Crispy's Mid-Season Videogame All-Stars: Our Top Picks for 2009 So Far
7/14/2009 9:45 AM | 12 Comments | Page 1 of 2
Kyle Orland
Status: "You can't get quality video game editorial from a value menu!" "No, really, you can't."
With Major League Baseball taking a break for the All-Star Game this week, we thought it'd be a good chance to take a look at videogaming's all-star performers for the first half of 2009. These are the games that brought something new and interesting to the table, the games we keep coming back to when we should be working, the games that we don't want to forget about when it comes time for the year-end lists.
Voting: Ten members of the Game Trust each picked their five top games of the year so far. First-place picks received five points, second-place picks four points, all the way down to one point for fifth-place picks.
Top vote-getters
1.
Plants vs. Zombies
What we said: "Before you know it, you're deploying watermelon catapults to drive back rows of Zombonis (those are zombies on zambonis, don'tcha know?) while erecting a protective canopy of palm trees to protect your balloon-zombie-popping cacti from an overhead assault by zombies on bungee cords. The change is so gradual that it barely registers from level to level, but at some point you look up and realize that
Plants vs. Zombies has grown from a small, insignificant seed into a complex, chaotic, fast-paced strategy game that's as addictive as the best in the genre." -- Kyle Orland (
Read his review)
Second-half prospects: The addiction has held on this long, but it may be a faded memory by the time 2010 rolls around.
Upcoming versions for non-PC platforms, though, could bring it back -- stronger than ever.
2.
Flower
What we said: "
Flower packs a deceptively large emotional impact that, like the best and worst things in life, sneaks up on you. Playing it made me want to return to my uncle's farms in Haiti or invite my dad over for an afternoon to see how he'd react to the Sixaxis. And while I don't know if my mom ever truly 'got' my passion for videogames, I think
Flower would've been the game to make her understand." -- Evan Narcisse (
Read the review)
Second-half prospects: The beautiful experience will definitely stick with us, but this short game doesn't exactly demand frequent replays. Can this gentle journey hold up to the nonstop action of other games?
3.
Infamous
What we said: "The way
Infamous integrates its ideas -- individuals' responsibility to each other, the fragility of the social contract and the allure of situational morality -- into actual gameplay turns it into a surprisingly self-aware piece of entertainment. That integration of theme and gameplay also works to make it one of the better-executed open-world games in recent memory." --Evan Narcisse (
Read his review)
Second-half prospects: Big-name, open-world action games tend to hit hard and heavy during the holidays.
Infamous will have to cut through this cloud to get attention from award-pickers come December.
4.
Resident Evil 5
What we said: "As a game about gunplay,
Resident Evil 5 is different, refreshing, uniquely social, and most of all, it packs a long-term punch in terms of replayability. It takes potential liabilities -- ammo shortages, unconventional controls, canned encounters, limited environmental interactivity, reliance on multiple playthroughs -- and turns them into assets. I'd rank this right up there with
Far Cry 2 in terms of shooters that refuse to play by the usual rules and are ultimately better for it." -- Tom Chick (
Read his column)
Second-half prospects: Problems with racism, clunky controls and repetitive gameplay (see
Scott Jones' review) may keep this one from being remembered as a true classic by year's end.
