I’m also cheating by stretching the definition of rhythm games to include any game in which the primary focus is on music. Hence the first title in the list.

Rez: Dreamcast, Playstation 2 & Xbox 360 (as Rez HD)

You’re always putting yourself in a difficult position when talking about Rez. People tend to either champion it as genius or decry it as pretentious art-game crap. In other words it’s a bit Marmite, if Marmite were a Panzer Dragoon clone based on the works of Kandinsky with the stated aim of inducing synesthesia in the player. It’s also a weirdly personal game to be talking about. I know I love Rez, but I’ve never really bothered to stop and think why. It’s Rez, you know?

Okay, clearly I need to try harder. Let’s start with this: Rez is a complete fucking cheat. Its primary gimmick is to tie every sound the player can make – essentially shooting enemies by dragging the reticule over them – to the backing music. Except these inputs snap to the beat so whether you’re killing enemies, collecting power ups or progressing to the next layer, it will never fall out of rhythm. The game’s entire premise is tightly controlled to stop the player fucking it up by being human.

That’s not a criticism, however, because it’s what makes Rez work and, assuming you like 10 year old electronica, Rez does work. By controlling the moment enemies explode into symbols and noise to the constant unmoving beat, complimented by the vibration of the controller, it really can induce a sort of faux-synesthesia. Its most exciting moments occur mid-way through each level, as you’re phasing between layers and everything – art, sound, vibration – begins to intensify, driving towards its unstoppable climax.

More importantly, on a personal level, it was the first moment I realised that games could actually be this. It’s cemented itself along with other PS2 titles like Ico and We Love Katamari that said to my teenage self, “stick around, this might just get interesting.”

Gitaroo Man: Playstation 2 & PSP (as Gitaroo Man Lives!)

Oh sure, Parappa The Rappa was great with its geek-funk soundtrack and memorable lines (“I gotta believe!”) but Gitaroo Man was the truly brilliant rhythm game. The main reason for this is the Legendary Theme, but it had other charms as well.

Such as? Well for a start it pastiches a far wider selection of musical genres. The game covers jazz, rock, punk, synth, dub, drum ‘n bass, j-pop and, bizarrely, electro-salsa; all performed in a coherent cheery pop wrapping. As for actually playing the game, each level is divided into two segments, battle and defend. Defend is the familiar Parappa-esque matching of the face buttons as they fly toward the centre of the screen whereas battle has you trace out the guitar riff, hitting buttons in time to the notes. It’s standard muscle memory fare, but keeps enough variation to remain enjoyable throughout.

Then there’s the story, casting you as U-1, a shy boy who learns to have confidence in his abilities with the aid of a talking dog, a magical guitar and a trip through space to face musical enemies. Frankly it’s almost cliched in its Japanese loner child + weird shit approach, but has some nice moments throughout and skirts just the right side of not taking itself seriously.

And then there’s the Legendary Theme. It’s a serene acoustic tune in a game filled with manic pop, but that alone propels it up to being one of the greatest levels in any rhythm game.

Rock Band 2: Playstation 3 & Xbox 360

The temptation when compiling these lists is to gravitate to the more obscure titles to prove your gaming cred. Rejected games for this final spot included Vib Ribbon, the PS1 choose-your-own-music line art platformer, and Harmonix’s own precursor to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Frequency. Both would clearly be cheating because, for fun times with music, you can’t beat Rock Band 2. It’s the ultimate post-pub game. My own personal litmus test for how drunk I am is whether I gravitate towards the drums (not that drunk) or vocals (very drunk.)

Why Rock Band 2 over any of the other peripheral based rhythm games? Primarily because it has a better tracklist than the first Rock Band, and the Guitar Hero series is now essentially a competent knock-off. Harmonix has always been able to craft better note charts for their tracks, and the whole experience feels slicker than the Activision version.

Really the only downside to coming home, loading up the game and taking Posthumous Meerkat out for another tour of the classics (by which I mean Steve Miller Band’s The Joker) is that it tends to get us into trouble with the neighbours after about 4am. To date it is easily the greatest multiplayer rhythm game.

Of course, I’ve missed out plenty. From Vib Ribbon through to Audiosurf. Let me know your own favourite music games in the comments.

