Released in October of last year, Uncharted 2 was easily the best game of 2009 as far as I’m concerned. The dialogue is hilarious and the characters are as good, if not better, than the first. The new romance angles are pretty great as well. No, angleS was no accident, Drake gets to battle jealousy almost as often as bad guys.

For anyone who didn’t try the first game, Uncharted is just a great action movie made into a game. Nathan Drake is a treasure hunter–or smuggler, depending how you look at it–with a tendency to find trouble. The prize this time? The Cintamani stone and the Kingdom of Shambhala. I won’t turn this into a history lesson, but if you google those you’ll have hours of good reading, I promise!

The interspersed history added into the Uncharted series is what makes it so magnificent to me. They take places that have lived in the world’s imagination for years and make them quite a visual treat. I don’t really want to give away all the cool places Drake visits, but let me assure you that they will impress you as well.

And all of that isn’t the best part of this game. The characters, and the voice actors who played them, are just fantastic. They witty back-and-forth banter really is top notch and made me laugh constantly. Whoever is running around as Drake’s sidekick gets to help you with traps and triggers as well, making some of the puzzles a lot more fun to figure out. It’s the characters that make it all so much fun.

As with many games these days, there’s also a multiplayer system. There’s nothing unique here when compared to other shooters, but they did pull off a good amalgamation of other popular games. They also added a fun ranking system that lets you purchase upgrades and show off your ability. Everybody loves to show off their skills, yea?

Uncharted 2 easily gets a 5 out of 5. This game is worth checking out.

Bioshock had one of the most interesting fantasy settings I’ve seen in a very long time; they took it even farther in the sequel. If you aren’t familiar with the series, Bioshock takes place in an underwater city called Rapture. It was a civilization not held to the rules of the surface world. The game’s focus is primarily on genetic research. Rapture had no rules stopping scientists from whatever they pleased.

I use “was” and “had” on purpose, the Rapture in the game takes place after the city, and her people, have begun breaking down. Genetic mutants rule the city now, with a little manipulating of course.  That’s what Bioshock does best, after all, the manipulating leaders who are always more than a little crazy.

The sequel has a new twist to it, now you are one of the Big Daddy’s from the previous game. With it comes some nice upgrades. Now you can dual wield your plasmids and your weapons. This was the first really great improvement over the last game. The second I found came with the hacking system. It’s simpler, and less repetitive, but it will also get your pulse racing a little bit when you mess up, and it’s much easier to mess up now.

The biggest improvement is the new creative strategy scenarios. In Bioshock 2 you really get to set up your battles much better than in the first. On top of that, you have a whole new set of weapons that will set many different sorts of traps for your enemies to walk through. You can really lay out where people will come from by looking around, and then plan your battles accordingly.  It’s fantastic.

And then there are the Big Sisters. These are just crazy. They are, at the very least, much  faster and stronger than you are. You know when you’re going to have to fight them though, so again you can plan ahead and setup some defenses. If you like the strategy of a good shooter you’ll like this, it’s not your every day run-and-gun, it takes some thought. This game is definitely worth checking out.

Dragon Age: Origins is one of the coolest games I’ve ever seen, RPG or no. Among RPGs it holds up, and even surpasses, some of its greatest predecessors (which were also all made by Bioware in my opinion) . It was more fun than Baldur’s Gate 2 and Planescape, even. Of course the playing style just gets more and more easy to use with each new game they release, such as the intelligently redesigned menu system in Dragon Age. But the game itself makes you care about the characters more than any RPG I’ve seen.

The World (top row): Dragon Age took a traditional Tolkien world of races: Human, Dwarves, Elves; and all those bad guys of course. The screenshot  on the left is from the Dwarven city. What’s cool about the world in this game specifically is the detail of each race choice. When you start the game you are thrown into the midst of 6 very cool stories. On top of that, each race has very serious political and racial tensions, and you can easily change the story by taking one stance or another. I’ve never felt so guilty playing an evil character before. I even went so far as to quit playing the evil dwarf path because I felt like a real bastard, it’s fantastic.

Dragon Age truly begins once you leave your home, for a number of excellent reasons based on who you play of course, and venture out into the world. Here is when you really start to see what the High Fantasy genre has done to video games. The two biggest themes I saw in this game came from two series, The Songs of Fire and Ice (by George R. R. Martin) and The Wheel of Time (by Robert Jordan). In the game, Gray Wardens (ahem, warders?) are an elite force who must save the world. You guessed it, you must join the Gray Wardens.

The Characters (bottom row): The people you meet in the game are the best example of the new age of RPGs. I mentioned above that I thought they took lots of hints from the high fantasy genre, and I’ll emphasize it even more here. Characters are what high fantasy is all about. The depth you get to know people in this game make you care about each and every one of them, for better as often as worse. The interactions between them is hilarious, and the voice actors make it all even better still.

Even characters you don’t get control over have distinct personalities. You end up hating or rooting for most of them as well (Bann Teagan comes to mind). If you only play this game for the interactions between characters, you will still absolutely love this RPG. I would definitely recommend trying it out if you are into fantasy (which you should be, if you are on my blog, right?!).

Oh yeah, and be blown away by this video, I recommend viewing it in HD.