Tag Archives: Xbox 360

Best of 2009, Games, GOTY, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2009 #4: Street Fighter IV

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“Oh my god. This is the shit.”

That summation, taken from a friend – a huge Street Fighter II fan – after his first few silent moments with Street Fighter IV, pretty much captures how I think most fighting fans felt when they got their hands on it. Street Fighter III was great, but it was such a step away that it was always going to be difficult to love quite as much.

Capcom, seemingly, knew this when it came to doing the sequel thing over again. This wasn’t Street Fighter III, and it certainly wasn’t Street Fighter EX; this was Street Fighter II’s successor.

It’s quite simply a magnificent fighting game. While its competitors, which have been more active over the past few years, have built dauntingly huge character rosters with moves lists the length of a toilet roll and more and more realistic visuals, Capcom eschewed such nonsense and took a pleasingly retro tack with this, and it was a big part of what I loved about it. A cherry-picked line-up with some largely inoffensive new additions – I don’t count Seth there, obviously – and moves list that fit on a single screen not only made complete mastery both tempting and feasible, but also brought back that old-school chess feeling, where your small pool of resources is well balanced and every character can beat every other one; you just have to work out how.

It was the only game that enchanted me into spending over £100 on a controller – not for Activision’s lack of trying – and I’ll probably be buying Super Street Fighter IV in a few months if that gets the old crowd in for another round. Capcom did a phenomenal job of actually following up Street Fighter II while keeping the essence and making it feel modern, and so here’s my recognition of that massive achievement.

Best of 2009, Games, GOTY, Xbox

Best of 2009 #5: Shadow Complex

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If there was one genre that I didn’t expect to see making a high-profile resurgence this year, and from Epic of all studios, it was Metroidvania. With Metroid having gone all first-person and Castlevania not taking no for an answer in its attempts to be the new God of War, the two standard bearers seemed to have abandoned it. Indeed, we didn’t even know this existed until E3, which made the surprise of how bloody good it was all the more pleasurable.

Given that there’s not a lot of pedigree for these kinds of games around any more, it’s all the more remarkable. A first attempt, on an engine more used to high-budget shooters – I believe part of Epic’s plan when picking up this title was to showcase Unreal Engine 3’s surprising versatility – and they created a game that I’d certainly put up there with the best in the genre.

It impressed me with how well the engine adapted, and a few kinks with the three-dimensional aiming aside, the technology only enhanced it, with some extremely impressive set pieces and sweeping changes to environments that just wouldn’t be possible on last-gen or wholly 2D engines. And even though it undeniably followed the genre template down to the smallest detail – really, the fact that you start from scratch rather than losing your all-powerful character’s weapons and abilities after the prologue is the only difference between this and Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid, structurally speaking.

I loved Shadow Complex, and it kept me going right to the brink of finding absolutely everything, where only a few irritating secrets remain. So with this and Battlefield 1943 showing that new takes on classic concepts works just as well as twin-stick shooters on Live Arcade, let’s hope that 2010 brings us more of that. I’d love to see some of my favourite long-dead 16-bit era gaming styles making a return.

Best of 2009, Games, GOTY, Xbox

Best of 2009 #7: Halo 3: ODST

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Can an expansion qualify for a GOTY list? Is Halo 3: ODST an expansion at all? Legitimate questions all, but I think that ODST, besides being a standalone release, is different enough to qualify. To be honest, beyond name recognition, did it even need to be painted as part of Halo 3 at all? Most of it happens concurrently with Halo 2, after all.

Semantics aside, I thoroughly enjoyed ODST, even as a relative disappointment after the massive event that was Halo 3. It’s partly a victim of Call of Duty usurping Halo as the 360’s premier franchise and, I think, partly down to people simply getting bored of the games, and I hope that Reach is different enough to win people back around.

So yes, a disappointment. But playing it, I was reminded of how much I enjoy Halo. To say that it’s been made irrelevant by Modern Warfare is extremely unfair because they play very different games, and I love Halo’s unscripted, free-form battles just as much as Infinity Ward’s brand of breakneck, scripted Hollywood action. ODST further courted my affections by somehow feeling more like the original, possibly down to the added vulnerability that comes from needing health packs, and it was a welcome challenge after playing through two Halo games in which you’re the baddest motherfucker in the galaxy.

Plus Firefight was pretty awesome. Expect to see variants of Gears 2’s Horde mode showing up throughout 2010’s shooter line-up.

Halo still needs a kick up the backside, though. Most will pick Modern Warfare 2’s success as the thing to do it, but I think that me only putting it seventh on this list will be the thing to do it. Wait until Bill Gates sees this…

Best of 2009, Games, GOTY, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2009 #8: Borderlands

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I don’t have any more categories than an overall top ten when I pick my game of the year, but if I was going to nominate the best value purchase of the year it would certainly be Borderlands. It cost me less than £18 and I got far more out of it than most full-price purchases. And thankfully it’s not been completely overlooked either, as it’s the fastest-selling new IP of 2009 and has sold handsomely.

It’s one of those surprise packages that I didn’t see coming at all, looking like nothing more than a random gun gimmick that got a quick facelift to stop it being completely lost in the shuffle as another FPS with RPG elements set in a deserted wasteland. How wrong I was. It’s a genius idea, taking the best bits from first-person shooters and MMORPGs and blending them masterfully to create something that can be played alone or with friends, and is also immense fun whichever way you do it.

