On the face of it 2009 wasn‘t a great year for gaming, after all a lot of the big name games that a lot of us were no doubt looking forward to were delayed so as to avoid competition with Modern Warfare 2. But when you think about it we really did have a good gaming year. Not only game wise either, for 2009 was the year that the PS3 became a major competitor in the console wars with its price drop and redesign. Even I bought into this and now am a somewhat proud owner of a PS3.

But enough about the technicalities and onto the games. Taking my cue from a good friend of mine, SegaZoom (who can be found at http://allandavison.co.uk/blog) I’ll do this in a list format. Easier to write and easier to read. And so in alphabetical order let us begin.

Batman: Arkham Asylum: If you’ve read any of my gaming blogs before you’ll know that I’m all about a solid single player experience, an experience that sadly seems to be dying. But Arkham Asylum tries to remedy this by focusing entirely on single player. An incredible amount of fun from start to finish, and even beyond in the case of collectables and riddles, Arkham Asylum never fails to entertain for fans of the action/adventure genre. The stealth sections are handled expertly, never as unforgiving as say Splinter Cell but never feeling shoved in either. Combat wise it can get repetitive, but the only time you should really notice this is after you’ve completed the bulk of the (superb) story.
Borderlands: A surprise hit for me this year, Borderlands is an MMORPGFPS. It plays like a mix of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The gunplay is tight and accurate (unlike Fallout 3 which I believe to be a great overhype, but more on that at a later date) and the open world environment is never boring to traverse. The missions (or quests) are always of a standard MMO fare, basically go here, kill this, collect so many of these, but when tackled as a group of up to 4 people this is immensely fun. Just be ready to argue over who gets what loot.

Killzone 2: Hyped as the PS3 exclusive that would bring the end to Halo’s reign as the benchmark for console shooters, Killzone 2 was never going to be able to live up to the hype, but in its credit it does a very good job. The single player is ample and different from most console shooter fares, everything that you do has a weight to it, that is to say you feel like everything you do has an effect on the world, every bullet seems powerful, every reload is a tense moment, and even the superbly implemented first person cover system makes the whole experience a finely crafted exercise in the standard go here shoot this genre. But it still doesn’t have that fun factor that other shooters have. Until you get into the frankly excellent multiplayer. While not on the same page as MW2 the way every objective transitions into the next on the fly is in a word brilliant, each game lasting roughly 30 minutes you’ll wish they went on longer. MW2 may be perfectly balanced but Killzone 2 shows what multiplayer should evolve into.

Modern Warfare 2: I believe I don’t really need to say much about MW2, seeing as it was touted as the biggest release in media entertainment history, but there are a few things I’d like to say. First of all single player wise it’s short, shorter and easier than even the original Modern Warfare. But while it last it is immense amounts of fun. Basically a playable version of a Michael Bay blockbuster, expect set pieces, plot twists and explosion at every turn. But the main reason anybody would really p[lay this game is for the multiplayer, which as always is superb and refined, rewarding you for spending time with it but never making the new-old experience gap too unbearable. Competitive multiplayer at its finest.

Prototype: Sandbox New York, super powered protagonist. Sounds a lot like the Spiderman games. And it was a lot like the Spiderman games, yet it was a lot more enjoyable (apart from Spiderman 2). You played an anti-hero that rampaged his way through the city destroying the military and the infection that had consumed the city itself. Both a hero and a villain. The story kept you hooked through an intriguing consume and discover mechanism, where you would absorb someone who knew about what was going on and you would gain their memories. All in all an excellent sandbox hero game.

Resident Evil 5: Personally I absolutely loved RE5, It was RE4 but with a friend. But it wasn’t without its faults. When you weren’t in fact playing with a friend you would have to babysit the AI, which on the higher difficulty settings made the game almost impossible, especially when their death would cause a game over. But when playing with a friend the game was a masterpiece of third person survival shooting. Many people belittled the controls (indeed the year previous Dead Space had shown us that a game exactly like this could have standard controls and still be exactly as intended) but the controls that were implemented were very much part of the experience, being unable to strafe and shoot while you moved allowed the slow paced enemies to pose an actual threat. My recommendation would be to pick this up if you had someone you could sit down with and play with, because that’s an awesome experience, but with the AI it’s pretty much an avoid.

