Ten Best Games of 2009

Normal blogging will be resumed shortly, but to mark the new year, here are the best ten games of 2009... that I played. (So no Modern Warfare 2 or Uncharted 2, for example.) It was hard to whittle it down to a top ten, but I think I got there. Unfortunately, it means that 33rd Division, Scribblenauts, Angry Birds, Ridge Racer Accelerated, Doom Classic, Borderlands and even the mighty Demon's Souls, Minigore and Orbital got left out.

Assassin's Creed 2 (360)

I loved the first Assassin's Creed game, but the sequel is on a completely different level. It's tuned to perfection, with the developers having learnt the lessons of the first game and it's absolutely packed with things to do. You can't move more than three feet in town without encountering a side mission, treasure chest, shop, random chase, glyph or feather. Everything's interesting, everything's fun, there's a decent script that's not afraid to be funny now and again ("It's me, Mario!") and it's absolutely beautiful. Best of all, I'm nowhere near done with it, so it'll last me well into 2010.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)

If I had to choose one single Game of the Year, there's no doubt that it would be Batman: Arkham Asylum. Influenced by the best comics and cartoons, it's the first game that really, truly lets you be Batman. Batman's not going to get hurt in a fight with a thug, but make him fight six at a time and he needs to be careful. And if those thugs have got guns, well, he'll have to take them out without being seen. All the gameplay elements mesh together perfectly - with the exception of a few of the boss fights - and I'll remember the setting and Mark Hamill's Joker for a long, long time to come, even if I've already forgotten some of the details of the actual story. Brilliant.

Canabalt (iPhone)

If I were doing hardware awards, the iPhone would be running away with them. My scepticism of the device as a games machine disappeared within days of getting one. I even like virtual sticks and buttons now. But the first iPhone game to make this alphabetical list doesn't need any of those. Instead, you just tap on the screen everytime you want to jump. It's simple, yes, but only dimwits would see that as a bad thing. You run, you jump and you inevitably die. And then you come back for another go. The randomly-generated levels keep things tense and it looks and sounds incredible.

Flower (PS3)

Breathtaking. Flower sees you become a god or spirit and takes you on a incredible journey. It's something of a miracle that the big brick of technology that is the Playstation 3 can make you feel such a part of nature. To describe the story would be an injustice - and I expect everyone has their own interpretation. The gentle glides, the swoops, the windmills and pylons and cities and grass and flowers... it'll all stay with me a long, long time.

Fuel (360)

The game I've always wanted in my head now exists in real life. It's a huge, sprawling mess of America, where driving for hours with no goal in mind is a simple joy. It's a game you remember. Riding bikes down impossibly huge cliffs, picking your way round the shallows of a lake at night, watching the sun break over a burned forest... like most of the games in this list, this is an exceptional game not just for the pure rush of the gaming moment, but in the way the sights, sounds and feelings remain long after you've stopped playing. And, you know, it didn't hurt that many of the races were brilliantly-designed, requiring knowledge of the environment and vehicles to succeed. A towering single-player achievement, it's just a shame that the online didn't quite live up to expectations.

Gran Turismo (PSP)

I only got this a few days before the end of the year, but after many hours of playing on the sofa and in bed, I knew it had to make this list. The driving model is exciting (though you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise before playing with the settings) and there are a huge number of cars and tracks. What really makes it for me, though, is the structure. Instead of a career mode you're just given some basic modes and can choose any of the tracks to race on. By racing you earn more money to buy new cars. There's nothing forced on you, you can just buy the cars you think look interesting and take them round your favourite tracks. What to see how a 1954 2CV handles Laguna Seca? Well, off you go - and you'll even get some money for it. Absolutely exceptional.

Killzone 2 (PS3)

You like shooting people in the face? Of course you do! Killzone 2 understands this. It gives you great guns and great enemies and makes amazing set pieces out of them. It takes a while to get into, but once you've wormed your way inside, you won't want to get out. Perfectly paced and just as long as it needs to be, Killzone 2 is an absolute triumph of the simple joy of putting bullets into bad guys.

