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List of Games Beaten in 2010

The topic is succinct enough, any supplemental text is unnecessary. Oh, I was supposed to leave this blank if that was the case? Well, no-one tells me anything.

Some stats, then, since the year seems to have passed:

  • Total Games Completed: 67 (hence the number of entries on the list, I suppose. This was a great lead-in, everybody!)
  • 2010 Games Completed: 17 (Relatively small: barely a quarter. So I guess that proves new games are expensive? These are the worst stats ever.)
  • 2009 Games Completed: 15 (I'm always playing catch-up)
  • 10+ Year Old Games Completed: 0 (so much for being a proponent of the classics...)
  • Games Started But Not Finished: 7 (does this suggest I choose my games well? Or that I have an OCD tendency to finish more of them than a normal gamer might?)
  • System Breakdown: PS3 (33), PS2 (10), Steam (6), 360 (6), Wii (5) DS (3), PSP (3), N64 (1). (Maybe I should change my username colour to blue?)
  • First Game of Year: Uncharted 2 (a high note, then)
  • Last Game of Year: Super Meat Boy (because that's how you want to spend New Year's)

List items

  • 10/01-24/01. Technically the first game I beat this year. Deeply unpleasant game. Didn't help I had some kind of Winter Pox at the time. Try holding your food in when giant baby demons are eating everyone.

  • 28/01-31/01. First rental for the PS3. Got all trophies in a matter of hours. I've noticed Ubisoft games of late take approximately the length of a Lord of the Rings movie (an extended edition, mind, I'll give them some credit) to beat these days. As a renter, I approve of the "short yet plentiful" approach to game releases.

  • 01/01-01/02. First game of the year, but I didn't beat it "properly" (i.e. Crushing Mode a.k.a. "Why won't this bald Russian asshole die already?") until a month later. One of the few games I occasionally multiplayer.

  • 04/01-01/02. Like Uncharted 2, I swept up the remaining trophies some time after beating it. Borderlands and its more traditional Roguelike brethren are like a giant tub of ice cream: Awesome initially, then time passes in the magical realm of overindulgence to the point where the very thought of it makes you nauseous.

  • 01/02-07/02. So I followed up a dungeon crawl (barren planetoid crawl?) with another one. So sue me. This is the first of several attempts to clear up my PS2 backlog, something which continues to seem unconquerable. The game itself is solid but fairly uninteresting, as I suspected it might be.

  • 11/02-14/02. Nothing like picking over the previous game's leftovers for a fulfilling video game sequel.

  • 16/02-20/02. What a completely mediocre little platformer. This was the PS3's killer app? The only way a game could be blander and cutesier would be a Tetris where the blocks were stuffed toys. Heh, "Tedtris".

  • 21/02-24/02. Still, there's a lot to be said for cute. At least LBP never made me kill unbaptized babies with Baraka claws. So many cracks to make at this game, some of them hairy.

  • 26/02-03/03. Not a game about defending girls on the internet, but almost as rewarding. This "single player (but with an optional multiplayer mode!)" game carefully holds back approximately 70% of its content for those optional online users to enjoy. Great.

  • 2009-03/03. Actually started some time before this year, very much one of those "intermittent plays" types. I probably still have Jiggies remaining, I recall some of the challenges getting awfully tough for the non-mechanically minded. If I had innovations beyond "attach rockets to everything and pray to bear Jesus" it might've helped.

  • 05/03-09-03. Oh hey, it's Space Marine Link. I suspect War just eats fairies who annoy him constantly. It's a fun enough game, if a bit kleptomaniac when it comes to plagiarizing other franchises. I laughed rudely at the "mystical vortex gun" that happened to shoot familiar orange and blue portals at walls.

  • 10/03-13/03. Yeah. Airport massacres. No, no, it was there purely to emphasize the dark narrative. Free publicity? Well only if you insist. Another game where I gathered up all the single-player trophies before moving on, which I believe in gamer parlance is "missing the point of CoD".

  • 10/02-14/03. Protip about $3 PSN games: You get what you pay for. Eh, whatever, I still very occasionally get a Breakout itch thanks to a childhood rife with similar games, and this is a more imaginative take on that hoary genre than most.

