Best of 2010
Below is a Top 10 list that contains very few surprises, although the order they popped up in my mind shocked me a little.
Honourable mentions go to Alpha Protocol, Costume Quest, and Puzzle Quest 2.
List items
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1. Mass Effect 2
Fantastic from start to finish, Mass Effect 2 built upon the already amazing original and turned it all Empire Strikes Back. Darker story, flawed characters, meaningful choices, and action shooter gameplay that was fun to play in its own right. I truly cannot wait for ME3...just leave the mining minigames on the cutting room floor, hey Bioware?
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2. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
A relatively late entry into the list, Ass:Bro was a shock to me as I had assumed that it was going to be a highly multiplayer focused game, with little in the way of singleplayer at all. Instead, we received a highly multiplayer focused game...that also had a singleplayer experience far superior to that of Assassin's Creed 2. The game may have been incredibly easy, but that really didn't take away from the exhilaration of ordering your elite cadre of assassinos through the ruins of Rome.
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3. Limbo
Not just on my list to piss Jeff off, Limbo was for me the best downloadable game of 2010 and a serious step toward "Games as Art" being something that doesn't make you want vomit every time you hear it. Beautiful to look at, amazingly clever to play, and all with a haunting atmosphere that was as exquisite as it was excruciating.
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4. Red Dead Redemption
I hate Rockstar games. There, I said it. Barring the decent (not great) Vice City, the only good GTA games were the first two. GTA 3 was bland, San Andreas was stupid, and GTA 4 felt like a dating simulator with terrible shooter mechanics thrown in. I went into RDR with nothing but trepidation, and was immediately shocked at how much I loved it. This was a game that fixed every single issue I had ever had with the GTA series, while also scratching that Western itch that hadn't been touched since GUN. The highest compliment I can pay Red Dead Redemption is that it has ensured I will at least look at Rockstar's next game.
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5. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Another late entry, Hot Pursuit is what Need for Speed should have been for years now. Forget your shitty FMV and tuning how far back the passenger seat will slide, these games are meant to be arcade racers in stupid-fast cars, and Criterion know a thing or two about that. The cops and robbers dynamic is great fun, the game is hella fast, and there is just enough meat to the driving mechanics that you don't feel like the cars are all identical. EA should just combine the Burnout and Need for Speed franchises now and let Criterion do whatever the hell they want.
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6. Alan Wake
Picked this one up out of the bargain bin after intending to get it for ages,and took even longer to finally start playing it. I understand my initial trepidation now, because Alan Wake scared the living hell out of me! A tense, psychological thriller (with a smidge of actual horror) with unique gameplay I feel doesn't get enough credit for changing up how third-person shooters work, Alan Wake is an interesting and entertaining work of fiction as much as it is a solid game.
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7. Sid Meier's Civilization V
The game that got me back into Sid Meier's world, Civ V managed to hook me in a way that the series had not managed since all the way back in number 2. Even stranger still, Firaxis have somehow managed to make me interested in playing a Civilisation game where I don't spend the centuries slaughtering everyone I come across. I played a game the other day where I went for a cultural victory, and I spent the entire game with three cities, isolated on a small island, and had no contact with any other civilisations until the 1700's, as well as a weak, outdated military. Sound boring? It was freaking AMAZING!
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8. Battlefield: Bad Company 2
I'm just going to quickly destroy whatever credibility I have by saying I liked the singleplayer in BC2 substantially more than what was on offer in Modern Warfare 2. Finished yelling at your monitors yet? Good. Anyway, the real meat here was the multiplayer, and what meat it was. Managing to streamline the complexities of Battlefield 2, while also incorporating a few tricks from the Call of Duty games, and that oh-so-sweet destructible terrain, BC2 accomplished that which no other FPS had managed to date: it took me away from TF2.
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9. Halo: Reach
A fitting swan song for the Halo series and the Bungie/Microsoft partnership, Reach was exactly what fans of the series needed it to be while also standing up well on its own merits, attracting a few new fans along the way. While I don't think the campaign or story was the strongest in the series, it did everything it had to in setting up the major turning point of the Halo universe story arc, and was a tonne of fun to boot. Plus I always appreciated split screen co-op.
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10. Call of Duty: Black Ops
This almost feels like a matter of obligation, as I have sunk a fair bit of time into this game since I got it. I like the game, don't get me wrong; the singleplayer campaign was interesting, over the top, and yet still less ridiculous than the garbage MW2 offered up. The multi is horribly unbalanced, and was broken for Dual Core owners to boot, but for all that it is still amazingly fun and surprisingly intense. I feel as though there are games I liked more than this, but I just can't think of them, and the 30 or so hours I have put into it so far justifies including here at the back.
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