[General Discussion] The Gamingforce Game of the Year 2009: Use Your Vote Time

Borderlands - 35 points

Borderlands is seriously one of the best games to come out in a long time. In a year full of sequels, rehashes, and tired genre games, Borderlands represents a company trying to put two seemingly separate genres together (Shooter, RPG) and coming out with a game that is more than the sum of its disparate parts.

It is fun to play, has one hell of a personality and art style, and has been one of my favorite games of the past year and of the past generation of games. I love it.

Dragon Age: Origins - 20 points

It's a gigantic fantasy RPG with a shitload of things to do, a world that's deep without being daunting, and a rather interesting overall combat system. Their consistent and rapid support for the game after release, while being rather expensive, is a nice touch; Oblivion got barely anything until that one expansion, and then nothing.

Torchlight - 15 points

While I did just go on about games sticking to genre traditions, the fact of the matter is when a game sticks to genre traditions REALLY FUCKING WELL, it can overcome how stale the genre itself is. Torchlight does everything about a Diablo-style action RPG right and only screws up little inconsequential bits like the narrator being overbearing. It is incredibly resource light while still looking fantastic, and I really hope that in the future more games will take this "Do something simple but right and cheaply" philosophy in the future.

Modern Warfare 2 - 10 points

The multiplayer is broken as hell and yet incredibly addictive, the singleplayer is hilariously ridiculous, and the whole game reeks of Infinity Ward sitting on their laurels and doing next to nothing to the first game.

They only get away with it because the first game was so goddamn amazing that they didn't HAVE to do much to it.

Bionic Commando - 10 points

It's a shame GRIN went under, because this game is severely underrated. Sure, the game was short, and sure the multiplayer was pedestrian at best, but the gameplay was just so god damned FUN that I can't help but think a lot of people missed the forest for the trees on this one. The reviewers seemed to miss the fun factor in lieu of "hurrrr 4 hours? fuck that" and that's a damned shame, because now we'll never see what GRIN could've accomplished on a longer game.

Groov - 10 points

Groov is emblematic of what can be done right with the Indie Games service on Xbox. It's a short little game, it's a dual-stick shooter, but the aesthetic and music syncing are neat ideas, and the whole thing is executed competently and looking good. As I said in my Prime Gamer review ages ago, it's a diamond in an extremely rough rough.

Jam it back in, in the dark.