Ah, 2009. A fun year for video games and a broke year for this reviewer, who in his shame admits freely to having not played as many games as his esteemed colleagues-in-pixilated-arms. I mean, I just got Borderlands as a Christmas gift, so there’s no making it onto my list this year (blasphemous, I know.) Always lagging behind, I am. And look—not a single PC-only game on my Top 5. I don’t even recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

Click the jump below to check out my Top 5 picks of the year, as well as two noteworthy honorable mentions.

#5. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360/PS3)
You get to play as Batman. ‘Nuff said. Wait, I’m mixing my comic metaphors there.

No, seriously—you get to play as Batman. We’ve seen Batman in other video games before—many, many other games—but Batman: Arhkam Asylum is the first game that lets us be Batman in all his Dark Knight glory, sneaking through the shadows, swinging from cables, swooping onto unsuspected prey with merciless, non-lethal efficiency. The ultimate nerdy thrill, no game has been able to capture so perfectly the superhero experience as satisfying as this. Beautiful art design, faithful voice acting and a Rogue’s Gallery full of adversaries to stomp, Batman: Arkham Asylum is a delight to play.

The Contrarian Fanboy speaks: Some of the puzzle mechanics get a tad repetitious, like when you’d walk into a room and be thrust into a “swing from the gargoyles” stealth scenario again and again. Oh, how I yearned just to be able to drop to the floor and start pulverizing people proper.

Or any sequence involving the Scarecrow. Nuts to that guy.

na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na... BATMAN

#4. Scribblenauts (DS)
This one gets a nod on my list out of sheer tenacious creativity and innovation. Rarely has a game, let alone a Nintendo DS game been so discussed, analyzed, anticipated and dissected as Scribblenauts was after its memorable E3 showing. Audiences asked, “So what, you can create… anything?” And 5th Cell, the little scamps, just smiled enigmatically and showed another clip of God on a skateboard with a shotgun fighting Cthulu.

Once the game arrived, its flaws became immediately apparent—no, you can’t create anything, and the control scheme was a flaming nightmare of awkwardness, but how many truly original game franchises does one see emerge in any given year? Most simply recycle mechanics and engines from other titles, polishing here or tweaking there. Scribblenauts was something new, something genuinely innovative and creative—an open-ended puzzler with seemingly limitless potential, based entirely around your ability to think outside the box and develop emergent gameplay. Ask a guy like Peter Molyneux, and he’ll swear that this is the future direction of video gaming.

Yes, the game overpromised, and expectations were impossibly high, but Scriblenauts still deserves a place on this list. It may be imperfect, but I’ll take an ambitious-yet-flawed game over a redundant one any day of the week.

The Contrarian Fanboy speaks: Did I mention the control scheme was awful? This cannot be overstated.

Please do not ride Cthulu in a race against God on a dinosaur. Cthulu does not like this.

#3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
Nostalgia, pure and simple, will make New Super Mario Bros. Wii one of the best-selling video games of all time. This is not a deep game, or a particularly challenging game, or a terribly innovative game. In fact, it bears more than a passing similarity to the previous New Super Mario Bros. title on the Nintendo DS in design and game play. With the possible exception of Rock Band, I challenge you to find a more entertaining or satisfying gaming experience that you and three friends, be them hardcore gamers or casually curious, can sit down and just play to your heart’s content.

Young and old, man and women alike, Nintendo has a knack at cultivating games to appeal to all parties, almost to a fault. Even this reviewer’s wife, a vehement non-gamer, looked upon this title fondly in our household, remembering days of yesteryear rescuing her own Princess back on the SNES in Super Mario World. But boy, the Princess sure gets kidnapped a lot. That girl needs a LoJack system.

The Contrarian Fanboy speaks: Nintendo feels obligated to cram motion control elements into all of its games, whether the game actually benefits from them or not. Wagging your controller to fly into the air is an awkward gaming element, and will make you look stupid in front of your three friends. Thanks, Nintendo.

