The best games of 2009. Well, the first six months of 2009

[Couchfire]

I’ve been on a half year trip around the world, so I missed pretty much everything so far. I need to start playing catch up.

[Jose_Liz]

In no particular order,

Prototype
Red Faction: Guerrilla
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
GTA: Chinatown Wars
Resistance: Retribution
Killzone 2

@TomChick

I meant to make a half-year list of the five top games of the year. I couldn’t do it. Can you?

-Tom

I really, really want to hear more about how GTA: CW was the best written GTA game. I could have written that!

[Jose_Liz]

In no particular order,

Prototype
Red Faction: Guerrilla
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
GTA: Chinatown Wars
Resistance: Retribution
Killzone 2

[tomchick]

@Jose Liz

I really, really want to hear more about how GTA: CW was the best written GTA game. I could have written that!

The story integrates into the mass murdering gameplay rather than existing as something tacked on alongside it and irrelevant. But mostly, it’s funny and has a light touch. It isn’t burdened by its own sense of self-importance. None of the writing in the previous GTAs was as good as it thought it was.

 -Tom

[aphoristic_gamer]

House of the Dead Overkill, Devil Survivor, Street Fighter IV, Infamous, and finally Demon’s Souls would be the five games I enjoyed the most this year.

I’d put my hand in a oven that Demon’s Souls is going to be the game of the generation, the scale and depth of this game is simply mind-blowing. There’s NO WAY anything else will even come close.

[Doug_Erickson]

jesus christos, tom: go to http://www.zombie-cow.com and pay yer 5 bux or 2.x quid for the funniest lucasarts adventure clone horked up by the indie game scene yet: time gentlemen, please!

[Lizard_King]

@aphoristic gamer

I’d put my hand in a oven that Demon’s Souls is going to be the game of the generation, the scale and depth of this game is simply mind-blowing. There’s NO WAY anything else will even come close.

Maybe I’ve already transitioned to a jaded afterglow, but I’m going to leave it at “likely number one for the year”.

[Kirian]

@TomChick

Huh…?

Wha…?

I love lists with games that I’ve never even heard of!

Also, I can’t tell if Doug is listing a game called Time Gentlemen, Please, which would be an awesome name for a racing game set in Victorian England in which you race various steampunk zeppelins – an updated Flying Heroes! – or if he’s alerting us to put our pencils down.

I’m super-psyched about Demon Souls, but I’m going to wait until it comes to American for realz. I got the most godawful demo of it at E3. The Atlus guy showing it had no idea how to sell it. If it hadn’t been for you guys who write long adoring posts about bringing it over from Japan like some sort of mail-order bride, I would have seen the demo and written it off as some horrible attempt at a God of War clone.

 -Tom

Zombie Cow deserve your money. Go, buy, now, as I am just about to.

Time gentlemen, please is what is normally called out by the bartender when he is closing the bar. Over here, at least. It’s a cue to finish up your drink and leave.

[Jeff_Green]

@aphoristic gamer

I’d put my hand in a oven that Demon’s Souls is going to be the game of the generation, the scale and depth of this game is simply mind-blowing. There’s NO WAY anything else will even come close.

If we are going to engage in pre-release hyperbolic hysteria, I suggest we stop being so modest about it. Let’s raise the bar on this sucker! Let’s take it to the next level!

To wit:

Demon’s Souls is quite literally going to be the best game to come out since before time began. Forget anything you’ve ever known about anything, this is simply the absolute apex of everything else. Not only would I gladly sell my mother into slavery just to play Demon Souls, but she would be glad for me. I do not plan on changing my underwear until it is released, and after that, I won’t change either, because I will be too busy playing this certifiable masterpiece of creative genius, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since at least the time of Mozart or even perhaps before!

See? Let’s try harder here people!

[Lizard_King]

@Jeff Green

If we are going to engage in pre-release hyperbolic hysteria, I suggest we stop being so modest about it. Let’s raise the bar on this sucker! Let’s take it to the next level!

