2009 Games of the Year

As I look back on the year in gaming, it has been a great year to be a digital entertainment connoisseur. Even with the evacuation of many tripe A titles to avoid the behemoth that was Modern Warfare 2, there were some spectacular successes released in 2009. Before I move my focus to the best gaming “offseason” in modern times, to E3 10, and on to the games and technologies of the new decade, here are my picks for games to be remembered, or forgotten, from the last year of the aughts:

Guilty Pleasure: Guitar Hero 5 - Consistently the Guitar Hero IP demonstrates that it is nothing more than a bad clone of Harmonix’s Rock Band genius. GH5 is the exception. A solid song list, easy coop, party mode, and, gulp, avatar play (I hearts it), GH5 excelled and advanced the genre.

Best Downloadable: Shadow Complex - This game was a gorgeous, bargain priced, flashback to the games of my youth. Metroid, Bionic Commando, and Contra brought my GI Joe dreams to reality via consoles. Shadow Complex was everything I liked about those games updated to today’s standards.

Best Graphics: Don’t get me wrong, NFS Shift, Arkham Asylum, Assassin’t Creed 2, and Modern Warfare 2 were all eye candy, but have you seen Uncharted 2? Cinematic doesn’t cover it. How about pure unadulterated eye pornography? I want to play a second time through just to see the world again.

Best DLC: Rock Band 2 - As much as I think Borderlands DLC will continue to provide more to do in the phenomenal title over the next year, RB2 continue to supply new great music to enjoy every week. It reminds me how much I can’t wait to get ahold of RB: Green Day and RB3 next year!!!

Biggest gaming Trend: Refinement - Assassin’s Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, Killzone 2... the list goes on and on. These games delivered on the missed promises of their predecessors. With sequels abound in 2010, this trend will continue next year.

Biggest Surprise: Batman Arkham Asylum - A comic book game. A licensed Intellectual Property. A fairly obscure development studio, Highly ambitious game design. This had flop written all over it. Instead they nailed the stealth, fighting, investigating, and glory of the Dark Knight lore. An instant classic.

Most Addictive: Oh Borderlands. I’m probably 50 hours or so into my hunter and still am energized every time I pull the trigger. That’s what happens when you combine my two favorite genres (FPS and RPG) and mix in a good dose of humor. I heart this game. Did I mention a sequel is in the works?

Biggest Disappointment: Halo ODST - This was a close one. Modern Warfare 2’s missteps earned an entire post of my ire. Assassin’s Creed 2 bored me to tears. But ODST takes the poop cake. Dumb AI, recycled art assets, ridiculous story, forgettable characters, and year old multiplayer. Has Micro$oft and Bungie finally wrung their prize IP dry?

Can’t miss list - In case you just woke up from a coma and are confined to only used games, here’s your list of can’t miss experiences that define 09: Infamous, Batman Arkham Asylum, Shadow Complex, Uncharted 2, Forza 3, Ratchet and Clank Tools, and Borderlands. Each advanced the craft of game design.

Game of the Year: This sure is a tough one. Borderlands earned my love and addiction. Batman put me in the shoes of the Dark Knight. Ratchet and Clank Tools perfected the genre they invented. But when it comes to fun, story, gameplay, graphics, and story, Uncharted 2 wins the day. Naughty Dog are simply masters of the gaming craft.


Well that will do it for 09. If you have missed any of these classics, tis the season for gaming. But play fast. We all have but a few weeks to wrap up each of these before Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, and Splinter Cell Conviction quickly ring in the new year. Gosh I heart being a gamer.

Snap the Magic Dragon

In the past I have been very vocal about my support for the iPhone/iPod Touch operating system (OS). It represented the most influential development in mobile computing ever. My greatest complaint, and a very significant one, is that the iPhone was and remains exclusive to AT&T. Despite over two years on the market, there really hasn’t been much quality competition for Apples’ God phone. And pending the mid-2010 migration of the iPhone to a world phone that supports both the CDMA (Verizon and Sprint) and GSM (AT&T and Tmobile), if you wanted a super sexy smartphone, it was the iPhone on AT&T’s pricey crappy network or nothing.

