Co-Op Experience of the Year: Left 4 Dead 2 - Left 4 Dead 2 lures players through the streets of Savannah, backwoods swamps, lonely motels, and the most frightening carnival on Earth, to name a handful of locations. I found the maps in the original game adequate, but too claustrophobic. By no means is L4D2 a reinvention of the series, but with so many welcome additions, it feels close to being the perfection of it. It’s the little things, like the gooey expulsions from severed heads splattering across your screen that make the experience pop with horrific delight. The level designs and objectives boast far more variety than the predecessor. Simply put Left 4 Dead 2 is one of the top Xbox 360 games of 2009 (especially when played in co-op mode), all zombie fans need to report to duty at your local game retailer.
Other Console Game of the Year: Uncharted 2 - This is that one game exclusive to the Playstation 3 that all Microsoft-lovers are jealous about; the team at Naughty Dog studios created an entertainment masterpiece with this one. Not only is the story-telling done in a superb way that keeps the player interested all the way through but the graphics are hands-down some of the best we have ever seen on a next-gen console. The multiplayer may have been lackluster but the rest of the game was top-notch work and we can easily recommend it to anyone reading this, whether or not they own a PS3. Once a year a game comes along for Sony that reminds people why they still know what they're doing in the world of video games, Uncharted 2 is just that title for 2009.
2009 Xbox 360 Game of the Year: Modern Warfare 2 - Every year there is one major video game release that nearly every person in the world is waiting for, this year that honor goes to Modern Warfare 2, from publisher Activision and developer Infinity Ward. It was also home to one of the biggest "scandals" of the year concerning video games - the airport/terrorist level. Graphically Modern Warfare 2 sets a bar so high that our industry will look to it as a blueprint of what can be done on next-gen systems visually. The developers found a perfect balance between realistic and entertainment (just wait until you play-through the airport level) that there were points during our review period that we actually forgot we weren’t watching a HD movie. At the end of the day Modern Warfare 2 is everything we were hoping it would be, from the “that did not just happen” moments to the refined gameplay mechanics, to the all-new Spec-Ops mode – it’s as near perfect as any video game has gotten up to this point.
