Lingxor

Even with the reproducible game crashing bugs that I found throughout this game, I still felt compelled to spend several dozen hours murdering anyone who got in the way of my revenge in New Vegas. The incredible scale of Bethesda games always makes it easy for me to forgive their brokenness. If I didn’t have access to the developer console in the PC version I might think differently.

Despite being an incremental upgrade to its predecessor, SSF4 carries on as an obsession of mine. It doesn’t matter if I’m playing or just spectating, the intricacies of this fighting game are still deeply captivating.

The hyper science fiction universe of Mass Effect continues to enthrall and Bioware continues to become more adept at their own brand of third person action. Bring back Wrex.

I was really impressed by the multiple interweaving plots and protagonists in Heavy Rain. I really felt as if there were consequences for my decisions. More developers should look to Heavy Rain if they want to present a compelling story and not a static experience progressing from one level to the next. JASON!

This is an atmosphere heavy game. I cannot recall the last time I had genuine moments of dread and fear in a game like I did in Amnesia. The ending was somewhat of a letdown, but I’ll definitely be remembering the journey that took me there for years to come.

Enslaved gave us the most lifelike and memorable characters of the year. Its unique take on the post-apocalypse also deserves mention, showing us that the end of the world doesn’t always have to be so ugly. Although the overall story didn’t live up to the premise, the original setting and characters of Enslaved made it one of the games that I just plain felt fortunate to play this year.

Bungie succeeds in giving us a Halo game with compelling characters who aren’t the Master Chief after mostly failing with their previous effort. Reach is clearly the pinnacle of their formula, but I’m ready for what’s next.

A stagnating genre was brought back to life in a big way with Super Meat Boy. The stellar soundtrack and art design alleviated the pain of getting chewed up repeatedly by this difficult game. The only thing I could ask for would be a quick level restart button.

Japan is usually terrible. This time it was awesome.

I HATED John Marsten. It seemed like I spent the whole game just getting screwed over by people despite clearly being able to lay waste to any amount of men with guns or wild animals with little effort. RDR still deserves mention for allowing us to trek through the wild west... even if we were forced to play as a punk ass bitch.