When Google announced it would be creating a free smartphone OS (Android), I was intrigued. Almost everything Google does it does well and providing hardware developers a free, stable, quality OS would be a great start to get them caught up with Apple. Plus, standardization across multiple phones all running Android would encourage a vibrant application market. When the Tmobile G1 phone, the first with the Android OS, launched, it was surprisingly underwhelming. It really looked more like a proof of concept than a finished product. Laggy performance, ugly transitions, and some bugs made the first incarnation of Android something to study then avoid.

Shortly thereafter, in the midst of the launches of numerous Android powered devices, a little known hardware British manufacturer named HTC, churned out the HTC Hero, a phone powered by Android but vastly improved with proprietary interface improvements known as Sense UI. When I saw the tech demo, I was simply floored. This was what I dreamt of Android being. Smooth transitions, integrated applications, sexy animations, customizable home screens for work or play, an integrated browser with flash, and all on Verizon’s solid network. When the product launched, it was mostly what had been advertised, with a few nitpicks such as a little processor lag and no proximity screen shutoff to save battery when talking on the phone. In short, it was the first device I have seen with the same wow factor as the iPhone.

HTC has launched a few devices since the Hero, but the rumblings I have been hearing should have the folks in Cupertino (Apple HQ) concerned, like greatly concerned. HTC is rumored to be imminently releasing their next generation Android device, the HTC Dragon. The Dragon will be an evolutionary step from the Hero, improved in every way. It will run the vastly improved Android 2 software, with the first demonstration of Sense 2.0 UI. In theory, the coding should be easier for HTC as many of the Sense 1.0 improvements have been integrated/copied into Android 2.0. The Dragon will sport a 4.3 inch touchscreen, a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera (also capable of video capture), integrated GPS, CDMA 3G card, a flash card slot for expanded memory, and, most importantly, a blazing fast 1 GHz “snapdragon” processor that should make any lag a thing of the past. Oh and did I mention HTC launches most, if not all, of their products at $200 or less with a contract?

Make no doubt, HTC already has a winner with the Sense UI. Any improvements on its rock solid software has the potential to be something very special. With all due respect to Motorola’s powerful but soulless/stock Android 2.0 device (Droid), it is the Sense UI that makes HTC’s products shine with next gen polish and the Dragon will be the first bonafide competition to the iPhone’s slick presentation. I have no need for a new phone, nor a new contract, but will have a very hard time resisting the Dragon, especially if Apple keeps delaying their super secret tablet. I say this, if you are in the market for a smart phone, want to avoid AT&T like the wireless H1N1 that it is, or are just curious about where smart phones are headed, you owe it to yourself to check out the HTC Dragon when it launches within the next few weeks. Stay tuned to my blog/twitter feed and I’ll be sure to have a followup hands-on report.

Santa De-Claused

Sure the Tiger Woods’ scandal has dominated headlines since it begin just over a week ago. Never mind that such behavior has become routine for over-coddled sports stars and that despite media reports, Tiger never marketed himself as a moral family man. He really didn’t market himself as anything other than a phenomenal golfer and fierce competitor, but the scandal just wouldn’t have been as juicy without some invented hypocrisy. So, now that the story is subsiding and they have successfully ruined his life, with some assistance from his own stupidity of course, who is next? Well, after some independent research and shocking developments, I say it is time to take down Santa Claus, AKA Chris Kringle, AKA Saint Nick. My research reveals he is anything but saintly...

