While the overall Game of the Year debates are the main draw this week, weāre also handing out some other awards. Like these, for the best PC games of 2009.
Since no PC game was in with a shot at the big prize, I felt like honouring the best of them in here. And when I say PC games, I mean it: only PC exclusives are in the running. So no Left 4 Dead 2, Borderlands and Dragon Age, no Batman: Arkham Asylum, DiRT 2 or Modern Warfare 2.
I loved them all, but these arenāt the āBest PC Game That Also Turned Up On Xbox 360 And PS3 In 2009ā awards. Theyāre the āBest PC Games Of 2009ā awards, which I feel is the least this oft-overlooked and under-appreciated market deserves.
Runners-Up
Machinarium
Leaving aside pretentious notions of āgames as artā, Machinarium was the most endearing game I played all year, regardless of the platform. It requires almost nothing from you in terms of hardware, running as it does on Flash, but thereās more atmosphere in this little indie adventure game than youāll find in any $10 million blockbuster.
https://lastchance.cc/machinarium-review-beautiful-robots-5431903%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Dissenters will say itās simply a Diablo clone, and theyāre 100% correct. It is. But itās a clone with so much love for (and insight into how to improve) the source material that itās more than capable of being remembered in its own right. Developers Runic also deserve credit for having the prescience to actually give Diablo fans what they wanted ā another Diablo ā something Blizzard seem years away from doing.
The best part, though? The colours. Those vibrant, delicious colours.
https://lastchance.cc/torchlight-review-the-fate-of-diablocraft-5407427%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Empire: Total War
Surprising, small-time hits are all well and good, but my favourite PC game of 2009 is anything but. Empire: Total War is a behemoth of a game, one of the last remaining series on the platform able to both provide a true āPC gamingā experience (menus! so many menus!) and bring with it the kind of big-budget production values we expect from the latest hardware.
Empire represents a near-perfect blend of real-time battles and turn-based strategic management. Itās not without its problems ā poor performance and siege pathfinding chief among them ā but the way it makes controlling a vast empire so intuitive and accessible easily overcomes these shortcomings.
Itās a testament to the gameās pull that, nearly a year on from release, Iām still playing it. Every chance I get.
(Read our Empire: Total War review)
https://lastchance.cc/empire-total-war-review-a-whiff-of-grapeshot-5172645%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
