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Clint

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Best of 2010

I don't have 10 games on my list. If I were to fill in positions 9 and 10, games like Split/Second, Bayonetta,  and Civ V would have battled their way onto my list, but I don't want to give votes to anything but the best, so they're not here. Also, I haven't actually played Civ V.

List items

  • The clear winner for me. Red Dead Redemption is a work by a group of people who could not have loved the western genre more, and it shows in every detail of the game. The simple but well-told tale of revenge and redemption, the beautiful landscape and spectacular weather effects and landscapes, the range and expression of not only the main but also the secondary and tertiary characters, and the absolutely stunning musical score add up to the most complete, cohesive experiences of the year.

  • It would be easy to write off Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood as an expansion pack to last year's Assassin's Creed 2. And to be honest, by the standards the franchise has set forth, it's not an unfair comparison. Recycling Ezio and Italy were somewhat disappointing choices at first glance, and while fascinating in concept, the multiplayer doesn't hold up to extended play.

    The game more than makes up for all of these flaws simply by executing its blueprint to near perfection. By tweaking the gameplay formula of last year's entry to be even more streamlined, and by coming up with a meaningful reason to continue Ezio's tale, Ubisoft Montreal have created a science fiction thriller that furthers the series' continuing challenge towards LOST at telling not only a mindbending, bewildering story, but a human tale as well.

  • To be honest, I've inflated the position of this game somewhat because like films released in April, I'm afraid that it's been all but forgotten now that it's awards season. But Heavy Rain deserves more recognition than it got to begin with, so here we are. I'll try not to repeat what I already said in my review, and instead point out that beyond having incredible graphics and an engaging story, Heavy Rain was one of the most subversive, fresh games of the year, and I greatly respect the team at Quantic Dream for taking their formula to such heights. I cannot wait to see what they come up with next.

  • I don't play multiplayer games. I played more than my fair share of old LAN parties back in the day, but today's highly competitive ranked multiplayer modes simply aren't fun for me. You spend hours grinding away at the game trying to learn all the nooks and crannies of every map, or you don't and lose frequently. And despite all that, I played the hell out of the multiplayer in Bad Company 2 for some reason. I don't know what it was that drew me in—truth be told, I bought the game for its single player mode, as the characters were incredibly memorable in the first Bad Company, and I was looking forward to starting another world war by chasing after a truck of gold over a contested border. And to be honest, the campaign in Bad Company 2 does not really deliver. They try too hard to emulate the Modern Warfare formula, and in doing so lose both the levity and the open-map feeling of the first game, turning it into a banal high-stakes corridor shooter. But the multiplayer in BC2 is perfect. It's the perfect pace for me, and the vehicle action gives it a leg up over Modern Warfare in my book. Seriously though, was I the only one that bothered to learn how to pilot a helicopter?

  • Look, there are a billion legitimate reasons to hate on Minecraft. I don't think the GB crew has actually played enough of it that any of their reasoning is valid. Yes, a very small number of people import their Minecraft creations from CAD programs. Some people spawn infinite resources to build what they do. It doesn't matter. Clearly the game is addicting and engrossing to these players, and it supports them in however they want to do it. For me, it wasn't so much the mining and the crafting that sucked me into this game for hours upon hours, it was the building. This game is crack for engineers. They give you the ability to make electrical circuits, minecart subway systems with branching tracks, farming and irrigation systems, elevators, and a veritable slew of other things which, though they've been built to death by other people already, just demand you to give it a go yourself. Absolutely brilliant.

  • They took Pac-Man and made it crazy. Fuck.

  • VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy represent a weird trend of building monuments to years past. Indeed, it would be a disturbing trend if they weren't both so well-crafted. VVVVVV in particular is a game I enjoy for showing that it is possible to build a platforming game that is very difficult without being ridiculously punishing. Again, I don't want to repeat myself too much from my review, so I'm going to leave it at that retrospective.

  • Super Mario Galaxy 2, much like Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, is easily dismissed as a level pack. And again in a way, that's exactly what it is. But really, the highly imaginative variety of levels is precisely what made the first stand out anyway—it had a shell of a story and really nothing in the way of gameplay evolution over other recent entrants in the Mario platforming lineage. So—a level pack of even crazier and more imaginative levels? Welcomed with open arms.