DP’s Games Crunch 2009 Part #1

January 5th, 2010

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2009 was my last year of freedom and now I’m all ready to join the ranks of subordination and eternal slavery in the world’s grander demise to corporate capitalism. With foresight towards inevitability, I selfishly slogged away at my game collection throughout the year, salvaging the remains of precious time. So in celebration of all I have left, I wish to say a few words on the games I’ve completed this year. My goal here is to either hit at the game’s essence or, in the case of the more popular titles, just say something interesting.

This’ll be a two part series which, in the face of GOTY awards and all that, I’ve unusually started after the new year. It’s worth noting that the games below are only the games I’ve shelved over the year, not the ones I’ve played in part. A number of the games below I finished in their heyday and returned to fully complete in 2009, there’s plenty of repeated plays too. Thanks for reading DP.com in 2009, I hope 2010 affords me the same generous window of time to continue my frequent writing schedule, which should be back to normal from today.

Wipeout HD

Original article
Tuition of Curves: WipEout HD

Teamed with Fury, Wipeout HD has been my most played game over the past 12 months, largely for the split-screen multiplayer. Wipeout HD‘s strength is its ability to draw maximum enjoyment out of a concentrated set of tracks, weaponry and refined racing mechanics. One might call it a very eastern style of design in that all parts meaningfully contribute to the whole.

Wipeout HD Fury

Original article: None

Wipeout HD was already incredible value for money, and then Fury comes along, adding another 70% of content for a slither of the price. Eliminator mode reinvents the experience yet changes only a handful of rules; an example of the well-considered design.

Trash Panic

Original article
Trash Panic: Causing Much Mayhem, Dropping Drama!!

Another PSN gem that’s been unfortunately overlooked by the masses. Trash Panic is in part the cause of its own demise. The uncertainty of the physics, fire and decomposition mechanics make every round unique, yet placing such a reliance on the infavourable probability of these variables removes the mastery from this masochistic puzzler.

Pixel Junk Eden

Original articles
Downloadable Drug
PixelJunk Eden: More So Facebook Than Ninja Roping

A stylistic trip until you fall and learn that Eden is an unforgiving mistress.

Donkey Kong Country 3

Original article: None

Artistically the most interesting and adventurous Donkey Kong Country, plus much more coherent and polished than the favoured DKC2. Furthermore, DKC3 adopts the newer features and abilities from DKC2 without skimming on the experimental levels (inverted control layout in water, bee chase, etc), making it the most wholesome game of the three. The ugly GBA version has a neat riff on Cobra Triangle: Rare’s speedboat game for the NES.

Unirally

Original article
Play Impressions (And the Rest #3)

Gotta love the ‘tude, I say. Unirally‘s music track, similarly to Super Punch Out!!‘s, captures a mood which I personally find very reminiscent of the era.

Zuma

Original article
What I Learnt From A Stone Frog Spitting Coloured Marbles

It’s hard to restrain yourself from Zuma‘s captivating spell, it was the only game I played for 2 months. The best puzzle game in years.

Portal

Original article
Portal and the Deconstruction of the Institution

I don’t think that many people understood that behind the dark humour you were being played by the institution. As I wrote about on GameSetWatch, Portal is an interesting text for studying institutional power and subordination. Well realised.

Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror

Original articles
The In-Game Mini-Blog
The Trophies Dilemma + In-Game Rewards
Syphon Filter:Dark Mirror Design Notes

Gabe Logan’s PSP outings are as technically credible as they are engaging with a diverse range of objectives, locales and characters. The best portable espionage around, tangibly better than MGS: Portable Ops. If this were a console game, people would have cared. Expect some finger strain.

Dino Crisis 2

Original article
Play Impressions (And the Rest #2)

The Resident Evil framework sped-up with dinosaurs and combos, rather short but very enjoyable and arcade-like. I really ought to play the original as its supposedly a reskinned Resident Evil and not a true divergence to formula like the sequel.

Wrecking Crew

Original article
Play Impressions: Revisiting Wrecking Crew and Wii Play

Great for the first 50 levels until the stages become seemingly unsolvable and desire to play ends shortly after.

Wii Sports

Original article: None

Unlike most jerks like myself who write about games, I’m empathetic towards the expanding game-playing audience. Consequently, I should be an advocate for the Wii Sports craze, but even 3 years after first going hands on with this title, I still don’t “get it”. Nothing ever responds the way I want it to.

Nintendogs

Original article: None

Like Wii Sports, I still don’t “get it”. The dogs don’t do what I tell them to!

Wii Play

Original article
Play Impressions: Revisiting Wrecking Crew and Wii Play

I’m still not sure why people are so cynical towards Wii Play. Considering its measly price of $10 when bundled with a Wii-mote (I saw it in a catalogue today and compared to a standard Wii-mote it only costs $4!!), I don’t think there’s much to complain about. Particularly considering the latitude and highly addictive nature of Tanks, Table Tennis and the pseudo Duck Hunt remake.

