Top 3 Games, Films & Tv Show's of 2009

[Branden_Lucero]

this is like the only article available. nothing much is even said.

[Stu]

nope. its already in the works. which is fuckin' sad because it hasn't even been 3 months since the first one game out. but that's EA for you. pretty soon they'll star releasing a bunch of shit spin-offs the series.

Yeah. Fuck companies wanting to make money!

[nemesiswontdie]

I wasnt bothered by the graphics at all. A game doesnt need to have good graphics to make a game great.

[Member_of_STARS]

Yeah. Fuck companies wanting to make money!

Can I file this response under the same category as "companies know best" and "you should play the game like the developers intended"?

Games need patching and support for at least some time. I dont know how stable or how well DA:O is made, but rushing a sequel is one of the reasons sequels blow or the games themselves are full of bugs.

[Stu]

Can I file this response under the same category as "companies know best" and "you should play the game like the developers intended"?

No you can't, because Dragon Age: Origins is being supported comprehensively post-release.

[Carnivol]

Dragon Age is to my knowledge (and as others have said) set to receive several expansions/updates (along with a sequel). There's none of that Left4Dead 2 bullshit Valve pulled being done to it (at least not so far).

And a Bioware RPG with a sequel in the works and expansions... gasp... what a shocker... (Jade Empire and that Sonic RPG are probably their only RPGs to've not received both expansions/DLC and sequels.)



As for my top picks of 2009 ...

Games:
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Red Faction: Guerrilla
- Volition came to the rescue with Saints Row 2 in 2008 when GTAIV disappointed me. In 2009 Volition delivered again when the GTAIV DLC was just more of the same drivel.

Halo 3: ODST
- Not exactly the biggest Halo fan around, but something about ODST just sat right with me. Think it was the general atmosphere of New Mombasa. They pretty much took Halo 3 and stole a bit of Metroid Prime... I approved.

Lost Planet 2 Demo:
- Yeah. A demo. Last time I spent this much time with a demo was when the Crackdown demo came out.

Movies:
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Coraline
- Sucker for Neil Gaiman.

Slumdog Millionaire
- Okay, so this was technically a 2008 movie, but it didn't have a wide release until Q1 2009.

G.I. Joe - Rise of Cobra
- Had Transformers 2 pinned down as the movie I had the most expectations for in 2009, but it ultimately failed to deliver... and it failed hard... fortunately... G.I. Joe was there to save the day... like a real American hero.

Series:
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the obvious choices a lot of people likely will list;
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Dexter - Season 4
Battlestar Galactica - Season 4 - Part 2
Lost - Season 5

Personal picks;

Community
- This was quite possibly one of the nicest surprises of 2009. Best TV sitcom I've seen in a long time. Very likely to snuggle up with Two Guys and a Girl + Arrested Development in the future as my top 3, ever (Seinfeld's a group of it's own!)

Penn & Teller's Bullshit - Season 7
- Not their strongest season, but still good.

Chuck - Season 2
- Okay, so this started in 2008, but was evenly split on each side of Christmas. Heck, *spoiler*this*spoiler* might've even been the greatest TV moment of 2009.

[SamuraiEdge]

Wow very unusual list of game's you have there Carnivol. A Dragon age sequel already? I have only one thing to say to that...Awesome.

[Branden_Lucero]

Bioware just seriously needs to improve on the sequel then, because i thought the character animation sucked. when you look at something like Mass Effect 2 and then look at Dragon Age, its like, you know what game they were more focused on.

[Carnivol]

Bioware just seriously needs to improve on the sequel then, because i thought the character animation sucked. when you look at something like Mass Effect 2 and then look at Dragon Age, its like, you know what game they were more focused on.

Dragon Age runs on a new proprietary(?) engine called Eclipse. Mass Effect 2 runs on U3 and recycles a solid does of assets from the previous game (which also has allowed them to make sure Mass Effect 2 isn't a resource hog like no other, as the first one was for seemingly no good reason at times)

Wow very unusual list of game's you have there Carnivol.

Thanks. I guess. I pretty much ended up thinking where I've clocked the most hours of pure stupidity or fun (Red Faction, both the demo and the full game provided me absurd amounts of fun... never saw that coming...) ODST was more of a game design curiosity that just caught my attention. Lost Planet 2 demo was just HELL YEAH! (and the trailers that've followed... oh man... bring it!)

