I played a lot of games in 2009. I could manage to count 23 of them, since I’m only looking at games that I played for the first time. This means that I’m not counting Thief: Deadly Shadows, Dungeon Siege, Warcraft 3, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and Beyond Good and Evil, since I’ve played those all before.

That being said, I’m going to go through my list in alphabetical order and try to give some kind of brief rating and review to each of them.

Braid

Amongst downloadable XBox Live Arcade titles, Braid is a superstar. While it doesn’t quite fit in with the casual fare that permeates downloadable console catalogs, it’s a good game to play in small chunks. Many of the puzzles can be so maddeningly difficult as to break your brain, but there’s an immense sense of satisfaction when you finally figure them out.

I played the PC version, since I have no XBox, but while the Steam release had some issues, it was worth the wait. I played it, my wife played it, and I wrote a series of hints that ended up near the top of the google search results.

Braid’s story was a bit hard to follow, introduced as it was in small chunks at the beginning of each of the game’s six worlds, and it got really odd at the end. But the game was more about the puzzles than anything else, so all else is forgivable. I’ll give the game a B.

Crysis

Before its launch, and for a number of months afterwards, Crysis‘s big marketing line was that it would bring your $2000 gaming rig to its knees with its amazing graphics. That’s probably why it didn’t sell as well as the developers might have hoped. Crysis was good, although overall I’ll say that I preferred CryTek’s earlier title Far Cry.

Crysis was almost like two separate games, as the gameplay during the second half is drastically different from the first half. Personally, I prefer the first half, as it was much closer to the gameplay in Far Cry. I could sneak around to scout an area, snipe off a few men, then let the rest come to me. It felt strategic and fun. The zero-gravity segments in the second half of the game were disorienting and confusing. I found myself backtracking unintentionally, and the alien enemies weren’t nearly as interesting to fight as the human opponents. The segments in which you fly a fighter jet were even worse. More often than not, I’d crash and burn but never know exactly what killed me.

Towards the end of the game, during a battle on an aircraft carrier, the game froze. Every time. I was never actually able to see the end of the game, which I assume was well under an hour away. I must have tried twenty times to get through that battle, but the game froze every single time. Considering the non-fun segments and the bug at the end, I’ll have to give Crysis a C+.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

As far as Tower Defense games go, I found Defense Grid to be strictly average. It held my attention long enough to play through the entire game, but I found the aliens to be generic, the story to be uninteresting, and the computer narrator’s melodramatic dialogue to be unbelievable, as the computer got more emotional about a hinted-at past war than most humans would get. The computer’s odd fixation on raspberries was a bit funny, but that small bit of humor didn’t make up for the rest of the game. I’ll give this one a C+.

Dead Space

Being the best survival horror game I’ve played in years is no mean feat. That’s what puts Dead Space in the running for the best game that I played in 2009.

It’s nearly impossible for me to talk about Dead Space without comparing it to Resident Evil, as I believe that Dead Space has neatly filled in the survival horror niche once occupied by the earlier Resident Evil games. But Dead Space is certainly its own animal, and is an entirely new generation of survival horror title. For one thing, Dead Space is more of a shooter than any of the original survival horror games (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Clocktower) ever were. It has the best collection of weapons I’ve seen in a shooter since Doom 3, a weapon upgrade system that I like even better than Resident Evil’s, and some excellent gameplay elements such as zero-gravity areas, vacuum areas, ship-mounted weaponry for firing at targets in space, and the kinesis and stasis modules.

Dead Space is certainly a game that I’ll return to and play again some day. I’m doubting that I’ll go for the trophy where you have to play the entire game with only a plasma cutter and no other weapons, but I’ll enjoy my replay nonetheless. Dead Space gets a solid A.

Desktop Tower Defense DS

I was a huge fan of the flash version of Desktop Tower Defense for a long time. I still believe it to be one of the best tower defense games ever made. As simple as it is, it’s got a lot of complexity and balance. Building new mazes for the creeps to traverse and arranging things perfectly can be quite a challenge, and if you start on advanced strategies like juggling, things get even more complex. The game begins simple, but has a lot of nuance.

For some reason, since I bought this game, I haven’t played my DS nearly as often as I used to. So I haven’t put a lot of time into the portable verion of Desktop Tower Defense. But they’ve added quite a lot of new modes, plus a number of achievements. Although not being able to share those achievements online somehow detracts from the experience, I’ll still enjoy trying to get them. Probably on an airplane at some point in the future. I’ll give Desktop Tower Defense DS a B-.