Super Mario Galaxy

Original articles
Super Mario Galaxy Observations #1 Bite Sized Design
Super Mario Galaxy Observations #2 Build me a Space Ship
Super Mario Galaxy Observations #3 – Representation of Boss Battles

Rejuvenated the platforming genre and it still gets insufficient cred—hardcore gamers ignoring Super Mario Galaxy (and the recent New Super Mario Bros. Wii) and instead preferring to shoot things are the reason why I have more respect for bed wetters than I do “gamers”.

Zelda: Twilight Princess

Original articles
Zelda: Twilight Princess – Conformity, Innovation and Relevancy
Zelda: Twilight Princess – Nintendo-fying Stolen Mechanics
The Final Word on Twilight Princess

Zelda for the conservatives. The game you were hoping for was made by Capcom and called Okami, you should go play it. Otherwise, engaging in a familiar way, no one does it better than the best.

Link’s Crossbow Training

Original article
Link’s Crossbow Training Review

Just like retail releases of 2D games (or Wii Play, for that matter!), gamers reject anything that is ill of convention, and—as proved here—even when said game is branded with nothing less than the Zelda franchise. Link’s Crossbow Training is an ideal arcade shooter.

House of the Dead II+III: Return

Original article
Differences Between House of the Dead II and III

Take this, its pseudo sequel, the above title, the two Resident Evil games, Ghost Squad and Dead Space Extraction and it’s easy to argue that light-gun are making a resurgence on the Wii. (This is why Link’s Crossbow Training IS relevant, because it can only be bought with the Wii Zapper, and the Zapper = good). This should have been a trilogy, including the fantastic original and some more extra features. Awful loading times mar arcade bliss.

Gunstar Heroes

Original article: None

Treasure’s first example of their supreme ingenuity. Retro Gamer magazine did a brilliant feature on this game (and coincidentally the House of the Dead franchise too) which is worth a read, 50^th issue.

Half-life

Original articles
An Entree to Half-life Discussion
Half-life – Foreplay, First Person Platforming, Implicit Direction and Whitewash Vanilla
Half-Life – The Journey

Half-life‘s narrative scaffolding falls apart in the year 2009, which proves that the idea was always more important than the execution.

Half-life 2

Original articles
An Entree to Half-life Discussion
Half-life – Foreplay, First Person Platforming, Implicit Direction and Whitewash Vanilla
Half-Life – The Journey

Gimmick after gimmick after gimmick, spliced with characters that begged to be liked, Half-life 2 introduces no fundamental changes to the genre. Too bad everyone was busy playing with gravity guns and antlion bait to notice its poor construction.

Half-life 2: Episode 1

Original article
Play Impressions: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One

Critics razzed on Episode 1 for being too similar to Half-life 2 without noting the obvious connection that Half-life 2 lacked substance to begin with. True, the entire game amounts to redux, but at least the gimmicks are interwoven instead of being drawn out over long stretches of play. Closer attention is paid to the player and minute-to-minute gameplay scenarios. Valve are finding their feet.

Half-life 2: Episode 2

Original article
Half-life: Episode Two Commentaries

The first Half-life worth liking. The slew of gimmicks from the prior two games are streamlined into the basic formula of Episode 2 (Gordon begins with the gravity gun and the less substantial gimmicks are either scrapped or isolated) with the focus placed on concocting interesting gameplay scenarios. The narrative ramps up too.

Super Mario RPG

Original articles
Microtransactions: ‘Non-Interactive Sequences, the Author and the Player’ and ‘Super Mario RPG and Alternative Dimensions’
Super Mario RPG: Quirks and Annoyances

Gives an ol’ PAL gamer goosebumps. Surprisingly breezy and progressive too—you can see how Intelligent Systems would later construe and then reimplement ideas seen here in the reboot of the series (below). Provides additional perspective on Squaresoft’s diversity at developing the 16-bit RPG when considered with Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI and others.

Paper Mario

Original articles
Paper Mario (in as Many Pieces)
Paper Mario Vs The Traditional JRPG (Structural Breakdown)

Perfect across the board and so far ahead of the curve that it was accused of being an RPG-lite at the time. It took J-RPGs another six years until they began to incorporate real-time action elements into their tiring RPG sub-systems.

Call of Duty 4

Original article: None

The frequency of death is probably what makes it so realistic. I thought little of the franchise until I played this a few years ago and become a believer. War is a terrible, terrible thing and CoD4 makes this shockingly apparent. Modern Warfare 2 seemingly dilutes common sense and goes overboard as far as I can tell.

Kirby’s Dreamland 2

Original article
Play Impressions: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One

Kirby’s Adventure 2 without the colour (unless played on a Super Game Boy!). Naturally, I can’t help but be impressed.

Metroid Prime 3

Original articles
Quarterly Diaries and more

I really have so much more to write about this game and yet I still haven’t, I’m sorry. I doubt that all of those AAA Q4 games released back in 2007 really affected the close of this seminal trilogy. Truth is, very few of the players, writers and candle stick makers in this industry care about the Metroid Prime series. Frankly, a genre-bending first-person action-adventure that focuses on the deep implicit, rather than shallow explicit far exceeds the maturity of this audience.