I respect your effort, but I wanted to clarify that for those of us that were willing to import it for a minor surcharge, it is in fact post-release hyperbolic hysteria.

[Jeff_Green]

@Lizard_King

I respect your effort, but I wanted to clarify that for those of us that were willing to import it for a minor surcharge, it is in fact post-release hyperbolic hysteria.

I stand corrected, sir. :) Please edit my sample text accordingly.

[Angrycoder]

@Lizard_King

1. Demon’s Souls-anyone who hasn’t imported this doesn’t yet know what the best game of 2009 is probably going to be. I guess in the fall when Atlus releases it in the US you can correct that. It takes everything that is good and right about traditional RPGs, mixes it with a bit of roguelike (but with much more forgiving progress), and an action combat system that rewards skill and a cool head as much (if not more) than it does raw power. The story is 90% the setting and the level design, giving it a survival horror flair at times and making it a refreshing change that Squenix could learn a lot from.

2. Resident Evil 5: I don’t know what biohazarous means, but I agree.

3. Fallout III + DLC (PC Version with Mart’s Mutant Mod and its companions, a zoomable sniper rifle, Extended galaxy radio and Existenz radio, etc). It’s like a completely new game, even after having the original w/o DLC dominate my gaming last year.

4. Dark Spire: A perfectly balanced traditional RPG on the DS that blows Etrian’s and recent roguelikes out of the water in terms of its depth and (relative) accessibility. The second part is key.

5. Prototymfamous: If you play them in close proximity to one another, they make one good game instead of two mediocre titles.

That was easy.

I nominate the LizardKing as our new overlord.

[Destarius]

@Angrycoder

I nominate the LizardKing as our new overlord.

You mean Overlord II?

[sleepconvention]

In no particular order, favorites of the handful of games I’ve played thusfar.

Plants Vs. Zombies
Peggle Dual Shot
StokEd
Ghostbusters
Wallace & Gromit

[jfletch]

SF4 by a long shot. 160 hours in so far, no other game this gen comes close. I skipped BlazBlue because I realized I am far ftom done with this one.

I have played many games I realy enjoyed - Resident Evil 5, Infamous, Chronicles of Riddick, Red Faction, and Demon’s Souls, but thanks to SF4 I haven’t really played much of them. I want to knock out Infamous this weekend and move onto COR or RE5.

[sam_and_the_firefly]

@malkav11

Sam and the Firefly lives in Japan and is taunting us with wacky Japan-only games.

Eliss is an iPhone game! I think it was made by a Spanish guy. It’s not obscure at all, as that sort of thing goes.

And Art Style HacoLife is a DSiWare game - it came out in the US last week, though I think it’s called BoxLife now.

I’ve played both games as much as anything else this year, so on the list they go. I think my stereotype should be ‘really likes minimalist touchscreen puzzle games’ rather than ‘really likes obscure wacky Japanese games’.

[malkav11]

Well, admittedly I’d never heard of Eliss. But I did recall you talking about Art Style HacoLife and its Japan-only context. Evidently that has changed. But I still don’t own a DSi, so, eh.

[Alex_Hopkinson]

I definitely can’t disagree with Red Faction, as it’s my GOTHalfYear. However Street Fighter 4 was definitely second place in my own hypothetical list, and Dawn of War II was right up in there.

In the pool of “top quality” would also (probably) go GTA:CW, Sims 3 and Blood Bowl. Honourable mentions to GH: Metallica, Wolverine, Plants vrs Zombies and Dynasty Warriors Gundam II (and I bet I’m the only person here with that game swimming around such a list!).

[Enidigm]

I just ordered RF:G for the PS3 sight unseen, without reading a review (except the praise for the game here on Qt3). You guys better not be wrong!

[Equisilus]

I haven’t yet bought a game that was released in 2009 for either the PC or PS3 (the two platforms I have), let alone have a top 5 or top 10. All the best games I’ve played this year were rereleases of games from 10+ years ago. I’ve high hopes for the second half (actually the last quarter) of 2009 to actually get me some games I can praise for this year.