Game of the Year 2009
Without further adieu, I present my top two games (plus two other games) of 2009:
(Warning, there are some minor spoilers within)
Blurred Reality (Chris Rhodan’s Blog)
The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at – Don Marquis
Jan
4
Dec
1
My iPhone Murdered my DS
I got home from work to find my iPhone standing over the bloody remains of my Nintendo DS, a sharpened dagger clasped firmly in its hand.
Ok, so maybe it wasn’t quite as dramatic as that, but the end result is certainly the same; I’ve used my DS for the grand total of one full battery charge since I bought my iPhone.
How do I know this? I can’t find my DS charger and I haven’t had any real desire to look for it….
Nov
19
An Open Letter to Infinity Ward
Infinity Ward,
I don’t have a copy of Modern Warfare 2 and there’s a good reason for that; I haven’t gotten around to downloading it yet. The only reason I’m bothering to even download it is because the singleplayer sounds good as always…. for the whole 5 hours it lasts. However, having tried it on someone else’s machine, the multiplayer is unplayable, and I wouldn’t pay anything close to full retail price for a 5 hour game not named Portal, let alone pay the higher than normal price you’re asking.
But it didn’t have to be this way.
Just 6 months ago I was a day one sale; I even considered pre-ordering it which something I almost never do, and now I’m glad I didn’t. I spent hours playing Call of Duty 4, and regard it is as probably my favorite multiplayer FPS game not produced by Valve. I skipped Treyarch’s World at War imposter, a game which was only really notable for its Nazi Zombie game mode, and waited with anticipation for your next masterpiece.
Then shit hit the fan.
Nov
14
Dragon Age Thoughts
Note: The majority of this was written late last week, look for some newer impressions after the weekend.
Bioware’s latest RPG masterpiece is finally upon us, and it’s obvious that they’ve made the most of the 6 years they’ve spent developing it (that’s right, for those unaware, Dragon Age was announced well before Mass Effect yet has only beaten Mass Effect’s sequel to stores by a couple of months).
Obviously a game with such a long development time has some huge expectations… expectations I stayed away from by distancing myself from as much of the previews and trailers as possible so that I could stay out of the hype and just enjoy the game, rather than being concerned with whether it met my expectations. But you know what; I don’t think it would have mattered as the game is, in a word, “brilliant”, though far from perfect. In fact, perhaps “difficult” is more appropriate as it seems to be the first thing that pops into mind when I talk to people about Dragon Age.
More after the jump.
Jun
24
The Top “Bombs” of the Current Generation
Here’s something I found interesting over on Bitmob (which is a predominantly user-driven video game site):
The Top Ten Bombs of the Current Generation
Essentially, by comparing game sales (taken from VGChartz) as a percentage of the console’s user base with that game’s review score (aggregated on gamerankings), the author has created a rough way of determining “bomb” games; i.e. games that are critically successful but sell poorly. While the system isn’t too accurate for determining a successful game (as it doesn’t take into account the cost of making the game, the game’s projected sales, marketing, the number of stores that stock it etc etc), it does provide an interesting insight into the game’s that are critically successful, but fail at market.
Listing and my thoughts after the jump.
Jun
17
Best games you’ve never heard of: Escape Velocity Nova
Welcome to the first of what will eventually become a regular series of mine: The best games you’ve (probably) never heard of. In this series of articles I’ll look at some awesome games, both old and new alike, that very few people seem to know of. Note that this isnt necessarily intended to be a review of the game in question, just a description of the game from my point of view.
The first game in this series is Ambrosia Software’s little known space combat game; Escape Velocity Nova.
Read the full article after the jump.
Jun
14
I bought a Wii (and I liked it)
Just a few days ago, I renewed my love affair with Nintendo and finally bought a Wii.
It would be easy to point to E3 as the reason for my sudden desire to buy one, though I didn’t actually pay too much attention to the Nintendo announcements at the time. Likewise, it would make sense that I’d want one given my new amount of free time with university finished for the semester, or that most of my friends have a Wii they play regularly as opposed to a Xbox360 or PC. But none of these were the reason I actually suddenly decided to finally join the legion of Wii-users.
While these are all excellent reasons to buy a Wii, the reason I actually decided to get my own was my family. My family is very much a modern on the go family, with people coming and going all the time and almost no time together as a family. We rarely have all of us home for dinner, and hardly see much of each other in the mornings before school/uni/work. I’ve been pushing the idea of a Wii as a family-bonding device for a while, though without much support. Finally I decided to put my own plan in motion and take matters into my own hands and buy one myself… and what a great decision it turned out to be.
In just 4 days, I think we’ve spent more time together having fun than we have in years. When I picked up the Wii, I also grabbed Super Smash Brothers and Mario Galaxy for myself, figuring I’d have plenty of time to enjoy them both… and I think I’ve clocked in a total of 2 hours between them. The Wii is just constantly in use for Wii Sports or Mario Power Tennis (which came as part of the deal I got the console in with extra controller and nun chuck) and I haven’t had a free time to play any solo game – everyone just wants a turn on the Wii.
Of course the novelty will where off sooner or later, but for now, mission accomplished.
Jun
11
E3 – Thoughts, Opinions and (way too early) Excitement
So, E3 was back to its old tricks, stepping out of the shadow of itself that it’s been for the past few years and reverting back into the far more exciting behemoth it should be.
Quick satire of major announcements and my thoughts on some games from E3 after the jump.
Jun
10
Welcome
Welcome one and all to my new blog. Now that university has finished for the semester (hopefully successfully), I finally have had the time to set this up properly (It may not look to different from when I set it up initally, but a lot has change on the back end) and to start writing for it.
I’d encourage you all to check out the About page if you haven’t, just to give you an idea of what my blog is about.
I’ll be populating this with some new posts over the course of the next week and will be (hopefully) updating 2-3 times a week, depending on my free time.
Hope you have fun here and enjoy my blog.