2010 showed off some promising things and I would like to list them off
 
The Japanese still got it.
Japan is still trying their best to appeal to the west. Some try a little too hard and end up falling apart. However, many studios are making some smart move. 
 
Atlus continues to bring their quality produces by licensing over other studio's games like 3D Dot Game Heroes from FromSoft, Zeno Clash from ACE Team, and a whole bunch more, while releasing their own heavy hitters like Persona 3 Portable, Trauma Team, Strange Journey, and Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City.
 
PlatinumGames may just show what the future of Japanese games are like by truly blending Western game styles with Japanese craziness. Bayonetta offers the similar combat style of Devil May Cry but makes it a whole lot easier to get in to while Vanquish is a 3rd person cover base shooter that moves as smooth as butter and makes gears look really slow. 
 
Open worlds opened my mind.
Out of all of the games I played this year, the ones that I really enjoyed were the open world games, which were Fallout New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption. Red Dead offer up a interesting story, characters, a wonderful western setting, and gameplay structure that Rockstar may use again in their future releases. New Vegas, while broken in many areas, still offer up the great Fallout experience will a better level balance, better companion controls, great characters, better story structure, and lots to do and ways to do them.
 
Running out of HD space because of DLC
This year I brought more DLC than usual due to the creativity they bring. Double Fine's Costume Quest showed the comedic style of the team with a small game. While gameplay is pretty basic RPG but what I paid for was the writing. After Burner Climax, enough said. LIMBO is a example of, due I say it, gaming as art. The art, the gameplay structure, the sound, and the questioning nature of the story, allowing people to make up what they feel as to what is going on.
 
A true Gentlemen leaves no puzzle unsolved
My mind has never been twisted up so much till Picross 3D came along. Hours of tapping blocks and forming different creations through the uses of logic. Also continuing the wonderful adventures of Professor Layton and Luke Triton in the Unwound Future. Nothing much to say about it only because it still the same great puzzle structure and heart-warming story.
 
So in what way did 2010 treat you in your gaming ways?