In a year of great games, which game was the greatest?

Welcome to the inaugural NowGamer Game Of The Year Awards. Each year, we’ll be celebrating the games that have defined our year – the games that have made us laugh and cry, that have kept us up way past our bedtimes and those that have, in their own way, made the art of games that little bit better.

Here we’ll be simply summing up why each one of these ten games deserves to nominated for the NowGamer Game Of The Year Award and then, at the end, declaring which game stands out head and shoulders above the rest.

So without any further ado here are the games… and the awards that people are already calling the Goaties!

Killzone 2
Stand out moment: Storming the Visari Palace in the game’s final battle – as good as anything Modern Warfare – or its sequel – can throw at you.

Way back in 2005 when PlayStation 3 was just a collection of scribbles on the back of Ken Kuturagi’s napkin, Guerrilla Games showed the world what it thought would be possible with the proposed PS3 specs. The world watched wide-eyed and then promptly poo-pooed what it had seen. Impossible, we thought.

Then Killzone 2 came out and, to everyone’s surprise, it delivered and not just visually, either. Guerrilla could have taken the ‘easy’ option and made a facsimile of Halo, or a ‘Modern Warfare in space’, but it didn’t. Elements from these and other shooters were incorporated, sure, but Killzone 2 was very much its own game: intentionally slow and tactical, the thinking man’s FPS, if you like.

Not that it came up short in the thrills department. Great visuals help when you’re trying to excite but great settings and set pieces are the things that really engage the player. Like the level when you’re fighting through the narrow backstreets and the bit when you’re fighting your way along a speeding train or when you climb into a mechanised walker and unleash hell onto the Helghast army.

That was the thing about Killzone 2 – we’ve all played these levels, or sections, in console shooters before but never have they been done with such verve.

But the really great thing about it was the simple pleasure of shooting the super-sophisticated-AI enemies (please take note Infinity Ward) and the duck and cover gunplay; it was Gears Of War from inside Marcus Fenix’s head. But with thinking bad guys.

Oh, and you think that ‘Soap’ MacTavish was the original Mohawk-wearing star of an FPS? Think again – that’ll be Sev from Killzone 2.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Standout moment: The realisation that Momohime and Kisuke’s sword-trees intersect meaning you’ll only get best weapons if you play through both their stories. Simple, but effective.

Although 2009 saw a number of landmark Wii releases, few offered an experience as visually lush and downright refreshing as Vanilla Ware’s Muramasa. A uniquely Japanese side-scrolling action hack’n’slash em up, the game features intricate 2D graphics made up of countless layers - the resulting effect is reminiscent of traditional Asian art, with a cartoony veneer – in fact Muramasa is one of the most beautiful games we can think of on Nintendo’s little white box.

The gameplay on the other hand is deceptively simple, with players able to hold the attack button down while swiping the analogue stick in different directions – the system may sound odd for a genre traditionally served by the tried and tested button-bashing mechanic, but here it feels innovative and unique. It’s also appropriate, with the game’s central swordplay theme given swishy, slice-like controls to match.

… continued