Plants vs Zombies

Did you know that the game that has kept you isolated and alone for months on end is also a great one to play with friends, despite its complete lack of multiplayer? It’s true, and also a frightening example of how the bloody thing can completely destroy every corner of your life! Kudos, Popcap. Endless survival mode was our primary drug for the weekend, with one person taking up the controls and the onlookers taking up the dual roles of strategy consultants and battlefield managers, providing such helpful advice as, “fifth row needs spikes, replace the second row’s Tall-Nuts, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAN GET YOUR FUCKING CAT-TAILS UP!”

Seeing as it was Fitz who was the most deeply ensconced in the Plants vs Zombies addiction, he spent most of the night at the helm with myself and Adam providing moral, as well as practical, guidance. This culminated in an impressive (for us) 24 flag run before some complete idiot forgot to bring the Lily-pads along to the next level and everything went to shit. Annoyingly we then thought it would be a good idea to have a look at some YouTube tactics, which preceeded to ruin the whole thing by showing builds that can get you to 1,000+ flags. It kind of destroys the urge to build on your own tactics when you know how to completely kick shit out of the game.

Plants! Also zombies.

QWOP

For comedy potential nothing can be better than a few rounds of web game QWOP among friends when you’re a little bit drunk. With co-ordination already at an all time low any chance of not being completely shit goes out the window. Normally it’s the kind of game you’d try a few times and get bored of, but with people around a perverse competitive element comes to the fore. All of a sudden the keyboard is being passed around as you dare the next person to beat your personal best of 1.7 metres. The funniest moments are when someone actually starts doing well (read: takes 1 and a half steps relatively smoothly) then subsequently fucks it all up when trying to replicate the action.

Just Cause 2

Disaster! BOLOPatch no longer works with Just Cause 2 after an update to the game! This means that infinite ammo, infinite health and the all important ‘strong rope’ that it provides are no longer available to people who are just loading it up to have a dick about. This is especially a problem when you’ve installed a mod that increases the power of the C4 tenfold, as you will almost definitely be killed every time you use it. Aw, man!

Oh technically you can have fun with the unpatched, unmodded version. We played hours of it in its natural state on PS3, but that game got completed. Now the fun comes from sticking on a load of stupid mods, an unbreakable tether and making sure that inconveniences like running out of ammo or dying are never a problem. It becomes a game of messing about until inspiration hits a person, who asks “I wonder if we can tether a car to a jumbo jet, plant the car with C4 and then, just as it flies over a military base, untether it, ride it down onto the base like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove and detonate the C4 on impact?” With BOLOPatch out of commission you no longer can.

Explosions! Also death.

Left 4 Dead

After countless failures, I did another search for a step-by-step guide to getting Left 4 Dead working in splitscreen and, lo-and-behold, this time I came across an up-to-date version that accounted for the patch Valve added that stopped the old method working. It takes numerous console commands, re-jigging some config files and unplugging and replugging an Xbox controller at exactly the right moment but by Jove we got it to work. Adam vaguely wondered why they wouldn’t just add an option for splitscreen into the main menu, clearly showing he misses something fundamental about doing any task on a PC.

Anyway, this marks the easiest way for me to play some Left 4 Dead. Both games have been out so long now that joining a public match is tantamount to asking for someone to shout abuse in your face for an hour and most people I know who own the game are long since done with it. The downside is you’re forced to have two characters played by the AI, but they’re competent enough and the ease by which you can guide your other human teammate by literally pointing at the screen and talking them through sections more than makes up for it. I even started to experience those moments that people who play with friends over headsets were talking about long ago, specifically moments like: “Oh, I’m glad you’re all cosy in the safehouse, but would you mind awfully just popping out for a second and dealing with this zombie that is literally raping my face?! There’s a dear.”

Zombies! Also plants.

Previously on An Hour With: ‘“Red Faction Guerrilla recommends you install Raptr.” Red Faction Guerrilla can fuck off. Jesus Christ, it’s actually launched a Raptr installation executable. Red Faction Guerrilla can fuck right off. Still the patch is done. This had better be one hell of a hammer… Runtime error!’

Yes, my last attempt at running this feature had me trying different executables, installing phantom patches and, finally, shutting down my virus scanner before I could even get the game to run, at which point I had absolutely no desire to actually play the game. Two and a half months later, I’m back to try again.

Why Bother?

