It’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment in our “Of the Decade” lists.

Winner: Resident Evil 4 (GameCube, 2004)

This decade saw a lot of “big” games, but how many of those games were any good? How many do you think you’ll even consider replaying in five or 10 years? If there’s one, and only one, game of the decade it has to be Resident Evil 4. The game resurrected a waning franchise, justified your purchase of a GameCube, and was actually fun to play. How rare. The lackluster Resident Evil 5 only reinforced how well made Resident Evil 4 was: perfect controls, probably the best graphics ever to grace the GameCube, and, yes, the best single-player mode of the decade make this the game of the decade. It’s pretty much non-stop fun, which is really all you can ask a video game to do.

Runners Up

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2, 2003)

You can almost consider Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to be the same game three times, but Vice City wins because it’s our favorite setting of the series so far. Is it fun to go around and blowing up anything that moves? Yes, but it’s actually more fun to appreciate the time and effort Rockstar put into crafting a pretty enjoyable cast of characters and reasonably OK story for our entertainment. Plus, how many game in the 2000s have completely ripped off the GTA franchise?

Guitar Hero (PS2/PS3/Xbox 360, 2005)

Our original game here was Super Smash Bros. Melee because it was, and I quote, “the ultimate party game.” Upon further reflection, that title actually belongs to Guitar Hero if only because you couldn’t attend a party attended by non-gamers between the game’s release and today without running into people banging on the strumming a plastic guitar. This is especially true if you visited certain gentrified sections of Brooklyn. The game was everywhere, so clearly it must have done something right. Publishers may have since shot themselves in the foot by releasing 800 versions of the game in a two-year window, but you can’t blame the game itself for publishers’ greed. It’s fun, and it represents the peak of the music game genre that, in a very real sense, defined the decade in gaming.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2, 2005)

This is our arthouse pick, yes, but for all the hullabaloo of “please re-make Final Fantasy VII for the PS3,” we say: no! Instead, re-make Shadow of the Colossus for it pushed the PS2 as far as the little guy could go. The game was like playing art. Rarely has a sense of scale been so raw in as it was here. A terrific soundtrack, a unique setting, and an unmatched sense of “oh man, we’re going on an adventure” means that youre sure to impress your “games as art” buddies .

Our Take

Devin: I want to throw Final Fantasy XII on here. A lot of people dismissed it because of its cipher of a main character and weird MMO-style combat. But the fact is it was a hugely deep, very interesting, and strikingly beautiful game. I loved it from start to finish, although the final boss was a bit corny.

Matt: You can’t tell me that any of these games above are more fun — I mean LOL, smile-on-your-face, gets-better-as-you-drink fun — than Super Smash Bros. Melee. Yet it probably isn’t the best game from the last 10 years. But it’s still damn fun.

Greg: I’m going to pull a Nicholas here and proclaim that this is all a bunch of nonsense. It’s impossible to claim that any one game of this decade was the most definitive (especially not RE4, dumb dumbs), considering how many games changed the horizon. Guitar Hero and Smash Bros made busting out a video game at a party okay. The Lego Star Wars/Indie/etc. series proved to girlfriends around the world that gaming with your boyfriend can be a fun experience. GTA taught the world to hate linear gameplay. Call Of Duty and Halo taught millions of console gamers the joys and frustrations of well made competitive first-person-shooters whilst simultaneously increasing the average weight of adolescents around the world. WoW brought MMOs into the mainstream. Shadow of the Colossus destroyed our sense of scale, while Katamari Damacy proved that games can be abstract and still sell well. There is no one answer to this question, because the games of this decade were simply too good.

Doug: Wii Sports — hear me out! As most people’s introduction to the Wii, the bundled Wii Sports game serves as the ambassador to a new way of thinking about video games. How many video games from the past ten years will you find people of all generations playing? Nobody’s really playing Halo in nursing homes or senior centers. The simple control scheme and 1:1 movement in Wii Sports made Nintendo’s latest console a hit with people outside the core demographic of gamers, something Sony and Microsoft are still scrambling to replicate.

David Diaz: I think Halo: Combat Evolved should have made this list. It became the benchmark for all console FPS and sparked the beginning of one of the most dominant franchises in console history.

It hasn’t been the best couple of months for Nintendo. Profits were down for the six months leading up to September, which the company blames on the strong yen and the Wii’s price cut. Net sales, too, were down, some 34.5 percent. Fair enough, and those reasons are likely to explain Nintendo’s situation, but is there something else going on? I know Pat Buchanan, the older gentlemen that he is, always uses the phrase “the chickens have come home to roost,” and I think it’s applicable here. Perhaps Nintendo’s strategy of selling the Wii to the “casual” crowd (housewives and the like, to simplify this) has finally run out of gas?