Dragon Quest 4 DS

Back in the day, when I played this game on a friend’s NES, I absolutely loved it. The charm and the fun are still there. I haven’t completed Dragon Quest 4 since beginning the NES version, but I’m easily halfway into the game. Once again, I just haven’t spent much time with the DS recently. I know that will change when Scribblenauts drops. But as far as RPGs for the DS, I haven’t seen many better. C+

Fairway Solitaire

While Fairway Solitaire is without doubt a casual game, it takes plain old solitaire and adds a golf theme to make it really interesting. Streaks where you don’t have to use cards from the deck become “long drives”, sandtraps and water hazards become cards that are inaccessible, and you can collect extra golf clubs that act as cards up your sleeve. While explaining these intracacies are beyond the scope of this mini-review, you should take my word that this game is amongst the better casual games that I’ve played this past year. B-

Fallout 3

While I didn’t go through all the expansions like Brandon did, I spent a lot of time playing Fallout 3. I played three characters, and maxxed out my levels on two of them. And even though it wasn’t entirely deserving of the “Oblivion-with-guns” moniker that it got in so many reviews, there was enough of that to detract from the game. All the things that I disliked about the Oblivion engine were still problems in Fallout 3, and none of the things that I’d loved so much about Oblivion were replaced with adequate substitutes. The charm of the first two Fallout titles was likewise lacking. As you can probably tell, I much preferred Oblivion to Fallout 3.Still, I did enjoy my time playing Fallout 3. GFW, while it does suck, gave me the ability to grab some achievements, and I got about 90% of the ones available, including every damn bobblehead in the game. I loved tearing up slavers with the shishkebab, I loved melting Combine troops with a plasma rifle, and that nuclear explosion was a thing of beauty. I’d just love to have seen more Wasteland in Fallout 3. You know, some snake squeezins, or perhaps a Scorpitron. Fallout 3 gets a B.

Far Cry 2
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Far Cry 2. I knew that it was an open-world game and that it was significantly different from both the original Far Cry and from Crysis. Far Cry removed a number of the elements that I’d liked so much about those two games: The science fiction elements, and lying prone for purposes of sneaking. I wish I’d been able to record achievements in the game. I went out of my way to grab every diamond in the northern section of the map – had I been able to get an achievement for it, I’d likely have done the same for the southern map. The game also has some really silly conventions.

Final Fantasy 12
The only other Final Fantasy games I’ve played are Final Fantasy 4 on the DS and Final Fantasy 9 back on the original Playstation. These are loong games. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 12 for years now. I tend to play for 4-6 months before getting burned out and shelving the game for a couple months. But then I go back to it. I’m still only about 2/3 of the way through the game and I plan to go back to it soon, although I’m sure I’ll quickly shelve it again when Borderlands and Dragon Age: Origins come out in October.

Final Fantasy is about story, but it’s also about level grinding. Lots and lots of level grinding. The game’s battles are simply too hard if you move from place to place battling only story-essential foes. Level grinding is absolutely essential. It harks back to old RPGS that I’d played on the Sega Master system. And in Final Fantasy 12, it’s actually a lot of fun to level grind. There’s a lot of inventory management and skill management to do – I’ve got a couple sheets of notebook paper where I’ve got notes sketched out on how my characters’ gear and skills are set up. It reminds me of mapping out Bards Tale or Wizardry dungeons on graph paper. Final Fantasy 12 gets a B. Square Enix knows what they’re doing when it comes to JRPGs.

Galactrix
I absolutely loved Puzzle Quest. And so I was very excited for Galactrix. I’m sad to say that I was seriously disappointed with the game. The touch screen controls are terrible. Selecting the item you want with the stylus is often more of a challenge than fighting battles. And the game’s loading screens are frequent and very long. The game’s minigames can be fun once you unlock them, and tricking out your ship with improved equipment is probably the best part of the game. Overall, Puzzle Quest was a far better game. Galactrix gets a D.

Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters was a mixed bag. There’s a lot of good, and a lot of bad. My biggest complaint about the game is the uneven difficulty. There are some moments that are just way too hard. This forced me to play through the game on “casual” difficulty. I also hit a number of bugs where certain plot triggers just wouldn’t fire, and I had to reload my last save, after which things worked fine.

