The 2009 Select [Button]: Game of the Year

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Game of the Year: Flower

In a year riddled with sequels and familiar, derivative material, Flower stands apart. This is a game that is more meditative than action-packed, and one that rewards a slow, patient approach. Instead of a space marine or a wise-cracking adventurer, the player takes the part of the wind, blowing petals from place to place. Besides originality in concept, Flower accomplishes something few games even attempt: it contains relevant social and political themes. Flower is presented with confidence and gravitas, delivering a message of change without a single word of dialogue. Remarkably, this message has the power to affect both the video game industry and the advancement of alternative energy.

Even the tone of the game speaks volumes for its creativity. It is at times exciting, but there is a quiet revolution here as well: the majority of the game is soothing. There are moments of adversity and triumph, but mostly there is just the peaceful exploration and transformation of wide expanses of land. In Flower, the world becomes more beautiful as you progress. Instead of leaving corpses in your wake, you leave blooming flowers and bright swathes of color.

Beyond Flower’s groundbreaking originality, it is spectacularly well-executed. The visuals are gorgeous, presenting one of the most colorful and dramatic landscapes of any game this year. The physics of the wind, carrying the many-colored petals and parting the grass beneath, help to deliver a sense of reality and immediacy to the game play. The world of Flower is transformed by the player, using the simple, proficient tilting of the controller, into a canvas of color and life. This is painting as performed by nature itself, placed in the palms of your hands.

Somehow, thatgamecompany has managed to create something fresh, beautiful and unique and get it right on their first try. There is not a single moment or mechanic out of place, the game never becomes dull or laborious, and the result is sublime. Other games accomplished a great deal this year: Uncharted 2, for example, took an idea that has been tried a hundred times and refined it until it shone. But what makes Flower the best game of the year is that it took an idea that was completely new, delivered on every possibility, and created something beautiful, simple, socially-relevant, and engaging. Flower is interactive art. And it feels so good.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Idea/Execution

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Best Idea without Execution: Scribblenauts

Scribblenauts is great for the first couple of hours. You can type in almost anything you can imagine, and a representation of that object will appear on the screen for you to interact with. The number of words that the in-game dictionary recognizes is stunning. Unfortunately, playing around with the dictionary may be the only really fun part of the game. Past the first few levels, the seams begin to show and then quickly unravel. The movement of your avatar is tied to the Nintendo DS stylus, causing him to throw himself into spikes just as often as selecting a usable item. This gets frustrating quickly, and could have easily been solved by using the DS buttons for movement.

Solving puzzles using all the items available to you should lead to a lot of eureka moments, but the objects interact in very limited ways. In one puzzle, when I was trying to move a cow so some cars could get by, I had the brilliant idea of using a shrink ray to shrink the cow, and then hiding it in a briefcase so that a nearby butcher wouldn’t see him. Unfortunately, the tiny cow wouldn’t go in the briefcase. (What? That was a reasonable solution.) Most puzzles ended up boiling down to just attaching something to a rope and a helicopter and moving it somewhere else. It’s disappointing that a game with one great mechanic failed to deliver a great game to surround it.

Best Execution without Ideas: Borderlands

Borderlands comes from the Voltron school of game design: take several winning ideas from other games and properties, combine them into one unstoppable game/robot, and then publish. It is essentially the setting of Firefly or Mad Max with the regenerating shield of Halo, the shooting mechanics of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the leveling and random loot system of Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. The only thing that sets the game apart is that no one has ever made a combination quite like that before. Despite the lack of originality, those elements combine to make a fun, addictive experience that we can’t seem to shut up about.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Single-Player/Multi-Player

by C.T. Hutt

Most Engrossing Single-Player: Dragon Age: Origins

Despite a plethora of high quality single-player experiences that have come out this year, Dragon Age: Origins reigns supreme. Single-player RPGs are designed to create the optimum mano-a-computer gaming experience, often without an online play aspect or offline cooperative modes, so it’s really no surprise that a title which has been crowned by many sources as the best RPG of the year also makes for the most engrossing single-player experience.

Stunning graphics, complex, strategic game play, and the engaging storyline offered by Dragon Age: Origins combine to keep any gamer with a taste for tactical combat and fantasy glued to their office chair for days. An outstanding single-player experience is not without its dangers of course. Side effects of Dragon Age: Origins may include: vitamin D deficiency, reduced social interaction, loss of sleep, carpel tunnel, poor diet, and delusions of being a Grey Warden. Other than those minor problems, we recommend Dragon Age: Origins to any gamer out there who wants to fly solo.

Honorable Mention: Batman: Arkham Asylum afforded gamers with an experience they have been anticipating for a very long time: a great game based on a comic book character. In some places Batman: Arkham Asylum went a little overboard (i.e.: chemical mega-joker), but it was still a fantastic title.

