Are you noticing a pattern yet? This week all of us at Gaming Daily are putting together our games of the year lists, which makes us several times listier than those websites who put out one big list. Collaboration is for the weak.
So here’s my top three, I’ve played most of this year’s big releases with indie darling Braid and mainstream behemoth Modern Warfare 2 the most major releases to pass me by. I’ve also excluded the excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum from the running as, terrific game though it is, I ended up treacherously playing it on console, rather than via ourglorious personal computing master.
3: Tales of Monkey Island
For the adventure gamer, the last ten years have been a barren wasteland. Since Grim Fandango in 1998 and Discworld Noir in 1999 we had been forgotten, unloved by the world of games. Point and click was out and year after year after year there was no hint, no chance of anyone every changing this new order. Then, in 2009 a voice cried out in the darkness, a whisper at first, but rapidly growing to a crescendo, and it said: “LET THERE BE NEW MONKEY ISLAND GAMES”.
At first we couldn’t believe it, this must be some cruel joke, some gross temptation, then the angry internet men came, like a lover that has been hurt too many times before they acted, almost in self defence, to pick and prod and undermine the idea, to vanquish all hope before it had begun to take hold. The rest of us waited, unable to think beyond one simple, solitary thought “Dear God, please let them be good”. And lo, they were.
The Tales of Monkey Island games are far more than just a series of fine adventure games, clever in wit and intricate in puzzle, they’re more than just proof that episodic gaming can truly work, they’re a symbol of the rebirth of one of gaming’s greatest genres. They’ve carefully taken the best aspects of each of the previous games, the unique setting and characters of the first, the surprising darkness of the second and the quickfire humour and excellent voice cast of the third and merged them into an excellent whole. I doubt there’s anyone who will ever name the Tales Games as their favourite in the series, but they’re a sterling addition to the roster, and they’re proof that these games can still be made, can still find an audience, and can still be loved.
2: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2
2009 was, for me, a year in which PC gaming was ascendant, for consoles the beginning of the year was rather quiet, but we PC gamers were already seeing an almighty battle being fought over the crown of best RTS of the year. While Empire: Total War was a quality game, I never found myself getting into it for a long period of time, and instead it was Relic’s superb RTS/RPG hybrid that drew me in.
Dawn of War 2 is actually three distinct games: the campaign is a stripped down RTS with strong RPG elements, seeing you control just a handful of squads cleverly and tactically against a horde of enemies, grabbing loot and levelling up, customising them in various ways. While fairly fun by yourself it’s with the addition of a second player that the game really comes to life, with only two squads each you get to know the strengths and weaknesses of each intimately and manage them with devastating flair. But more than that you come to know and embody their personalities, for those few weeks I was Avitus, the immovable object, the stubborn base of firepower upon which victory is built and Thom was Thadeus, brash and eager, always wanting to end things with brutal hand to hand combat.
The second game was the more standard RTS (although still lacking in base building) multiplayer, which while competent never really held my attention and had things remained that way Dawn of War would have faded from my memory and probably never appeared on this list. But things did not remain as such, Relic managed to surprise us all by taking a leaf out of the Team Fortress 2 handbook. First came the ‘There is only War’ patch, which rebalanced the multiplayer extensively, but that was just a prelude, it was the next patch ‘The Last Stand’ which really drove Dawn of War forwards, adding a third unique game mode.
The Last Stand took the RPG elements of the game to their logical extreme, putting you in the shoes of three heroes, each with upgradeable wargear that allowed you to customise them in various ways, and pitted you against wave after wave of enemies. It was fun, it was tense and it generated stories of epic feats and discussions of the best builds, it made the game talked about in a way that the original campaign, great though it was, never had. It gave the game life after we all thought it was dead, and that is why it’s in this list.
1: Dragon Age: Origins
What is there to say about Dragon Age that hasn’t already been said by Craig? Well I don’t think it’s the best game I’ve ever played, but I do think it’s damn close. I love Bioware RPGs, and many of them have been real contenders for the top of their genre, so it means a lot when I say that Dragon Age makes everything Bioware have done to date look like kid’s stuff.
Those unwilling or unable to look beyond the surface might dismiss Dragon Age as a generic fantasy RPG, but it is so much more than that, it’s writing evokes a depth and complexity that has not truly been seen since the glory days of Black Isle. Bioware have often drawn criticism for their simplistic and bipolar moral choices, but in Dragon Age this system has been torn up, and instead one sees several difficult choices between shades of gray. There were several occasions, especially in the endgame, where I simply had to walk away from the PC and spend some time thinking long and hard about what I was going to do.
In Orzammar you are asked to support a candidate for King without a clear view of their platform, you have only the words of their supporters who inevitably slander the opposition and present themselves in the best possible light. For a while I was annoyed at this lack of information before I realised that this is what politics is really like and that the writers have simply refused to sugar coat things for us.
Dragon Age oozes character from every pore, playing as a Dwarf Commoner you start the game with a companion called Leskey, a suave roguely type who I immediately grew to like. Playing again as an Elf I only met him once, where he said but one line of dialogue, yet I never felt that the game was lessened by this, such is the attention to detail that has been lavished on this game.
During the build up to Dragon Age many saw it as the epitaph for Fantasy RPGs, that this would mark the moment the mainstream abandoned them to eastern Europe and the indie scene. If this is the case, than Dragon Age has ensured that they go not with a whimper, but with one last, great hurrah and if no more such games are made it will not be because they are considered a poor or unprofitable genre, but simply because all other attempts will forever be in Dragon Age’s shadow.