Scribblenauts: A potentially fun little DS game, Scribblenauts would take my award for most disappointing game of the year if I was to give one. Yes it is fun to make things fight each other for five minutes but the novelty soon wears off and the actual missions can be easily solved by only a couple of items. Not much I can right about this game because in all honesty I couldn’t bring myself to play it much.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: It took me a while to finally play this game, in the end I had to lend it off SegaZoom, but it wasn’t because I wasn’t interested, it was because I was always involved with something else this year. When I finally got around to playing it I found an immensely satisfying hack and slash game that followed the story of the film somewhat faithfully but even expanded upon it in a logical and believable way. How many tie-ins can you think of that did the source material good and even expanded upon it to make an awesome experience? Never as deep as ninja gaiden or as ‘epic’ as God of War, Wolverine was consistently enjoyable, never too hard, never too easy. One of the best film tie-ins ever produced.

Uncharted 2: Out of alphabetical order but I had to save the best till last. Being perfectly honest I will be unable to give Uncharted 2 the praise it deserves here. Its gaming excellence, hall of fame worthy, and indeed one of my top 5 games of all generations. The single player is beyond comparison for cinematic excellence, perfect pacing, brilliant voice acting and general direction. You can always control the camera in UC2 but at times I found myself never touching the stick for the camera always found the perfect shot if what was going on, and the set pieces have to be experienced. The first 30 seconds of UC2 gave me more good feelings than the whole of Arkham Asylum, and I loved Arkham Asylum. All I can say is that Uncharted 2 really is worth buying a PS3 for, even more so than Metal Gear Solid 4, and if you know me then you know just how much that means. Uncharted 2 is without hesitation, without a doubt my game of the year 2009. Play it, if you don’t have a PS3 find someone who does and play it with them. This is the argument that games are art. This is the argument that games are the films. This is the argument that single player is better than multiplayer. This is gaming perfection. Oh and did I mention that this also has an awesome multiplayer component to rival Killzone and Modern Warfare?

In conclusion I would like to say that some games are in fact missing form this list because either I haven’t played them (I’m even now still trying to catch up with 2008) so if your game of the year 2009 isn’t here worry not, it just means I was unable to experience it this year. But even so I stand by my statement that uncharted 2 is better than it. Seriously, it’s just that good.

-DiehardSpook, feeling dirty for calling a PS3 game the best of the year

Firstly I finally got around to completing Arkham Asylum, and I have to say I loved it. I may not actually be able to remember what games game out in 2009 but Arkham is defiantly one of the best. But this doesn’t mean it’s without its flaws. As you have probably heard, the combat is repetitive, but truthfully I never found this a problem. The combat in this game just feels right. Yes it’s the same all the way through but it’s just so much fun to chain together huge combos with your bare hands and batarangs. The stealth is also satisfying to play. Granted it doesn’t rival Splinter Cell or Metal Gear, but it isn’t meant to, its batman, and that’s what it feels like. Hanging upside down from a gargoyle before grabbing a lone passerby never gets old.

The story as well is great, feeling like a true batman story, which I won’t spoil here. What truly makes the story gripping though is the voice acting. I don’t know whether it’s because I grew up watching the animated series or just because it is superb voice acting, but hearing Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil reprise their roles as the Dark Knight and The Joker respectively brings a sense of childish glee I haven’t felt in a long time. The supporting cast is also top notch. In fact if I had to pick a weak link in the VA I would have to go with Kevin Conroy’s Batman, which I still felt was excellent, albeit a little dry.

Game play wise, story wise, and for sheer fun this game is a masterpiece, possible GOTY material. And I would like to point something out here; this game is SINGLE PLAYER ONLY. Which I don’t want to say I told you so but I believe I once ranted about the greatest gaming experiences being solely single player.

All in all I would recommend picking up this game somehow, rent it, buy it, borrow it, anything, just please play this wonderful exhibit of gaming pleasure.

Moving on I would now like to mention the newest update to the NXE which brings us Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM. I only use Facebook to update my status and read other peoples but for this it seems to work brilliantly on the Xbox, even allowing me to see Facebook friends who have Xbox live and vice versa. Twitter I never use so I can’t mention what that’s like. But I love Last.FM. Even right now I have it playing in the background, currently tuned to the “electronic tag” channel. It’s great to just type in an artist or genre and have it play that kind of music in the background. The only shame is that you can’t stream it in the background of something else.

Something I recently discovered as well is the superb Supernatural. I bought seasons 1-3 on the recommendation of a couple of friends and I have to say I’ve been hooked since Episode 1. If I was to compare it to something it would be the X-Files monster of the week episodes, which I must admit is a bloody good thing to be compared to. The story follows Sam and Dean Winchester as they travel America hunting spirits and demons. Most of the episodes follow a monster of the week format, but there is an overarching storyline involving the death of the brother’s mother. I won’t go into detail so as to avoid spoilers, but I will say that it’s a story that’s good enough to hold the series together and keep you interested.

