What I've learned and my Game of the Year

So I learned something with my last post. Not the one about the Wii. The other one that was up for about 15 minutes and that I then deleted.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post promising a retrospective on the Wii, PS3 and the DS. I had something to say about the Wii, so I thought to myself "I may as well do a year-in-review of the console, and while I'm at it, do one for the PS3 and the DS." The problem here? I assumed I'd have something interesting to say about the PS3 and the DS. Turns out I did not. My lesson learned? Don't promise readers future content when you don't already have ideas for those posts. If I actually had a decent readership, that could easily end with a lot of fans walking out the door, any credibility I may have built along with them.

So my apologies. I will not be writing a PS3 and DS year-in-review. Instead, I will be talking about my Game of the Year.

I thought carefully about what my Game of the Year was. I considered thinking about which game was most finely crafted, or the game with the most influence of the year. Then I read The Brainy Gamer's post about The most important game of 2010. It is, as always, an excellent post and one that I recommend you read.

So since The Brainy Gamer already covered the most important game of 2010 I decided I'd just go with my personal favorite. It was an easy choice, since there was really only one game this year that I fell in love with. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed many other games in 2010, but none of them really grabbed me as strongly as this one did. Most of the games I played this year were also 2009 games, so not legitimate candidates.

So with enough pussy footing around, here we go!

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies for the Nintendo DS. When this game was being advertised, it was made clear that Square Enix wanted to make the Dragon Quest series as popular in North America as it is in Japan. DQIX was the result of that desire. They did not do a drastic overhaul of the series to make North American consumers interested. They included one very North American gaming mechanic to draw some sales, which is to allow the player to create their own main characters in a character creation process at the beginning of the game. Other than that, the game is Dragon Quest through and through.

No one thing made me fall in love with Dragon Quest IX, but rather an accumulation of tiny details. This game was crafted with love. A fine balance of nostalgia from previous Dragon Quest games along with its own style, DQIX screams with personality from start to finish. The battle system is proof that turn-based RPG battles can still be fun amongst the onslaught of new battle systems in most new RPGs. It forces you to make use of your full range of spells and abilities, particularly during the challenging boss fights. One of the most charming things about DQIX is the humor. Almost relentlessly, the text in the game is full of puns and word play. Equipment names, character names and most of all, monster names, this game is full of some of the best wordplay that I've seen in a game. Names like Cruelcumber (cucumber monster), Zummeanie (zuchini), Wight Knight, Knocktopus, Stenchurion, Bad Karmour (a living armour enemy) and so on.

This game is also pack full of content. Hundreds of different pieces of equipment, 12 different classes and a post-game that is even larger than the main game. You will almost never run out of things to do in this game. And just to make things even better, there are dozens of quests available as downloadable content that are still being pushed out once a week, a service that only ends in January 2011. Oh, and the whole game can be played with up to 3 other friends via local wifi.

Square Enix did not hold back for Dragon Quest IX. Oddly enough, it was a much better game than Final Fantasy XIII, which was actually kind of awful, even though FFXIII had an absolutely massive budget in comparison to DQIX. They created one of the best (if not the best) Dragon Quest games to date and one of my favorite games of all time, much less of 2010.

I want to thank the few readers that I have for returning to my blog with its sporadic updates. I appreciate the traffic no matter how much or how little there is. When I have an idea about about video games, it's nice to know there's somewhere I can go to write that idea down and have you few people read about it. I look forward to what 2011 brings for gaming and I will hopefully be able to provide some interesting perspective on whatever happens.

Have an excellent New Year!