I have friends who wouldn’t touch an MMORPG with a ten-foot pole but fell right into Borderlands, in one case spending over 15 hours with it over a weekend, and I’m really excited to see where the framework is used now. We know that a sequel is coming and that ‘Borderworlds’ has been trademarked – the fact that it’s plural is the really interesting thing in that title – and more of the same, perhaps with some more varied environments and a bit of visual character customisation, would be brilliant and a certain purchase for me, but Gearbox should really take it to its natural conclusion as a true MMOFPS. This with an active and populated world could be the MMO recipe that finally manages to click with me.

So well done, Gearbox, for coming onto this list with the latest entry and being one of the year’s genuinely nice surprises. Here’s to Borderworlds.

Best of 2009, Games, GOTY, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2009 #9: Resident Evil 5

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Alas, adding co-op to the framework for one of the best action-adventure games ever made wasn’t enough to blow minds as the same formula managed to do in 2005, but Resident Evil 5 still deserves recognition. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing you could accuse its developer of – besides being staffed by massive racists, obviously – is only making minor improvements to the game that netted dozens of game of the year awards not too long ago. They must be mad.

Some of that was simply down to how things have moved on since Resident Evil 4, as shooters with the same perspective and arguably more friendly mechanics are ten a penny these days. Some of it was also down to the fact that, unless you had more dedicated friends than me, you had to spend the whole game reliant on an AI partner, and you’re a lot less willing to forgive the mistakes of that than you are a real person. The notion of this being survival horror went out the window with the last game and it’s even less so now, and the proliferation of this style has, perversely, left what was groundbreaking only a few years ago feeling aged.

As always seems to the the way, I’ve ended up sounding really down on this game, and I’m not at all, because it’s still an excellent adventure that just has flaws that you need to be willing to look past, which, people tend to forget, has always been the way with Resident Evil. To change it too much, to bow to the pressure of its predecessor’s pretenders, would stop it being Resident Evil, and that’s what I still want from this series; if I want to play Gears of War, I’ll play Gears of War. This felt like a member of the series, helped by the reappearance of series tropes that had gone walkabout recently.

There’s big pressure on the next one, and if it’s as good as this one I’ll be at the front of the line. We’ve got Umbrella back, so how about some zombies?

Games, Impressions, PlayStation, Xbox

LTTP: Batman: Arkham Asylum

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This game has blown me away. Whatever Rocksteady does next, I’m already interested.

I know I’m only a month or so removed from the game’s release, but that seems like a lifetime these days, when my entire friends list has already deserted this for Forza 3 and FIFA 10. We’re a fickle bunch with short attention spans, us gamers.

But anyway, my initial statement is an accurate summation of how this game makes me feel, now that I’ve got around to playing it as a belated birthday present. I remember saying, back when Zelda: Twilight Princess came out, that it was the first time in ages that I’d found myself losing track of time as I played, and Arkham Asylum has been one of the few games since to have done the same thing. The other day I sat down to play, intending to do so for an hour or so, and ended up stopping four hours later. The next day, five and a half. I started at 7:00 and literally the next time I looked at the clock it was 11:30. It’s scary when it happens, but it’s also the mark of a very, very good game.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

A lot of this game’s inspirations are obvious, but Rocksteady has certainly picked the right ones. Arkham has that same worn-down and dirty – not to mention suspiciously unsanitary for a hospital – look of BioShock’s Rapture, as well as discarded audio diaries to fill in the back stories; it plays to the strengths of Unreal Engine 3 – it’s really one of the best-looking non-Epic uses of the tech, with gorgeous character models and brilliant animation – by making its buildings and architecture look like they come directly from Sera, but still differentiates itself by looking like a Batman game.

Rocksteady’s carefully straddled the line between accessibility and fan service, presenting an almost-complete who’s who of Batman villains – Batman’s no killing policy and the ending leave the possibility for sequels open, of course – with hundreds of nods to famous characters and events in Batman’s past to be found, mainly through the Riddler’s challenges. I’m a bit of a Batman fan and I don’t recall anything that will cause the fanboys to lose too much sleep through the developer taking liberties, and there are a few elements that I know are drawn from the comics but drew confused rolled eyes from laymen who assumed that it was Rocksteady fabricating things.

Coming at the game late on, I’d heard about the saggy portion as the game approached its climax, but I didn’t find it problematic at all. The game moves at a fantastic pace, bringing in new areas and gameplay elements constantly, doing a superb job of giving you new and interesting things to do. A list of gadgets and new moves meant that stealthy confrontations with multiple enemies was something I looked forward to, because the game does a stunning job of making you feel like Batman, using your skills to isolate an enemy and take him down silently as his friends are made ever more anxious and jumpy – look at the scene in Batman Begins when he clears a room of thugs by darting around and hiding in the rafters and imagine how badass it feels to do it yourself.

And the aforementioned all-star cast of the Dark Knight’s nemeses is certainly done justice. Only a couple really strike me as feeling like your typical boss battles, and the rest are of extremely high quality. Without spoiling anything, the encounters with Scarecrow are stunningly well done, and I have high hopes that he’ll be back in the next one.

I heartily recommend this game. It’s running high in my provisional GOTY list and while it’ll do well to top the one to beat, it’s definitely one of this year’s best adventures.