Best of the Rest: James' Picks of 2009

Who the fuck cares?

Seriously, your comments are getting more irrelevant by the minute.

I think the joke was in the screenshot...

By that do you mean you don't think they disappointed him?

No, just that they weren't disappointing to me.

I disagree with all of them, except RE 5.

Well, I majorly disagree with Killzone 2 being there. I could see being disappointed in ODST over the lack of Matchmaking in Firefight. Haven't played RE5 (just barely got RE4), and haven't played Punch Out, so I can't comment on those. As for MW2...let's not go there.

I was just being a smartass.
:P

We get it! You like Killzone 2!

This. I love how I've breezed through latest "hardcore" CoDs on Veteran without dying, yet spent 5 hours figuring out one level in "casual" Saqqarah.

The only two spots I ran into trouble in MW2 on Vet were the beginning of the boat chase in Endgame and the part on the Oil Tanker with all the smoke. I don't remember having much trouble with the Favela level.

The Favela level was actually one of the levels I enjoyed the most..

aside from that I found the game quite forgettable to be honest, i was amped to get my hands on it too, got it at a midnight launch.

As soon as I started playing, i felt like there was something missing, which was only amplified when I played online... I dunno, I really tried to enjoy this game, the controls are the best of any FPS game on consoles, and it plays well. It's just the level designs that bug me. They are TOO balanced, you can almost see the math that went into making sure every building and nook has multiple entry points and/or holes in the wall to ensure that players can be taken out from different vantage points. It just seemed cheap, not to mention, the levels are all fairly small.

I suppose this could be a good thing for some people....

But for me, it meant trading this game away while i could still get a good value from it.

The timing on PunchOut went out of its way to fake you out, Although I nearly completed it, it didn't live up to my expectations. If you are going to wait ten years to make another entry in a series, make sure there is more to it.

Agreed. Veteran in Modern Warfare 2 was a cakewalk compared to that of World at War.

If you have a platinum you aren't a bad player. I'm pretty sure that getting all the stars in spec ops is required for a platinum and thats not an easy task.

House of the Dead is a very established, historic franchise.

I have to agree, House of the Dead is very historical for having bad games.

exactly. It proves that old school Nintendo isn't revered strictly because of nostalgia, those types of games can compete on equal footing with all our fancy 3D sandboxes and motion-capture hollywood cinema scenes.

I think you guys are kidding yourselves if you think it's not about nostalgia. The game doesn't stand up to other modern day platformers (Little Big Planet) in any way ... no map editor, online multiplayer, character customization, DLC ... and if it didn't have Mario & Co in the game no one would even know it exists. In fact, the only reason people like it is because of nostalgia. It's not a killer app on the Wii like Galaxy, Brawl & Metroid were in years past. It really doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the top 10 or even the top 20 games of 2009 in my opinion. It's probably a top 10 Wii game but thats just because it was a really down year on Wii. The highest rated Wii game of the year (91 metacritic) is a repackaging of old Metroid games ... thats tell you a lot. Then, the next three highest rated games were beatles rock band, guitar hero 5 & tiger woods (all multiplatform) and only then at that point do you get to NSMBW which sits at an 87 on metacritic. The Wii just didn't have the killer apps this year (good stuff but nothing great at all) from first or 3rd parties.

I agree with J#5. NSMBW is all about nostagia. I just picked it up today because best buy had it on sale. It's a great game, lots of fun. But it's not that great. Fragments of levels are litterally pulled out of older mario games. I'm only on world three but it feel just like any oldschool mario game. Except not quite as good. The platforming is solid, but the introduction to waggle is unnecessary and unfit in the game. Mario platforming is about percision, and adding waggle instead of using the a or b buttons is counter productive to say the least.Honestly I feel like Mario 3, Super Mario World, and Yoshis island were all way, way better. And to think I could have gotten two of those on the VC for half the price. I'm not saying it's bad, it's a ton of fun. Just like those old mario games. Because it basically is those old games in a shiny new package. Like Johnny said, if Mario wasn't in the title no one would have noticed it.