If you’re going to play this game, play it for the story and the atomosphere, because those were great. The game totally nails the feel of the original movie, and having all four ghostbusters voiced by the actual actors is fantastic. The game is very well written. The plot is probably better than that of the Ghostbusters 2 movie, and there are some really funny one-liners in the game. I have to give this game a C+.

Lost Planet
Seldom have I had a worse experience with a game that I had with the PC port of Lost Planet. Most of my complaints had to do with the fact that it’s the worst PC port of a console game that I’ve ever played, but the game engine is also terrible – I have a hard time imagining that I’d have enjoyed the 360 version much more. This is the only game in my list that gets a definite F.

Mad World
I understand that my negative take on Mad World is primarily opinion. I know that other people (such as Brandon) really enjoyed Mad World. But I didn’t like the game at all. At all. I played nearly halfway through it (I’m guessing) hoping that it would get better, but I eventually just got bored and frustrated.

I’d been expected a new-school brawler that felt like SmashTV or Double Dragon, but what I got was not nearly as fun. At all. I had many complaints about the game overall, but the bottom line is that I just didn’t find it to be fun. At all. Mad World gets a D.

Mass Effect
If Brandon doesn’t kill me for my take on Mad World, then he’ll probably kill me for my take on Mass Effect. In a word: meh. The game was fine, but I didn’t get nearly as much out of it as everyone else seemed to. The story was really interesting, I’ll give you that, and Bioware always does an amazing job with the dialogue. But to me, the gameplay’s the thing. And the engine that Mass Effect ran on (actually, the engine that a lot of Bioware games have run on) felt old and klunky to me.

I played through the whole game – start to finish – but it didn’t grab me. I enjoyed the story, but the gameplay wasn’t there, so I can’t classify it as a keeper. Mass Effect gets a C.

Okami
I’d heard about Okami for a long time before having picked up a copy. I got the Wii version, although Okami was originally a playstation 2 game. And I loved it.

The gameplay in Okami is a lot like the gameplay in the more recent Zelda games – action/adventure. Fetch quests and conversations with some minor platforming and a whole lot of fighting. Also, plenty of minigames. Add to that the innovative magic brush mechanic and you’ve got a winner. But what stood out most to me about Okami were the graphics. They don’t excel by being photorealistic – just the opposite – the stylized graphics in Okami are an excellent argument against photorealism. They look amazing in a far more cartoonish way. Okami gets a B.

Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode 2: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
I’m a big fan of Penny-Arcade. I love their style of humor, and of course I love the bulk of their subject matter: video games, tabletop gaming, and general geekery. I’ve played and loved both their games. How can you not love a game where you’re battling hobos, mimes, barbershop quartets, insane asylum inmates, and robots with a perverse sexual attraction to fruit? I give this one a B. It’s inexpensive, and if you buy it on Steam, you can shoot for the Steam achievements.

Pixeljunk Monsters
I’ve certainly written enough here about my love for Pixeljunk Monsters. Although I didn’t start playing it in 2009, I likely won’t finish before the end of the year. Honestly, I’ll probably end up putting it aside again as I start playing Muramasa and Scribblenauts. Although I’ve only got two levels remaining in the expansion, there are still plenty of trophy challenges for me to tackle. The “Four Tree Rainbow” challenge is harder than it looked, and the “Rainbow Team” challenge looks to be incredibly difficult. In Pixeljunk Monsters lingo, to “rainbow” a level is to complete it perfectly – without losing a single villager. Pixeljunk Monsters gets an A from me simply because I can’t think of many other games I’ve ever gotten so much prolonged play out of.

Plants vs Zombies
While I’ve enjoyed many Popcap games in the past – Bookworm Adventures and Zuma come to mind – I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed any of them as much as Plants vs Zombies. I only played the game for a couple weeks, but during those weeks, I played it hard. My initial take on the game was a poor one – how could a tower defense game with only six linear lanes have the depth of something like Desktop Tower Defense? You know what? I grew out of that one quickly, and became a Plants vs Zombies addict. Steam offers achievements for the game, and PvZ became the first game on which I’d ever gotten 100% of the achievements. Plants vs Zombies gets an A. It’s all about the spikerocks, gloom shrooms and garlic.