Noby Noby Boy (PS3)

Initially, it seems like it'll probably be fun for ten minutes, but no more. There aren't any real goals (beyond hunting for trophies, if you feel like it) there's just a random level and the stretching, twisting, ever-hungry Boy. You move around, eat things, knock things over and just play for the simple joy of play. And it doesn't seem to get old. You always expect it to, but every time you go back, it still grabs you and a quick five minutes turns into an hour and a half without you noticing - or caring. Criminally overlooked and incredibly cheap, Noby Noby Boy deserved much, much better.

Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero? (PSP)

Hard as nails - you might well lose all your 1,000 lives before completing the game - but never malicious, Prinny is an odd game. It's an old school platformer spin-off from a series of strategy games and shouldn't really work. If you believe the reviewers who skated the surface without finding their way inside, it was a failure. But those reviewers are wrong. It's a huge game, packed with humour and secrets and, crucially, death is always your own fault. Quite frankly, if you like running, jumping and pounding things with your bottom, there wasn't a better game released this year.

Words With Friends (iPhone)

The online multiplayer hit of the year, I've played this every day for months now. Heavily based on Scrabble, Words With Friends doesn't bother with any fluff, but just lets you play the game against other people with a minimum of fuss. Portable game of the year, without a shadow of a doubt.

Fuel (360)

I finally got to the part I was dreading. I've got two stars on all the races I've unlocked and it's not enough to unlock any more areas. So I'm having to go back and do races on three-star difficulty. Going through the menus to do this means the load times are more of an issue than normal, but I've been surprised by just how much fun I've been having. Some races have been very easy, some hard, but I've enjoyed them all.

Fuel (360)

Bombing around Firemoor Fields, doing a two or three more career races, a couple more vista points, an Achievement for getting clothes for my driver, etc. I think I'm still quite a long way from opening up any new areas.

Fuel (360)

Got an Achievement last night. First one in a while. It was the one for collecting one hundred liveries. As luck would have it, it wasn't just a random livery for a vehicle I never use, but a new design for my beloved Dustgrinder bike. Hooray!

Collected another livery after that, then went off to do an actual career race - this one a buggy race that took place mostly on roads. Took me three tries, but was pretty easy once I discovered a shortcut at the beginning of the race that put me far enough ahead that I could avoid being overtaken on the bits that I couldn't do very well. There was a hairpin on to gravel which I could never quite get right, a jump it was hard to hit at the correct angle and a curved, woody section where I knew there must be a shortcut - the AI cars were certainly finding it - but which I couldn't find. Excellent race.

Fuel (360)

Played this for a couple of hours last night while the wife played The Sims 3. Managed to go over half an hour without seeing a road or dirt track as I tried to get the Warrior to climb a mountain with a vista point on the top. Several likely looking slopes proved fruitless, but I got there eventually... then fell off. Another climb and I reached the vista point. That was a good feeling. Then found some more points of interest before trying out a checkpoint race across the top of the Dead Lady's Lake area. Took me several tries, but I eventually won it, despite not being able to find a shortcut the other cars were using. I like races where I get to drive the General Custer. It may not be the best car I could have used, but I know how to drive it and didn't want to spend any money on a new vehicle that may have been rubbish.

It's funny, a few days away from the game and the scale astonished me all over again when I jumped back in. There's also a lot of variation and character to the different areas, despite the small number of different objects and terrain styles. In a sequel I would dearly love to see many more unique buildings. Could they be generated, as the world is, I wonder?

Fuel (360)

Spent a good a few hours driving to new camps I'd unlocked on the eastern side of the map. Ended up at The Hangar, so did a few races round there, then went back to an area known as Fire Fields, or something. I can't remember the exact name now. All great stuff, but the only thing that sticks in my mind is doing a bike racing late on Saturday night and being determined to win it before bed, despite it being well past one in the morning. I did it, eventually, but I didn't get to bed until nearly two. Sometimes you can lave a race unwon though, you know?

