Best of 2010
The best games of 2010 that I actually played in 2010.
List items
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1. Red Dead Redemption
The last game I played this year quickly became my favorite game of the year. Not because of its gun-blazing action, which is perfectly competent, but because it made me enjoy the kind of random tasks that I've disliked in a lot of previous open world games. Never has wrangling cattle been this enjoyable.
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2. Mass Effect 2
The only reason this isn't number one is because I never finished it. I never finished it for the very reason Brad despises the way the final missions are handled. Because I didn't realize I was on the path to finish and could no longer take sidequests to ensure my whole crew could be saved, I refused to finish it. One of these days I'll forgive it and knock out that last hour.
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3. Picross 3D
Dude, Picross. In three-dimensions. This is the type of game the DS was designed for. It's one of the few DS games where I don't find the stylus cumbersome and, like Trainyard, I love that I can just as easily play one puzzle as twenty in a sitting.
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4. Trainyard
The iPhone game I played most this year was Trainyard. It's a simple game in which you draw railroad tracks to guide colored trains into their corresponding stations. But the game starts to boggle the mind as you encounter new mechanics like color mixing, combining, and splitting. And the best part? You can play it for two minutes as easily as you can forty.
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5. Halo: Reach
Bungie's final installment of the Halo series is the most polished to date. While Halo 2 remains my favorite, the level and encounter design in Reach encouraged me to play through co-op on Legendary. For those of you that know me, this is not something I ever do. Ever.
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6. Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Had the writing been better this may have earned a higher spot on the list, but Bad Company 2 is the perfect example of a military first person shooter that just works. It Call of Duty'd up the linearity of the campaign, which ended up working okay because the locations and scenarios in the game worked just fine without the bit of exploration of the original Bad Company. I did miss the focus on blowing up buildings, though.
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7. Call of Duty: Black Ops
I had no plans to buy this game and I'm still not sure why I pre-ordered it. But I'm glad I did because I had a great time shootin' dudes in the face throughout the Cold War. Even though half way through I figured out what the plot twist was, I enjoyed the over-the-top campaign and Ed Harris's sunglasses. But fuck that barrel scene, man.
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8. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
Ghost train! Pac-Man CE was fun, but Pac-Man CE DX blew me out of the water. It hit on all cylinders with fast-paced action, satisfying visual effects, and terrific music. It's one of the few XBLA games that I know I will keep coming back to in years to come.
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9. Rock Band 3
I promised I wouldn't get sucked back in to the Rock Band series, as my drums had been collecting dust for quite some time. But a $40 Black Friday deal hooked me and I'm glad I caved. This is Rock Band the way it was meant to be played: just as easily casually as hardcore. The menus are the easiest to navigate to date and the select-your-set campaign progression means no more terrible repetition.
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10. Borderlands
I played the hell of out 2009's Borderlands throughout 2010, but I thought it important to note how much I loved Claptrap's New Robot Revolution. It was the first DLC on par with the main game (sorry, Knoxx, but driving on highways is not fun) and I know I'll come back to it twice more. Because there's always room for more loot.
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