I was recently forced by my daughter to watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for the umpteenth time. When I really paid attention, what I saw for the first time shocked me and after discussions with other skeptics, his behavior and corresponding coverup should shame all of us that feed this red-jacketed philanderer cookies once a year. I shall explain:

Santa’s First Illegitimate Son: Early on, in what shall be referred to as the 1964 evidence film, we are introduced to Herbie the elf who refuses to make toys, the biological urge of all elves, and prefers to pursue dentistry. This alone would be odd enough, but it is clearly shown that Herbie, ready for it, does not have elf ears!!! He is however of elf height and foot size, so the question is, where did his ears and desire to make toys go? The answer is simple. Herbie is a half breed. Then I noticed there are only two humans in Christmas town. The innocent sweet Mrs. Claus and our primary suspect, Santa. So who else could have fathered this round eared, social deviant? Claus I tell you.

But There is Another: Even more shocking, we are next introduced to Rudolph shortly after his birth. Within the first few minutes of his life we see several insightful things: 1. Rudolph speaks English (slightly odd for an animal) and 2. He has a red nose. The first reindeer ever with a red nose hmm, what are the chances? Pretty good when you consider there is another in Christmas Town with a red nose. A red magical nose even, that can be used to ascend chimneys. You got it, his lust apparently unfulfilled in dangerous elf liaisons, Santa had, gulp, resorted to forbidden reindeer love. Is it any coincidence that Santa stops by right after the birth to look in on his illegitimate son?!?!

The Cover Up: First, after seeing Rudolph’s telltale nose, Santa tried to get rid of him by shaming him into running away. Next, Santa had his elf foreman mock Herbie until he too fled. Then, most deviously, he sent his private hit man, Yukon Cornelius, to ensure the two sons of Santa never returned. Santa-Hut also sent his equivalent of the Rancor monster, the Abominable Snowman, to finish the job in case Yukon couldn’t pull the trigger. Speaking of not pulling the trigger... Yukon feigns to protect Rudolph and Herbie from the snow creature, but rather than shoot his coconspirator with a clearly shown pistol on his belt, he instead sails the group to an island where other rejects from Santa’s cultish compound have been exiled.

It is only at the last minute when S. Claus, an established criminal with multiple aliases, realizes a storm will cancel Christmas (a huge PR problem) and that his sons have survived his assassination attempts, that he concocts a story to cover his tracks and uses his hoofed son as a glorified headlight, under the guise of "leading the sleigh." Herbie is then bribed into silence by being granted a dentist practice but must first show his loyalty to the Santa-don by removing the teeth of the snow monster so he can’t speak the truth.

Overall, it turns out Rudolph is a sad tale of betrayal and abuse by a maniacal fat man. I for one am closing the flue on Christmas Eve and not letting that conartist, reindeer lover in my home. I’m off to research Kwanzaa. At least there is one holiday tale I can turn to that wasn’t just made up in the sixties...

Have we reached the Processor Plateau?

One of the most frustrating factors in life to deal with as a tech geek has been the exponential increase in processing power. It seems every time I bought a computer over the last two decades, within three years it became obsolete and unable to run the latest version of even the most basic applications. There were several reasons for this including advances in display technology (monochrome, to 16 color, to 256 color, resolution, etc), sloppy programming techniques of the world’s leader in Operating Systems (OS), advances in the complexity of most applications, and significant advances in the graphical polish of most applications. All of these factors required increasingly powerful processors to support them.

But a funny thing happened the other day. Apple released the latest version of their flagship OS and it was smaller and faster than it’s predecessor, even when running on the same hardware. Had Apple cracked some impossible code? Nope. In fact I think they showed the first sign of something I have been predicting for quite sometime.W e have reached the point where commonly available "cheap" processors are more than capable of handling what 99.9% of us want on a computer. We no longer need four times faster processing every few years. In short, a processor plateau, where increases in processor performance do not correspond with increases in usefulness, may be finally upon us. I shall explain why and what this means to you...

In theory, the required speed of a processor must reflect three things: The processing power required to support input/output devices, the computational power to support the applications being run, and the speed of which the operator (the human at the machine) can process the output of the computer and provide corresponding input. In essence, the demands of the user, the box, and what it is doing. All of these have been stable for quite some time. To expand:

Display technology, although becoming more vibrant and power efficient, has pretty much remained the same in resolution and color variety for quite sometime. The mouse and the keyboard haven’t fundamentally changed since I can remember.

