As you may have seen by now, Destructoid and a number of outer outlets have posted their games of the year. The usual suspects were all in attendance — games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Modern Warfare 2, and of course Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
With only ten spaces on your traditional GotY nominations list, there are plenty of games that got forgotten. Fortunately, Destructoid never forgets, and while our winners have been named, we felt it only right to pay tribute to the games of 2009 that are not getting their due honors this year.
There are a number of games that would have been just as welcome on any GotY listing, but didn’t make the cut due to bad luck or fickle, forgetful minds. It is with great pleasure, then, that I give to you our top ten games that didn’t make Game of the Year 2009. Written in conjunction with Jonathan Holmes, I proudly present to you our list of the ten games you better not forget!
When Ubisoft released details about its upcoming Assassin’s Creed 2 DLC and I suggested that it was content that had merely yanked out of the original game, I was told off for being presumptuous. Well, guess what — the upcoming Assassin’s Creed 2 DLC is content that was merely yanked out of the original game.
I win.
“I felt that, ‘Okay, there were too many things to do and to finish.’ So we said, ‘Okay, let’s take a portion of the game that was planned and we’ll give it in DLC.’ We’ll remove some stress to the team while giving more to fans and people who like Assassin’s Creed,” justifies Ubisoft Montreal’s Patrice Desilets in an interview with Kotaku. “I think we gave them so much content that they cannot say that we owe them, that we didn’t give them a lot for their sixty bucks.”
I don’t think cramming a game full of rooftop races and identical “beat up this guy” missions is content, exactly, but whatever. Do you agree with Desilets? Was Assassin’s Creed 2 full of so much brilliance that the studio was justified in locking out content, or is Ubisoft just trying to justify the same tactics employed by DLC whores like Namco Bandai?
Sony’s finally taking the MLB The Show cover out of the Northeast. Joe Mauer, the 2009 American League Most Valuable Player, will grace the cover of MLB 10 The Show, the next iteration in Sony San Diego’s acclaimed baseball series. The last four cover athletes were Dustin Pedroia, Ryan Howard, David Wright, and David Ortiz, so I’m sure the rest of the nation will be happy to see a small-market team like the Minnesota Twins get some love.
Mauer is a hitting machine who has put up gaudy numbers throughout his six years in the league. He led baseball with an absurdly high .365 batting average this year, winning his third batting title in four years. He was a near-unanimous MVP winner, receiving 27 of 28 first-place votes; he’s only the second catcher to win the award in 33 years. Oh, and he racked up a slew of additional honors in 2009, winning Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards and getting selected to his third All-Star team. Next year, Mauer will look to lead the Twins back to the playoffs in their brand-new ballpark, Target Field (look above for a screenshot of Mauer going yard in the Twins’ new digs).
MLB 10 The Show will be out in March 2010 on the PS3, PS2, and PSP. For all the details on what it will bring to the table, along with five more screenshots, be sure to check out my full preview.
Time for yet another story about what great people we gamers can be. Some nefarious new hackery has been wrecking the PS3 version of Modern Warfare 2, allowing cheaters to scale the top of the leaderboards with ludicrously high scores. Not ones for subtlety, the cheaters have awarded themselves impossible statistics, such as gameplay time running into tens of thousands of days.
The problem appears to be incredibly widespread, with hacking information readily available online for people with so little self-esteem that they need to cheat in an online videogame to make themselves look like they’ve accomplished something in life. So far, neither Activision or Infinity Ward have responded to the this new issue, although a fix shall surely come soon.
So, why is it that the PS3 version is suffering all these hacks? Perhaps because they know Sony won’t be doing anything about it? Looks to me like the PlayStation Network could well become a haven for the scumballs of online gaming.
Videogames made solely to coincide with the release of a major movie tend to be terrible — rushed, lazy, and made with little to no care by studios who are just doing the bare minimum required to get paid. Avatar: The Game, however, is supposed to be different. James Cameron himself said that this videogame was not simply based on his movie — it was part of the experience.
