2009 Game Year Review

Ok, let's see... My personal "game of the year 2009" goes to, well, the game I participated working on, Capture the Egg. No surprises here, this Warcraft III mod project just plain rocks, period.

Ok, but how about the "2nd best game of the year 2009" award? The winner is... err...

Torchlight? Nah. Pretty good game, awesome art style. Classes are not done right, though. Especially the abilities could have received a lot more polish in terms of balancing, fitting together nicely etc.

Risen? Nah. Been there, done that. Too similar to Gothic 1+2 (those were of course good) to determine a certain uniqueness and a feeling of "something fresh".

Trine? Nah. This one was shiny, just beautiful art-wise, fun gameplay-wise. But no replayability. Fire & forget, never come back. Sad.

League of Legends or Heroes of Newerth? Nah. Great art style, but all else DotA clones and DotA I didn't like all too much due to the necessary level and item grind in a PvP game.

Canabalt? Nah, even though I'm tempted to grant the "(2nd best) game of the year award 2009" to a game that took 5 days from design to completion. :D

Dragonica? Nah. No class uniqueness and too much of a free-to-play grindfest. Still liked the art style and the gameplay approach of a side-scrolling MMORPGs

Plants vs. Zombies? Hmm... Nah. Great game, gameplay, and style. But no multiplayer and/or no true replayability incentives after campaign completion.

Battleforge? Nah. C'mon, how could you actually consider this?!

GTA IV? Hm, maybe. Great game, some of the best quests / missions I've played so far, very believable characters,... I'll still give it a "no" because there was one game that was slightly better.

Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II it is! Congratulations by and from the jury. Great campaign, focusing on very few units with well thought out strengths / weaknesses profiles etc., co-op campaign was pure fun, the art style warhammer-ish.

It's still sad, however, that a game wins this previous "(Tjuhl's 2nd best) game of the year 2009" award where I was really tempted to release a horde of Warhammer orcs on the development team because they (a) used mirrored units for all races, (b) technically prevented an endless (Tyrannid survival) campaign, and (c) did not put in the option to modify keybindings.