I played many games in 2010. I did not play many more games in 2010. These are what I understand to be the best of the latter, along with my justification for not playing them, in order of their release, I think. Oh, and I just don't care for handheld games anymore.
Depending on who you talk to, Bayonetta is either the greatest game in the history of history, or it's an also ran action game. I've never really been able to get into Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden made me its bitch, and God of War just...well, more on that in a bit. I was tempted to pick this up once it got down to $20, but my history with the genre made it easy to pass over in favor of new releases. I eventually played the demo and confirmed that it's just not for me.
The premise, "A grown up Zelda game," sounds promising enough, but I haven't bothered to complete a Zelda game since A Link to the Past. I'm the one person in the world who has never even played Ocarina of Time. I guess those facts allowed me to let Darksiders slip under my radar for just long enough that no one else cared about it any longer, which knocked it off my radar entirely.
I've never played No More Heroes, and given the lack of games which are both good and original (i.e. not Nintendo franchise sequels) on the Wii, I probably should have played both this and its predecessor. However, I made the horrible mistake of trying to play Killer 7, which will forever prevent me from giving another Suda 51 game a chance.
I was late to the party on the original BioShock game. I'm not sure if it's because I never played the System Shock games or my waning interest in shooters by and large, but I just couldn't get into BioShock. Actually, thinking back on it now, it was largely because the game didn't have a very good autosave feature, and after one death in particular, I lost much of the progress I had made. That soured me from the whole BioShock experience, and it seemed to me like a bad idea to play the sequel without caring to play the original.
As a Greek mythology nerd, I was excited when the original game came out. As an action game, it's a bit dull, but it is competently made and its presentation is really good. Unfortunately, God of War is to Greek mythology what Linkin Park is to rap. The great presentation of the original wasn't enough, for me, to overcome the repetitive combat and dopey, angst-riddled story, which led me to ignore all of God of War's sequels.
I didn't really feel that having not played Just Cause would matter for Just Cause 2, but until Red Dead Redemption, I found myself adverse to sandbox games. The idea is great, but I always found myself meandering through a world that wasn't particularly interesting without much of a purpose, finding little fun along the way. I was never convinced that this was much different to my preconceptions of games within the genre.
I was genuinely interested in Split/Second for about two weeks. It sounds like an combat racing game with some original ideas and presentation, but as I recall its release was near that of both Alan Wake and Super Mario Galaxy. Split/Second was the odd man out.
I know very little of the original Sin and Punishment. At some point, either Star Successor or its predecessor were compared to Panzer Dragoon. Now, it's not tough for me to ignore a shooter in the first place, and while I recognize the expert craftsmanship that went into Panzer Dragoon Orta, it just wasn't a game for me. I, probably correctly, assumed this would not be as well.
This was just a matter of poor timing on my part. I never did complete the original Starcraft, despite having 12 years to do so. Additionally, I didn't get a computer that can run Starcraft 2 until September, at which point I had just restarted playing World of Warcraft. Of course, that was right around the time the Holiday releases began to trickle out, and it left me in the lurch with what will almost unanimously be the game of the year. My bad.
I gave up on Halo after Halo 2's terrible ending and my terrible multiplayer experience (read: I stink). Side note: Can you believe that 343 Studios is rumored to be remaking Halo CE as their first game since taking over the franchise? It doesn't exactly make me regret my decision to abandon ship.
The only reason I didn't play what was easily the game for which I had the greatest anticipation in 2010 is because the invisible space wizard hates me. My new computer can run Starcraft 2, and it even meets all of the recommended specs to play Civ V, with the exception of the graphics card. In all honesty, I will be planning my next computer purchase around the release of Civ VI to avoid this very issue.
If it hadn't been for Super Meat Boy's ability to make me into a stud platform gamer, I probably would have made time for Kirby's Epic Yarn. The art style and presentation are very compelling to me, but in what I like to call the Post Meat Boy world, I am pretty sure that a Kirby game, by comparison, would be like going from running in marathons to having both of your legs amputated. Still, I wish I had tried Kirby instead of Donkey Kong Country Returns.
Given how buggy I understand this game to be, my decision not to play Fallout: New Vegas isn't likely to upset anyone, least of all me. Even if it was an expertly crafted game, without any of its programmatic flaws, I still wouldn't have bothered to play it. I did like Fallout 3 to a certain extent, but it's balance of bad Bioware RPG combat and bad FPS combat made it easy for me to lose interest in the story.
I had only ever heard of Vanquish through its commercials prior to every episode of Penny Arcade TV in September. It annoyed me to sit through the same commercial time after time, so it was easy enough to ignore the game's release, but it was even more easy since I hadn't heard of the game since until Game of the Year nominees started to be released. The demo didn't do much for me; sure, rocket sliding is fun, but that mechanic alone didn't make me want to play through the game.
I need more plastic instruments (well, to the extent that we consider a turntable an instrument) in my house like I need a hole in the head. Also, though they did wisely include Wu Tang mixes in the game, the songs just don't interest me in the way they did in both Rock Band and Rock Band 2. I bet it is a lot of fun when it's not locking up.
At some point very close to its release, it occurred to me that I had been burned by Lionhead by playing both Fable and Fable 2. Although Fable 2 was a marked improvement over Fable, the game remained a buggy mess with lousy loading times and mediocre presentation at best. Sure, you can do a slew of different activities, but there wasn't any great motivation to do any of them, and unlike a true sandbox game, the options for exploration and creating your own experiences were very limited. It was at that point that I concluded that, despite my previous plans to do so, I would not be buying into the Molyneux propaganda this time around. It is a joy to learn that, at least according to the Giant Bomb staff, if not my friends who have played the game, that my decision was the correct one.
I've had a bit of a love affair with the rhythm game genre, particularly the Rock Band series. I became a scorned lover when I completed The Beatles: Rock Band on expert in under three hours, but the fires of love were rekindled when returning to Rock Band 2. But, as with any love affair, the flame eventual begins to die out. Though they tried to spice up our romance with the Green Day game, I just couldn't regain the same passion I once had for the series in particular and the genre overall. They even brought new toys into the mix with the addition of a keyboard, and while there some intrigue for me to tickle Rock Band's ivories, the handwriting is on the wall. Rock Band, baby, we're through. I know its a tough time to break this to you, what with Harmonix up for sale and all, but you're a great series and I think you'll go on to do great things. You'll just have to do those things without me.
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