Today is June 30, the halfway point of the year. I thought I’d look back on the first six months of 2009 to determine just how good a gaming year it’s been… so far.
My first thought when thinking of writing this post was to speculate whether any of the games released to date in 2009 could possibly become my overall game of the year. So, just off the top of my head, I planned to list all the potential candidates, such as…
Red Faction: Guerrilla, Little King’s Story, OutRun Online, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Swords & Soldiers, Sims 3, Riddick, Zeno Clash and… well, that’s about it.
What a peculiar list. Rewind to January and I don’t think I’d have pegged any of those to make their way onto my best of ’09 shortlist.
So do any of these have a chance of taking out top honours come the year’s end? Are any of these games genuine game of the year material?
Maybe they will be. But part of me kinda hopes not. To be honest, I don’t think there’s been one truly great game released so far this year. Not for me, anyway.
The big titles have all left me underwhelmed in varying ways. Killzone 2 was a decent shooter. Resident Evil 5 was about half a good game. Street Fighter IV simply isn’t for me. Halo Wars was OK. inFamous was OK, too. And I’ve barely given enough time to major PC titles like Dawn of War II and Empire: Total War.
(I know that sounds a little dismissive, but just personally, not one of those games has really grabbed me.)
Looking at my personal top ten picks for 2008, only two games from the first half of the year made the cut. They were GTA IV and Audiosurf, and only the latter featured in the top five. The remainder of my top ten were plucked from the madness of those pre-Xmas months.
It left me thinking: is it simply the case that all the best games really do come out in the second half of the year or are those early year releases too often overlooked when it comes to awards time?
So I’m interested to hear about your picks for the Games of the Half-Year. Do you think you might have already played your own personal Game of the Year? Or is it more likely still to come?
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