15. Professor Layton & the Diabolical Box (Level 5 – DS)

Luke and the Professor’s first adventure was a charming escape that delighted and challenged, always leaving the intellectual gamer craving more of its logic puzzles. This year’s sequel brought more of the same, as well as a variety of new mini-games and an even more enthralling story (with a far superior conclusion). More of the same is great when the original is so fantastic, but Diabolical Box just wasn’t unique enough to top the rest of my picks this year.

14. LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias (Frontier – WiiWare)

Long-awaited sequel to WiiWare’s heart-warming launch title sees chubster Toku and wind spirit Enril embark on a new quest for the cure to a fatal affliction striking the village. New tornado and weather powers lead to excellent puzzles and a surprisingly useful heat mechanic. Moving lakes as rain clouds and then freezing them for ice platforms is easily among the simplest and most satisfying moments of the year in gaming.

13. bit.trip BEAT/CORE/VOID (Gaijin Games – WiiWare)

Gaijin proved to be the little developer that could. Three guys with retro graphics and a penchant for masochistic gameplay cranked out the first half in a series of six downloadable games that were as beautiful as they were frustrating. This year’s concluding trilogy should prove verrry interesting.

12. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo – Wii)

The promise of a new traditional Super Mario Bros game is enough to get most people with experience playing videogames excited, with visions of bouncing from left to right along the heads of goombas dancing through their heads. The innovation of four-player simultaneous co-op or competitive play mixed with absolutely brilliant level design is what sets the newest Mario adventure apart from its predecessors.

11. Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (Electronic Arts – DS)

Top screen: Ninja Gaidan-style action platforming. Bottom screen: Puzzle League-style color-matching. Add healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek British humor. Double that healthy dose. Sprinkle hordes of unforgiving enemies just for the sake of making the game effing hard as hell, and serve.

10. inFamous (Insomniac – Playstation 3)

The beauty of sandbox action games is the freedom of doing whatever you want wherever you want, yet somehow I had never played one of these games more than once from start to finish until inFamous. Drastically different story elements, environments, interactions and super-powers based on whether your actions were read as good or evil made multiple playthroughs almost necessary. Doesn’t hurt that the game was really fun on top of all that.

9. Flower (thatgamecompany – Playstation Network)

People like to talk about how Flower was the ultimate casual game this year, that the one-button control, lack of hud, ambiance and general do-what-you-want-at-your-own-pace-ness about it lent itself to non-gamers perfectly. This could not be farther from the truth. Instruction in the game was minimal to the point that you would need to be well-versed in gaming to understand that that thing you just saw is your next target and that you have to hit all these things to make this thing happen. Gameplay matters aside, there’s no denying that your jaw drops and your heart lifts the first time you make trees bloom and life blossom. Beautiful in every way.

8. MadWorld (Platinum Games – Wii)

Vampires are all the rage right now because of their sexuality, not because of, you know, the whole blood thing. There are only a handful of undead beasties in MadWorld, but the blood… oh my, crimson really does stand out in a sea of black and white. The extreme combo-based sport combat of Platinum Games debut project definitely makes it unique and worth exploration, but it’s the nonstop humor that keeps it fun. Hearing sports announcers voiced by comedians Greg Proops and John Di Maggio egg the player and each other on constantly makes the entire game a delight, from the gore-soaked tutorial straight through the end credits.

7. Tap Tap Revenge 2 & 3 (Tapulous – iPhone)

The first Tap Tap game was clearly just trying to be Guitar Hero for the iPhone, and not succeeding very well in that aim. Its sequels, however, brought tons of improvements in the forms of new music downloads from artists people actually care to hear, more engaging graphics, online multiplayer, and social interaction. Whenever I’ve got free wi-fi and a few minutes to kill, I tend to open up TTR3 and find an open lobby to challenge twenty strangers in rhythm-based finger combat. Of course everyone would change the song selection if they could, but as is, these two Tap Taps are among my most-played games of the year.

