2009 was a great year for videogames. We all know this. We had hugely AWESOME titles like Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games, The Godfather 2, and Tony Hawk: Ride. We also had totally forgettable titles like Modern Warfare 2, Halo ODST, Left 4 Dead 2, and, of course, Uncharted 2: Among Theives. However, for me, there were some titles that just blew the others out of the water. These are my top three games of 2009.

First up is The Beetles: Rock Band



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Awesome.

I'm a huge fan of the Beetles' music. I just love those guys. I mean, who doesn't love that song Hey June(bug)? Unfortunately, that song isn't in this game. It made me very sad. However, they made up for it with other great songs, like Baby You Can Drive My Bug, I Wanna Hold Your Antennae, and, of course, I am the Ernobius gigas. And, with the addition of the Buprestoidea Road album, we can now play the famous Buprestoidea Road medley... if you own the game on Xbox360 or PS3. If you're on the Wii, you can't play it straight through.

Almost as amazing as the songs themselves are the dream sequences. You see, later in the Beetles' career, they began to realize that if they kept trying to perform concerts, they'd eventually get stepped on and trampled by their overzealous fangirls. So, they locked themselves in their studio at Buprestoidea studios and released hit after hit. In order to avoid tarnishing their history, Harmonix decided to put in bright, colorful sequences to replace screaming fans. For instance, in “I am the Ernobius Gigas” the dream sequence is a single Ernobius Gigas eating. BRILLIANT.

For the use of brilliant music and awesome dream sequences, The Beetles: Rock Band gets number three on my top games of 2009. However, it is nothing compared to number two.



In Fatman: Fatman's Asylum, you play as Brunce Whine (pictured above). Bruce Whine is a rather large fellow. Bruce Whine is also a huge Batman fanboy. He's also certifiably insane. It is due to these two facts that he is locked in Fatman's Asylum. Long story short, Fatman thinks he's Batman, when really, he's just a fat man.

I know EVERYONE has played through this game, so I won't bore you with the details of the story. I'll just say its amazing from when the Poker breaks out of captivity to when the superb final boss fight in which Fatman prevails against Poker, proving once and for all, that cookies beat steroids.

What really makes this game remarkable for me is the prowler missions. You, Bruce Whine, hide from muscly steroid-enhanced goons with guns. Then you eat them. There's a reason this game is rated M for AWESOME.

There's also the really cool psychoanalysis part of the game, in which Scare'fro (the game's token black character) makes you think that you're really just a fat man locked up in an insane asylum and that none of the game is real. Of course he's wrong, though.

...isn't he?



Lastly, there's Borderlands.

I wasn't expecting to be that amazed by this sneaky title. However, its easily stolen what would be Fatman's place as my Game of the Year. It might not have Beetles: Rock Band's amazing soundtrack (though it does have the great song “Ain't No Rest for the Picket”), and it might not have Fatman's awesome goon-eating prowler missions, but it does have one thing the other two on this list lack: realism.

If you don't know, Borderlands is a story-driven game about a National Guardsman who has to shoot Mexicans who try to cross the border. However, he is often at-ends with this because of the fact that he is half-Mexican, and his grandfather may or may not have been an illegal immigrant. As time goes on, he realizes that he can't stop the immigration alone, so he goes on a hunt for the mythical “vault” a place where immigrants are said to pole-vault into American-soil. However, by the end of the game, he is somehow at Canada, and in his absense, thousands have crossed the border. The game ends with him deciding that it was better to do a half-assed job than what he was really payed for.

Such a heart warming story.