2010 - The Way We Was
By billygoat117 2 Comments
Yesterday I put up my Top Ten list for the year. I used that to talk at length about each game, so I won't redo that here. I also wanted to talk about some other things that have been on my mind lately about other games that came out this year, and I guess give out some awards (or more appropriately, shout-outs). Not that my awards have any cachet to them whatsoever, but hey, it's my blog, so deal with it. So anyway, just for context, here are the names of my top ten, then I'll jump in to my other ramblings, musings, and nonplussments. Trivia Alert! How many games that I list here have colons in their names? Seriously, it's kind of ridiculous.
Top Ten for 2010
1. Red Dead Redemption2. Mass Effect 2
3. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
4. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
5. Halo: Reach
6. Fallout: New Vegas
7. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction
8. Alan Wake
9. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
10. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Just Missed the Cut
Battlefield: Bad Company 2I had a lot of fun with Bad Company 2, but ultimately, the few people on my friends list who I played with stopped, and it's kind of hard to keep up with a game like that when you have to Lone Wolf it every time you jump into a multiplayer session. Sad to say, I even traded it in to Amazon because I didn't think I'd ever play it again. It's easily a better game than Black Ops, and I've recently gotten the urge to pick a copy up again and jump back in, especially with the Vietnam pack that just dropped.
Transformers: War for Cybertron
Yeah, yeah, I know. That's why it's not actually on my top ten. But this game is still super fun, and if you ask me, everything a Transformers game should be. And even though it shamelessly cribs from Call of Duty, the multiplayer is tons of fun. I'm sure no one is playing it anymore, but it totally made me feel like I was a little kid again, playing with my toys against my friends.
Civilization 5
I didn't actually play enough of Civ 5 to justify putting it in my top ten, but what I played was truly something special. I have never played any of the other Civilization games, so I was a little unprepared for what this game would hold. It was pretty daunting to jump in feet first, but this game makes it easy to grasp its concepts and teaches you new techniques without being overly punitive. I'm looking forward to spending more time with this in 2011.
Call of Duty: Black Ops
This game deserves to be mentioned in GOTY discussions, if for nothing else than its pedigree, but I simply have too many problems with this game to put it very high. These problems will be detailed a little further down on this list.
Best Games I didn’t actually finish
BayonettaI totally get where everyone is coming from, but for whatever reason, I hit a huge wall with this game. I'll try to Gamefly it and finish it up, because I want to fully see what everyone else has said about this crazy, crazy game.
Darksiders
I really, really liked this game. It just fell victim to other games coming out that demanded my attention. I think Mass Effect 2 is the main reason I never finished Darksiders when I had the chance. I would throw it in off and on throughout the year and try to make some progress, but when you haven't touched a game in a while, you forget the controls, the mechanics, where you've been in the game world, and it's just too hard to pick up where you left off. I think I'll probably start over from the beginning so I can make a clean runthrough. Darksiders really is the modern take on Zelda that we never knew we wanted.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Again, a game that had too much competition for me to give it a ton of attention. I know a lot of people were really hot on this game, and while I'm not quite as enthusiastic (some of the levels have WAY too many branching paths) I liked it a lot. I just simply didn't have time to finish it, or even get remotely close.
Best Downloadable Games
Pac-Man CE DX It's fucking Pac-Man with bombs. Also, this.
Limbo
Ever since Brad's Quick Look, I knew I had to have this game, and boy, did it deliver. Not terribly long, but everything about it was nearly perfect. I admit that I had to get outside help on a few puzzles (not from an FAQ, though, so put down those pitchforks), but overall this game was great. Limbo is probably the moodiest game I've ever played, if that makes any sense.
Dead Rising 2: Case Zero
I never finished the first Dead Rising because, well, I just didn't. Too Japanese in its sensibilities, I guess. I was looking forward to the second one, but when Case Zero was announced, I was doubly excited. It turned out to be the perfect amount of Dead Rising for me, and from the sound of things, I'm not alone in that assessment. It's a good dose of zombie killing without all of the problems and frustrations attendant to the main game.