6. Rhythm Heaven (Nintendo – DS)

One of the many crazy gambles Nintendo has made this decade – right up there with a two-screened handheld and motion controls – was the microgame, pioneered by the WarioWare series. In Rhythm Heaven, they took the formula of simple reflexive gaming and goofy cartoon styling from WarioWare and mixed it with original music from one of Japan’s top pop stars. The results are nothing short of infectiously wonderful.

5. Art Style: BOXLIFE (skip ltd. – DSiWare)

Art Style, Nintendo’s marvelous foray into the less-is-more design aesthetic. More often than not, these tiny experiments prove to have more heart than games with twenty times their budget. In BOXLIFE, the player assumes the role of a worker in a box factory. It’s glorious geometric puzzling mixed with its capitalist-dream sim of a score system made the game a captivating time suck these past six months, and a fever dream for graduates of graphic design classes who spent entire weekends constructing tiny boxes over and over again. Basically, BOXLIFE is a happy recreation of my wasted college hours, so I am biased.

4. Noby Noby Boy (Namco Bandai – Playstation Network)

Everyone knew that the next game from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi would be unique and very special, but I don’t think anyone saw Noby Noby Boy coming. More than any other game out there right now, I feel like Noby Noby Boy really embraces the concept of “next-gen” gaming by doing things no game could do on the last generation of hardware. As a downloadable program, the game is decidedly simple – randomly generating stages each time you play, providing the player with a playground and no real “goal,” just the ability to stretch, eat, and run around doing as they please. Where Noby shines, though, is in its meta-game-ness – the fact that the ever present scoreboard that is GIRL is the continuously combined length of all players contributing to the game at all times, that every inch your BOY travels contributes to the ability of every other player in the world, and they to you. They more we all play, the farther GIRL reaches, the more space and planets we have to play on. Oh yeah, and you can record videos of your sessions and upload to YouTube without stopping playing. This is really part of the whole Game 2.0 movement that LittleBigPlanet was touting last year.

3. Canabalt (SemiSecret – Flash, iPhone)

A cool li’l monochromatic experiment in simplicity in game control/design, the Flash browser game Canabalt saw the player running and jumping across rooftops to avoid unspeakable horror just off screen (and hinted at in the background. The iPhone port a mere month later introduced local and online leaderboards, twitter integration for instant bragging rights, and – most importantly – portability. Mario may have ingrained the run-and-jump formula into the minds of generations, but Canabalt turned it up to 11. AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO STOP PLAYING THIS THING OH MY GAAAAAAAAAH…

2. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady – Playstation 3, XBox 360, PC)

Superhero games typically suck. Batman: Arkham Asylum does not. Far from it, in fact. Upon release, Arkham was held up around the world as a potential “game of the year.” The game succeeds by being realistic about what Batman can and cannot do (well, as realistic as superhero games are likely to get). He does not fly, he has no superhuman strength, he doesn’t use guns and he is not bulletproof. Batman relies on his keen skills of deduction, peak physical performance, and bevy of helpful little gadgets to take down the most dangerous criminals in the urban squalor of Gotham. Focusing on these abilities helps the player truly feel like they are the man who is the bat. A script by Paul Dini and voicework by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill do wonders to put the player deep into the twisted and methodical world of Arkham, to boot.

1. Space Invaders Infinity Gene (Taito – iPhone)

Space Invaders is a videogame legacy, but it’s been pretty much the same for thirty years with no substantial change. Fitting, then, that the overwhelming narrative theme in Infinity Gene is evolution. The game is rife with references to genome mapping and the writings of Charles Darwin. As the player’s ship evolves with new weapons and abilities, so do the environments and enemies. The more you play, the larger the game’s evolutionary tree navigation grows, each branch containing new stages and options. Space Invaders Infinity Gene was the game I couldn’t stop playing in 2009. Even when I was on the other side of the country trying to expand my horizons, the enormous and unnerving boss battles beckoned me back into my versatile space fighter. I only hope the franchise lasts another thirty years so we can see where game evolution takes us from there.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 11:00 am and is filed under Lists, Videogames. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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