Prototype

I can imagine Prototype being a far better game on a console. Firstly, it might not freeze as often as it did on my Vista machine, although I’m willing to concede that the freezing issue may be related to the import version of the game I’m playing. While the PC controls weren’t terrible, I had some issues with the dashing controls. Firstly, the double-tap on the ‘W’ key for an air dash wouldn’t always register – I’m sure that’s my own fault, but the double-keyboard-tap isn’t the easiest motion on which to get 100% accuracy. Similarly, I found that when dashing, you corner like a passenger jet. So often, I’d sprint past a waypoint or someone I’d intended to grab, then take at least 5 seconds to turn around and run back. And when you’re in a timed event and you’ve only got 60 seconds to do what you’ve got to do, that 5 seconds can make a huge difference.

Although I’m playing a weird Russian import version that I got on Ebay and I can’t actually register achievements, I managed to complete nearly every challenge. I got gold on all but one gliding challenge and managed to complete every infected consume event. The military consume events where you’ve got to consume the commander and then end the alert before getting in can be HARD. And although I found destroying hives and bases with a tank to be super-easy, helicopters are nearly worthless. Granted, they’re the best for fast travel, but they’re difficult to hijack and they get destroyed by one hit from anything.

Also, like Ghostbusters, I can’t imagine playing Prototype on any difficulty other than ‘Easy’. Prototype gets a C+, but it might be a B- on consoles.

Resident Evil 5

I played the Playstation 3 version of Resident Evil 5, and while it was inferior to its predecessors in different ways, it wasn’t a bad game. Resident Evil 5 tried to be Resident Evil 4. But it wasn’t different enough from Resident Evil 4 to really shine, and it didn’t have the charm of Resident Evil 4. There was no mine cart chase, no jetski sequence, and no chance to harpoon lake monsters. There was a nice sequence where you could shoot at enemies from machine guns mounted to the back of a jeep, but that alone didn’t measure up.

Resident Evil 5 only really shines when played co-op. I played with my brother on his XBox over Christmas vacation, and having the game be a shared experience really changed it. For the better. The partner AI in Resident Evil 5 is laughably bad at times. The game gets a B.

Street Fighter 4

After having beaten Seth with every character in the game other than the three big bosses whom I have yet to unlock, I’ve been playing Street Fighter 4 far less. I’ve gotten somewhat competent at online matches, although like so many other online games, the people still playing are the ones who play all the time, and are thus much better at the game than I am. But the game did bring back a good bit of my Street Fighter 2 nostalgia, and despite my hatred of Crimson Viper and Rufus, I really like the game. B+

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
This game totally fails, which is sad. It seemed like it had so much going for it. Great story, a very nice engine with good graphics, and the upgrade and combo system seemed like it was going to work out very nicely. If only it weren’t for all the bottomless pits. There is nothing as maddeningly frustrating as falling into the same pit for the fourth time when you have to wait for 5 minutes in between attempts. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed gets a D for bad platforming.

Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People

I love HomeStarRunner. I really do. So I was super-excited to hear that there was going to be a StrongBad-themed WiiWare game, and I snatched it up as soon as it was available. Sadly, I’d forgotten that I don’t generally like point and click adventure games. And that I’m horribly bad at them. So while HomestarRunner.com gets an A, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People gets a C-.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad gaming year. Granted, there was nothing that stood out like Half-Life 2, Oblivion, or Shadow of the Colossus, but the year isn’t over yet, and I’ve still got to play Scribblenauts, Muramasa, Brutal Legend, Uncharted 2, and Dragon Age: Origins.

It’s been a couple weeks since I finished playing Ghostbusters, and I figure that if I don’t write down my thoughts on it now, I’ll probably forget entirely.

My take on the game is some good, some bad, like most games. What the game really nails is the feel of the original Ghostbusters movie. When you first fire that proton stream, the sound of it and the feel of it are so excellent and so exactly like the movie that it’s difficult not to smile. Likewise, the voice-overs by the original actors are spot-on. Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis are absolutely brilliant, and Ernie Hudson also does a good job. I have to say that I was disappointed by Bill Murray’s performance, and the annoying strut that they gave his character in the game didn’t help.

Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis were also the writers on this project, and they did an excellent job. There are some very funny and quippy one-liners in there. While it probably wasn’t the quality of the original movie, the humor is far above average for a video game.