There are still a few things I want to talk about (Banjo-Kazooie, Shadow Complex, Magic the Gathering, the Lost Symbol, Matt Hazard, Ninja Blade, Killzone, Metal Gear, Uncharted, Forza and more) but in the interest of not wanting to build a mountain of text Ill save these for a future update.

-DiehardSpook, because he wants to believe

I pre-ordered ODST many months ago, and left it sitting in my que at play.com. Then not long before its release my dad used my play account (and his card) to buy something. Subsequently his card details were saved and used to pay for ODST upon release. It appears that even the fates don’t want me to miss a Halo game (although not as much as Alan who dragged me out of bed at 8am to camp outside blockbuster to make sure he got a copy).

So what can I say about ODST? Not much really, its basically Halo 1 with a new engine and new levels. Seriously. But thats why I love it so much. Halo 1 was always the best of the trilogy (despite having so much lag in gameplay it was almost  unplayable on a 360).

I doubt anybody would disagree with me when I say that Halo was the game that brought about the shift from health bars to recharging health in shooters, so I feel its somewhat poetic that a Halo game brings them back. Granted that later part isn’t too true seeing as Far Cry 2 also had a health bar (semi rechargeable) and no doubt other shooters have, but putting that way wouldn’t have sounded as nice. A health bar doesn’t mean you don’t have rechargeable  health however. In ODST you have a shield, but it isnt actually called a shield, its called your stamina, but it works in exactly the same way. Think Halo 1 and its shield / Health bar system and you have exactly what ODST has.

Weapon wise its pretty much a clone as well as the scoped pistol makes a triumphant return. And gone is dual wielding, but to tell the truth I never found myself in a situation I wanted to dual wield..
The main complaint that seems to be circling the web though is that the length of ODST isn’t adequate enough to justify full price. I disagree. My first play through was on Legendary (hardest) 2 player co-op, and it lasted 7 hours, a somewhat average time for shooters today. But then there are the tens of hours I have played on the new “firefight” mode (similar to gears of wars horde mode but with the halo skulls changing up the gameplay every round). Then there is even the 2nd disc. Granted this is just a repackage of the maps from Halo 3 with the only new feature being 3 exclusive maps, but we were told all the time before release that this is what the 2nd disc would be, so I cant understand why people are complaining about this. For me it was a pretty good deal though seeing as I am somewhat against DLC for reasons unbeknown to myself and didn’t have any of the new map packs.

Yes, I may be something of a Halo fan (although not a fanboy, that word is reserved for MGS) and love everything that has had its name on so far (books, games, comics, adverts) but even people who aren’t fans of Halo have found ODST to be a very enjoyable game. However I can not recommend a buy unless you enjoyed the other Halo games, because if you didnt enjoy the, then after the rental length campaign you won’t find much else to spend your time with.

-DiehardSpook, 40,000gs, thats my excuse for the lack of updates – score whoring

Gaming today seems to be a multiplayer-centric hobby, which I have no quarrels against, but this seems to also be causing harm to the single player side of things. Many developers are taking their time to craft an excellent multiplayer experience (which unless your making Call of Duty or Halo seems to be a rediculously futile effort) and then tacking on a solo campaign as an afterthought. Even when the single player component is the main focus of development it always seems to be the multiplayer that gets the attention.

One example of this is Gears of War. Ill probably get flamed for this but I pretty much despise the single player game, its garbage. Now I own both Gears of War games, and have thoroughly enjoyed them, but I refuse to play either one of them solo, its just abysmal. Co-op is brilliant, and competative multiplayer is fine but Im not really a fan. Yet still Gears gets heralded as the greatest Xbox 360 game of all time. This to me is a complete mystery. Yes I had fun, but it was no where near the brilliance of say Bioshock, nor did it aproach the likes of condemned (the first one) for enthralment. It wast even anywhere near as fun as the recent Prince of Persia. Personally I would rank all these games above Gears.

But alas the three games I have mentioned are single player only experiences. And in this day and age gamers seem to find that a bad thing. Granted Im not the most socialable of people, but I sti;ll do like to hang out with my friends and maybe have a multiplayer session, but rarely do we team up and have a game of competative multiplayer. Often we find ourselves preferring to share a single player experience than play an online deathmatch, its a better experience. We load up the campaign in Call of Duty and pass the controller on at every death. Everyone gets a turn, and everyone has fun. We could just as easily all go to our seperate abodes and jack into xbox live for a team deathmatch, but hear we barely talk, we barely even have that much fun. After an hour weve all had enough and decide to move on to our own things.