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
This game was way better than it had any right to be. I was skeptical of it up until the day of release, but the myriad positive reviews swayed my opinion. I'm glad I gave it a chance because it turned out to be a super enjoyable experience. Solid level design, a good loot mechanic, and just plain fun.
Super Meat Boy
Ahh, Super Meat Boy. What more can I say that hasn't already been said? A little bit, actually. As strange as it may sound, I never once got frustrated or upset at Super Meat Boy. Seriously. No controller throwing, no TV smashing, not even any profanity, really. I had no problem with this game's crushing difficulty. You have to learn to play the game by its rules, rules which make perfect sense once you understand them. You can only be mad at yourself for not being good enough. All that said, I haven't tried to get all the bandages, which is a path I fear will lead only to the depths of insanity. I believe such an undertaking is beyond me.
Biggest Disappointments
Crackdown 2 How you make Crackdown into something mundane and severely lacking in the fun department? I don't get it. This is probably the quickest I've traded a game in after buying it.
Shank
A perfect example of style over substance. The combat gets too repetitive after the halfway point and the enemies take way too many hits to kill. Such a shame, because the game is visually stunning and had tons of promise.
Medal of Honor
Okay, I guess I didn't really have high hopes for this in the first place, but it was still disheartening to see that it did so poorly. It's perfectly competent, but in the crowded FPS market, that's simply not good enough anymore.
Best Example of a Game I Don’t Actually Like That Much But Still Play a Lot
Call of Duty: Black Ops Okay. Deep breath.
I really, really, really wanted to like Black Ops. I truly did. Modern Warfare 2 is one of my favorite games of the last few years. Memorable characters, amazing set-pieces, top-notch multiplayer. Black Ops feels like a pretender to the throne. It has the best of intentions, but for me, it fails to deliver in almost every way. It's really hard to quantify or explain this, but Black Ops just feels...off. From the level design to the actual controls to the characterizations, everything feels like it's lacking polish. People have been saying that Reznov and Woods are such great characters, but I think Captain Price, Ghost, and "Soap" MacTavish have ten times the personality of those two. There's something in the animation that's too jerky, too sudden, that makes the characters seem like puppets instead actual human beings I'm supposed to relate to. It's almost as if the fact that Treyarch is using Infinity Ward's engine holds them back from knowing how to get the most out of the animations or how to tune the controls finely enough. Finally, I think the introduction of COD points ruins the multiplayer. We can argue the merits of leveling up to unlock weapons, perks and equipment until we're blue in the face, but that said, there's no sense of accomplishment to getting new items anymore. All you have to do is buy them now. In Modern Warfare 2, if I wanted to be able to move completely silently, I had to earn that damn Ninja Pro perk. Most people didn't use it, and it made me feel like I had a small advantage, since I like to listen for footsteps to ascertain the location of my opponents, and they couldn't hear me coming. It was my reward for earning that perk. Now, you can buy Ninja immediately, so way more people use it right off the bat. and it completely loses its status. I also think the weapon progression is really poor. There are about 3 guns I routinely use, and nothing else is even remotely interesting.
Okay. All that said, the multiplayer is still enjoyable enough, although I only play it when my friends are on. Also, the Wager Matches are the one thing Treyarch added that is legitimately cool and original. I just wish those gametypes were available as standalone modes without having to wager.
Games That Would Be On My Top Ten If I'd Actually Had Time To Play Them
Rock Band 3Dude, I love the shit out of Rock Band 2. Like a lot of people, I've spent quite a but of money on song DLC. I know that I will love Rock Band 3 once I get around to picking it up. I really want to see what the pro modes and keyboard sections are like, and I just plain want more rawk in my life. Hopefully the bundle with the keyboard comes down in price a bit.
DJ Hero 2
I only played the first DJ Hero at a demo station at Best Buy, and I meant to pick up once it was once sale for cheap (which it was more than once, but I never pulled the trigger). DJ Hero 2 looks like it improved everything that made the first one great, and I really want to pick it up this next year.
Super Mario Galaxy 2
I don't have a Wii. That's the only reason I didn't play this. It looks magical. Literally magical.