I don't think you can really compare LittleBigPlanet to NSMBW because the experiences are focused on different aspects. I've played and love both games, but LBP is more so about creating and sharing, and the platforming is a means to that end, hence the loose controls and all that, while Mario has a much more focused goal to it.

And I never said that nostalgia isn't a part of the NSMBW's appeal, and hey, if you don't get into sidescrolling platformers this isn't going to change anything at all. What I was talking about was what it accomplishes in its multiplayer, and how it compares to playing the game by yourself. I love Nintendo, but they've done a terrible job in integrating their hardcore fanbase with their new casual audience, at least until now. I've played NSMBW with friends, family and strangers, ranging from my five year old cousin to my friend's parents, and not only has everyone enjoyed it, but everyone seems to just be able to "get it" right away, regardless of past gaming experiences. Couple that with just how thoughtful Nintendo was with the co-op (it has the absolute perfect mix of cooperation and chaos) and the genius Super Guide feature, and what you get is, in my opinion, everything Nintendo's been working for since the DS came out.

Am I saying it's the Game of the Year? Absolutely not, and I'm not even sure if it would be in my personal top 10, but for what this game has accomplished it definitely deserved some love, and I'm just happy to see James and other Joystiq staff giving it said love.

The only thing I can suggest is upping your look speed or enabling High Precision Controls they added.

That doesn't work. Precision controls do nothing for the latency. There are two factors involved: one is the actual control, where the wanted it to feel a bit different than other games. The other is vsync. Vsync prevents screen tearing. Screen tearing is when a game can only render so much of the screen at a time because the hardware isn't fast enough to render the entire image in real-time. So it might render, say, the first 1/3 of the screen, and on the next frame, it will pick up where it left off, start rendering the next frame 1/3 down the screen, and so forth, which creates what look like odd horizontal lines during faster movement. Vsync fixes this by making the rest of the game wait while it renders the entire screen. It makes for a smoother look, similar to going from a crappy frame rate to a good one. The doen side of vsync is if the hardware isn't 100% up for the job, it would take a few game cycles to display the entire frame with vsync off - meaning, the rest of the game engine is going to be behind by two or three (usually) game cycles. This is ehy the game's actions, including shooting, are all behind by a couple frames.

I know a lot of you don't notice it or care, which is great. I don't care about that. The discussion around the issue bothered me when people don't understand that it is the great graphics that are causing it, not the control scheme, not the aiming acceleration, sensitivity, or precision. Gamers who have played 3D games on the PC for the last decade can attest, this is what happens when your rig just can't barely keep up. I played FEAR on PC at 640x480 because anything higher gave that revolutionary weighty feel. Play Turok 1 on N64 and then go right to Turok 2. That was the first time I noticed it. Plenty of people loced Turok 2, but I couldn't stand it because it had terrible input lag. A buddy of mine says the PS3 version of BioShock had it too, and they introduced a patch that allowed you to turn vsync off, ehich fixed the lag, but I can't attest to that because I've only played the PC version.

Either way, I really don't want to start a stupid internet war over it, I had my fair share of that when the game came out. I loved the game for what it is, and it's great people don't mind or even notice the added latency, but myself, my brother, and two friends of mine all shared the same opinion - game is great, controls suck. They'll never add in the option to turn vsync off, because that would be admitting that they were covering themselves when they explained that it was intentional, and it would explain that either their engine isn't completely efficient for the platform, or that the hardware isn't up to snuff.

Like I said, I know there are plenty that will disagree with me. I don't feel like arguing it again. This wall of text rant explains my thoughts on the issue, so there is nothing else I think I can add from further discussion. The game was great regardless. I'd still be playing the multiplayer if it had a no respawn mode. ^_^

It's damn hard I'll say that much.

I don't think most of those fall under 2009 titles...but what ever floats your boat.

[banned]

He has a point Larry, the cutoff is games that came out in 2009. You've got to respect the cutoff.

Hey, I played them in 2009. That counts for me! It's my personal best of 2009, I think that falls within the cutoff! Right?

Wh-NO! Thats not how the cutoff works, you don't decide what the cutoff it.

is*

I think if it's MY top ten list I get to decide what the cutoff is! Is that too much to ask? YOU CAN HAVE YOUR OWN CUTOFF!