Starting today and running through Friday, the staff here at Extra Guy will be counting down their favorite games of 2009. This isn’t a definitive best of the year for the site, but rather a countdown of some of the games that we enjoyed playing throughout the year. Take a look at what each of us chose as our number 5:
Dan
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
I’m not what you would call a 50 Cent fan. I had a brief foray into liking rap ironically back in 2004, but yelling ‘Whaaat’ ala DMX got old kind of quickly. So it took me by surprise when I quite enjoyed Blood on the Sand, though I have to admit that it was in an ironic sense as well. The game was decent, and you got to hear ‘Hey Fiddy!’ every thirty seconds while you tried to help Mr. Cent get his diamond encrusted skull back from that bitch who stole it, taking down helicopter after helicopter in the process. It’s not often that you see a rapper pick up an AK in a Middle Eastern country and start shooting fools, and so for a unintellectual romp Blood on the Sand was a damn good time.
Anthony
LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias
Winter of the Melodias is a follow up to WiiWare’s first competent offering and it improves and expands upon the original in almost every way. This platformer had fantastic pacing — reminiscent of Super Metroid or a modern Castlevania — and added a new gameplay wrinkle each time the game was in danger of becoming stale. If there’s an example of how to bring retail quality to a downloadable environment, but chop it up in easily digestible bite-sized chunks, it’s the LostWinds series.
Dave
Resident Evil 5
I’ve been a huge Resident Evil fan since I played RE2 on the original PlayStation, so I was incredibly excited about this release. RE5 gave me everything I’ve come to expect from a Resident Evil game and more. Although I do miss the old days of Resident Evil being a game about killing zombies, I still love the story and the atmosphere that the series provides, and it’s great to be back in control of Chris. A lot of controversy arrived with this game due to the controls not being updated since RE4, but in the end what you’ll find is that even with these old school controls this is still one of the best games of 2009. If somehow you missed a chance to check this game out earlier this year, Capcom is set to release a special gold edition early next year that you definitely need to pick up and play.
