Courtesy of Wordle.net, a portrait of this site. I last did this just about 100 posts ago.
Dusty Gamer Wordle circa 451 posts
Dusty Gamer
Videogames 1978 -
Category Archives: blog
The best of 2009
My 10 best games of 2009
For the most of 2009 I spent my gaming time playing games from 2008 – Far Cry 2, Fable II, Rock Band 2, lots of cheap PSP & DS titles, Company Of Heroes, Dawn Of War (the first one) – but I thought it could be fun to put together a list of what was the best 2009 had to offer. For future reference, see.
I have not played many of the big hitters of 2009 so there’s bound to be holes, but these days, gaming is too big a pastime for one man to wholly take in with his free time (and income). Major omissions include Halo: ODST, Modern Warfare 2, Resident Evil 5 and Dragon Age: Origins, to name a few.
My ten best games of 2009:
- Space Hulk (board game)
- Batman: Arkham Asylum. I haven’t written about Rocksteady’s phenomenal take on Batman (because I’ve been too busy playing it), but it ranks as one of my all-time favorite games. Play it.
- Demon’s Souls
- GTA Chinatown Wars (DS)
- Shadow Complex
- Torchlight. I’ve been playing this for most of the holidays, it’s crazy good. Too bad about the lack of variety and the still missing multiplayer.
- Killzone 2
- Plants Vs Zombies. This Popcap title stole a ridiculous amount of time this year. Probably the best value for money all year.
- Street Fighter IV
- Rock Band Unplugged
I’m surprised by how many “small” games there are – mobile games and cheap PC games. Remarkably, the only one I was looking forward to before it hit was Killzone 2, the rest of these have been more or less very happy surprises.
It’s complex
Shadow Complex
I liked Orson Scott Card’s original short story of “Ender’s Game”. I was looking forward to checking out some of the author’s other work at some point. When Epic’s 2D Super Metroid homage Shadow Complex was announced, I was mildly interested due to it being based on Card’s novels. The game came out, reviewed very well and I decided to buy it. Then I learned of the many people boycotting the game. I considered this for a day and bought the game for 15 USD.
I am strongly against Card’s world view. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue for me unless he was also an outspoken advocate of these beliefs. It looks like the developer of the game, Chair, and the game’s writer, Peter David, have made an effort to steer clear of Card’s controversial themes while making a kick-ass game. I’ve played the game for most of tonight and it is really, really good. Nothing in the content has jarred with me in any way.
So what we have here is an author I want nothing to do with, lending his name to an entertainment product I enjoy a lot. It helps that as far as I can tell, the author has not collaborated in a very meaningful way with Chair, but rather Chair has taken the fictional world and name from the author to get some PR.
This last bit is what really bothers me, beyond giving some small amount of money to Card through buying the game. According to an article in Gamasutra, Chair’s people are not homophobes to any degree. Maybe they didn’t know about the whole issue when they were working on the game – I know I didn’t. If they did, it bothers me a lot that they would give this publicity to Card, arguably more valuable than anything Card has published, as it’s reaching a new audience for him.
What I decided to do is enjoy the game for what it is (an excellent action adventure I would’ve loved to work on) and talk about my misgivings here. And no, I won’t be buying any books by Card.
WordPress 2.8 problems
I'm sure he's better at repairing things than I am
I updated the site to WordPress 2.8 today and did not get it to work despite numerous reinstalls and furious googling. I managed to roll back to the previous version (2.7.1) and nothing seems to be broken. If you see something seriously out of place, I’d appreciate a note.
Site update, face change
I have upgraded to WordPress 2.7 due to the previous installation having issues with file uploads. Unfortunately my old theme does not seem compatible with the new version. I am now looking for new clothes, nevermind if there’s something weird in this space for a few days.
Sorry about any confusion. I gotta say the new dashboard rocks.
Move along, nothing to see here
A portrait of myself
Courtesy of Wordle.net, this is a portrait of Dusty Gamer at the age of 354 posts. Some surprises in there, too – I mean, “helicopters”? Really? It’s got the top 100 words I’ve used, not including “common” English words.
WordPress 2.5
I have upgraded to WordPress 2.5 from 2.0.6.
There seems to be something wrong with my feed, though. If yours doesn’t appear to be updating, please let me know and I’ll look into it.
Site maintenance (WordPress)
I finetuned the CSS a bit to make the links in posts stand out without all the other links becoming an overweight mess. Hopefully everything looks alright with you all, please drop me a line if things are out of place from where you stand.
Here we go (Mass Effect, Christmas)
Oh god, I’ve been dreading this day. Mass Effect should be waiting for me at home, along with a couple of other titles. If I hope to get a review in, it’s going to be a lot of game time. I was just sick for three days and basically played through Call Of Duty 4 and Half-Life 2, with a lot of Call Of Duty 4 multi-player on the side. Of course it’s nice to play something apart from an FPS for a change and really, I’m so hot for Mass Effect, but I had hoped to finish some older games. Mostly Bioshock and Shadow of the Colossus. And it would be nice to play some more Project Gotham Racing 4 and Sega Rally, and… Being spoilt for choice is one thing, wrestling a press deadline is quite another matter. Now I understand why the gaming press moans about the Christmas onslaught of games and then the lack of releases in the following months.
I guess I should be happy that I got Mass Effect now that I just managed to clear COD4. But there’s still at least Assassin’s Creed to play through in the coming few weeks.
First impressions on Mass Effect coming in a few days. Personally, I can’t wait.
Dreams of colossi
Last night I dreamt of a colossus. Of the kind you meet in PS2′s Shadow of the Colossus, which I finally bought last night from Gamestop. Beautiful cardboard box, too. I haven’t yet started on the game, but I’m itching to. Luckily I’m between deadlines and without a whole lot of review code to play through, so maybe next weekend I can get into it.
This is the first videogame dream I’ve had in a very long time – the previous ones are from my childhood, I believe. It was also very vivid. Waking up, I felt like I had been on a grand adventure. (Even though much of the actual content of the show was paddling along in a tiny boat without oars – I guess playing Phantom Hourglass just before bed does that to your subconscious.)
The reason for this is not that I’m looking forward to Shadow of the Colossus. I am, and very much so, but I look forward to almost every game I boot up. I think Wil Wheaton is to blame. Last night, during commute, I listened to his keynote speech from PAX 07, and was really taken back to all the great gaming memories from my childhood. Putting in for sleep, I guess I was a kid again, excited about a new game sitting on my table, much more so than ever as an adult.
You can find the keynote audio through the Gamers With Jobs review of his latest book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives.
