This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
We set out to make our Best of 2009 Non-Award Awards as unaward-like as possible, but hey, let’s not get crazy. It’s just not a Non-Award Awards without a Best Game of the Year, except in our case it’s Best Games, plural.
Our picks include a $20 downloadable title from PopCap, adventures starring roguish and/or lovable Sony and Nintendo mascots, a stylized genre hybrid, and an 80-hour role-playing game. Diverse as these games are, it’s tough to argue that any of them don’t belong here. Well, except for one game on this list that most people seem to love or hate….
Want more Best ofs? We got ’em:
Bitmob’s Best of 2009: Part 1
Bitmob’s Best of 2009: Part 2
Bitmob’s Best of 2009: Part 3
Bitmob’s Best Games of 2009 (you are here)
Bitmob’s Best Worst of 2009: Part 1
Bitmob’s Best Worst of 2009: Part 2
Uncharted 2
By Mike Minotti
Remember when I told everyone that Uncharted 2 was going to
be Game of the Year weeks before it came out? Let’s just say my “I Was
Right” hat has been getting plenty of use since the New Year.
Even if you somehow disagree, you’d be hard pressed to say that
general opinion isn’t with me on this one. IGN, 1UP,
the Spike Video
Game Awards, and Game Informer are among those to bestow top honors
to the game. You may think that popular opinion isn’t everything, but you would
be wrong. Democracy always wins. Just ask the English.
Uncharted 2 was in a class by itself this year. Sure, other
games had moments of excellence, but Uncharted 2 is
excellence. A majority of media outlets can’t be wrong. Ever.
Plants vs. Zombies
By Dan ‘Shoe’ Hsu
Many different groups went to war in 2009: Russians, Americans,
Covenant…and lots of zombies. And while people had success putting down the
undead with triple-barreled Hydra shotguns (Resident Evil 5) and electrified sniper bullets
(Borderlands), no call to arms was more memorable than Plants vs. Zombies‘.
Peashooters, winter-melon launchers, and cabbage-pults, along
with dozens of other garden-variety weapons and defensive measures, prove that
cheesy and creative aren’t mutually exclusive. And these veggies aren’t
vegetables, either: They’re adorable, personality-filled plants that dance to
the catchy soundtrack, giving them a life you wouldn’t expect given the game’s
title.
Yet all this cuteness is only a charming front for a very deep
(but not difficult) strategy game containing a mind-blowing amount of modes,
plants, zombies, and unlockables. All that for a low, downloadable price? Game
of the Year for me, thank you.
Dragon Age: Origins
By Demian Linn
Wipe away the blood gushing in and around Dragon
Age: Origins and you’ll find
an amazing — and huge — game under all that egregious gore.
Multiple origin stories lead up to a sprawling
adventure through underground dwarven cities and the rest of war-torn Ferelden,
epic battles with, well, dragons among other, less-epic things, and a cast of
characters with so much personality that they’ll banter with each other while
you work on saving the land.
It’s an old-time dungeon hack updated for modern
sensibilities and tech; the first game in years to pull me away from World of
Warcraft (temporarily, I’m
sure, although I haven’t relapsed yet), and some of the best 80 hours of 2009.
Demon’s Souls
By Rob Savillo
Of the many things I’ve written about Demon’s Souls — from its
excellent and tactically interesting combat, innovative multiplayer that’s
simultaneously comforting and dreary, oppressively ominous environments and
atmosphere, to an emphasis on gameplay-directed storytelling — one thing
stands out.
Demon’s Souls is a game above all else. The dark fantasy,
action-role-playing game isn’t a mechanism to shuffle me through a paper-thin
narrative. Rather, Demon’s Souls continually offered a series of interesting
choices to ponder.
No other game provided as much engaging challenge as Demon’s
Souls. Everything I earned I worked to achieve, and I’m that much more
satisfied as a result.
Demon’s Souls has set a high bar for quality in game design, and
I find myself measuring other title to this brilliant work of art.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
By Brett Bates
Four us of struggled through the final Bowser level nearly 20
times before that one glorious moment when it all clicked: We stomped, bubbled,
and leapt blindly as one. It was magical. On more than one occasion the last
player alive would appear to fall to a fiery doom, only to pop another player’s
bubble as they fell. We hit upon the perfect combination of luck, skill, and
teamwork, and we were unstoppable. When we finally stomped the switch that
sealed Bowser’s fate, I literally fell out of my chair in exhilaration.
That’s why we play video games — we want to capture those moments
of pure fun. And NSMB had more of those than any other game I played this year.
Borderlands
By Ryan Rubis
Borderlands is the action-packed, post-apocalyptic yin to Fallout 3‘s deliberately
paced yang, and was a great way to close out this otherwise dull (to me, at
least) year.
Truth be told, the individual components that constitute
Borderlands don’t really make for a gripping game. The gunplay — while
competent — lacks that extra “oomph” of more established FPS
entries, and the role-playing game bits are bereft of the item slots,
consistent narrative, intuitive interface, and deep character customization of
conventional Diablo clones.
I’ve heard people complain that it’s nothing more than a tech demo for a bigger
and better game, and y’know what…I really can’t argue with that.
It’s the video game equivalent of a 3 a.m. gas station taco: you know it really isn’t that good, but for
what it is, it’s good enough, and fills a need. I’m not exactly sure what that need is, personally, but I
think it has to do with shooting things with your friends and collecting more
things that the aforementioned things you shot leave behind. Developer Gearbox
deserves major props for successfully melding the two most played-out genres in
gaming (click-click-click loot games and shooters).