Good question! A mixture of that experience and Just Cause 2 had pretty much killed off any interest I had in the game. Luckily for RFG, my Playstation died a couple of months back taking JC2 with it. Sony have been apparently unable to rescue the game from its cold, dead hands. I’ve now re-bought it on PC after finding a cheap-o copy on the Internet. It’s downloading now so it’s seriously RFG’s last chance to impress. Why bother at all? Well, when one of PC Gamer’s writers turns up in the comments thread and tells you that, despite all the shit, it’s worth it, you should probably pay attention.

The Preamble

Anti-virus off. Game launching. GfW Live kicking into life. Update needs downloading. Shit. Luckily, this time it’s all sorted in the time it takes to make a cup of tea. Probably about 10% of my PC gaming experience revolves around making tea. With that sorted the game decides to work properly.

The Playtest

0:00 – Cutscene! The game seems to be bucking the trend of 98% of games set in space in that your character isn’t a space marine. For a moment I’m fooled into thinking the game will be relatively well written. Why? As your character returns to Mars and meets up with his brother he doesn’t say anything along the lines of “Hi brother,” one of my least favourite pieces of awkward character exposition. Instead the brother asks “How’s mum?” which is marginally less clunky. I soon realise how generous I was being, as the rest of the cutscene is awkward story exposition. The EDF have taken over and seem to be oppressing everyone. I’ve played/watched enough science fiction to make a safe guess that EDF stands for Earth Defence Force (Yup, I’ve just checked the manual which confirms it.)

3:00 – Tutorial time. My character announces that he’s here to mine, not gather scrap metal. I’m not here to do either, I’m here to use this large hammer that I’ve just been given. Luckily there’s a big wall between me and where I need to be.

3:15 – Oh dear God. You know, I was completely ready to intensely dislike this game, or at least not forgive it for all the shit I went through last time. That all changed when I first hit that wall. It’s brilliant! The destruction physics are properly amazing. Before long the wall is completely demolished and I’m giggling to myself like a 15 year old that’s spent a little too long sniffing gas out of a deodorant can.

5:30 – The game’s asking me to switch to remote charges to demolish two towers. Unfortunately, at my screen’s current resolution, I can’t actually make out which key it wants me to press to bring up the weapon select menu. My assumption is the number keys and the mouse wheel, but instead of confirming if I was correct (I was,) I take it as a sign that I should keep using the hammer.

14:00 – Yeah, the hammer works pretty well. In my exuberance the second tower falls on top of me while I’m destroying it from the inside. Luckily the developers had clearly anticipated people were going to be this stupid and the character just clips through the rubble, harmed but alive.

15:00 – Shit, the space cops are here!  Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I was brought here to salvage or mine or something. If the game ever explained why I was knocking the shit out of some towers then I missed it. Anyway, the cops kill the protagonist’s brother (Spoiler!) If I feel any sorrow over this act, it’s only because it’s likely to lead to a lengthy cutscene.

17:30 – Can I hammer something yet?

18:30 – Some posh British woman is further tutorialising me. Apparently I’m working for the resistance now. Extensive research shows me that I can’t smash her in the face with my hammer.

19:00 – In case you’re wondering, the thing that’s covering half the screen in the above screenshot is my character’s coat which, at various points in the game, decided nobody was going to keep it anchored to conventional laws of geometry and started to explore the screen.

28:30 – I’ve spent the last 10 minutes hammering everything in sight in our home base. People, buildings and cars all felt the wrath of my +2 Hammer of Childish Shit. Shortly after the video below was taken somebody got fed up with my destruction and started shooting me. Surprisingly it wasn’t the resistance realising they’d made a huge mistake, but instead the EDF. They feel the full force of Hammer Justice. One of them shouts “We can’t win,” which turns out to be a pretty accurate assessment as the protagonist appears to be a bullet sponge.

30:00 – I’m starting to feel a little embarrassed about my behavior, as well as the fact that population morale is at zero thanks to my actions, so I decide to go and do a mission.

33:00 – Woo! My mission is to go to a place and blow up (hammer) a load of stuff! I happily accept the task and begin driving to the objective.

35:00 – Car controls are typically sandbox in being a little twitchy but also very forgiving of crashing into things, although in Red Faction you don’t so much crash into as crash through. Another feature of the game’s destruction engine is that it fixes a problem that plagues so many action games. It’s impossible to get stuck between two bits of scenery when you can smash one into pieces.

