As has become the annual tradition here on the site, here’s my year-end roundup of the best music, movies, and games that I heard, played, and saw this year. Note that these are my personal picks — I’m not an expert in all of these categories, and especially in the category of movies, I really didn’t see a bunch of movies I wanted to see (it’s been a very busy year for me). But what the heck, here’s the top five in each that spring to mind.

Top five albums of 2009

Assorted songs by Pomplamoose
This is my favorite new band of 2009, and I don’t even have a full album from them, just a series of downloads and YouTube videos to listen to. The first I heard of theirs was this Single Ladies cover (which got itself stuck in my head more than any other song this year), but since then I’ve fallen in love with Nataly Dawn, and I guess her boyfriend and co-artist Jack Conte is pretty cool, too. I won’t link all the songs (ok, I will link September), but just go head over to YouTube and get lost in all the great inventive mixes and tweaks these guys put in their beautiful music together.

The Blueprint 3 by Jay Z
Hip hop is a young man’s game… unless you’re Jay Z, apparently. He’s still making great music that earns him respect in a tough scene and also happens to sell very well, which isn’t easy for anyone, much less a guy who just hit 40. “Empire State of Mind” is unfortunately overplayed at this point, but if you could listen to it with new ears again, you’d hear a classic hip hop anthem with a chorus that soars above the busy streets just like New York’s own skyscrapers.

Ocean Eyes by Owl City
This is the point at which the Pitchfork hipsters stop reading this list, close the browser window in disgust, and go listen to Bitte Orca for the four hundredth time this year. Yes, Owl City is a pop record, and yes, it’s overplayed as well, and yes, it’s completely and totally ripping off The Postal Service. But Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello haven’t made an album together in years, so if I can’t have more of them, I’ll take the next best thing. Sure, I wince at some of the puns, and yes, though I like Fireflies, I’ve heard it enough to last me for years. But Adam Young is making the sumptuous, catchy electronic pop that the Postal Service stopped making after their first album, and I can’t get enough. If Ben and Jimmy want to come reclaim their territory, great. But until then, I’ll be listening to this album yet again.

Safe by Dan Bull
This was another YouTube find — I heard Generation Gaming by him, and had to hear more. I found Safe, a sort of concept album that shows this British rapper’s flair for mixing up songwriting and hip hop in ways they aren’t usually combined. The Streets is probably the easiest comparison (they do both have that accent, and they are both rapping), but Mike Skinner is much harsher, both in beats and rhymes, than this guy. Bull’s songs go down much smoother.

Fantasies by Metric
Another pop record — my tastes have gotten pretty boring as I get older. But this album was definitely one of my most listened-to records this year, and I think it’s Metric’s best. They let Emily Haines get on the mic and just do the rocking to back her up. All these songs, from the building hum of Blindness to the over-the-top bestial clash of Stadium Love, are catchy and loud and great.

Top five movies (I’ve seen) of 2009

I’ll warn you again: I’ve been shockingly neglectful in my moviewatching habits this year. I haven’t yet seen Inglorious Basterds, District 9, Bruno, Julie and Julia, Extract, Zombieland, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Precious, Bad Lieutenant, The Hurt Locker, or any number of other movies that should probably otherwise be on this list. But these are the best five I saw.

Up
The opening sequence of this one is the best piece of film Pixar has ever made in their entire legendary career. There’s more feeling in the first 20 minutes of this movie than in all of the animated CG movies Dreamworks has ever made, and in most of the animated films ever assembled. By the end of the movie, things got a little silly (the dogs? really?), but man, that story of the poor old man and his adventure-bound wife cuts you right to the core right away.

Watchmen
I’ve got my issues with it (mostly the ending), but as far as I’m concerned, Zach Snyder put the unfilmable comic on film. He did just enough borrowing and just enough of his own work to make a stunning movie experience that still doesn’t take away from the original graphic novel reading. Alan Moore’s Watchmen book is still incredible, because it does things visually that you can only do in a comic book. But Snyder’s movie pulls off enough of those little tricks to keep the movie faithful, and puts a few movie and CG tricks in as well. Rorshach is still creepy but right, Manhattan is still naked, and all of the characters and stories are still there: super heroes and villians who have to deal with the dirty, ugly, shocking way the real world works.

Up in the Air
This is the one Oscar contender I was able to catch this year, and while I haven’t been a big fan of Jason Reitman in the past (I thought Thank You for Smoking was lame, and Juno was cloying), this one sold me: these are some of the strongest, most real characters I’ve seen on the screen in a while. The story takes some weird moves through this weird world that we all seem to live in these days, but these characters never, ever hit a false note, and even the most traveled of sentiments (how many times have you heard the meaningless phrase “in this economy” this year?) can still be powerful and striking when you’ve got real stories backing them up. Part of this is luck — apparently Reitman wrote this years ago, and delays in making it made the release this year much more timely — but I’ll admit it: Reitman can make some real characters and he can get talented actors to make you believe them.

