By Way Of Introduction

A blah blah blah lists are the last refuge of the uncreative a blee blee blee haven't even tried to do anything with this damn domain since I bought it a bloo bloo bloo bloo fuck it. Fuckin' lists for you. Raaaah!

GAMES OF THE YEAR 2009: A QUARTERLY REPORT

5. Rhythm Heaven (photo)

Because it takes me forever and ever to beat even the easiest, shortest, for-little-girls-and-grandmas-only-est games, I'm still making my way through Rhythm Heaven - in fact, due to a recent overload of both work and Aeroplane, I haven't even touched it in like a week. In the interest of journalistic integrity, I decided to break out my DS only to discover that it had been even longer since I'd charged it up, necessitating a trip to the wall; not wanting to lose my momentum, I decided to sit my ass down and play as I recharged. It didn't take me long to get stuck trying to get a perfect on Shoot-Em-Up, a minigame where you play as a spaceship blasting the life out of invading aliens by tapping to a beat; no matter how earnestly I whipped my head around like Stevie Wonder in a vain effort to stay the course, I kept getting thrown off by following the visuals rather than the rhythm and expecting the patterns to go for longer than one bar. It got so bad that I eventually had to break out the one trick I'd learned in Rhythm Tengoku, RH's equally-ecstatically-inscrutable GBA predecessor, and close my eyes to shut out all distractions. And yet even going that far wasn't enough; after enough failure I quit out of the game in a huff, dedicating myself to conquering that other game where giant Easter Island heads sing to each other and get pooped on by birds. Unfortunately, I had to open my eyes in order to quit out of Shoot-Em-Up and accidentally caught a reflection of myself in my TV - a twenty-eight year-old Scott Walker-listening math-documentary-watching beardo hipster fuckup sitting Native-American-style on the floor hunched over his (blue!) DS in high dudgeon over his inability to successfully shoot down all of the invading cartoon monsters in time to the rhythm.

My point is that Rhythm Heaven is tremendous.

4. Peggle: Dual Shot (photo)

On the one hand, this is kind of inarguably the Chrono Trigger DS of puzzle game releases - you can't deny the obvious upgrades made, but really you're just voting for the game you fell in love with all those years ago. On the other hand, WOO PEGGLE ON THE BUS WITH A STYLUS AND WITH A SHITTON MORE STAGES WOO.

3. MLB 09: The Show (photo)

Unfortunately everything I have to say about this game has already been said by a great, great man; I have nothing to add except that I am still pants-shittingly awful at this game (although I'm getting okay-ish at fielding) and that my love is in no way diminished by this. Best sports game since NFL2K1.

2. Flower (photo)

Certain. The word is certain. I was dead-set iron-clad certain that this game was going to be a gigantic, fetid Jurassic Park-sized pile of overblown, overrated shit - basically, the PSN's Braid. But no, I was wrong (it happens); Flower turned out to actually be fun. I'm still very much all "Well." at all the Emotive and Intentionally Vague term papers folks were posting around the time of its release, mind you - my point is that it's actually enjoyable to play through Flower, largely thanks to the most successfully-implemented motion controls since Wii Sports. I freely admit to being an inveterate game-blamer with regards to control responsiveness (as my neighbors can attest, I turn into Jon Hamm on 30 Rock when I play SF2HD), and yet I have absolutely no complaints about how Flower plays; it kinda reminds me of Super Mario 64 (or maybe even SMB1 if my, er, unreliable memory can be trusted) in that it took me a while to come to terms with the staggering degree of control suddenly at my fingertips, but by the end I was fly...uh, I was airbo...er...well, shit, it's pretty hard to think of a non-corny metaphor given Flower's central conceit. Just know that the corn is pretty damned justified in this one case.

1. MadWorld (photo)

Because I started playing both this and God Hand within a few months of each other, it's going to be a little difficult for me to avoid sounding like a slavering Clover fanboy here; also, since that renaissance of discovery occurred within the last, like, three months, it's going to be even harder for me to avoid sounding like a massive Johnny-come-lately douchebag. Well, fuck it; MadWorld is a completely gratifying, thoroughly involving video gaming product from ship to stern, the kind of game that makes you want to applaud the medium as a whole. A lot of people have already drawn the Jet Grind Radio comparisons by now, which is infuriating because it's still far and away the most accurate frame of reference; it's just that where JGR overloaded your with hardcore weeaboo signifiers, MadWorld does it with violence. That's not to say that MadWorld's great because it's a violent game - it's great because the violence is integrated so smoothly and intuitively (it won't take you long before you're scanning environments for bonus-multiplying violence-enhancers with the same eye for line-clearing opportunities Tetris taught you) and, above all, stylishly. Like, stylish to the point of being the best-looking game of the year so far, and it's not even close. For reference, Flower is a tooth-rottingly beautiful game, the kind of software that makes you (momentarily) pleased with yourself for having kicked yourself squaw in the credit rating over an absurd 1080p techno-boondoggle. MadWorld, by comparison, doesn't even run in progressive scan. That's not a setup for anything, incidentally; just something to consider when you're taking MadWorld's visuals in and reeling from how much better they look than everything else you've played this year. Also gets bonus points for being legitimately funny. I suppose you are all intimately familiar with legitimate hilarity's polar opposite, "Video Game Funny"; rest assured that you're in the hands of Greg Proops and John "Bender" Di Maggio given the freedom to cuss like sixth graders.