36:00 – I get my first taste of mortality. You’d think years of watching King of the Hill would have taught me basic propane tank safety, but no. As my hammer connects with the tank the game decides it’s had just about enough of my consequence free trail of stupidity and promptly kills me.

37:00 – Okay, let’s try again. This time I might actually use those remote detonators.

43:00 – After a few barely-controlled explosions the space cops are back to stop me. Shooting ensues. It’s all pretty simple stuff and your character is remarkably resilient, even on normal mode. This is actually a good thing, as I made the mistake of playing Just Cause 2 on normal difficulty and, after a while, dealing with the army became a chore. When dicking about is a game’s primary means of fun easy is good.

44:00 – With the mission complete I drive back to base, accidentally parking my vehicle in a wall, and go back to being unhelpful.

45:00 – Colonist: “I wish my parents understood what I was fighting for.” It’s amazing just how po-faced and serious the story is. It’s completely at odds with how any person would ever play the game.

47:00 – As I destroy a skip (which NPCs keep throwing rocks into despite it no longer having sides) the game realises my primary focus up to now and pops up with a text box telling me that if I destroy buildings marked as red on the map, I’ll be lowering EDF control in the area or something. Hidden subtext: if you’re going to be a nuisance, at least be a useful nuisance. This leads to my second death of the game, as the first enemy structure I destroy turns out to be full of fuel.

52:00 – With no immediate objective in sight I check the map and notice a hammer icon. This deserves investigating.

54:00 – Shit! It turns out to be a challenge that requires me to use my pistol and explosive barrels to demolish a building. I can’t even select my hammer! Lying bastards!

57:00 – Oh, I was meant to move the explosive barrels into position before blindly shooting at them. My bad. Restart.

1:00:00 – I fail the mission again, despite having completely destroyed every wall. Seriously, look at the picture above, what the fuck’s holding it up? The ladder? How does that work? As soon as I exit the mission the tower falls over. Then my coat spazzes out again.

Conclusion

The story’s predictably shit and bizarrely serious and the game’s plagued by weird bugs (not just the coat thing, I had plenty of display issues as well.) Still, it seems to be great fun and, despite Just Cause 2 having just finished downloading, will probably see itself getting played a lot more often. Even at this stage, if you can find it going cheap, I can confidently say it’s worth picking up.

So this is going to become a more regular feature. Not weekly, or to any sort of regular human timescale, but certainly ‘more than once.’ The plan is to discuss specific stories or elements within a selection of games encountered that weekend in order to highlight what they are like to play from moment to moment rather than the usual overarching information on how well all the pieces tie together…

1. It’s an adventure game.
2. It’s about a Jewish community in New York.
3. The style is classic film Noir except, instead of playing a cynical Private Eye, your character is a disenchanted Rabbi.
4. Most conversations give the option of a ‘Rabbinical Response,’ which basically turns your next statement into a question.
5. Disenchanted Rabbi would be a great band name.

What Is It?

An open world game set on Mars. Massive hammer based destruction seems to be the focus. Beyond that I’ve got no idea. I did play the demo, however, and hated it.

Why Did You Buy It?

Legions of people saying that the demo was a poor reflection of the game, which is actually brilliant fun. Also this video. Also Game selling it for £5 over Christmas. Also the allure of hammering things.

The Preamble

Before I play the game, I have to start the game. This logic is undefeatable. Unfortunately I can’t find the bloody thing because there doesn’t seem to be a THQ, Volition or Red Faction Guerrilla folder in the start menu. Ah, of course. This is going to be one of those games that ignores the years old tradition of putting the executable files into an easy to sort through centralised set of nested folders, instead choosing to use the caustic wasteland of shit that is the Vista Games folder. This will need to be rectified.

I’ve got two reasons for using Steam as a centralised platform for launching all my games, whether they were bought through Steam or not. The first is, as a game launcher, it’s light years ahead of Vista’s awful Games folder. The second is that it adds the Steam overlay to non-Steam games, meaning they don’t crash to the fucking desktop when Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s Steam group announces one of their seemingly hourly TF2 matches. With RF:G added to the fold, shit can finally get hammered.

Runtime error! Fuck. Hmm, maybe my illicit Steam antics are causing issues. Time to brave the wastelands of the Games folder.