Star Trek
I’m not a trekkie, so maybe my opinion doesn’t count here, but here’s another movie where I walked out saying that “they did it.” Chris Pine is the best Kirk I’ve ever seen — rowdy, witty, and ready to jump into a fight he probably can’t win. Spock was suitably annoying in the way logic can be, and with Nimoy, they had the perfect minimal nod to the old series. Plus, the whole time travel premise was the best possible Star Trek-style way to show that while this is a reboot, this isn’t necessarily the characters you already know.

Taken
See, I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for number 5 here! I need to see more movies! But yes, as I twittered right after I saw this one, this was the best paternal revenge story since The Limey. I really enjoyed it. Not a big movie, but nice, taut action around a solid, interesting premise. Not all action movies have to be about crazy giant robots or weird looking aliens shooting laser guns. Some of them can just be good.

Top five games of 2009

Batman: Arkham Asylum
This is my game of the year. I didn’t expect much until I actually played it for the first time back at E3, and then I realized what Rocksteady had actually done, which was what we’ve all wanted someone to do for a long time: actually give you the experience of being Batman. When you fight in this game, you’re not just fighting, you’re choosing who you want knocked out, because Batman is that good. When you sneak around, you’re not worried about whether they’ll see you or not (nobody ever sees Batman coming), you’re just thinking about how scared you’re making the bad guys. And the fact that they got the Batman: TAS voices and writers to put a great story in a Super Metroid-style Bioshock-quality environment is icing on the GotY cake.

Borderlands
A lot of companies and people have tried to recreate the addictive loot-hunting gameplay of Diablo, but nobody I’ve tried has succeeded — until Gearbox’s first person shooter came along. The story is lame (and the ending is lame as a result), but even after my friend and I beat the game, we’ve gone back multiple times to clean up all the quests we could find and keep on hunting for that better gun, that bigger shield. There are a few quibbles with the controls (holding X down accidentally will replace the gun you’re holding with whatever you pick up, sometime causing you to drop an amazing weapon, and sometimes you’re stuck running just to find a fast travel station where it’s not immediately clear which one you want to go to), but the pacing is a thing of beauty, and when you’re in the world of Pandora with a few friends, there hasn’t been a better co-op experience this year. Here’s hoping the sequel comes soon, and we get many, many more levels and guns to gain with this gameplay.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade
I don’t usually go in for the more obviously Japanese fare — it’s usually very well done, but a little too strange for me to really appreciate it (see Metal Gear Solid and the recent Final Fantasy games — good games, but I don’t get most of them). But this one spoke to me — the graphics are unspeakably beautiful, the gameplay combines solid 2D arcade action with a terrific, grindy RPG weapon hunt (gotta catch all the swords!) and some wild boss battles. Excellent game — almost made it worth having the Wii around this year.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Yes, I’m drinking the kool-aid, but wait: I never bought Call of Duty 4. I rented it over a weekend — beat the singleplayer in a few hours and played a few multiplayer games with some friends. I decided to get in on the ground floor with this one, and it’s been worth the ride: the single-player experience, short as it is, consists of a series of action movie highs. The spec ops mode is a terrific way to play co-op. And the multiplayer mode is the most exciting FPS shootout I’ve played in a while — despite the racist voice chat (I mute them all), the exploits (I played something else the weekend the Javelin bug was out there), and the crazy good clans ruining the experience for everyone else, it’s super fun to knife somebody in the back and hear that level up sound.

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes
I had high hopes for a few Puzzle Quest-style followups to take the throne this year, from Square Enix’s Gyromancer to Puzzle Quest’s own Galactrix sci-fi sequel. But in the end, this new contender made by my new favorite developer, Capy, was the one that captured the genie in an entirely new bottle. It’s still a puzzle RPG, but the puzzling is gem-matching done in a completely new way (you can match vertically for offense or horizontally for defense, and there’s a “charging” element that not only has you strategizing where to make your matches, but when), and the RPG is much more story than quest based, with multiple main characters and multiple units controlled by each, each with their own stats and leveling schedules. Add in Capy’s excellent retro pixelated designs (never have zombies and demons been so cute, and you can even match bears!), and this is my favorite handheld game of the year.

There you go. You’ll notice I didn’t do honorable mentions this year, and there’s a few reasons why, but mostly it was just because I was pretty picky this year. Next year, I may also have to do TV shows — Mad Men and 24 would have been on that list, along with Big Bang Theory. If you have your own list, be sure to email or tweet it to me, I’d like to see it.