Fuel (360)

Played a couple of hours last night while my wife was off playing with iTunes upstairs. I started off in Drownington Cove, doing various things. I finished off the career races there (on two stars), then did some challenges, collected some liveries, got a couple of Mavericks, etc. Best race was probably a Raid challenge there. It starts off easily enough - you can stay ahead of the AI easily enough on the way to the first checkpoint by ignoring the roads - but the second half of the race is a bit harder, as you have avoid an awful lot of water. There's a big body of water you have to dogleg past, then the final part of the race sees you picking your way between small pools. I eventually did it, after about four tries, by watching where the AI went, which revealed a path across the shallows at the side of the lake. Then it was just a case of sticking to the roads to avoid the pools, before powering across the grass to the finish line. Excellent stuff.

After that I moved on over to Redrock Bluffs, where I did some more career races. On the way to one of them I had another great Fuel moment. I was driving across the desert at night, when a sudden flash of lightning illuminated all the terrain and great forks of lightning appeared in the sky. It gave me a vivd honeymoon flashback, reminding me of watching storms roll in across the Grand Canyon as night fell. Perfect.

Then, this morning, I played for an hour or so before work, polishing off another two or three career races and unlocking three more areas of the map in the process. Wonderful stuff. I know I keep saying that, but it is.

Fuel (360)

Did a few races last night, but by far the best was Tornado Warning, which, as the name implies, features a tornado or two. It's incredibly impressive stuff, with some real "woah!" moments as cars fly past your head and barns get pulled from the ground. An exceptionally fun bit of racing, with the fight against the other races, the fight against the road itself and the fight against the tornados themselves. I did a few other races and had great fun, but everything else paled in comparison to that race. Awesome stuff.

(And it didn't hurt that I'd watched Twister earlier in the evening before playing.)

Fuel (360)

This evening was set aside for an adventure - driving from Tsunami Reef in the top north-west corner of the map down to Redrock Bluffs (i.e. the Grand Canyon) in the bottom south-east corner. There's a secret Achievement for doing it, but the best reason to do it is just because you can. I didn't turn on my GPS for the journey and instead pointed myself south-east and drove, mostly on the Dirtgrinder bike, but I also used the Spider Wraith buggy for a while.

You start off on sand dunes, then you reach the grass, then the forest. Gentle rolling terrain becomes mountains, where I couldn't quite go in a straight line and drive through narrow valleys, which luckily pointed in roughly the right direction. Then more hills and forests, until they give way to red desert. Driving the last few miles reminded me strongly of the drive through southern Utah and northern Arizona on my honeymoon - which was also a drive to the Grand Canyon. My wife was sitting next to me on the sofa, as she had done in the car on that drive and we talked about the music that had playing on the radio. (Shakira and the Stone Roses, if you're interested.)

Shortly after that I reached the base camp in Redrock Bluffs, after a drive of one hour and forty minutes and ninety miles.

I didn't celebrate for long, instead jumping into the Career race that takes you round the Skywalk, which is really quite scary. Of course, once I'd won that race, I drove straight off it and fell to my expected doom. Fun!

That was almost it, but I grabbed a nearby livery and vista point, then raced against a helicopter, which was great fun. And then I noticed my mileage was on 1,491, so I drove another nine miles and marked hitting the 1,500 mile mark by driving into a fence.

Fantastic stuff all round.

Fuel (360)

On Friday night I had my first taste of the online multiplayer, after being invited into a group of friends. We had a good time, but I saw a lot more glitches than I've seen in the single player game. And not having persistent sessions is an absolutely baffling design decision. I didn't win any races, unfortunately, but I didn't do too badly. If jochta hadn't been playing, I might have had a chance of finishing first now and again.

The rest of the weekend has been spent in single player. I've done a lot of races down in the south-west of the map. Going from the Ashtray to Stagazers' Peak and Pinwheel Ridge, just doing the career races with an occasional detour if I found myself near something of interest. It's odd how, speaking very generally, the career races in fuel aren't nearly as interesting as the challenges. They're great fun, but they don't have that little extra that makes the challenges so special.

Fuel (360)

Had two half-hour sessions last night and an hour this morning.

The first session last night was simply free roaming around. Had a wonderful time finding my way up and around mountains to reach some liveries and vista spots. Great stuff, including a heart-in-mouth drive across a very narrow ridge.

