The following is a list of my top ten most anticipated video games of 2010 and why I am so excited for them. It was created on January 16th, before I had played any of these games and is also part of Br3adfan's 2010: The Video Game Experiment thread. Please note the following games are in alphabetical order, not in any order of preference.
I've heard only good about the Xbox 360 release of Bayonetta and can't wait to play myself. Not only does the combat look immensely fun but the whole game seems to have an insane look and feel which seems well worth experiencing. Part of this game actually involves throwing a church at a dragon! Need I say more?
The original Bioshock had an atmosphere and story like no other game I'd ever played, making me only too curious when news of a sequel arose. While I am somewhat sceptical of some aspects of the game such as the multiplayer and playing entirely as a Big Daddy and I think that Rapture may not be as mysterious and exhilarating the second time round, I still welcome with open arms more of the great things that the first Bioshock showcased.
Like God of War but set in the nine circles of hell? Sounds good to me. Admittedly this is not the game I am most stoked about, but so far the sense of presentation and the good-looking combat of Dante's Inferno have been more than adequate to win my affections. Let's hope it performs as well as I'm expecting.
I've been a big fan of the Legend of Zelda games, so when talk surfaced of an action game with the kind of puzzles you'd expect to see being solved by a man with a green tunic and purple-hilted sword it piqued my interest. Bringing together a combination of an apocalyptic environment and enemies, Zelda-like puzzles and action-adventure gameplay, Darksiders looks to be a unique combination of likeable elements.
Fable II was a game that had me enchanted from start to finish in just about every way and with the success of the previous two games in the series I have huge expectations of gaming visionary Peter Molyneux's third instalment in the series. I can only imagine what is in store.
I'm not the biggest Final Fantasy fan out there but this game grabbed my attention. The graphics look beautiful and the rich half-sci-fi, half-natural world the game is set in is something that caters pretty strongly to my interests. About 99% of the time gameplay is really what makes the game though and the well-tested RPG formula of Final Fantasy combined with the exciting ATB battle system make this game look very promising.
More than any other fictional universe the world of Halo has captured my attention completely. I found the original Halo trilogy mind-blowing to play through and Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST provided some good follow-up, but I'm awaiting news of fantastic things to come out of the grand finale of what has been one of the most successful video game franchises of all time. I trust Bungie to make this an awesome game.
There was a lot to be loved about the original Mass Effect and when at its best it was a huge joy to play, however few can ignore the rather glaring faults of the original. The next step in the Mass Effect series appears not only to have fixed those faults which detracted from the experience of the original game, while retaining what made it so captivating, but Bioware have gone out of their way to add so many new concepts and so much new content that Mass Effect 2 is almost certainly my most anticipated game of 2010.
Pokémon was one of the very first video games I ever played and nothing can invoke a sense of nostalgia in me quite like running around the simple lands of Pokémon, capturing and battling the mythical creatures which inhabit them. The Pokémon series has been a consistently high quality affair and with these remakes of the fantastic second generation of Pokémon games I know I'm in for plenty of obsessive Pokédex-compilation and happy reminiscence of gaming as a kid.
Nintendo showed us something amazing with the original Super Mario Galaxy. It revived some of the retro 3D wonder of Super Mario 64 while not being overly-aggressive in its implementation of motion controls and bringing enough new stuff to the table to make it the perfect mix of old and new. We don't know that much about Super Mario Galaxy 2 but we do know it delivers more of what we saw in the original and that's more than good enough for me.