[Member_of_STARS]

Dragon Age is to my knowledge (and as others have said) set to receive several expansions/updates (along with a sequel). There's none of that Left4Dead 2 bullshit Valve pulled being done to it (at least not so far).

Im speaking in general terms. Ive been "suffering" myself because support was either dropped or less than adequate when the developers rushed to develop an EXP pack or a sequel.

And lets not forget Biowares own Mass Effect, which on PC got 1 or 2 patches, and still has BSOD, CTD, GPF errors, occasional horrible lag. Surely, not nearly as bad as some of the worst crap released this year, but still not that impressive for an otherwise fantastic game.

Personally, unless its a multiplayer game where everything has to be as polished as possible, I dont really care, but people have a right to be concerned when developers start rushing sequels.

-

Anyhow

GOTY09- STALKER: Call of Pripyat, Batman: AA, Uncharted 2. Out of these, Call of Pripyat is probably one of the finest definitions of a "sequel". It does everything right, except for firefight dynamics (mods fix that), drops things that dont work, throws in additional element that do work, fixes up the wonky stuff.

When it comes to shows. I found myself really enjoying House MD-s current seasons first 3-4 episodes, which were some of the greatest season intros Ive ever seen. Now, its kind of gone back to the same old routine. Supernatural and Entourage have been consistently great throughout their seasons, unlike pretty much every other popular show like Heroes, Lost, Prison Break...

Movies. Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Sherlock Holmes. Finally, Guy Ritchie delivered. Ive disliked all of his work until now (yes, Im talking about Snatch and Smoking Barrels).

[Carnivol]

And lets not forget Biowares own Mass Effect, which on PC got 1 or 2 patches, and still has BSOD, CTD, GPF errors, occasional horrible lag. Surely, not nearly as bad as some of the worst crap released this year, but still not that impressive for an otherwise fantastic game.

I'd blame the U3 engine. For supposedly being an out of the box SDK solution - there are few games that seem to actually work flawlessly on that thing (unless they've had external help on the hotline 24/7). The less restricted the games are, the more complex the clockwork gets, and the more wonky everything in it seems to get... it's almost as if EPIC made it solely for the purpose of making games in either small confined areas or linear tunnels (both which Gears of War presents you with) and that they somehow sold if off as something capable of much more than that.

The 360 version of Mass Effect is pretty much just as bad as the PC version (if not even worse thanks to the general poor gameplay performance of the game on the 360. Though the BSOD's on the PC version sounds like driver compatibility failure on hardware end. Software shouldn't really be able to trigger BSODs). Dunno how many times I've had to reload something 'cause stuff just didn't load, how many times I've had to reset 'cause the cutscenes just don't start, how many times random small things have caused me to reset/load (checking a mining point, to then have the marker spawn inside you so you get stuck... forever.), falling out of bounds thanks to two or more enemies using biotics for throw/singularity stuff, exploding the MAKO 'cause it lands on dangerous surfaces such as rooftops.

Think the support issues for the game (and the expansion plans they initially had) kinda failed 'cause of BioWare's transfer to EA at the time. When stuff like that happens, everyone usually drop everything they have in their hands and sit around waiting for a thumbs up to continue work on stuff... which may take... forever! It's a strange business miracle that the PC version even came to be


(Also; Heroes need to die. Ever since season 2 it's been clear that it overstayed its welcome and no one had any ideas as for where to take things after season 1... and I even consider Season 1 one of the most pleasant surprises in recent TV history )

[Member_of_STARS]

I'd blame the U3 engine.

From the research Ive done, only General Protection Fault errors can be blamed on the U3 engine alone, but those were rather frequent on the v1.0 ME, and curiously enough, seems like a reocurring error on Unreal engine. SWAT4 had the same errors (Unreal 2.5).

BSODs, as you put it correctly, are mostly a driver/hardware issues, both occuring on nVidia and ATi cards. However. Rainbow Six Vegas, although being one of the worst ports Ive seen (not in technical issues, but rather concept/optimization-wise) suffered no such errors. Although, it did still run poorly.

You did raise an interesting thought. Im trying to remember a flawless PC U3 game, and except for UT3 (which was a conceptual disaster), theres none. While Modern Warfare, a flawless game (literally), is built on a 10 year old engine.

