2009 was a great year. I had the opportunity to watch/play/read/listen several great games, films and books. This list is what I could remember.

Games

Most, but not all, I finished

1. Braid - PC
2. Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Wii
3. The Beatles: Rockband - Wii
4. Dawn of Discovery - Wii
5. de Blob - Wii
6. Dragon Age - PC
7. Drakensang: The Dark Eye - PC
8. Machinarium - PC
9. Neverhood - PC
10. Planescape Torment - PC
11. Race Driver: GRID - PC
12. Torchlight - PC
13. The Witcher - PC

Movies

1. 5cm Per Second
2. Akira
3. Amadeus
4. Army of Shadows
5. Citizen Kane
6. Cowboy Bebop
7. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
8. Doctor Zhivago
9. Drag Me to Hell
10. Ghost in The Shell
11. The Hangover
12. Helvetica
13. Home
14. The Hurt Locker
15. Lady Vengeance
16. The Manchurian Candidate
17. Oldboy
18. The Sinning
19. Star Trek
20. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
21. Tokyo Godfathers
22. Up

Books

Some of them I used the audiobook

1. David Allen - Getting Things Done
2. David Allen - Making It All Work
3. Malcolm Gladwell - The Tipping Point
4. Malcolm Gladwell - Blink
5. Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers
6. Peter F. Hamilton - Fallen Dragon
7. Peter F. Hamilton - The Dreaming Void
8. Peter F. Hamilton - The Temporal Void
9. Raymond Kurzweil - The Age of Spiritual Machines
10. Stephen King - The Dark Tower: The Waste Lands
11. Stephen King - The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass
12. Umberto Eco - Foucault’s Pendulum

And 2010 might be even better.

200 megabytes is the size of the entire game. And yet, probably one of the most surprisingly good games in some time.

Braid tells the story of Tim and his journey to find the princess. It’s a basic platform game, with the controls just like old Mario, except one thing: you can control time. By pressing a button (and further in game, by some other situations) you can turn back time. Even after you died. If the controls are similar to the famous plumber, the game dymaics is completely different. It is a puzzle game.

Braid is an action-puzzle game about manipulating the flow of time. To rescue a princess, the player journeys through a series of worlds; in each world, time behaves differently. The game provides a mind-expanding experience that is filler-free, treating the player�s time as precious.

The puzzles are very well designed and the difficult progression is a state-of-the-art. Considering that it is an one-man work (Jonathan Blow. did it alone, except for the music, which he licensed, and graphics, which he hired a guy for the job), it’s amazingly good.