  • 16/03-20/03. 1) Ponder the new "Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time" release. 2) Remember that you hadn't played the previous game in the series yet, (this one, natch) and go rent it. 3) Get so thoroughly sick of grinding weapon experience towards the end that you don't want to see another R&C game for at least a year 4) ????? 5) Profit (from not spending money to buy the new "Crack in Time" game). 6) Wonder why all PS3 R&C games are called "Ratchet and Clank Future" when presumably the entire franchise is set in the future.

  • 23/03-26/03. Boy was I not enamoured with this game in the slightest. Clearly do not share the Devil May Cry dude's sense of fun, which is odd because I liked Okami. Didn't help the protagonist was a cross between Cobra's The Baroness and a daddy-long-legs.

  • 08/02-23/03. Unfairly decried as a "brainless hack-n-slasher" by the game review elite, when it requires a great deal more strategy than, say, Dynasty Warriors. Dashing into a crowd of monsters is likely to go very badly for you, very quickly. Those elite were right on the money about it being a bit of a chore though.

  • 30/03-04/04. An Irish bomber is slightly more sympathetic to an English audience than the Third Reich, but it's a close run thing. If you're a completist, have fun spending 50 hours doing nothing but attaching dynamite to gun nests. You'll eventually forget you're supposed to be saving a country full of capitulating ingrates.

  • 12/04-13/04. "Fly anywhere." "Cool, I'll do that as soon as the game opens up a bit." "You just beat it." "Oh shit. Really? I guess I got confused because you forgot to put a real ending in there." "Yup, our bad."

  • 29/03-15/04. I legitimately enjoyed this game, despite how it must horribly confuse a regular person with its oxymoronic real-time turn-based combat. It kind of reminded me of Inglourious Basterds in a way, with all the smaller skirmishes and the occasional worryingly psychotic recruit.

  • 14/04-22/04. Another PS2 backlog pick and a game that doesn't get enough love, I feel. It may graphically resemble a certain Dire Straits music video from the 80s, but its clever Lost Vikings style specialist-switching puzzles were fun to solve.

  • 23/04-29/04. Perfectly generic JRPG, complete with terrible engrish localization and completely unsurprising plot that leads to an end boss fight with an evil God of Darkness, if you can believe it. I find these sorts of games relaxing, like putting on a worn pair of shoes. Christ, I sound old.

  • 02/05-03/05. Actually fairly fun movie license that doesn't follow the movie at all (though the Reapers do show up). At no point does Blade catch his shades though, which means as far as I'm concerned the game is not canon.

  • 06/05-08/05. I found myself with the PS2 version of this and decided to give it a whirl. It turns out this was the one where Guybrush fights Rupert Murdoch with a giant monkey robot doing kung fu. Perhaps not the series' peak.

  • 10/05-17/05. The new DS remake. I'm of the mind that Torneko Taloon is one of the finest video game protagonists ever devised. Everyone is trying to rescue or avenge someone they love, or save the world, but Torneko just wants to rip people off and nap.

  • 18/05-21/05. Summed up perfectly with this Peachifruit quote: "MY EXTRATERRITORIAL RIGHTS ARE TOO POWERFUL TO LET THIS GAME END!"

  • 21/05-31/05. Some background: My DS touchscreen doesn't work. Well, it does, but it's spotty. Ouendan is almost entirely to blame. This makes stylus-intensive games like ol' blockshoot here particularly frustrating, especially if you're going for "perfect" bonuses. I'd highly recommend it though, if you have a fully functional touchscreen.

  • 03/06-07/06. Between the glitches, the hokey plot, the fucking cougars, the rampant misogyny, the small but numerous poor design decisions, the fucking cougars and the damp squib of an ending, this is actually an okay game. It's no Bully, but then what post-Bully Rockstar game is?

  • 18/06-21/06. As much as I adore Mario platformers, even I have to admit that this is the "Malibu Stacy (with new hat!)" to Mario Galaxy's "Malibu Stacy". Still, I'd have been just as happy playing the first one again, so no harm done.

  • 21/06. Rail shooters aren't my deal, especially ones that spin you around like a giddy child, but I wanted to try this out for the purportedly hilarious B-Movie homage of a plot, script and soundtrack. It didn't disappoint on that front at least.

  • 24/06-26/06. Tim Schafer is amazing, but I don't know if game designer is his ideal role. "Creative Director" possibly, if I knew what that was. Badass setting and amusing dialogue (like Psychonauts, but to a lesser extent) hamstrung by a bizarre and jarring merging of RTS and sandbox.