The second session saw me find a challenge that I couldn't do (of which more later). And then, for some reason I don't understand, just before shutting down, I spent all my money. I went to the car list and chose random cars and bought them. I went down from over 100,000 Fuel to just over a thousand in seconds. Why did I do that? I'm not sure, honestly, but I think it was because I've been finding the currency a bit pointless, having so much stored up. I think I just wanted to get back to the beginning of the game, where every barrel found sitting in a forest or by a farm house was worth finding. I think I'm going to regret it, but we'll see.

This morning I went to find the challenge I couldn't do last night. It wasn't the challenge marker I thought it was, so I went and did a nearby career race instead. I won on two-star difficulty on my first go without any problems. Then, though, the challenge was bothering me. Instead of driving to it, I just chose it from the menu. That's the first time I've done that, but probably won't be the last. You see, I have nothing against using the menus to go to races and challenges, it's just not normally how I want to play, but this morning I just wanted to try the challenge again - so I did.

And what a challenge!

It's a checkpoint race against nine other cars. You're forced to use a particular car - one that goes incredibly fast in a straight line on asphalt, but which hates corners and which slows down to nothing the moment it hits dirt or grass. So, the tactics for the race are very simple - go fast on the straights and STAY ON THE ROAD. Yes, that deserves the capital letters. Coming off the road in this race is fatal. And it's not easy to stay on the asphalt. You've got a car that doesn't like corners. You've got nine other racers, all driving heavier cars that send you flying off the road the moment you touch them. Oh, and this all takes place in the middle of a huge storm, which reduces visibility quite significantly.

So, yeah, it's hard. Luckily, the course you drive on, either by luck or genius design, is perfectly set up. It starts with two long straights, with a 90-degree corner in the middle. This does two things. It tells you as soon as you start the race for the first time everything you need to know - stay on the road, respect corners, go fast on straights. It also gives you, if you manage to stay on the road, a chance to get past most or all of the cars in your way. The next third of the race is the tricky part. If you've got out in front by the time you reach it - which you really need to do - it's terrifying, full of sharp turns, climbs and drops. Taking it slow enough to stay on course, but not so slow that you fall behind, requires complete concentration. It's very stressful, in the best way possible. Then comes the final third of the race, which is flatter, faster and actually quite easy. You can't relax, as such, but it's certainly less stressful.

It's one of the best races I've ever done in a game. That track, combined with the opponents and the car you're made to drive makes for a thrilling, difficult, rewarding race. When I finally won it - on my last try, no really, this one's the last one before work - an Achievement popped up (for winning thirty challenges). I really felt like I'd earned it.

So there you are, one of the best races ever, either by luck or design. The interesting thing is, though, that if taken out of context - as a demo, say - the race would completely put people off the game. It works because you're not always stuck using cars that can't go off-road and refuse to go round corners, but because this is a special event. I'm never going to free roam in that car. For all I know, that's the only challenge that will use it. But it's brilliant.

Fuel (360)

Just as an addition to the last post, while driving to the new base camp I had a hint of why some people - especially reviewers - might not get on with Fuel. For the first time, I had a real goal and a real deadline. The goal was to reach the new camp, the deadline was the time I had to leave for work. When I started the drive, all was fine. I went back and got stacks of barrels that I'd missed. I took a little detour to grab a livery. All that normal stuff.

However, I then noticed I wasn't making progress as quickly as I needed to. I had to reach the base camp by 8:15am. So, while I still enjoyed myself, there was a slight, creeping annoyance. Instead of laughing when I slammed into a tree, I got annoyed with the couple of second wait before my bike respawned. I saw barrels aplenty, but didn't want to waste time going to grab them. Other interesting things popped up to my left and right, but I had to keep moving. The GPS was leading me down winding paths that, I'm sure, would have been excellent fun to drive down, but the terrain was fairly flat, so I could just go in a straight line across the countryside, so I did.

Everything was about getting across the country as quickly as possible, without it actually being a race. There was no reward at the other end - at any time I could have selected the base camp from the menu to appear there. And it's in that context that the free roaming seems to be pointless, even counter-productive. If you have very limited time and a set goal, the game pretty much falls apart. The joy of the thing, of sliding, driving and crashing across America, of getting distracted by jumps and barrels and little green dots on your GPS, all that falls away. It becomes meaningless, even an annoyance.