“Well then dont play online, stick to your single player” you may be saying. I gladly do, but this is becoming ever harder with the developers feeling a pressure to include a multiplayer mode. This takes up time and resources, and in turn means that the single player experience I love so much is slowly dying. Storylines are beocming shorter and easier to complete, and if they arent then theyre becoming more repetative, with levels being back tracked just to artificially increase the length.

Now I ask of you, apart from the so called “MLG” fucktards (note: I dont hate MLG, just those xing-wah tsao duh lioa mhangs that try to ruin everyones online games by claiming “dude, this game sucks, it should have MLG, then Id show you noobs what skills are while i fucked your mother”, which by the way is what one guy had to say last time i was online, urgh), think back and name the greatest games of the past 5 years. Im not asking for answers here I just want you to think, and be honest, what would you class as teh 5 greatest games of teh past 5 years. For me they would be:
1- Bioshock
2- The Orange box (every game is a masterpiece here, and as a box was realeased in the last 5 years so still counts)
3- The elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
4- Mass Effect
5- Call of Duty 4
Four out of five of my list are single player games only (with th eexception of team fortess in teh orange box but trying to find a match on that is like trying to find the holy grail so doesnt count). These games have been more than games, they have been experiences. I would even go so far as to call them art. Yet these games do not seem to get as much recognition as theyre multiplayer counter parts, the games this generation with the most regocnoition are the Gears games, Halo and Call of Duty, and all because of theyre multiplayer component. How often do you find praise for Call of Duty 4s single player campaign? If you were to judge the game by the forums on GameFAQs then you would think there wasnt even a single player component.

And so, like cinema before it, I now lament the death of the single player experience. The multiplayer revolution is taking over, and I fear this is a revolution it is too late to quell.

-DiehardSpook, because Id rather not have my mother defiled by pre-pubescant Americans with rage problems

Its no surprise that I feel that television reached its peak with Joss Whedon’s Firefly. If you have yet to see this series I ask you that you do it as soon as you can, for while it may only be 13 episodes long it is far greater in its concept and scale. Ask any geek nowdays and theyll tell you that Firefly is an absolute masterpiece. But this doesnt mean I find other programs unworthy, oh no. Back in college I used to enjoy talking about two other series – Battlestar Galactica and 24, although while BSG is in my opinion the far superior program 24 is the one that came up in conversation more.

Starting with 24 I would like to admit that I believe this series has run its course, 7 seasons was the perfect amount, and the announcement of an 8th season doesnt fill me with hope. But during those 7 season I was in love iwth the exploits of Jack Bauer, and I wasnt the only one. One of the few friends I had in my college tutor group, Vicki ( who has her own blog over at http://littlelessvague.wordpress.com/ which I recomend looking at) and I used to enjoy the weekly conversation about that weeks episode of 24. We would share our experience of the recent episode and swap theories about the overall story arc. And is that not the sign of a great series? When people come together to talk about it in their everyday lives?

24 was a phenomenon, but like everything else it has its lifespan, and then it dies. Dont get me wrong, I will watch the 8th season with glee and no doubt thoroughly enjoy it, but right now I would have been happy to learn that season 7 was the final season for Jack and CTU, it was the perfect amount (even Buffy which could have gone on stopped at its 7th season, comic continuation not included). I just cant see myself finding Vicki on MSN and starting a conversation by saying “WOW, did you catch last nights episode of 24?”.Those days have passed, and not because of the move away from college, but because of teh move away from 24.

The 2nd show I mentioned was Battlestar Glactica. A reimaging (and an arguable improvemnt) of the original 1970′s series, this show was THE quinesential sci-fi series of modern times. I have to admit though conversations about BSG remained somewhat rare until the penultimate season (the first half of series4). Although this may be because of the stigma that sci-fi seems to have, even these days mainstream sci-fi like Doctor Who seems to have some wort of stigma attached to it.

But BSG was a true phenomenon, it was the best thiong on TV for years. It even knew it had an expiration date, and rather than drag it out ended itself early (arguably of course, as some people Ive talken too have said they believed the series should have ended in its 3rd seaosn, but i digress). 4 Seasons brought us more than several season of many other shows. It brought us political intrigue, and a commentary on the current climate of the modern world. It showed us our own fear of the hidden among us, our fear of terrosim from a cell within our very own soceity. And because of this it was a very real, very exciting experience. We could relate to the characters, we could even imagine ourselves as one of the characters, and by this I mean we could see oursleves portrayed exactly by one of them (I myself saw the majority of myself in the charecter of “Chief” Galen Tyrol).