  • 27/06-29/06. Third Ubisoft game, third platinum trophy. Seeing a pattern? It's a commendation if you're into trophies I suppose. Otherwise it's a fine but short action-platformer, like all the other ones.

  • 01/06-04/07. Man. Underwhelming. Marta has to be one of the least likable female protagonists ever devised. Someone on the design team must been dealing with one psycho of an ex-girlfriend is all I'm suggesting. Emil's complete doormat personality didn't help either. I had my fill playing as a human brick wall from FF8, thanks.

  • 05/07-07/07. Perfectly satisfactory Transformers game. Surprising how few and far between they are.

  • 11/07-13/07. I actually liked this game most than more people did, I think. I mean, the 'Busters themselves were all butts, but you were kind of stuck playing as the intern - a position somehow lower than "Ray" on the respect scale - so that's fair enough. It's the closest thing we have as a bridge between the movies and the great 90s cartoon, importantly.

  • 09/07-18/07. Decided to get into this series, starting at the ground floor. Interesting take by the Japanese on a sandbox game, sort of crossing River City Ransom with a conventional Yakuza story. I hear the sequels get even better.

  • 18/07-27/07. It's games like this which stop me from striking off the Wii. Far more humor, wit and innovation than any other game I've played this year. But really, screw King Shishkebaboo and his fat, effete arbitrary-pinball-boss-fight face.

  • 31/07-03/08. A decent enough superhero sandbox. At least I don't recall anything about it that sucked off-hand. Besides Zeke of course.

  • 07/08-08/08. "What if we made [Bioshock] but had him fight [Russians] using [Time Powers]?" "Get on it." Man, I could make a mint with this random premise generator. I am being facetious of course, Singularity's quite good fun.

  • 03/08-14/08. Why do Gust games always have such awesome soundtracks? It's always the first thing I notice. Before I start grinding items for synthesis, anyway. Turn elderly cats into swords and hit people with them everyday. Barrel!

  • 14/08-16/08. Soon there'll be a Pokemon game in every genre. Scratch "Diablo-esque Action RPG" off the list. I only got as far as finding the original 151, because I don't care about any Pokemon after that and neither does anyone else.

  • 18/08-24/08. Better late than never, right? Bioware games follow a formula even more predictable than "androgynous teen saves world" these days, but they still have some of the best writers in the game biz.

  • 27/08-29/08. Oh hey, it's CoD: Modern Warfare again, but isn't. Good if you're stuck between CoD releases? But that's usually a gap of a month or so, so get yourself some patience already.

  • 01/09-01/09. Sure, why not. Pretty pretty flowers. Like Noby Noby Boy, it scarcely counts as a game though. More like a "look what we did, and you can even control some of it sort of" virtual artistic installation.

  • 24/08-03/09. General gaming experience with this title: Skip cutscene, skip cutscene, skip cutscene, awesome boss battle full of frenetic twitch action, skip cutscene, skip cutscene, "oh you're saying there's an imbalance with the natural order of things and the dragon gods need me to-"skip cutscene.

  • 04/09-06/09. Sparklyeyes McGravelvoice in a pair of license games that are still pretty great, if you like sneaking around in the dark. That is, until you reach spider turret village. If you've never played video games, turrets are the worst things in FPS games and spiders are the worst things in action games, so use your imagination for how fun a combination is to deal with.

  • 08/09-10/09. Awesome game. Like a Samurai-era Mega Man, complete with dozens (at least 50) of exciting boss fights and constant upgrades. Gets a little weird when your chirpy Boy Wonder side-kick turns into a hot chick later on.

  • 11/09-12/09. Another day, another PS2 backlog entry. Like most Judge Dredd games, it's a standard generic shooter with some interesting "how do I arrest these guys instead of just killing them?" decisions to make. It's fairly bland otherwise, and graphically inferior.

  • 13/09-18/09. They were going to take away my license to play video games if I didn't try Mass Effect 2 sometime soon (yes, "they"). Like Dragon Age, predictable but a great adventure nonetheless. Assume control of a copy today? (Jeez, this hurts me).

  • 19/09-20/09. Been sitting on a copy of this for ages. Maybe should've kept it under there. At least it harkens back to those bigger puzzles that took the entire stage to solve. Lara's rampant sociopathy and hatred of wildlife is still a little hard to swallow though.

