the game and the freedom you had to progress meant few stumbling blocks to gaming nirvana. I have no idea what the story was about so let’s assume it’s rather ordinary and skip to the good bits: blowing things up. I can’t name a game where destruction has been done better.
Runner Up: Borderlands
Overhyped Game of the Year (AKA The game that was expected to make coffee, bend time and rule all but in the end was a bit meh)
KILLZONE 2. Sony and Guerrilla Game’s follow up to the justifiably ignored Killzone was meant to be many things. Here’s what it was and wasn’t.
IT WAS: A decent FPS, put together well and looked beautiful.
IT WASN’T: a system seller, or a particularly great game.
Year of PS3 got off to a false start and was almost disqualified from the race with KZ2.
Runner up: Scribblenaughts
Most Disappointing Game (AKA Games with buzz and hope that just didn’t deliver)
Wolfenstein Coulda, should but didna. Wolfenstein squandered the hope that long term fans had for a worthwhile follow up to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. What they got was a good single player that seemed to need a teeny bit more polish and content and a terrrrrrrrrible multiplayer. Do you get this game? Do you like MP more than SP? Flip a coin.
Runner Up: Modern Warfare 2
MOST IMPROVED (AKA They fixed the shit in the first one that was busted)
Assassin’s Creed II. Oh Lord is it ever so much better than the first game. In every single way, this game is more fun than the original. The content is better organised so that the game is not “here are 10 things you can do, go do each of them 500 times.” The whole concept is still a bit silly and Kristen Bell’s character looks like she had a lip transplant from the original Kryten but overall any game that has Uncharted Guy doing voices is good.
Runner Up: Uncharted 2
BEST DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT: SHADOW COMPLEX
BF1943, GTA episodes and Trials were there but Shadow Complex was by far the best DL only game released in 2009. A Metroidvania that’s probably more palatable to a modern audience (since it has Uncharted Guy doing voices, of course), the game managed to astound, entertain, stir up controversy and offer a good few hours of gameplay.
Runner Up: Halo 3 ODST (no, not really, but it should have been)
Best Game Only on Wii: NEW SUPER MARIO BROTHERS WII
OK, so it was really only one of two Wii games I bought this year. But it was the one I didn’t sell (HotD: Overkill). It’s frustrating as all fuck, has a save system that’s as pointless as the one in Dead Rising and I’m not playing it right now. Why am I not playing this right now? I don’t know.
Best Game Only on PS3: UNCHARTED 2
Sony had two really good games this year. Uncharted 2 and Infamous. Infamous is blown out of the water by Uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 is the quintessential adventure game. Whereas the first game promised platforming but delivered a gears of War Clone, the sequel mixes things up so successfully that you never realise when the game is going to go from one style to another. yes, you know at least once per chapter there will be something you’re standing in collapsing around you leaving you hanging from one arm but that’s beside the point.
Best Game Only on Xbox 360: SHADOW COMPLEX The 360 almost had a gap year with the only big exclusives being Forza 3 (which a LOT of people love and recognise as the driving game of 2009 to play), Halo 3: ODST which really was just a bit too much recycling with such a short single player campaign.
Best Game Only on PC- this is the year 2009.
Best Game on Everything: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. IW may have pissed off as many people as they please with MW2. There’s the story that eschews any semblance of realism for moments of turkey-slapping-a-sleeping-lion thrills, OTT Multiplayer perks and combos, poor matchmaking and the various PC issues that made the game into a must play for many into a meh for some.
Best Pissing Away Goodwill. TIE: Infinity Ward and Activision.
Infinity Ward for doing the dirty on PC gamers and Activision for driving Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero into the ground. Oh, and splitting Starcraft II into three different games.
Most Improved: Sony. They cut the PS3 price from hysterical to merely funny (after three years it’s finally at the PS2 launch price), released the Slim and released Uncharted and Infamous. It still takes way too long to download and install a patch and most people still spend more on Blu Ray than they do on PS3 games, and PS3 ports are still often slightly lagging behind 360 in terms of graphics but it’s basically where it should have been three years ago. Just in time for God of War III
Most Potential for 2010: Microsoft. Really, they sold the 360 well but didn’t release that many 1st party games so you’d think game over, but then you see they have Crackdown 2, Halo Reach and Alan Wake. And then there’s Natal.