It had the highs and lows of a soap opera, but exectuted them with such finesse they became plausible and emotinal. I am not going to reveal any spoilers in case anybody here has yet to see tis magnificent series, which I urge you all to do, but I will admit that I cried during the finale. Many times. I cried at the events that were portrayed, and I cried for this was the end of what is probably the greatest TVseries to ever grace our screens (including Firefly, which while my favourite never truly had a chance to become as great as it could have been).

In conclusion all I have to say is too watch BSG and Firefly. You  will love both. And I guess Im also saying that I miss those college mornings discussing Jack Bauers latest adventures. May we someday get another serial to discuss at the watercooler.

-DiehardSpook, because his fraking toaster likes to give him hell

-DiehardSpook, because colour is overrated

I also lost my work on a retrospective review of the Metal Gear Solid series and half a top ten of video game cold openings. All in all not a nice virus. But I will get these re-done and posted at last.

Also got a look back at the work of Buster Keaton coming up, so should be plenty of updates in the next couple of months, so check back now and then.

-DiehardSpook, because a video-rant is also in production due to laziness

Yesterday I saw a film that caused me to orgasm just because my eyes couldn’t, my brain needed some way to climax because of the sensations it was trying to take in. Even now I still tingle and the very thought of the night I spent together with Ong-Bak 2. And not once in the 1 hour 28 minute runtime did I notice that I’d forgotten to turn on the subtitles, that’s how much it blew my brain.

Right now I literally have goose bumps; the hairs on my arm are standing on end. Without knowing what anybody was saying I knew exactly what was going on (for the most part, the 30 seconds of fight between Tony Jaa and some lizard-bird-woman towards the end was such a random encounter I’d thought id slipped into Final Fantasy).

In fact that’s what this film is, it’s a JRPG, boy gets reason for revenge, gets into random fights every 30 seconds (literally), becomes stronger, gets into series of boss fights along the way, becomes stronger, ends up in 30 solid minutes of “OMGWTFMMAWETDREAMS”.

I’m not even sure I can write a review right now. Hell, I’m not even sure I could ever review this film. Just watch it, as soon as you can.

Wow. Just wow.

-DiehardSpook, because running up an elephant and back flipping off its forehead is just plain awesome

-DiehardSpook, because he misses the glory days of bear and bird

Why is cinema dying? Because of the ever changing audience, and their inability to suspend disbelief, and are unable to comprehend the complex plot lines, instead wishing mainly for big budget pieces of eye candy. And that’s what studios have to make nowadays. But to please the audience and to please the critics are two separate things. So we come to another problem that studios have to overcome, the critic. The critic is a fickle creature that seems to be attracted to different things depending on lunar cycles and wind direction.

The best example I can think of for this in recent time is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It was ravaged by critics (and fans I might add) for no more reasons than they couldn’t suspend their disbelief that far and didn’t like the minor niggles, albeit those said niggles were in fact quite dumb on Lucas’/Spielberg’s parts, even I don’t believe that a homage to Tarzan was a clever idea, but I don’t believe it was any worse than the voodoo doll scene in Temple of Doom. In fact overall I liked the film more than Temple of Doom, it’s arguably the better of the two, so why all the hate?

Simple, the audience/ critics could not suspend their disbelief to allow them to enjoy an elderly Harrison Ford hiding from a nuclear explosion in a fridge. Is it really any more ridiculous than a box melting anybody who looks at it, or a cup that makes its drinker immortal within a certain geographic area? I don’t believe it is, but that’s the problem with the modern audience, they don’t seem to want to believe it, even within the confines of the silver screen.

Genres in the modern age have suffered as well. Major releases these days are all pretty similar. Granted in the olden days genres would always feel the same as well, but back then there was a greater range of genres to choose from. For example my personal favourite cinematical genre is Film Noir, and in recent time the closest we’ve come to a film from that genre has been Sin City, which while good was nowhere close to the brilliance of Double Indemnity or Casablanca.

I could ramble for ages more, but instead I’ll just wrap it up here and enjoy the times we’ve already had with cinema, for as genres are disappearing, audiences are becoming less willing to accept filmic styles and cinema, as a result, is dying, so it seems fitting to remember the good times. We will always have motion pictures but when we can call a barrage of rom-coms and action blockbusters cinema it will be a sad day indeed, but at least we’ll always have Paris.

-DiehardSpook, because out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, he would walk into yours.