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!

Inspired by this week’s big Nintendo release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Erich, Tim, and Adam don their plumbers caps this week for a mini-roundtable discussion of Mario games past, with highlights, lowlights, and nostalgia galore. Before they get to the mushroom-fueled fun, however, it’s all about games they’ve been playing, including Borderlands, Halo: ODST, Modern Warfare 2, Dead Space: Extraction, Beatles: Rock Band, and Torchlight.

What’s your favorite Mario game? Let us know the comments below, over in the DVD Verdict Jury Room forums, or by emailing us at feedback@pixelverdict.com.

You can listen to the show with the player below, download it here, or subscribe through iTunes or by adding our feed to your podcatcher of choice.

The Charge:
Word of Ember blazed across the land, and the town of Torchlight flared to life…

Opening Statement:
Let’s get this out of the way right now: Torchlight is the least original game you will ever play. It is impossible to compare this little game to another, more popular iteration in the dungeon clicker/crawler genre—Diablo, the big kahuna, the head cheese. And Torchlight is okay with this. After all, the game was developed by Runic Games, and two of its members, Max and Erich Schaefer were co-designers on Diablo and Diablo II. They stick to what they know. And you’ll be delighted that they did.

Facts of the Case:
The sleepy mining town of Torchlight is in trouble. A mysterious ore called ember has been discovered deep in the mines, a powerful substance that can imbue people and items with magical powers. Adventurers flock from all corners to Torchlight to seek riches and dangers. Unfortunately, the ember has a corrupting influence, and many past civilizations and monsters have sprung up from within the darkness to threaten Torchlight. As the adventures venture deeper and deeper, more ancient and powerful civilizations—some ruined, some still thriving—are found beneath.

The troll is in trouble.

The Evidence:
I’m not kidding: when people compare Torchlight to Diablo, they’re not making some esoteric and allegorical comparison between plots, or gameplay mechanics. I literally mean somebody took Diablo and threw a new coat of paint on it. Virtually all gameplay elements–the leveling and talent system, the ever-descending, randomly-generated caverns below the city (always helpfully stocked with vendors), the control scheme, set pieces of epic, randomly generated loot, even the sound effects–all virtually identical. Graphics have received a much-needed (and cartoonish) bump into the modern era, but in all other aspects, Torchlight is the most familiar game you will ever pick up. It’s like coming home to a hot meal cooked by your mother, or warm slippers and robe fresh from the dryer. It’s oddly comforting.

The third designer from Runic Games, Travis Baldree was the designer on Fate, and so Torchlight picks up a bit of influence from this school of adventure as well. Our lone adventurer descending into evil-steeped dungeons now has a faithful pet companion—either a dog or a cat—who acts as NPC minion, meat shield, spell casting assist and pack mule. A brilliant and welcome improvement to the Diablo formula is the ability to send said pet back to town, laden with goods, who will return in a few minutes with a stack of gold for you, leaving you free to continue on adventuring without pausing to de-stash. You’ll be sans-backup for the duration, so there is a small cost to the convenience, but to be honest, you gear up so fast and so powerful that your pet rarely means the difference between life and death in combat.

This is but one of dozens of tiny improvements to the Diablo formula that Torchlight has implemented, and it pays off. It would be entirely possible that fans would be dismissive, even downright hostile if Torchlight stole all of Diablo’s gameplay elements without giving something back. The pet system is the most obvious improvement, but subtle changes also make for a welcome and easy gameplay experience: the non-dependent talent trees, meaning that as long as you are of a certain level, you can unlock the talents regardless of previous selections, or the multiple crafting/enchanting vendors, allowing you to combine gems and items, and also remove them from slotted items (very handy).

In addition to your standard chest where you can stash your ever-growing inventory of epic weapons and gems, a second chest serves as a shared stash for all your alt characters. Playing the burly Destroyer, and wish that sweet rifle you just got dropped on your Vanquisher character? No problem! Throw it in the shared stash and she’ll have full access. Torchlight is full of such tiny tweaks, but the cumulative effect is like a breath of fresh air in a stale genre.

The spiders get so much bigger than this.