Least Potential for 2010: Wii
So we have a vitality sensor as the big piece of hardware? Really? Few games still support Motion Plus. Few gamers care and the signs are than grandma doesn’t either.
Game of the Year: Uncharted 2. Are you at all surprised? Naughty Dog redeem themselves after the disasters that were the Jak and Daxter sequels. This is the only game this year that a non-gamer will sit and watch as if it were a movie and enjoy it.
Runner Up: Modern Warfare 2.
It was a pretty good year overall. The only disappointing part of the year was the end. While we had some cracking titles such as Uncharted 2, ODST, Left 3 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed II, MW2 and Super Mario Wii it still felt like something was missing.Oh that’s right about 2 or 3 more must-haves in the lead up to Christmas that we wouldn’t get to play till 2010 anyway. Having them all come out in the first quarter of 2010 seems to have upset the natural balance.
Clint displays why he is a mental giant as we listen to him bitch about playing The Lost and Damned DLC for GTA. Watch how he ignores where his motorbike is in order to drive around in a car
and complain why he’s in a car in a game about a biker. Laffs ensue.
My recent DLC binge netted me the Lost and the Damned and the CoD World at War Map Pack 2. I had intended to skip the GTA DLC since I had not come close to finishing GTA IV before getting sick of it and moving on to fresh gaming pastures. I think the reason I got it was some need to use up my Internet Bandwidth quota since 25GB a month goes a long way if you aren’t into Bit Torrent. Infamous also made me feel that going back to the slower moving GTA IV engine might be a step backwards but I tried it anyway.
I like it so far. I’m only a few missions in but it seems to be a nice take on Liberty City without feeling like a simple retread of IV.
The storyline with the bikers seems a lot easier to get into, less introspective than Niko and Roman, played less for laughs and more for drama. The guys of the Lost MC are fucking assholes of the first order but they make great videogame characters. Of course as a member of a motorcycle gang, you will be riding around on a hog for most of the time and unless you preferred these in GTA IV, they take a while to get used to riding these and firing a shotgun at the same time. Its also got that custom GTA difficulty about it but then I’m finding I’m enjoying it in this post-infamous world.
Johnny Klebitz, your hero for want of a better word, is a little more obviously fucked up thank Niko. He’s a biker and he just wants to keep to business. The leader of the gang, Billy, has just come out of rehab after being busted and is aching for action, such as starting turf wars with rival gangs etc. This being a GTA game, there ares no tea parties, group hugs and wondering if this is what its like When Doves Cry.
Also, despite me saying I’d had enough of WaW with a PC playthough, a 360 playthough and months of multi on both systems, I got the extra maps anyway. And because I’d been away from the multiplayer for so long, I immediately sucked more than a Wii game called Let’s Tidy Up After Ourselves in the NPD top 10. But after relearning not to suck, I’ve started to enjoy the new maps and not just stick to the three zombie maps. We have Corrosion, which seems to be some sort of refinery level where its Soviets v Nazis; Banzai, aan outdoor jungle level with a wooden bridge, waterfalls, tunnels and bamboo huts; and my favourite, Sub Pen, a really nice US verses Japan level that’s small and intimate but large enough for small or medium size groups.
Its interesting to note how in both of the map packs released for WaW so far, Treyarch have shied away from the larger tank based levels which were the more popular ones in CoD3. The tanks in WaW are just irritating since they dominate the levels and the anti-tank options are limited. The jury is still out on dogs but they are preferable to fucking helicopters, which is what I dread most about the upcoming Modern Warfare 2.
Just as a site update: The site has had fewer updates due to my work moving offices this last week. My studio is in disarray so there’s nowhere for us to record a podcast yet. Hopefully we can have something for you by next week. The first one might be a tad echo-ey.
also: not playing Burnout Paradise DLC. Thanks Sony. Thony.
Its a long weekend where I live and I decided to try out the recent DLC for Burnout Paradise. Well, after about 5 hours of patching Burnout, updating the PS3 firmware, updating my CC details on PSN, buying the DLC and the finding out that for some reason DLC is coded to the region of the game on a region free consoles where game patches are region free.