Ubisoft Montreal had free reign to do whatever they wanted in the Avatar universe, crafting its own unique adventure on Cameron’s lush and verdant world of Pandora. So, what did Ubisoft Montreal do with this playpen of creativity, this ticket to take an upcoming movie and produce a videogame that truly stands out as an amazing counterpart to Cameron’s original vision?
Ubisoft Montreal made a videogame solely to coincide with the release of a major movie.
Oh well. Read on the full review.
It was inevitable, but it’s good to get it confirmed, right? Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors-style take on Fist of the North Star has been confirmed for release outside of Japan. Although Koei has yet to issue an official announcement, a newspaper interview with Koei Tecmo CEO Kenji Matsubara stated implicitly that the publisher has plans for a worldwide sale.
This is the same interview in which Matsubara stated that his belief that the game will sell at least a million copies in Japan alone. The article also states that, following news of the game’s development, Koei Tecmo stock raised by 17%. Looks like things are looking up for what was once two rather niche companies.
It seems that the newly formed Koei Tecmo Holdings is off to a very solid start, and I hope that they continue with the good fortune. Fist of the North Star Musou is looking great so far. Cannot wait to see more as development continues.
Glitching in Modern Warfare 2? Make sure you do it on the PS3, because Sony isn’t really concerned. Do it on the Xbox 360, however, and Microsoft will slap your account with a temporary ban.
The “javelin glitch” is a new exploit discovered in Modern Warfare 2 that allows players to essentially become a human bomb by using a piece of equipment in a way it is not meant to be used. Xbox Live’s Stephen Toulouse told everyone to “play fair” and warned that violators will be suspended.
Meanwhile, Sony has stated that it will not take Microsoft’s lead while Infinity Ward works on patching out the exploit. No reasons were given for Sony’s inaction, a rep merely stated: “I don’t believe we are banning people for using the glitch.”
Interesting that Microsoft would be so keen to work with Infinity Ward, while Sony doesn’t seem bothered. Perhaps a statement on the closer relationship Infinity Ward has with Xbox Live? Sony really ought to work on those relations if it wants PSN to be a viable competitor.
On Wednesday, I headed into Manhattan to take a look at a preview build of WayForward’s upcoming reboot of the NES puzzle platformer A Boy and His Blob. It’s a game whose distinctive art style has garnered it a lot of attention, but many gamers wondered whether it would actually be fun to play (something that you couldn’t always say about the NES original).
I spoke with Pete Rosky, Assistant Product Manager at Majesco (the company that’s publishing A Boy and His Blob), about the game as well as some promotional considerations. Hit the jump for the interview, and check back on Monday for my full preview of A Boy and His Blob. (For more Blob interview goodness, hit up Colette’s talk with WayForward’s Sean Velasco, the game director.)
If you could pick any classic game series to reboot with a similar art style, which one would you choose?
I would love to see ToeJam & Earl come back, actually. I think that’s my answer. I mean, it was pretty funky as it was, but just imagine that now. You know, some new music — some licensed stuff.
Was WayForward comfortable with the distinctive look of the game from the start, or did the success of games like Braid let them know that that was a good direction to go in?
This was all them. In fact, I think they started working on this before Braid released. So I don’t know if there was inspiration or not later, but this was the pitch — at Majesco, we had nothing to do with the original, actual concept — we own the IP, [and] WayForward was just digging it. They really wanted to do something, and they pitched us this game with this art style right off the bat. Original concepts were all beautiful, hand-drawn — the boy looked the same … like, he didn’t go through any weird modifications — they’re really into stuff like Totoro and The Iron Giant. Sean [Velasco], the director, is very into that, kind of, anime-but-not-wacky-anime; he’s into the really beautiful stuff. So this was always their concept.
The original game was very well loved, but it was also very frustrating (for example, if you ran out of jelly beans, you were screwed). How has this game been designed differently?
That was one of the big things right off the bat — that this game was not going to be frustrating. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be challenging; it’s not a breeze. But you don’t run out of jelly beans; there’s no counter. You have unlimited jelly beans — you just have to know when to use them. There are checkpoints everywhere. Saving is happening behind the scenes; you don’t have to worry about going to a save spot and all this other crap.