That’s the good stuff. Now for my complaints. Firstly, the game is way too effing hard. After getting killed a dozen times by some ghost candlesticks, I restarted the game on “casual” difficulty. And while I almost never died on this difficulty, there was one spot at the end that I nearly couldn’t get through. I am not a wuss. I play most games on “normal” difficulty and do well. But Ghostbusters is in need of some major difficulty tweaking.

My other complaint is bugginess. At least 3-4 times in the game, I’d find myself in a situation where I couldn’t progress. A door wouldn’t open, a boss wouldn’t appear, or some other game trigger that was supposed to fire simply wouldn’t. In this situations, I’d quit out, reload a save, and without fail it would work just fine the next time. But these are serious bugs, and they were seriously annoying.

Overall, I’d still recommend the game. It was a good game, and if you’re a fan of the original Ghostbusters movie, you’ll probably have a lot of fun with it. But when you pick it up, for the love of God, save yourself some agony and start on the easiest difficulty.

Certain annoyances have disappeared entirely as the medium has evolved. For example, I can’t remember the last time I played a game in which you were able to save your game in a state from which you can’t possibly proceed. (stuck in terrain, having permanently lost a plot-critical item) I think the last time I played a game with that particular issue was on the Commodore 64. But there are plenty of other problems that I see all over the place.

The most recent was when I was playing Ghostbusters last week. I’d reached the edge of a rooftop, and having captured all the ghosts on the roof, I found that there was nowhere else to go. I ran around making sure I didn’t need to trap more ghosts in order to trigger an event. I checked the doors and ladders to see if there was another area I needed to go to. I tried talking to Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler. No love. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Reloading the game fixed the issue, but the same exact issue popped up again later in the game, when I was in the museum. I’d killed all the ghosts in the area, and found myself locked in the Aztec exhibit with no exits.

Ghostbusters wasn’t the first time I’d seen that issue. In God of War 2, I hit a very similar situation – I’d reached the edge of a cliff I thought I needed to jump off, but there was an invisible wall stopping me from proceeding. When I reloaded and replayed, the invisible wall was gone. In Vampire: Bloodlines, someone told me to go to the second floor of building – I hunted for that second floor for hours, but it didn’t seem to exist and I in the end I had to stop playing the game.

Another issue that I hit in Ghostbusters is that of erratic difficulty. When playing the game on normal, I found that whle certain parts had a perfectly good difficulty level, certain parts were just way too hard. I had to restart the game on easy difficulty. Maybe the game should have a Kind Code.

And then there are my gripes about partner AI. There aren’t many games that make you play with a computer-controlled partner. Enter The Matrix comes to mind. (If Niobe was a blue pill, she’d never have passed her drivers’ test) The game I’m primarily talking about here is Resident Evil 5. In Resident Evil 4, you at least had a good amount of control over the girl you were protecting. I’m sure that was made easier by the fact that she had no inventory and didn’t try to fight enemies. You could tell her to follow you, or stay put. But in Resident Evil 5, your partner tries to fight and to help you solve puzzles. And worst of all, at certain points in the game, you need her.

At this point, I need to make a disclaimer. I’m referring to the AI partner as ‘she’ because I chose to play the game as Chris Redfield. Had I chosen to play as Sheva, Chris would be the idiot AI partner. No gender bias here. Purely circumstantial.

Sheva loves her handgun so much that when she runs out of bullets, she won’t use the machine gun. I can’t count the number of times when I’m fighting a miniboss and Sheva refuses to use her grenade launcher. I’ll be out of magnum ammo, and have to resort to using my handgun and flash grenades despite the fact that my partner has a goddamned grenade launcher. Sheva also likes to run far away when I’m being attacked so that when I go down and need her to revive me, she has no way to get to me in time.

But I’m not the only one she likes to get killed. One time, she ran ahead of me directly onto a conveyor belt that led into a furnace. Another time, she refused to stay more than three feet away from a reaper with an instant-kill attack. I wish I could ask her to hide in a dumpster while I fight the enemies by myself.

The most recent thing she’s done to piss me off is when I was fighting Albert Wesker. One of the items you need in this fight is a special rocket launcher. She took it and ran away, leaving me to fight the boss who I couldn’t possibly hurt without the rocket launcher. A minute later, I died because she was too far away to revive me when I was hit. If you’re reading this and can identify with my complaints about Sheva’s mental retardation, I suggest checking out Yahtzee’s review of the Resident Evil 5. He agrees, hilariously.