And that, I reckon, is why the reviews of Fuel haven't been as good as they probably should be. Fuel should be treated as you'd treat a long soak in the bath with a good book, reviewers only have time for a quick shower.

Fuel (360)

Got up an hour early this morning. Not specifically to play this - I was well awake and probably wouldn't have slept - but the thought of being able to have a go did spur me out of bed. Did the last career race in The Big Cauldron's Edge zone, then decided to drive over to the base camp in The Ashtray zone, where I'd never previously been. I underestimated how long it would take to get there by quite a bit, but just managed to reach it before it was time for work. For the first part of the journey I was using the Spider Wraith buggy, but kept hitting trees, to went back to the Shuriken bike, which is a lot narrower and, therefore, easier to take through forests.

Fuel (360)

Played for literally five minutes before work. (Yes, despite the huge world, it's worth just jumping in for five minutes.)

About ten seconds after setting off on my bike I'd got another Achievement, this one for performing 200 tricks. (There's no manual trick stuff, thankfully, but if you're on a motorbike or quad bike and jump far enough your rider will perform a little trick animation.) Then I found a Doppler truck and was about to turn off when I noticed my mileage was on 899.6, so I had to drive another 0.4 miles to get it up to a nice round 900 before I stopped playing.

Fuel (360)

Went into another new area, even though I hadn't completely finished the last one. Yeah, I'm breaking that habit. I'm going to be doing races and anything else I come across along the way, because I want to see every zone before too long and if I try to do everything in a zone before moving on it'll take forever. I'm a rebel... and I play by my own rules.

Anyway, this evening was grand. I did a couple of career races - an excellent bike race and a reasonable monster trucks race - and then did an Endurance challenge, a race of over twenty miles. The first time I tried I lost by about 150 yards. That was an... interesting feeling. But Fuel is one of those games where I never mind losing too much, because I don't mind trying again. So, indeed, I tried again and won by about four miles.

And then I fell into a lake a lot.

Fuel (360)

I absolutely adore this game now. And I loved it from the beginning. I love the balance I've found between exploring and racing and it's full of great gaming moments - picking my way through the shallows at a lake edge at night, hitting a bump and flying into the air and sailing between a gap between two trees barely wider than my bike, driving through the night without knowing where I was going and as sun rises seeing the whole world spread out below me, jumping into first place in a race with a perfectly timed jump off a mountain side and a slide on the dirt path below, buying a new bike that turns out to be much, much faster than anything I've driven before - and then having to take it at full speed down a winding road full of wrecked cars and vans... etc.

And that's just in a fairly brief session this evening.

Also, I got even more Achievements today. It's throwing them at me.

Fuel (360)

Fourteen hours player. Seven hundred miles driven. Three zones explored, with a short detour into a locked zone to pick up a Vista Point I'd seen from the border.

I love it. Online's a bit rubbish, I've heard, but I've not tried it myself. People are complaining about running out of Fuel to buy new cars, but I've got 80,000 in the bank right now. I've seen the odd disappearing truck, but haven't encountered any real bugs at all. Even the Achievements seem to work properly so far.

It won't be for everyone, I know, but it works for me. For a while now I've had an idea in my head. A huge expanse of hills and trees, having a target in the distance and finding my own way there, barreling down hills, splashing through streams, just driving. And it turns out that Fuel matches this ideal perfectly. It's just exactly what I've been wanting.

(And I'm very pleased that the 360 supports streaming from iPods for custom soundtracks. Wouldn't have been the same without my country songs playing as I drove.)

Fuel (360)

Very, very enjoyable stuff. I'm eight or nine hours in now. After six hours I crossed over into the second zone and was soon bouncing over sand dunes in a buggy, happy as anything. I've done races, I've done challenges and I've driven around in search of liveries and vista points... and I've just driven for the joy of driving. The handling model is great fun and the game looks ropey at times, but absolutely stunningly beautiful at others. Looking east at sunrise towards a forest fire, everything black and red... mindblowing.

Some events are better than others. The buggy events are always highlights, there's a downhill bike race near the starting camp that's just amazing, the monster truck events are fairly dull. But nothing's broken, the structured "game" stuff varies between amazing and competent enough and the world is just awesome.