Too much waggling can be hazardous to your health.

#2. Street Fighter IV (Xbox 360/PS3/PC)
Again with the nostalgia titles! Apparently I’m a soft touch for things that remind me of my childhood. And nothing reminds me more of my childhood than cramming rolls upon rolls of quarters into the Street Fighter II machine at the convenience store by my house, day after day. Capcom has hit this one out of the park by resisting the temptation to make something new—like Street Fighter Alpha, or Street Fighter III and its various incarnations, or some mash-up pairing Ryu with giant robots.

No, none of that nonsense. Street Fighter IV is a return to form, a loving homage to the glory days of arcade and the pure simplicities of button-mashing, spinning piledrivers and fireballs. The 3D graphics and 2D game play blend perfectly. You don’t need an instruction manual for this one. You just sit down, turn it on, and know what to do.

Also, do not play Dave in Street Fighter IV. He will pile drive your face.

The Contrarian Fanboy speaks: Capcom may have avoided the pitfalls from its various Street Fighter incarnations over the last ten years… except for one unfortunate area—the boss fight. Seth is a douchebag. He just makes things up to win fights, like the physics engine or the laws of gravity. He feeds on your tears.

But thank the lords up above that he can’t reincarnate himself like Gill. Capcom can go @#$% themselves over Gill.

This is you, losing the fight.

#1. Dragon Age: Origins (PS3, XBOX360, PC)
If you make a Top 5 list of the Best Games of the Year, and one of your factors is “time you have spent playing the game”, then Dragon Age: Origins deserves its crown. The latest epic RPG from BioWare, Dragon Age is as satisfying a role playing experience as North Americans can envision without stealing ideas from Square Enix. Beautiful visual designs, an engrossing and complex plot and a large and colorful cast of characters with surprisingly well-defined identities make Dragon Age a rewarding gaming experience that will suck the marrow from your bones like a vampire.

Do not be alarmed at the seemingly spontaneous two-inch beard growth that springs from your face every time you sit down to play Dragon Age. It isn’t a side effect of the game per se—it just means you’ve been sitting in a pile of your own filth for two weeks solid. It happens when you play a game this good. Fans of BioWare’s other games (Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect) will feel right at home. This is the kind of world you can get lost in.

The Contrarian Fanboy speaks: Boy, I wish I bought this on PC. I don’t care how good you make a navigation or control scheme on consoles—it can’t hold a candle to a keyboard and a mouse when it comes to unleashing tactic-based combat on hordes of enemies. Forget the sissy “wheel” menu– give me an F1 key and I’ll whump any dragon that steps to me. Oh snap, I went there.

This is Morrigan and she blows things up for you. Try to avoid sleeping with her.

Honorable Mentions
If this was a Top 7 List, these would be #6 and #7. Lousy editors.

The Beatles: Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii)
This one just barely missed the #5 spot list for me. More a love letter to four mop-heads from Liverpool than a rhythm game, The Beatles: Rock Band is the ultimate fan boy gift for Beatles fans—a living, breathing documentary of music, song and obscure collector’s memorabilia. It may masquerade as a video game, but the real beauty and joy in this game is being an obsessive fan of the band in question. This one rekindled my love for The Beatles.

On a personal level, it’s hard to express the joy this title brought me. But judged purely from a game merit standpoint, it gets edged out by the competition. It’s a cruel world, I know.

Torchlight (PC)
From the creators of Fate and Diablo comes… well, a carbon-copy clone of Fate and Diablo, without a hint of irony. Proof that games don’t need to break new grounds to deliver superb gaming experiences, Torchlight filled the empty stomachs of hungry PC gamers anxiously awaiting the dungeon-crawling feast of Diablo III (release TBD).

As meals go, sure, it’s all empty carbohydrates—and the game experience is short and repetitive—but the sugar rush is fantastic, and you’d be hard-pressed to get more gaming value out of a Jackson these days.




See you all next year!