My last game gripe for the day? CD checks. I could vent all day about oppressive DRM, but CD checks aren’t oppressive so much as they’re simply antiquated. Why do games still require you to leave the CD in the drive in order to play? In the days before CD burners were mainstream, it may have been an effective anti-piracy measure. Today, I think its primary effect is to annoy me and make me buy more of my games from Steam. I tend to play 3-4 games at a time, and I’ve only got two optical drives in my PC. This means constantly swapping out CDs, which annoys me to no end. I generally go out and find a no-CD patch, which I have no qualms using because I’ve legitimately purchased the game. Companies like Stardock and Steam have it right. Just let me play the game for which I’ve paid you without the goddamned CD in the goddamned drive!

For as long as there have been video games, there have been ridiculous and stupid video game bosses. From the FBI Agent in Atari’s E.T. to Letz Shake in No More Heroes, who blew himself up before you ever got to fight him, ludicrous game bosses have a long and rich history. I’ve taken it upon myself to list my own personal bottom five video game bosses.

Number Five: Tarjan, the mad god, from Bards’ Tale 3

Back in 1990, Tarjan was the original blob of hit points. Final Fantasy later became known for this type of boss, but I’ve never played the original Final Fantasy, which was released the same year.

After a grueling dungeon, you managed to open the door at the center where the mad god had walled himself in. Three climactic battles later, you were ready to face Tarjan and his minions. Each round, he summoned ten new Black Slayers, nasty creatures that automatically kill you on any hit. Even with your adventuring party at full health, you had to have at least two characters cast the spell that resurrected the entire party every round, because you could be certain that by the time the spell was cast, a few of them would be killed. It wasn’t uncommon during this fight to have a character die once or twice per combat round. And Tarjan himself probably had upward of a million hit points. Even if you had multiple characters doing 9999 damage to him every round, the fight took quite a while. Although Tarjan is less ridiculous than the other bosses on this list, the over-the-top nature of this fight slides him into fifth place.

View video of Tarjan Boss Battle

Number Four: Gozer the Gozerian, from Ghostbusters

Although Gozer is like Tarjan in that they’re both gods, they’re on this list for opposite reasons. The Commodore 64 version of Ghostbusters wasn’t a bad game for its time – you’d drive around town blasting ghosts with unlicensed nuclear accelerators, earning money to upgrade your gear while keeping the city’s psychokinetic energy down to manageable levels. At the end, you had to dodge through the legs of the Staypuft marshmallow man to enter the building where Gozer’s gate opened. At the top, you faced Gozer the Gozerian. To beat Gozer, you had to… brace yourself… press the joystick either left or right. This caused the Ghostbusters to move towards each other and cross the streams. Then you’d win. Talk about anticlimactic. It was literally impossible to lose to Gozer. So congratulations, Gozer – you win the award for lamest boss I’ve ever seen in a game.

View video of Gozer Boss Battle

Number Three: Jen, from Prey

In a poorly-executed attempt at creating emotional conflict, the creators of Prey decided to kidnap your girlfriend and make her a boss. Halfway through the game, you’re ambushed by a four-legged alien with Gatling gun arms and your girlfriend’s head and torso. You’re only given a second to wonder whether you’re supposed to attack before your girlfriend starts unloading hot lead and lasers into you. It’s seriously freakish, but her cries for help as she’s attacking end up coming off more comical than sympathetic.

View video of Jen Boss Battle

Number Two: John Romero’s severed head on a stick, from Doom 2

This is the only game on the list that I haven’t played, but the very notion of having one of the game creator’s decapitated heads as a final boss is so out there that I couldn’t pass it up. As I understand it, the original intent was to place an object behind a wall, and have that object take damage through the area impact of a rocket launcher. When it was killed, the character would win. That object, of course, was John Romero’s head… on a stick. After Romero himself found out, he recorded himself saying “To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero” backwards, and the game was changed so that you had to turn clipping off and travel through the wall to fight him in order to beat the game. Freaking weird.

View video of John Romero’s Head Boss Battle

Number One: The Nihilanth, from Half-Life

After surviving a military attack from the guys you thought were on your side and trekking through an alien landscape in search of the alien leader, you eventually find… wha? A massive mutated infant with a flip-top head and tentacles for legs? Although the game was fantastic, the Nihilanth earns the top spot on my list for sheer absurdity.

View video of Nihilanth Boss Battle