So after flushing $28 down the Sony toilet (unless I can borrow someone’s local copy), I popped in Boom Blox, a game I’ve had sitting around for 5 months into the Wii, a console I have not played at home in over a year. Boomblox is one awesome puzzle game.
The premise is the game is quite simple. You have a puzzle and rotate the camera around the puzzle to get a good angle, use the pointer to aim at where you’d like to hit, lock on, then through the miracle of waggle, throw the ball at the piece. You knock down some colours, avoid knocking others and otherwise play variations of this theme.
There’s not much else to say about it except its a helluva lot of fun.
Whether there’s enough of a game to justify this as a full price game is rather debatable. As it is, I can’t see how I could pad it out to a full review.
I have to say that Halo 3 is still a great MP game. Call of Duty 4 and WaW are very good experiences but H3′s Mythic pack has been a lot of fun. Sometime I get bitchslapped and other times, I do ok. But the game is rarely laggy for me (compared to WaW- which must have a sizable install base of its own). And I’m not even using the Good Connection option in the matchmaking options.
ODSTSTSTSTSTSTD might be an expansion pack but the fundamentals are so good I don’t think its an issue.
The new Prince of Persia kinda crept on us like a stealth camouflaged Pedo bear. I was expecting a cel-shaded Assassin’s Creed and what we have Prince of Persia Sands of Time with an even more automated control scheme. Its like trying to type something with auto-fill on. Predictive text may be great on phones, but its not so great when you’re trying to pull off complex moves smoothly.
The new PoP apparently does away with death. Bullshit. All it does is put more checkpoints in and cover the fact with a cutscene. You will be watching that short non-skippable cutscene of Elika grabbing your hand many, many, many, many times. Why? Because this is a game that expects you to ignore your instinct whilst playing.
Its hard to describe. In order to pull of the move list, you need to unlearn. Need to double jump? Press A to jump then Y to have Elika use her mojo to give you an extra distance boost. Jump across a chasm and press A to jump up? No the game does it for you automagically. If you press A again, you’re jumping backwards to your temporary death.
I’m very conflicted about playing this game any further. I like it and it shits me to tears within the space of five minutes. Its a great game to play in 20 minute installments. The reason you can’t play it any longer than that is because you realise that you’re spending so much time on one jump sequence because the controls don’t quite do what you need them to. Prince of Persia is in fact the best argument for Mirror’s Edge using a first-person perspective.
PoP is the last 2008 game I have left to play and is the last of my gaming Xmas pressies I had to play. We have a long weekend coming up so it will be interesting to see how much time PoP actually gets. Right now its level pegging with Halo 3 time.
So Grifball. What the fuck is that? I played this as part of the Mythic Map pack last night and its basically a room where two teams are only armed with melee weapons such as the Gravity Hammer and the swords. It was fun apart from one of the few instances of lag I’ve noted in Halo 3. Like, it was really really bad lag. There’s a bomb in there as well but dying when enemies were nowhere near me made it a little confusing.
The other team modes are just plain fun. Its a pity the bigger team games are so objective based as I want to shoot more than I want to capture flags. The question remains, why is Halo 3 easier to play (its P2P just like most live games) online than CoD WaW, where there is a noticeable lag between you shooting and hitting an opponent.
I’m kinda waiting for something to hit me in the face. Hopefully Infamous will be that game as its the only game on my radar for the month of May. Maybe I’ll look at some more DLC stuff like Burnout Paradise Cops and Robbers pack. Part of me wants to replay some faves like Bioshock, Crackdown and even the campaign from Halo 3.
Roll up, Roll up to the one and only genuine DLCarnival. Yes I have gone mad and decided to fill in my current game playing drought by downloading more and more DLC for my favourite games and skipping the games I don’t want to play. A few weeks ago, it was the Call of Duty World at War map pack. Before that, it was Fallout 3′s Operation Anchorage. This week, its Halo 3 maps and Guitar Hero World Tour songs, two games I haven’t touched this year, but have been meaning to go back.
Why? Prince of Persia sits on the entertainment unit, its surface barely scratched (metaphorically). I just don’t fell like it right now. I know its good and I’ll probably have a go soon but I really just want to shoot my fellow man in the face (or more likley, be shot in the face by a whiny punk). So despite enjoying the maps for CoD WaW, I realise that I can’t compete with the levelled up dufus who in habit these games ever since CoD4 removed any casual fun from the series.