A game with a quick and dirty development cycle, Torchlight is the epitome of independent game development, kicking out the door in less than a year with a marvelous price tag—only twenty dollars—and sold entirely via digital distribution (although a retail box version is expected January 2010). The price makes this a virtual mandatory purchase for PC gamers, and the engine powering the game’s graphics have been deliberately tweaked to allow satisfactory performance on even the slowest of netbooks. I play Torchlight on an aged laptop with no graphical modifications on maximum resolution with all but the most minor of slowdowns. The graphical style is cartoon-inspired, with colorful sprites, large muscular men and curvy women, stylistic touches and light tones. No Diablo-style gothic darkness here; Torchlight is all about color and flash.

Ever played Diablo or Fate? Good, then you can play this. Gameplay works exactly as you would expect, with attacking and movement controlled by the mouse, and keyboard hotkeys binding to potions, scrolls, magical spells and abilities. Torchlight the town serves as the main hub, offering vendors, quests and storage space for acquired loot. The main storyline takes you down, and randomly-generated dungeon tiles change every five levels. The artwork is fantastic, and no two tiles are anything alike. Waygates are laid out every five floors, giving adventurers an easy way to backtrack. Odds are you won’t even have to read the instruction manual for Torchlight—just dive in and play.

Some of the gameplay elements are a bit tweaky—I had a problem getting Torchlight to recognize multiple keyboard presses, like holding down SHIFT to stand stationary and pressing a hotkey to chug a potion, but nothing that got my character killed or anything. In the game’s defense, I haven’t updated to the latest patch, so it’s possible some of these quirks have worked (or will work) themselves out.

Three character classes are included: the Destroyer (fighter), the Alchemist (mage) and the Vanquisher (rogue). They all play exactly like you’d expect them to—the Destroyer gets the big armor and big hardware, the Alchemist has summoned minions and plenty of magical attacks, while the Vanquisher excels in ranged weaponry (guns and bows) and traps. Again, very familiar-feeling archetypes; experienced dungeon crawlers will have no problem here. You can drop some rings and necklaces, as well as spells onto your pet to have them assist, as well as fish from pools in a fishing mini-game to feed to your pet. Each fish carries with it a new effect—usually transforming your pet into a monster for a few minutes, gaining new abilities and attacks. To be honest, you’ll never bother with this gameplay element. It’s cute, but entirely superfluous. Your character will be plenty powerful as-is.

The gameplay is easy—almost too easy—until you hit an invisible wall (around level twenty-five for me) where suddenly the difficulty ramps up, so be prepared. You can snooze-click your way through the first few dungeons, but Torchlight will eventually catch up and start to kick up the challenge.

STOMPY STOMPY

Rebuttal Witness:
The downside to a short development cycle and a cheap price tag, of course, is that something has to give, and where Torchlight immediately fails the litmus test against its big Blizzard brother is in multiplayer. Torchlight is a single player game only, full stop. No multiplayer, no co-op, no servers linking players and ladders, none of that. It’s just you and your pet, alone in the world. For those who appreciate the single-player elements in a game, this is hardly an issue, but the more hardcore Battle.net crowd will take serious umbrage at being locked out of competition and cooperation with one another. Hopefully they’ll be consoled by the hardcore game mode and Torchlight’s extensive modding capabilities.

Torchlight also disappoints in the plot department, but for a dungeon crawl, I’m not entirely convinced this is anything but a mild offense. I’ve now played the game through with all three character types, and for the life of me, I still don’t know who my characters are, why they’re venturing into the dungeons of Torchlight, or any of the elements of this colorful universe. Who cares? You click on stuff, it dies, and drops phat loot! Now that’s a dungeon crawler.

Closing Statement:
Who said PC gaming is dead? Torchlight is the best twenty bucks you can spend right now. Seriously, go buy it, and watch the time fall away like sands in an hourglass. If this were a full-priced retail game, it would be a lot easier to find fault with its flaws—heavily-borrowed gaming mechanics, no multiplayer—but as a discount indie title goes, you can’t beat it. It may not be the deepest game in terms of story or mechanics, but on a fun vs. dollar spent comparison chart, this is the easiest purchase you could make.

Even if you only have a casual interest in Diablo or other dungeon adventure games, get this game. Get it now.

The Verdict:

Platform: PC
Developer: Runic Games
Publisher: Perfect World Entertainment, Inc. / Encore, Inc.
Release Date: October 27th, 2009
Rated: Not Rated

Official Site (Purchase)