Nope, not that. To the Internet! Oh, my flatmate must be up because the Internet’s down. I really need to get around to resetting that bloody router. Still, at least I’m not playing a Ubisoft game (burn!)

The router’s remembered how to deal with two connections again… To the Internet! The only thing I learn from my search of ‘Red Faction Guerilla runtime error’ is my propensity for misspelling guerrilla. Maybe the game’s been patched? It has! Although the only patch download I can find is hosted by Gamespot, who want me to sign up to get it. I’ve gone this long without needing a Gamespot account, I’m not about to get one now.

Oh. Shit. RF:G uses Games for Windows: Live. This does mean it would auto-update patches but, crucially, only if I could start the fucking game. The game’s website is the usual flash-enabled hell of pointless screenshots and over-hyped feature lists. No help there then.

I’ve finally found the patch! Hidden on the community forum in a technical help thread. There’s also some advice for what to do if you can’t start your game.  Surprisingly none of the advice is “play a better made game,” which is what I’ve been leaning toward for the last 10 minutes. Okay, I’ll play along and update my graphics drivers.

I forgot, Nvidia’s auto update site doesn’t work properly in my Firefox browser. Hey, Internet Explorer, you’re going to get some work for a change. Make the most of it. Unsurprisingly I’ve already got the latest graphics driver update (well, excepting the one they removed for breaking people’s fans) this patch better work.

“Red Faction Guerrilla recommends you install Raptr.” Red Faction Guerrilla can fuck off. Jesus Christ, it’s actually launched a Raptr installation executable. Red Faction Guerrilla can fuck right off. Still the patch is done. This had better be one hell of a hammer.

Runtime error!

The very last suggestion in the technical help thread is “Uninstall and reinstall the game.” I’m certainly going to follow at least half of that advice. First though is the slightly bizarre suggestion of turning off all spyware and anti-virus software. How the fuck is that going to help? Is the game offended at the cowardice of using a full suite of security tools? Whatever, I can’t see it working but I’ve jumped through this many hoops already. Say goodnight, Bitdefender.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

The Playtest

Fuck it, I’ll do it another day.

Bayonetta

If you were writing a walkthrough of Bayonetta you’d probably have to start every paragraph with “after a lengthy cutscene.” Not only is the game’s story told in excruciatingly long cinematic chunks, it is, without doubt, one of the most completely batshit insane affairs I’ve ever seen in a videogame. I remember the first time I saw the anime Excel Saga not quite knowing whether to love or be disgusted by just how brutally retarded it was. Bayonetta’s like that. It might be brilliant. I’ve completed it and I’m still not entirely sure.

The actual game is on much more solid ground. It’s clearly in the same mould as Devil May Cry but Bayonetta is much more focused on the dodging mechanic. Time your dodges right and everything slows down leaving enemies open to combo attacks. It’s also a game that demands multiple playthroughs. Your first time through the game is primarily focused on surviving and figuring out how to defeat the myriad of enemies thrown at you. On subsequent attempts, as you can afford more powerful techniques and weapons, things should become much more centred around actually moving through the levels with style. At least that’s my theory – I’m not quite ready to delve in again.

Mass Effect 2

I’ve got no excuse for having not finished this yet, especially since it’s been the only thing I’ve wanted to play for most of February. The only reason that I can think of for my slowed progress is that I’m near the end – and the end means over a years wait for the next Mass Effect. If we were further into the year I’d call it my favourite game of the year so far. It’s a true statement still, but loses most of its impact if you say it at the start of March, especially when you’ve only played a couple of 2010 released games.

I’ve got a couple of posts lined up to go into some specifics but, as a general overview, I can confirm the truth in all the reviews. The combat is much improved over the last game. I’m now actually looking forward to the fights Shepherd finds herself in instead of merely putting up with them. That said, the true brilliance of the game, as with last time, lies in your interactions with your crew members. The overall plot might be a but more clunky this time round, but the characterisation of some of your team is as strong as ever.

Battlefield 1943

I’m still going through periods of playing this compulsively. In the period between the closure of the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 demo and the release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 this Friday it’s pretty much the only competitive online shooter I’ve played. For a console FPS that isn’t called Modern Warfare 2 it’s still surprisingly easy to find a game.