Most Engrossing Multi-Player: Left 4 Dead 2

Zombies. They stink, they try to kill you, and they drag down property value in a major way. As a responsible citizen and home owner it is your duty and your pleasure to shoot them in the head. But many hands make for light work, so while you are busy clearing the zombie infested streets of New Orleans from the undead, make sure to bring a buddy along. Left 4 Dead 2 brings home the awesomeness of a great horror/ survival FPS and an excellent co-operative game play experience. Nothing says “we are having some fun now” more than pounding your buddy on the back yelling “Shoot the the jockey! Shoot the jockey!” before you get pulled into a puddle of acidic spitter mucus. Toss in some excellent environments and a dash of poignant social commentary and you’ve got a title we will be playing for months to come.

Honorable Mention: Borderlands. Wait, what? Didn’t you just say you hated that game? Not entirely. The setting, storyline, repetitive missions, character balance, and soundtrack of Borderlands all leave a lot to be desired, but the co-operative play is really quite good. Borderlands is proof positive that almost anything can be fun if you bring some friends along for the ride.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Ambiance

by C.T. Hutt

Best Ambiance: The Path

Tale of Tales has been the little game developer that could this year. They have turned the collective heads of the gaming community with their original titles and unique approach to the gaming medium. I haven’t had a chance to play Fatale, but if their past performance is any indicator of quality I am sure it will be a knock out.

The Path, released last March, is not what many gamers have come to expect from an exploration game. There are no traditional puzzles to solve in this game and no enemies to fight, but The Path manages to establish genuine emotional resonance with the player utilizing graphics tricks many would consider outdated. Ambiance in The Path is created by changes in camera angle, well-placed music and sound effects, and alterations in lighting.

There were few action-oriented components to The Path, which made the title a non-starter for many gamers. It was a game that focused on one central mechanic, our feelings about a given scenario, and didn’t let up. In many titles, ambiance and setting are obstacles developers work to overcome so they can get back into the action. In The Path, Tale of Tales made ambiance the whole point, and it worked.

Honorable Mentions: Flower and the Hard Rain level in Left 4 Dead 2 both had stirring ambiance. Whether eliciting an imprecise, but radiant sense of hope or simply evoking animal terror these titles used environment, sound, and music effects to their utmost.

Worst Ambiance: Borderlands

Following a compass needle through a vast junkyard in the middle of a desert, this is the Borderlands experience. I don’t have much to say about this title that hasn’t already been said. The action mechanics were spot on, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but mild amusement from this game. They didn’t even get the feeling of desolation to ring through; in a game called Borderlands that seems like a necessity.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Improvement

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Most Improved: Assassin’s Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed had a lot going for it: a conflict set in the middle east during the crusades, beautiful graphics and exciting assassination missions, but the game was bogged down by repetition and strange design choices. Fortunately, the developers at Ubisoft took almost every piece of criticism from the first game and worked it into the sequel. The mission structure became more varied, the settings became even more colorful, the main character learned how to swim, the player’s skills increased along with the character’s, and so on. Basically, everything Assassin’s Creed did, Assassin’s Creed 2 did better. The sequel still had a few problems (the free running system doesn’t always perform as desired and some of the mission types are still a drag), but the Assassin’s Creed series went from being a decently fun game with an interesting historical setting to a unique, exciting franchise in just a few years.

Honorable Mentions: Left 4 Dead 2 and Uncharted 2 both improved substantially when compared to their predecessors, but the first games in each series were already solid, so the change was not nearly so dramatic.

Least Improved: Overlord 2

Seeing the progress made between Overlord and Overlord 2 was exciting at first. They improved the camera, gave the player more comprehensive control over their minions, and changed the morality system so that it encompassed two different kinds of evil, while the first one had a black and white morality. In the first game, I chose between giving the villagers food and keeping the food for myself. In the second, my options were killing all the villagers or bending their wills to my service. They even maintained the dark sense of humor from the original, which is a large part of what makes the series fun. Unfortunately, for every problem they fixed a new one popped up (just like playing whack-a-minion). While control of the minions was improved, the minions themselves seemed more idiotic and less likely to notice and interact with objects and enemies. The camera and the control mechanism were tied together, which resulted in the main character never looking where he needed to, resulting in irritating deaths and confusion. The morality system required the player to hunt down hundreds of individuals with no way to track them, which quickly became too cumbersome to be worth it, and the magic system was drastically over-complicated. I have a soft spot for both games, but Overlord 2 managed to make a mess just as often as it cleaned one up, resulting in a mediocre sequel to a mediocre game.

The 2009 Select [Button]

Well, dear readers, 2009 is drawing to a close. Like every other blog on the net, we at Press Pause to Reflect can’t resist the siren call of posting about the best games of the past year. Granted, we don’t assign games a numerical score, color code, pass/fail rating, percentage, or grading metric of any kind, but we know what we like. Starting Monday, every day we will be sharing our picks in various categories for the most interesting or significant games of the year.

Don’t agree with our assessments? Tell us all about it in the discussion section.