Required application computational power, IE how hard the processor has to work to support most commonly used programs, has stabilized. Most people use computers for word processing, spreadsheets, internet, email, music, and movies. These tasks have been the same for the greater part of a decade.

Lastly, the speed of the user to process data on the screen and respond with today’s input and output devices (mouse/keyboard/monitor) is pretty fixed. Modern operating systems and programs are pretty slick at providing this information in a very pretty and easy to use format, but at some point no matter how pretty and logical the layouts get, we can only read, think, and click so fast.

So given that the speed of a required processor is simply a function of these three fixed variables, it makes sense that at some point you just don’t need to get faster, at least until input or output devices change significantly, we evolve as a species, or a new complex computing task becomes common. So until holographic displays, retinal input, my pinkie finger falls off, or predicting the weather at home become common place, there must be a theoretical maximum speed of processing that we need. I believe we are close, if not there.

I stumbled upon this realization the other day. My friend was looking into buying a Mac for the first time and asked me, given the increased upfront expense, how long would his Apple last him. I thought about it and told him that given his uses for a computer, consisting of web surfing, email, and word processing, indefinitely. The bottom line is, there is enough raw processing power in today’s computers to exceed the hardware’s lifetime, IE the processor is fast enough to handle most new software until the machine breaks from age. This is a massive change in how computing technology has worked over the last two decades.

Suddenly, I looked around and saw plenty of other evidence to support my theory that faster processors are just not needed by the masses. Think about the success of these devices that use bargain, last generation processors: Laptop prices have plummeted, with numerous discount netbooks available running the brand new Windows 7 for under $400. The original EDGE iPhone has been around for almost two years and is still arguably one of the sexiest, easy to use mobile device on the planet. GPS devices are dirt cheap, even as they get easier to use, as they just don’t need faster processors for what they do. Microsoft and Sony delayed the next console generation, overdue by any previous generation standards, as the current gen systems are still turning out increasingly amazing looking and playing games using five year old technology. And the most successful console of this generation, the Nintendo Wii, uses a seven year old processor.

So what does this mean to you? First, WAY cheaper prices for very capable computers and mobile devices. It also means that new manufacturers can and will emerge at anytime, able to compete with the big established names. The difference between a winning tech toy and a forgotten product is no longer the cutting edge processor or memory only the big name companies can afford, but instead will be the quality of its interface.

For instance, when the iPhone launched it had one of the most powerful mobile processors available along with plenty of digital storage and as a result was able to support a beautiful OS that no one else could touch. Now, any handset producer can get the technology that the iPhone has on the cheap. It just comes down to the quality of their programmers and resulting OS. As an example, upstart company HTC has really focused on interface quality. As a result, the upcoming HTC Dragon/Passion, built on Android 2.0 and their proprietary Sense UI, will absolutely give Apple a run for their money. [Want proof, here’s their demo which currently runs on the HTC Eris phone.]

In the end, reaching this processor plateau has essentially shattered the technological barriers to success that only a few powerful companies could previously overcome. Brace yourself for new amazing tech products coming from everywhere, at lower prices, limited only by the imagination and programming skill of their creators. The tech world is becoming truly flat. And as a tech nerd, I couldn’t be happier about it.

Update: I've gotten a few texts as to why I don't get the HTC Eris or Hero right now versus waiting for the Dragon and one email asking what the Dragon is. The Eris and Hero run Android 1.0 with the HTC Sense UI addons (they make it way sexy). They also use a greatly outdated 500 MHz processor. The HTC Dragon, whose release is imminent, will be based on Android 2.0, will have the next version of Sense UI, and sports a blazing 1GHz "Snapdragon" processor. That Snapdragon processor will likely hit the plateau for HTC devices. If Apple keeps delaying the release of the Apple Slate tablet, it will be VERY hard for me to resist grabbing a Verizon Dragon on launch day.