So Halo 3 got the downloads. There are new Gears of War 2 maps and Killzone 2 maps available now or coming soon, but those games just aren’t as much fun online as Halo 3 (with the headset switched off). There’s a rip off of The Guild with 30′something Halo 3 players that’s not really that good, but considering The Guild also isn’t really that good we’ll just suppose its accurate. I wouldn’t know as I don’t play games in clans, guilds or any other loose confederation of nerds where teamwork means teabagging. I just play to have fun. So i’ll play these maps for an hour or two and then move on.
Then on GHWT I will just buy a song, play it once and move on. I would like to play the James Bond Theme and the Queen songs (some of which i already have on Singstar). That’s it. I might even try to play a bit more of World Tour mode, but I’m not counting on anything.
Why play the DLC when there are so many new experiences coming out such as Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV and more? Because none of it speaks to me as a gamer. Nothing says, “play me.” Street Fighter might as well say “bite me,’ for all the appeal it has. In prepping for a podcast a few months pack, the three of us looked through the coming soon section of EB’s US website. We really couldn’t find much after Killzone 2 that appealed to any of us. Expect lots of demoes Focus Tested in the next few months. The one shining light on the new release beacon in the near term is Infamous. We’re all pretty jazzed for that. But maybe its because there’s no Crackdown 2 announced. The web believes its coming but my spare pants are still on Defcon 3.
Here’s a quick look at the demo of the first episode of Wanted (PSN tested). Operation Winback on the N64′s lawyer called and they want their game back.
Based loosely on last year’s movie Wanted which you control a main character who doesn’t look like James McAvoy or Angelina Jolie, but could be the result of a transporter accident, so we’ll call the playable character Tuvix.
Wanted is a third person title that makes you think of a 10 year old n64 game rather than Gears of War. Why? It doesn’t look all that bad, but it doesn’t look all that great either. How does it play? It plays ok as a game where you sneak up an press the melee button, but as a shooter, its kinda painful. I couldn’t recommend it.
A demo is obviously meant to make you buy the full game but when your whole game is merely an episode, the demo for this game is at least a substantial experience, enough to say: this is shash.
The look is kinda fizzy though the framerate holds up well. Sound is fine to be sure but its somewhat lacking charisma.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. DLC also available on PC. Fallout 3 game required. Fallout 3 also on PS3, but without DLC.
Developed and published by Bethesda.
Our first DLC review on c1 and its Fallout 3′s first piece of DLC, Operation Anchorage. F3:OA is a side mission for the game based around the Outcasts you may have seen around the map. You agree to use your Pip Boy to interface with an old Virtual Reality pod and voila, you’re transported virtually back to the campaign to oust Chinese Army occupation of Alaska before the Balloon went up.
The DLC is a lot more linear than the rest of the game and more action oriented. Its more Mass Effect than Fallout. You take nothing in and take nothing out, so you can’t loot corpses since your vanquished foes vanish along with any weapons and ammo. You have ammo dispensers and health dispenses dotted around the map, not always where you need one and since you can’t carry meds, it does change how you play fairly significantly. You can’t go into a fight, shoot, heal, shoot heal. You have to heal when you see the dispenser and hope you can make it through the few throttled areas with enemies aplenty without dieing.
There’s a boss encounter at the end but if your speech stats are high enough, you may able to avoid altogether in a rather bizarre way. At the end of the simulation, you unlock some booty that you can return to at any point (though i’m not sure if items respawn- i’d doubt it). There’s nothing in the booty that you can’t get elsewhere but its nice to have it all in once place.
The other thing the DLC does is remove the level cap, so its definitely worth doing if you plan to do everything in the game. The actual F3:OA mission is not all that great and made me stop playing F3 once I was done. I would say its essential only if you are planning on doing EVERYTHING. There two more F3 DLC packs scheduled in the next few months but I think I’m done with this game. The levels here should take around 3-4 hours which is not bad for the price but you just need to know that it doesn’t play like the rest of the game.
Controller1.com rating 2/3
Since Fallout 3 is hard to FT without spoiling it for Clint, who’s just started, we’re playing through a mission of Operation Anchorage, the first DLC for this title.
A shorter than usual podcast for a game that can drain your life faster than a Mana bat with a drinking problem.
