Game of the Year

This award is near and dear to my heart because I wish I can spend at least 50% of my waking hours playing video games, but alas, that can’t be done because of work, social obligations, and time spent buying video games. As a note, I own a PS3 and a DS (no Xbox 360, no Wii, no PSP) and I only nominate games I’ve played, so if you’re looking for games like Halo 3 or Gears of War 2, you’ve come to the wrong place. Also, I’m by no means a rich man, so you can also expect some notable snubs (Assassin’s Creed 2) due to financial constraints, but I think I did pretty well this year.

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Already pulling in more accolades than Michael Phelps before the bong incident, Uncharted 2 was what I wished the fourth Indiana Jones movie could have been—better than my expectations. If you own a PS3, this is a must have game unless you’re allergic to awesome, which also means you shouldn’t even own a PS3 in the first place. The voice acting was perfect, the graphics were jaw-dropping, the storyline was enthralling, and it even has multi-player! Heck, the train chapter alone was worth it. You don’t need to play the first game (Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune) to play this game, but it’ll definitely be some good back-story between Drake and Elena.

• Dragon Age: Origins
Now this was a game I was on the fence about buying and if straddling a fence is as much fun as playing Dragon Age: Origins, then I’m getting a home with white pickets all around it while I alienate my new neighbors and their children. I’ve only scratched the surface of this epic game, but I got the basics down.

You/I = main character
Dragons = evil
Blood splatter = never can get enough
Side boobs = good, wholesome family fun

• Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
When I played the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, I thought the series had reached an apex. Then I played Modern Warfare 2 and can only see great things beyond the horizon. Unlike a lot of gamers out there, I actually enjoy a good single player campaign, and even through it was short, it was really entertaining. Sure I died like a hundred times during the chapter in South America, but that didn’t deter me from diving into waves of arms dealers with reckless abandonment and guns blazing. Of course, the key to Modern Warfare 2’s success is the multiplayer and I’ve played my fair share of those foul-language free-for-all death matches (the mute option is my friend). It’s fun and incredibly gratifying to stab a guy in the throat or shoot him in the testicles after one too many idiotic drops of the n-word.

• Batman: Arkham Asylum
This was a fun surprise for me. “Fun” because the game does Batman the way Batman should be done. “Surprise” because it had exceeded all of my set goals for what I wanted the game to be. Definitely the best Batman game ever, you get all of his gadgets, all of his fighting skills, and get to fight a lot of the famous members of his rogues gallery. The graphics were surprisingly detailed and the extras (geek service) were truly entertaining. The best part wasn’t the fact that they got Kevin Conroy to play Batman and Mark Hamill to do the Joker, even though those are close second and third places. The best part of the game was seeing a fully rendered Harley Quinn in a nurse’s uniform. I’d turn my head and cough to that any day.

• Beatles: Rock Band
This was a toughie between Rock Band and Street Fighter 4. I tested these out at two different parties and they killed them both. These supposed party games quickly changed raucous conversation laden fiestas into quiet events where people blankly stared at screens. So I left it to a coin toss.

Heads: You get to play through what felt like a library of Beetles songs with psychedelic backgrounds and a Cliff’s Notes summary of their history in the music business.
Tails: You get a fighting game with great graphics, tight controls, and modernized versions of classic characters.
Heads: You are left with a realization that you don’t know all of the Beatles’ songs and not all of them are even good. Plus the background animation through their hippie years gave me nightmares. Nightmares!
Tails: You’re stuck playing a game that you purchased for pure nostalgia only to find out that they are going to release a Super version with more playable characters that should have been included in the original but instead you’re stuck with having to play as either a really fat white guy, a French judo expert with impossible move sets, or a hyperactive Mexican midget who is about as much fun to play as it is to have a classroom full of kindergarteners punch me in the nuts.

Heads! The fifth nominee is Beatles: Rock Band.

And the winner is…

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves!

This was a pretty good 4-way race, but Uncharted 2 gets my vote for game of the year mainly because I’m still having joy-gasms from, not just playing, experiencing it. The creators at Naughty Dog outdid themselves with this hallmark. I’m not just replaying this game to see if there are different ways of attacking things or winning the game. I’m replaying it to see what I’ve done before again! That’s how good it is. Plus Nolan North is perfect as the quipping Nathan Drake and Emily Rose (reprising her role as Elena Fisher) and Claudia Black (better known as Aeryn Sun from Farscape and Vala Mal Doran in the later years of Stargate SG-1, nerds rejoice!) made an entertaining love triangle. This game had it all.