2010 Calvin Awards: Best Videogame
February 8, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
When Arkham Asylum was released back in September, it is a miracle that this site's content production didn't grind to a complete halt. So complete was our obsession with the first videogame to understand what makes a superhero cool that we would spend hours and hours in discussions about how to solve various puzzles and rack up the highest combo totals. This Batman adaptation somehow redeems a franchise that has had so many bad games that you may have come to believe that Joel Schumacher was put in charge of the development process. After no fewer than 15 years of frustrating failures, Arkham Asylum reminds us of the year the Tampa Bay Devil Rays suddenly became a World Series team. The game's triumph is that much of an out of nowhere situation.
Our staff's jubilation in discovering each and every new Batbelt upgrade created a two week period of extended euphoria. We would rush to tell one another the locations of various Riddler solutions in order to ensure that all of us beat the totality of the game's most difficult challenge. Arkham Asylum is the rare fighting game that punishes button mashing, enforcing playing discipline to pick and choose the proper moments to throw a punch. Even better, the game's silent takedowns foster an environment of extreme player satisfaction. What other videogame affords the player the opportunity to enjoy the increased heartrates and creeping paranoia of a room full of thugs as they are gradually eliminated? Arkham Asylum was recently placed in the Guinness World Records for being the highest praised videogame of all time. Who are we to disagree? The title that finally (!) makes Batman fun to play is our choice for videogame of the year.
Despite our passionate support of Arkham Asylum, its victory in this category was narrow. The game it barely edged for the title is one whose history is the most storied in the industry. Coming on the heels of 2006's New Super Mario Bros., a DS game that celebrated the legendary gameplay that has made Nintendo billions of dollars, New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii quickly earned a place in our collective hearts. Depending on one's perspective, this is the first such side-scrolling Mario game for a non-portable console since Super Mario Bros. 3 was released almost 20 years ago. For some of our staff, that 19 year and nine month gap represents almost their entire lives.
Yes, there have been other Mario console games in that interim, particularly Super Mario 64, the franchise's move to 3D, the disappointing Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, which finished third in our 2008 voting (behind Halo 3 and Bioshock). None of those titles moved us the way that Super Mario Bros. 3 did way back when. The ability to re-live some of our favorite gameplay moments from our youth enticed almost all of our staff members to throw a vote Mario's way. This is true even those of us stupid enough to play in co-op mode, or as the guys at Penny-Arcade.com have appropriately described it, Divorce Mode. It is quite possibly the most difficult gameplay experience of the year as well as the most satisfying once you and your partner begin to learn to work together successfully. Once you have mastered the skill of Mushroom World cohabitation, only then may you truly join the fraternity of Mario Brothers. The satisaction of such developed skill is total. New Mario Bros. for the Wii offers one of the most rewarding multi-player game experiences in the history of the industry and had it not been for Batman finally done right, this would be a worthy choice as the best videogame of the year.
The rest of our top five consists of three games that are as dissimilar as humanly possible. Third place goes to Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to last year's number four videogame of the year, Left 4 Dead. While a couple of members of our staff initially shared many of the same concerns as the Valve protest group, who maintained a sequel this soon could not be evolved enough from the original, the studio proved us wrong in offering significant upgrades in terms of weapons, combat excitement, and enhanced enemies. It's also as good an online experience as the videogame community offers. Fourth place goes to Modern Warfare 2, the top selling game of 2009 whose predecessor joined Super Mario Galaxy on our 2008 list. Some members of our staff were drinking the Kool-Aid on MW2 months before its release but those of us who were on the fence about it prior to release stayed that way after it came out. The game offers tremendous online gameplay but the campaign mode...could be better. You can beat it in roughly the time it takes to microwave a burrito and that lackluster single player experience is what prevents it from finishing higher on the list.
Rounding out the top five is Scribblenauts, a game that I consider to be the logical successor to the 1980s Infocom series of games starting with Zork. Scribblenauts is a user experience that has to be played to be appreciated fully. Let's just say that when my wife was working her way through the game, it was not the least bit unusual for her to come running into the room espousing odd remarks such as "I just threw a Yeti at a child and it worked!" or "My robot electrified the piranha, but it died before I could steal the honey from the bees." If you have no idea what any of that means, don't worry. Neither did I at the time. Scribblenauts is a game that fundamentally requires the player to mine the depths of their imagination in order to come up with the most creative solutions possible to unravel puzzles. Sure, you could use bug spray to get rid of some pesky bees, but what is fun is that when you could try to drop a volcano on them instead? Boxing a lexicon of several thousand words and a game mantra of "Write Anything, Solve Anything", Scribblenauts provided the most novel gameplay of 2009. BOP proudly caters to a more intellectual crowd and that makes you all the perfect target audience for this game. Give it a shot and I guarantee you will love it. Our staff liked it roughly as much as Modern Warfare 2 and it cost only half as much to boot.
For those members of our staff who didn't get enough of a superhero fix from Arkham Asylum, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 did the trick, which explains its sixth place finish. Featuring over 50 beloved comic book characters and one Deadpool joke that still makes me giggle every time I think about it, this videogame showed much more deference and respect to Marvel's icons than X-Men Origins: Wolverine did. Meanwhile, ferroequinologists should take note of our seventh place selection, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Featuring cel-shaded graphics similar to The Wind Waker, the designers of this DS game threw out the flawed sailing aspect of that title, thereby saving many players from motion sickness. The player movement in this Zelda game has replaced boats with trains and created an absurdly fun atmosphere in the process. Between this game and Scribblenauts, this was the best year to date for the DS in the estimation of our staff.
The rest of the top ten sees two well established properties and a definite first for the purposes of our voting. The novel selection goes to Doodle Jump, a maddeninly addictive iPhone/iTouch app that requires the user to tilt their touch screen in order to jump to various platforms. Meanwhile, there are enemies who must be eliminated in the process, making this game equal parts Q-Bert, Jumpman, and Super Mario Bros. Several of our staff members at a treatment facility right now trying to overcome their Doodle Jump addictions. Ninth place goes to The Beatles: Rock Band, a game that comes almost half a century after the British Invasion, making it arguably the first game for kids AND their grandparents. Our final selection has somewhat similar appeal. Twenty-two years after Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! became one of the anchor titles for the original Nintendo, Punch-Out!! for the Wii reminded us how much fun it is to memorize the flurry combinations of comically over the top opponents. Yes, this game lacks a boss character as challenging as Tyson himself was back in the day, but it's still a blast to play as well as a tremendous workout for those who are bold enough to play the game using motion control.
Just missing the top ten was Halo: ODST, the game that allows Malcolm Reynolds and Caprica Six to fall in love in the heat of alien invasion. It actually tied for tenth place, but then lost a run-off vote for the final spot. Other titles in strong contention for selection were Street Fighter IV (we went old school across the board with our vote this year), Borderlands, Pokemon Platinum Edition Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and a pair of iPhone apps, Words with Friends and Flight Control. Can you tell we spent a lot of time in airports this year? (David Mumpower/BOP)
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