  • 21/09-23/09. Gets an award for laziest recycling of material. I mean, it's just the first game only they replaced the clever tier-based gangs with zombies and more zombies. Every big set-piece involves protecting something for a duration, a mission type only slightly worse than escort quests.

  • 26/09-27/09. Shouty bumfights. The first level was the only genuinely unnerving experience, the rest was an odd mix of forensic work and uncomfortable weirdness. Like David Caruso on that one TV show.

  • 04/10-08/10. Since XBL is having that "800 point refund for 2400 points spent" deal, I figured I'd pick this up after seeing decent reviews. It's pretty much like Tomb Raider concentrate: all of the action, exploration and puzzles with the modern franchise's crapiosity skimmed off the top.

  • 29/09-08/10. Beat this the same day. Shares the same issues of all its Survival Horror ilk (obtuse puzzles, lots of arbitrary backtracking to unlock doors) made better with its compelling camera battle system and being genuinely terrifying. This one got a bit tiresome though, maybe because there were a LOT more of the weaker stuff. Also I hate Crawling Woman.

  • 09/10-17/10. Cavia has a dark, dark sense of humor. As a condition for the final ending, it deleted every scrap of data in every Nier save file I had, taunting me by slowly eliminating all my stats, inventory and history in front of my very eyes. Brutal. Still, it's my seventh Platinum and I have to say I enjoyed the majority of it.

  • 17/10-22/10. An egregious gap in my playing history, now remedied. Actually feels more epic in scope than either of its sequels, a truly outstanding achievement for the N64. There's still a few N64 games left that I need to beat though...

  • 23/10-24/10. Nothing particularly objectionable about this game (though I found the many references to Voltaire's Candide a little weird), it just came and went pretty quickly. Definitely a slick TPS, and one that doesn't focus (too strongly) on cover combat for a change.

  • 27/10-27/10. Short and sweet. Both the game and this blurb.

  • 01/11-07/11. More exploration, more story, more endings, more glitches. The Vegas that shines twice as bright, burns out twice as quick. And then crashes. At least I got through to the end without a game-breaking bug, though usually that doesn't count as a plus.

  • 28/10-15/11. This one grew on me, I'll admit. Something very satisfying about ripping the souls out of creatures with the sixaxis. All the side-quest stuff you have to do to upgrade Folks keeps you busy, and the story's not too bad either.

  • 22/11-23/11. BLOPs is competent enough but hardly game of the year material. Way too many odd design decisions, apparently from Treyarch (I'd never played a non-Modern Warfare COD before now), soured the whole experience. Pro-tip: Having CCR's "Fortunate Son" playing in a Vietnam sequence was pretty much old when the war was still going.

  • 25/11-29/11. Excellent game, despite the times when its ambition surpassed its capabilities. 5 "UH"s out of 5.

  • 30/11-30/11. Bought during the Black Friday Steam sale, with four other games. Cute game. Great music. After getting those shinies and discovering the secret lab, I'm pretty much done.

  • 30/11-30/11. Bought during the Black Friday Steam sale. Workable Monkey Island knock-off, with a few too many furry sex jokes for my liking.

  • 03/12-03/12. Kind of a theme with these latter games. Steam sales are a harsh mistress. Or rather, an entirely too generous one. Like Knock-Off Monkey Island, above, Knock-Off Layton is good for what it is: An Indie variant on a classic. Seems slightly backwards to think of Indie as basically less-imaginative tiny-town versions of retail games, but that's often the reality.

  • 05/12-12/12. Though I've cleared the debt, thus removing the main impetus to play, there is still plenty left to see and do. Fantastic Indie/Doujin game, might do a blog post on it later. Definitely is my Downloadable Game of the Year.

  • 15/12-19/12. One of those near-perfect games that could have only originated from the PC Golden Age (mid-90s for those keeping track). And, like most PC games, can actually be made perfect using mods. If PC gaming died tomorrow, there'd still a lifetime of awesome stuff to play that you've never even heard of. Or I haven't. But then I'm ig'nant.

  • 22/12-22/12. Some clever puzzles but way too short. They were seriously charging people over ten bucks for this? What it lacked in content it more than made up with pretentiousness. Uh, I mean, a "great and thoughtful story about some guy who liked to drink wine and got a girl mad with him for some reason".
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