GOONL!NE

By Jonathan Cullen, James Love and Will Swarbrick, with contributions from Jennifer Allen and Martin Gaston.

Well, it was going to be piss easy, going into awards season, right? Modern Warfare 2 sweeping all the overall GOTYs you could find.

Wrong.

While we did love Modern Warfare 2 here, it was unmistakably Uncharted 2 that swept us off our feet. It really was absolutely an incredible experience from start to finish, and is the closest a game has come to in a Hollywood blockbusters. Hear the thoughts of our staff on the game, and why it is the best game this year below.

Congratulations to Naughty Dog, and Uncharted 2 – GOONL!NE’s GOTY for 2009.

Jonathan Cullen, Managing Editor: Uncharted 2 is… well, it’s kind of hard to explain as it is. I thought I had seen probably the finest game of all time last Summer. But low and behold, Naughty Dog proved me wrong. It’s story is absolutely well done, acted brilliantly and casted perfectly with Nolan North, Claudia Black and Emily Rose as Drake, Chloe and Elena.

It truly is a spectacular game, and is probably the best story driven game I’ve ever played. Incredible.

James Love, Co-Managing Editor: Without a doubt, Uncharted 2 is the most exciting, well-written and beautiful game to appear this year. The set-pieces are superb, battling along the speeding train as you pass through a variety of scenery was one of those moments where you almost wish you could take in the landscape and forget about all those baddies you’re meant to be fighting.

But it’s not just the action that has made Uncharted 2 our Game of the Year, there are little gems in the game that appeal to our more human side. Playing Marco Polo in the pool on top of the Shangri-La hotel is one such moment that’ll bring a smile to your face, but my favourite is when Drake finds himself in the remote Himalayan village.

Here you see another side to him, with Naughty Dog giving his character even more depth and proving he is one of the nicest guys in gaming. Playing hide-and-seek with the village kids or even just petting a cow on the head, moments like this are ones to be savoured.

Will Swarbrick, Senior Editor: See, I came late to the party. Due to Royal Mail getting a runny tummy or something, it took a good 2 weeks before my shiny disc finally arrived. And all that hype, all that pressure building up, finally released as the game loaded up (Eww…). I was not disappointed.

OK, it wasn’t perfect – every minute there seemed to be a jump that was too big, and you’d only just grab onto the side of the ledge and slowly crawl your way up, which made it dull after a while, and some enemies were still bullet-sponges, and I still don’t get those blue guys, but it’s rare to find a game so focused – there’s no one point in the game I could call poor or even average, but a hundred points I could label utterly stunning.

Jennifer Allen, Freelancer: Uncharted 2 might not be the most original game in the world but the storytelling it provides is wonderful. It’s the little touches, like wandering through the Tibetan village, that makes it so much more than just another action adventure game. A well deserved GOTY that makes a PS3 purchase worthwhile all by itself.

Martin Gaston, Freelancer: Uncharted 2 was such an immediately spectacular game I found myself stopping after the first hour and putting the game away: I wanted to prolong my first playthrough for as long as possible. It’s about as close to the perfect single-player blockbuster as you’re going to get, with meticulously handled shootouts, punchy dialog and rollicking choreography which puts most of Hollywood to shame. At the end of the game, as the smooth-talking Drake is asked to grade his fear for sidekick-cum-love interest Elena’s possible demise on a scale of one to ten, I was sitting in dread contemplating how it might be years before I get to play another game which contains the same amount of exhilarating gusto.