Luckily most of the hardcore FPS freaks have moved to MW2 so things are surprisingly casual for a game centred around shooting men in the face. I’ve been able to gain a respectable score while indulging in the stupid crap I tend to get up to when I become a little too familiar with an online game – excessive sniping, parachuting out of a plane at the right angle for it to cause insane explosions and parking a tank in the middle of an enemy base to see how much destruction I can cause before being blown up have all been unhelpful contributions to my team’s war effort.

Borderlands

Specifically the Mad Moxxi DLC pack which adds an arena mode to the game. With loot drops and XP earning removed for the arena battles the game’s forced to rely purely on its FPS mechanics. Luckily it rises to the challenge admirably, proving just how satisfying its gunplay is.

Because trying one of the arena battles solo is tantamount to buying a one way ticket to Rape City (which I don’t think is a real city) I’ve been forced to head online for co-op buddies. Generally I never do this with strangers because I assume they’ll be arseholes, hence why despite owning Left 4 Dead for about a year I’ve never actually played its campaign mode, but here your interactions are pretty basic. As waves of enemies flood your ranks your interactions are kept to “kill things, keep other players alive.” There’s very little room to be a dick because, if you are, you could lose a hell of a lot of progress.

Heavy Rain

This is how I’ve spent the last two evenings, and would be this evening if I could. It’s the same story as could be applied to any Quantic Dream game – if you’re the type of person who is prepared to enjoy it you will absolutely love the thing. I’m sure once I’ve finished the game and have gone back to try and elicit different results, once I’ve seen the limitations of the storytelling mechanic and the way you don’t have as much agency over the outcome as you first thought, I’ll be slightly less fond of the game. For now though it’s a rare example of a game where my decisions are reactions to often tense and stressful situations. I want to do the right thing for each character and trying to decipher just what that is where the game’s strength lies.

An example, that I’m keeping vague but is nevertheless slighlty spoilerish: A guy is pointing a gun at the head of my partner and I’m trying to talk him down. At each point I can choose a different topic to try and make him lower the gun or I can shoot him. With each attempt he’s becoming seemingly more erratic. Do I try a different approach? Have I got time? Oh God he’s going to pull that trigger at any moment… At which point I’m hammering the R1 button to take him down before I fuck it all up. Fuck. I don’t even like the guy I’m partnered with.

Yeah, Heavy Rain’s really fucking good.

My solution is sheer elegance in its simplicity: A list of increasingly esoteric awards covering some of the games that deserve some form of recognition but, for whatever reason, didn’t make the Top 10. Let’s go!

Wii Game of the Year: House of The Dead: Overkill

The Wii continues to be a console that receives almost no attention in my household. The only real exception to this rule was House of The Dead: Overkill. That did, at least, receive some attention. Not much, but some. It’s a well made on-rails shooter with a tongue-in-cheek horror aesthetic in the vein of Quentin Tarrantino’s idea of Grindhouse cinema. It’s got two player co-op and caused me to buy a giant plastic hand cannon so it inevitably won.

Honourable Mention: Bit.Trip Beat – Fantastic old-school arcade Wiiware title that’s kind of like a cross between Pong and Rez. Hard as all hell.

DS Game of the Year: Scribblenauts

This winning is probably a testament to how few DS games I’ve played this year. While Scribblenauts is delightful it is also, equally, frustrating. Unfortunately once you’ve thought of a solution to a puzzle it can be a fiddly process to actually implement that solution, with the mechanics of items not always corresponding to the way that item would behave in the real world. Still, it’s a game of stories. That I made a hard to reach button be pressed by placing God next to an atheist, causing the atheist to run in fear towards that button, is testament to the number of possibilities you have at your disposal.

PSP Game of the Year: GTA: Chinatown Wars

A few places have been giving this DS Game of the Year status but, if you compare the two versions, the PSP is the clear home of this game. The visuals are good enough that it feels like the successor to the original top down games. It’s surprising just how much of GTA4′s Liberty City is included in the game and remains easily recognisable. Also, in the drug trading sidequest, you have much more reason to engage in something outside of the main storyline than was ever offered in GTA4.