Still, you cant really blame U3 on the problems, because even corridor shooters suffer from issues, while not showing problems ME showed. So I do still think its mostly the developers fault. Not saying releasing a PC game is all butterflies and rainbows, because the game has to be optimized for virtually endless variations of hardware, but some can do it, while others cant. Time and money issues, perhaps? Which is exactly why rushed sequels are to blame. However-

Think the support issues for the game (and the expansion plans they initially had) kinda failed 'cause of BioWare's transfer to EA at the time.

I am willing to accept this as a good excuse for Bioware

Speaking of characters falling through the ground. Yesterday I played the "Normandy crash site" mission on ME2, completed the objectives and then rturned to the crash site. What happened was the screen flickered for a second and Shepard fell to her death. At the time I thought that maybe a return to the site would trigger a cutscene where Shepard "couldnt take the guilt, so she ended her life." Haha. Now I know better.

(Also; Heroes need to die. Ever since season 2 it's been clear that it overstayed its welcome and no one had any ideas as for where to take things after season 1... and I even consider Season 1 one of the most pleasant surprises in recent TV history )

Season 1 villain
Season 1 villain gets killed
Season 2 new villain
Season 2 villain gets killed
Season 3 new villain
Season 3 villain gets killed

It became old incredibly fast. I dont think theres even hype around the show anymore, is there?

[Carnivol]

You did raise an interesting thought. Im trying to remember a flawless PC U3 game, and except for UT3 (which was a conceptual disaster), theres none. While Modern Warfare, a flawless game (literally), is built on a 10 year old engine.

Come to think of it... how much of that thing is still idTech?
I noticed even MW, WaW and MW2 still have the idSoftware proprietary tech license text on them... which came as a bit of a surprise to me, as I thought they bragged about MW being a brand spankin' new engine and all that.

It became old incredibly fast. I dont think theres even hype around the show anymore, is there?

Problem is that Season 2-4 didn't seem to be going anywhere and they implement new plot holes and contradictions left and right on a weekly basis. Some of the stuff was so wonky that you start to wonder if it was an homage or the writers just ripping off things 'cause they couldn't come up with anything original (Like the whole arc of Mohinder pretty much reliving David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly, scene by scene.)

At least season 1 had a full build up leading to the finale. Season 2-3 seems to've tried way too hard to explain things that didn't really need an explanation + fell on its own face whenever something should've been a shocker + they introduce new characters left and right (and poorly wrote out chars too)

[Member_of_STARS]

Come to think of it... how much of that thing is still idTech?
I noticed even MW, WaW and MW2 still have the idSoftware proprietary tech license text on them... which came as a bit of a surprise to me, as I thought they bragged about MW being a brand spankin' new engine and all that.

About 5-10%, in technical terms its way over my head, but thats the figure Ive seen being thrown around. idTechs legendary netcode is probably in there in some way or form, because MW (and all things considered, even MW2 to an extent) hit detection is legendary and without equal.

Did they really brag about their engine, though?

At least season 1 had a full build up leading to the finale. Season 2-3 seems to've tried way too hard to explain things that didn't really need an explanation + fell on its own face whenever something should've been a shocker + they introduce new characters left and right (and poorly wrote out chars too)

Indeed. At some point I started to wonder if it was a one season project, because every other season seemed disjointed.

[Carnivol]

Did they really brag about their engine, though?

Never paid too much attention to the studio side of things, but every single tech related coverage I've seen in magazines and stuff about CoD4:MW seemed to pretty much have been "They've thrown out all tech from the previous games and made a completely new engine!!!1!111! NEXT GEN AM HERE!" so I found it a bit surprising to see that the id Software note is still on the box (as I knew the older ones were build on the Quake 3 engine.) Did they recycle old stuff? (Formats?) Did they use just the netcode? Did they lift stuff from the Doom 3 engine?

Either way, I guess this partly explains how id has managed to stay healthy without really having had too much success recently. So at least something good comes out of a franchise I quite frankly don't like.

Indeed. At some point I started to wonder if it was a one season project, because every other season seemed disjointed.

Guess it's pretty obvious that it must've been sold as a one season deal/idea, but like all American TV productions... that's never really enough. Gotta keep something going for as long as possible and ram it face first down in the ground.