It got easier as far as navigating, but there are so many more enemies and so many more obstacles now that it kind of balanced out. We took out the frustration and added difficulty.
As a matter of inventory, do you gather more jelly beans as the game goes on? Like, once you get one, will it always be available to you?
It varies per level, but there are a couple that you’re going to notice are more standard than others. There’s a balloon, which is really essential, because if your blob gets trapped somewhere and he can’t come back to you, you can throw the balloon from a high point or throw [up] to him at a high point. It’s kind of like in the original, where there was a ketchup [bean], where you would throw it and the blob would just show up. Like, that was their way of “fixing it.”
Now, we have it to where you actually have to use the trajectory (hold the B button), [and] throw that bean; he’ll catch that bean, and then he’ll come up as a balloon head. So that’s one of the major ones. The trampoline is in a lot of levels; the ladder and the hole are in a lot of levels. Those are kind of your core that you start with in the game, but later, it varies a lot.
But it’s not a progression where it’s like, you start with these and then you gain these as you go along, and you’ll always have them?
It’s always purposeful. You’ll never have a bean that you just aren’t going to use in a level. There’s a part towards the end of the game, like one of the last areas — it’s called the Citadel. It’s where the Emperor’s keeping all the blobs; it’s one of the last big areas. This is when [enemies] start really attacking you. The enemies get tougher and tougher. And there are spitters — they actually spit this black ooze at you, and it kills you instantly.
So we made it that the blob turns into a shield. This only appears in the Citadel, because it would be worthless in the Forest. So it’s one of those things where you don’t necessarily earn it, but you get to a certain point in the game where you’re going to need it, and it’s going to pop up.
When will you announce a Jelly Belly pre-order bonus?
It was thought of, [but] licensing just was turning into more of a headache than it was worth. And at the end of the day, it would’ve felt like product placement. And we really didn’t want to put that image on the game; we think the game speaks for itself. And I don’t really think [such a promotion] would’ve sold any [extra] copies; it wouldn’t have really done anything for the business. So at the end of the day, we didn’t want to sell out.
A lot of people, especially at Destructoid, have been wondering about this — are we going to see any figures/toys? I mean, I would love a blob plushie…
We would love to do something, but right now, there’s nothing official to announce.
So when is the game launching?
Soon! October — late October.
I’m looking forward to it. Thanks for your time, Pete!
Thanks!
In case you’ve forgotten (it’s been a while), Owl Boy is a terrific looking indie platformer from D-Pad Studio, dripping in retro flavor and set in a unique and interesting world. We had an exclusive trailer a few months back, but that was the last thing anybody ever saw of the planned PC and Xbox 360 game.
Curious and concerned, Destructoid contacted D-Pad studio to find out what had become of Owl Boy. We were informed that the game was still in development, but that the situation had been somewhat troublesome and frustrating.
“Our main programmer, Blake, timed out of the project because of work about half a year ago,” explain’s D-Pad’s Simon Andersen. “We were in need of a new programmer but after sorting through the truckloads of people that showed up for the beta-testing and never returned afterwards, we decided to keep the search internal to avoid getting a slew of applicants that weren’t serious.
“We eventually found a replacement, but progress was slow and it eventually became clear we needed to find someone new. Another replacement was found but after another grueling training phase things stopped completely. After this, I’ve been desperately trying to find someone to help out with the project, and to be honest, I’m almost at my wits end. The last option that’s left is going for a public call out for a replacement, but it’s going to be hell sorting through applicants without my programmer around to check if they’re actually up to par, so it’s not really ideal. I’m not one to complain about things in public, so I’ve avoided dragging the audience into this issue, though maybe we should have.”
The game has been submitted to the IGF festival in San Francisco, but currently lacks programmer backing, leading to a demo that Andersen admits he is “embarrassed” by. Despite the setbacks, Andersen says his team is not giving up now after six months of wrestling, and that a mountain of content is begging to be shown off as soon as it’s ready.
“We will complete Owl Boy,” declares Andersen. “It’s just a question of when.”