DLC/Expansion of the Year: WipEout Fury

The expansion to last years Wipeout HD offers nearly enough new content to justify it being a full sequel. The new Zone tracks are inspired peices of design; wide tracks with sharp corners really offering a sense of building tension and panic as the speed increases throughout. New game modes like Eliminator and Detonator give the game an arcade edge that isn’t concerned with the pursuit of perfect lines that make up most of the original. Eliminator, specifically, is a great concept. The mode lets you head to the front of the pack, do a 180 flip with the touch of a button and deploy a Quake down the track towards the trailing vehicles, destroying the majority of them. Anything that lets you be that much of a dick is a winner in my book.

Honourable Mention: Point Lookout (Fallout 3) - The best of the Fallout DLC releases, although one mired by technical problems (I’ve only just got the bloody thing to work properly.) This is the only one, of the DLC releases that take place outside of the main area, that isn’t just a series of linear locations to fight through. It’s also genuinely good looking, in a creepy incestuous way.

Disappointment of the Year: Ghostbusters

Just before its release there were some rumourings that this might actually be good. It wasn’t. I can only think of one 2009 gaming experience that angered me more. Ghostbusters’ problem wasn’t that its difficulty curve ramped up so high in the later levels that it was almost unplayable with the imprecise and unintuitive control system. It was that it was never funny or charming enough to give a reason for persisting with said difficulty curve.

Dishonourable Mention: Prince of Persia: Epilogue - I’ve made my issues with Prince of Persia known before, but had to admit there was a lot I liked about the game. There was nothing I liked about its Epilogue DLC. It took every problem I had with the original (artificial platforming constraints, terrible combat and unintuitive ‘power plates’) and amplified them. It then removed everything I liked about the original. Its worst crime was the Shapeshifter, a boss encountered multiple times that shifted between two bosses from the original. One of these was fucking unkillable. This was the 2009 gaming experience that angered me the most and the only reason it didn’t win (lose?) this category was because I wasn’t expecting much from it in the first place.

Co-op Experience of the Year: Modern Warfare 2 (Spec-Ops mode)

I could write a whole post on what Modern Warfare 2′s single player and multiplayer modes do wrong. I probably wont but, essentially, once you remove the artifices, the games flaws are all too apparent. Spec-Ops is the only mode that is genuinely brilliant and only then if you’re playing with a friend. Some of the missions you’re given are plainly ridiculous but, with a friend along, this just adds to the charm. An example: Me and Adam were doing a sniper mission in Chernobyl on veteran difficulty (bastard hard mode). Most of the mission was spent hidden behind derelict cars, one of us moving into the open, waiting to get shot and moving back hoping that the other had seen the glint that would give us the location of the sniper. An all round great experience.

Most Improved Sequel of the Year: Assassin’s Creed 2

I’ve still not got to the end, so that might still be rubbish but, even if it is, Assassin’s Creed 2 has already addressed my two problems with the original: There wasn’t enough to do and you couldn’t actually assassinate people. Whereas Assassin’s Creed 1 had you repeat the same series of tasks to find your target, 2 gives you a more traditional linear main story with side quests should you wish to do them. Actually having a crafted progression of missions ensures they are more interesting and keeps the story flowing at a better rate. More importantly you can kill a target without ever alerting a guard, and he goes down with a swift knife to the back like everyone else, no more having to engage him in a fight just because he’s important.

Game that was technically a 2008 release but wasn’t out on PC till 2009 of the Year: Braid

At this point praising Braid is like saying The Godfather was quite good. I may be repeating every other gaming site out there but Braid is genuinely brilliant. It’s the only puzzle game in recent memory that I’ve found genuinely challenging. I went through it again recently in the role of ‘puzzle advisor’ giving hints as Adam played it and was struck by just how much your brain starts to mesh with the game’s constructs and manipulations of time. The ending (by which I mean World 1-1, not so much the Epilogue) is also gut-wrenchingly poignant.

Game that would probably be my game of the year if I could find the time to really play it of the Year: Dragon Age: Origins

I’ve only just got to the part where you begin to choose which order you visit locations. It’s still not quite ‘clicked’ with me yet, a clunky expression I use to define the moment in an RPG where the mechanics and story form a perfect storm of obsession in my head and I will actually start to devote serious time for it. Still, there are things I like already, mostly that the games morality is based on what individual characters think of you, forcing you to learn about them and the strength of their beliefs if you want to keep on their good side. I knew threatening violence against a priest would annoy Alistair, what I didn’t realise was just how much he would disapprove.