How many games were released for the Wii that appeal to the more hardcore among us? I’m thinking back to all the games I’ve played this year—Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5, Bioshock, Fallout 3, Race Driver: Grid, Forza Motorsport 3, and maybe one or two others that I’m forgetting—and none of them were available for the Wii. Now, I consider myself a hardcore gamer only in the sense that I’m not going to play something like Mario Party or some sing-along game; I’m not hanging out on NeoGaf debating the merits of Xbox Live vs PSN. So that’s where I’m coming from.

The point? I would say that there have been next to no games released for the Wii that interested me, a gamer who’d rather sit there and try to 100 percent Resident Evil 5 (well, Resident Evil 4… Resident Evil: 5 had too many things that annoyed me) than lose five pounds playing Wii Fit. I’m a gamer, not someone looking to have a fun evening with my grandkids.

I think that’s what it comes down to: Nintendo has made, if I may, mad money over the past few years by positioning the Wii as an entertainment device for the whole family. That’s all well and good, but when Single Professional Woman buys a Wii so she can host a Wii Sports party once a month, what are the odds that she’s going to keep buying game after game?

That’s not to say Nintendo is doomed, of course. I played the New Super Mario Brothers Wii a few weeks ago, and I can honestly say, “Now there’s a game that’ll appeal to the ‘hardcore’ among us.”

But what do I care? I’m most concerned with leveling my warlock in WoW.

Flickr

Some day, I too will have three identical monitors for gaming purposes. It’ll have to be in my game cave once I retire as an eccentric millionaire, though. Don’t have room for it here. That’s probably a good thing, though, since I also don’t have the money required, and besides that there are still a few quirks to be worked out. Not to mention the fact that the best games are barely playable on current hardware, since you have to run them at resolutions like 7680×1600.

First, they need to shrink the bezels on some monitors. I’m tired of a big-ass border between my screens. Come on, guys, make it happen! Second, there needs to be no weirdo stretching on the games. Anamorphic widescreen is one thing, but having a 150-degree viewing angle is something you need to deal with more carefully than simply giving the player a fisheye view, or zooming in and giving them a portion of what they’d normally see. I know it’s hard, but do I look like I care? Back in your hole!

Glitches or no glitches, it’s still out of my price range. It’s still enticing to be playing a game with full peripheral vision. Just git them bezels outta here!

Check out the full review and other videos (Resident Evil 5, Left 4 Dead, etc) over at PC Perspective.

Sony laid out its motion controller plans the other day at the Tokyo Game Show and mentioned that Resident Evil 5 and LittleBigPlanet would be the first games to take advantage of the system. Well, freaks and geeks, wanna see some actually gameplay? ‘Course you do.

Go ahead and skip to 2:50 when the action starts. It looks good enough, I guess. Hopefully when the product launches though, you don’t have to use the motion controller along with a normal PS3 controller like the dude is using in the demo. That would be, well, lame and a cop-out on Sony’s part.

I posted some pictures of Sony’s and Ubisoft’s booth at this year’s Tokyo Game Show yesterday, but booth-wise, Square Enix, Microsoft (Xbox 360) and Capcom made quite a strong showing, too. Here’s some proof.

Square Enix’s booth
There was exactly one game dominating the Square Enix booth and that was Final Fantasy XIII (trailer).

Microsoft’s booth
Microsoft clearly has the most elegant and coolest booth at the show, just like last year. Unlike during Tokyo Game Show 2008, when players could try out Resident Evil 5, for instance, the attention the Xbox360 gets this years is spread over a number of different games. Also, big M said 12 publishers have signed on to support Natal in the future.

Capcom’s booth

Capcom presented Resident Evil 5 last year, and this year it’s another Resident Evil game that serves as the killer title: Biohazard – The Darkside Chronicles. As one of the biggest Resident Evil fans in the world, I am really looking forward to this on-rails shooter – it looked and played fantastic in the Tokyo Game Show version. The final game will be released in Japan in January.

Another big title was Lost Planet 2, which will come out for Xbox360 and PS3. I asked a Capcom representative when this will be the case but he couldn’t answer me.

So yeah, the PS3 motion controller will be available this Springtime, and the first “big” games to make use of it will be Resident Evil 5 and LittleBigPlanet. High Velocity Bowling will also use the controller, and it sounds absolutely thrilling.

All of that was announced not too long ago at the Tokyo Game Show. Given the time zone difference, I have no idea when, exactly, all that went down, but I doubt y’all need to know the exact minute when Kaz Hirai stepped onto the stage.

In other, non-motion control news, Gran Turismo 5 now has a solid release date in Japan: March 31. North American and European release dates will be announced “soon,” which could be the least descriptive word on the English language.