I know a lot of people online are laying into this left right and centre, but if you wasted hours and hours cruising round San Andreas listening to the country station, just for the love of driving through the countryside, this is the game for you. Just remember to supply your own country music - the 360's support for iPods has come in very handy this weekend.

Fuel (360)

First impressions, based on a couple of hours of play. May well be long and rambling, will probably not make much sense, either. Apologies.

Fuel, from what I've seen, is, at its most basic, a game of resource management. You've got two resources to worry about, both represented my meters at the bottom right of the screen. These resources are SPEED and DAMAGE. The trick is to keep SPEED high, while keeping DAMAGE low. Pretty obvious, right? Well, yes, but I've not played an arcade racer - and Fuel is no danger of being mistaken for a simulation, three cheers for that - where conserving speed is so very, very important. There are an awful lot of points where gradients get steep and the terrain gets rough, making acceleration impossible and momentum very necessary. You can't just mess up and then expect to be able to accelerate back up to full speed, or even any speed, in time to catch the pack or beat the timer.

As for damage, Fuel uses an odd system that, on paper, sounds awful. (And, it seems, is in practice for a lot of people.) It worried me greatly before I played. Your damage isn't represented by anything more than a small needle moving around a dial. (And, sometimes, a bit of smoke. Ooh, posh.) If the dial moves over the top, a black screen with the Fuel logo appears and a couple of seconds later you appear back on the road, magically healed. You don't see yourself crash. You see a tree, you see the tree get very, very close to your vehicle, then you see the Fuel logo. Sounds like pretty much the worst thing ever, right? It's not. Somehow, it works. I'm trying to work out why. I think it might be because Fuel's way of doing things keeps the focus on the driving. It's a game about driving, not about crashing and burning. I understand that doesn't sound convincing and I know people online hate the system, but I thought I'd hate it and I find it perfectly acceptable. Sometimes, though, I'd love to see my ride roll down a hillside and explode at the bottom. You know.

So you've got these two resources to manage. It's different, it's simple without being simplistic and it makes driving very, very interesting. For me. You may disagree. Plenty of people do and will.

And then, of course, you've got the world. It's as big as you've heard. Graphically it's very similar to Oblivion, in that it looks gorgeous up close, but awfully ropey the further away you look. Driving down a hillside towards open ground is the best way to make the game look bad. Speeding through a heavily-wooded area at sunrise the best way to make it look great. Speeding, though. Hmm. The sense of speed, at least in the early vehicles, isn't there in either of the behind-vehicle views, but it's pretty decent in the "in-car" (more accurately "no-car") view. I normally use that view when I'm on a motorbike in the woods, for that 3D Deathchase/Return of the Jedi thing, but the further of the two behind-vehicle views the rest of the time. It's not about the speed, it's about driving through the world. Even the races and challenges are just things to do in the world.

If you were to simply go through the game via the menus then you'd be doing it wrong. Very, very wrong. Not only would you have to sit through a million loading screens in short succession, but you'd missing out on the all-important context. I've been driving from challenge to vista point to new livery, sometimes just picking a direction and driving randomly. Leaping over streams, screaming through the woods at night, watching the sun set over a lake, speeding through a still-burning forest fire... that's what it's about. Seeing a building off the distance, racing to it, then driving slowly around looking for any left-over fuel barrels.

It's... I'm not sure. It's not slow, but it's relaxing. It's not pointless, but there's not pressure or hurry to get anywhere. It's just what I wanted. I wanted just to be able to drive, bouncing my way through America. It's what I got.

It's the Assassin's Creed of racing games. Some people saw the world of Assassin's Creed, then looked for the point of it. Others saw the world and thought that it was the point, in and of itself. And some people saw Assassin's Creed's simple missions and simple rules and felt it didn't fit a world that looked so realistic on the surface. There was a break there that some people couldn't get past. And some people, like me, didn't care. Some people were happy with a simple set of game rules, with a few clearly defined variables, in a gorgeous world. And that describes both Assassin's Creed and Fuel.

For many people, Assassin's Creed was a crushing disappointment, others loved it. Fuel will get the get the same reaction - is getting the same reaction. But I loved Assassin's Creed and I think I might love Fuel, too.