G4 Canada's 2009 Game of the Year Awards

When gamers look back and think of 2009, one word will come to mind: mediocrity. Many of the highly-anticipated titles just didn't live up to the hype and left many gamers wanting more. Short single player campaigns and reduced features were the norm as cutbacks and a volatile economy were the boss battles everyone had to fight. Still, there were those developers, publishers who weathered the storm and put out some of their best work to date. Below are our choices for the best and worst of 2009.

GRASS GREENER / SNOW WHITER

Living in the 9th best place to live on the planet, it now seems strange that I used to live on what is now the 25th best place to live. Given that the best place to live in the whole wide world is apparently France, this must be a deeply flawed survey.

I look back fondly to when I lived in the UK. All the bigger issues that one reads about in the papers never seem to make much difference at home: anti-social behaviour, immigration, black-on-black gun crime, knife crime, urban sprawl, poor roads and coastal erosion have very little impact if you ride a bike and live in a small town in the midlands. Perhaps that's the reason why people who are 'fed up with this country' are never really happy anywhere.

One of the nicer aspects of life here (and something that makes life unbearable for some in Britain) is the attitude and demeanour of youngsters. I often get asked why it is that British children are so well behaved. After speaking to them, it's clear that their only experience of Britain is watching Mary Poppins, so I tell them that Canadian children (even the really naughty ones) are mostly better behaved than British specimens. It's not their fault of course, in Britain it's too often the drink that's to blame.

Being a police officer on Britain, 'nuisance youths' and the consequent vandalism, public drunkeness and general screaming and shouting, was a kind of background music to the business of policing, so that wherever one went one met children swaying in the street shouting, 'Pigs innit!' Nowadays, I deal with very few children and the drunk, loud and abusive ones are so rare I'm momentarily shocked.

Even the older ones are reasonable. I once went to break up a party with about 150 teenage guests that had got slightly out of control. Naturally enough I anticipated the worst, but within 10 minutes, everyone had quietly dispersed and the music was turned off. People in nightclubs seem to drink a fraction of what they do in British ones, and afterwards... they get into taxis and go. Of course, at -20 deg C, you don't want to hang around for too long in the open, but even in high summer on a Saturday night, the worst you get is a bit of pushing and shoving.

There must be statistics out there that prove me wrong, that show Canadians to be a nation of violent drunks and their children even worse. If there are, I'm sure you'll let me know.

IF YOU DELIBERATELY BURN A TEENAGE GIRL TO DEATH

...by throwing petrol on her and then setting it alight, and then you shut her in her bedroom so she has no chance of escaping or calling for help, should you ever be allowed to walk the streets again?

Mad Judge Lord Bracadale thinks you should.

Well, it's a point of view!

He's given Stewart Blackburn 21 years for that. Assuming he keeps his nose clean, he'll be under 40 when he is let back out, doubtless with a taxpayer-funded change of identity to assist his reintegration into society.

Jessica McCagh was 17 years old when she died in agony.

We recently discussed the case of Craig Hodson Walker, who was shot dead. His killers will serve a minimum of 34 years.

In the comments, one John B pointed out that 'There's a lot of rot been talked on this (blog) about sentencing and arbitraryness'.

I don't know about John, but on a purely qualitative basis I think most people - if forced to choose - would prefer to be shot than burned alive. There seems to be at least some arbitrariness at work here*.

But that's not the point.

Set someone on fire and let them burn to death: Never See Daylight Again.

Shoot a young man dead during the commission of a robbery: Never See Daylight Again.
Cricket bat and stab your boyfriend to death as he lies in bed: Never See Daylight Again.

*Yes it's Scotland, so what?

FOXY LOXY

ANOTHER YEAR OVER

The 'Voice of the Resistance' explains why people hate the police: it's because the police don't like them blowing up speed cameras, apparently.

At least in the old days it was because everyone was being fitted up!

A few of the things police did this year, apart from trying to catch libertarian pyrotechnician speed freaks:

They were shot dead, stabbed to death, drowned when bridges collapsed, were killed as they put out 'diversion' signs at accident scenes.

Those who weren't killed were routinely spat at in the face, threatened with guns and attacked by mobs for asking teenagers to pick up litter.

They were 'hailed a hero' as they rugby tackled muggers while on holiday in New York, saved the lives of unconscious babies in Northumbria, jumped into rivers to save drowning men and kung fu kicked armed robbers after stumbling across post office raids while off duty, having only popped out for a pint of milk.

They recovered the bodies of suicides, old people who'd been lying dead in a pool of their own goo for a month or two, carried the bodies of toddlers from smashed up cars and kicked down the doors of houses where fathers had shot their four-year-old daughters, their ex-girlfriends and themselves. Nice.

All that, plus telling you the time of day and where the nearest Argos is.

Here's to a better 2010.

Gadget Gifts for the Photo & Video Lover

If you find yourself scrambling to find just the right thing for the photo & video lover, here are three gift ideas for enthusiasts that you might want to have a look at.

Colman Treacy and Peter Fahey: Two Sides Of The Sanity Coin

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Colman Treacy QC in action prosecuting an attempt murder in Birmingham. All I can say is you wouldn't have wanted to come up against him.

Today - now a judge - he has weighed off the killers of Craig Hodson-Walker for 34 years apiece.

It's not enough, but it's a damn sight better than most murderers get.

Of course, it will be appealed and reduced.

Meanwhile, the other big murder story of the day was the unspeakably tragic case of Katie Summers.

Miss Summers was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend Brian Taylor a while back. Taylor's Mad Judge®-imposed minimum recommendation was only 17.5 years - it sounds a lot, but for knifing to death a mother of four young children? Go figure.

The IPCC investigated the case after it was revealed that Miss Summers had called the cops loads of times but nothing much had happened to Taylor. This may not have been unrelated to the fact that she repeatedly refused to give evidence against him.

Victoria Derbyshire of BBC 5 Live had GMP Chief Constable Peter Fahey on this morning. She seemed to be suggesting that the police can prevent people from stabbing each other to death if only they do enough 'risk assessments'.

This seems unlikely.

Mr Fahey's favoured approach did include new, improved (ie longer) risk assessments, but also a new police injunction, whereby a superintendent could, on the basis of intelligence, ban a person from a given area. 'If he breached that injunction, he could be arrested and put in jail,' said Mr Fahey.

It's a genius idea - leaving aside the tricky question of which jail cells will be used to house these unconvicted men (and what the human rights lawyers will have to say about it).

But it seems to me that the Chief missed a trick. If you can prevent murders by creating injunctions which ban people from certain addresses, why not create injunctions which ban them from stabbing people?

FOXTROT OSCAR

RPGCast - Episode 107: "My Cat Just Leveled Up"

WoW's got a new patch, Yakuza 3 is coming out here, Mass Effect 2 has Worf, and we're back on the air! Oh, you were happier with us not on the air? Okay, I'll just be over crying in the corner...