Best of 2010
Snake_Eyes_Ex: Best of 2010
List items
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A masterfully told story of a character whom I felt true pathos for. Rockstar created a believable setting weaving a story of redemption versus freedom while America is expanding and coming to grips with nationalism and the industrial revolution. Some truly heavy themes told without pretentious hand-holding by the writers. One of my all-time favorite games.
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While the main storyline wasn't as well told for me as Red Dead's, the individual character stories were very well told. I really cared about many of my crew-members. The core gameplay was streamlined as Bioware was honest with themselves as to what they were making.
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This is becoming my favorite franchise. The melding of real history with conspiracy theory - stretched through vast periods of time - makes me very excited to see where this franchise goes. While the cinematic quality and storytelling isn't quite to the level of Red Dead or Mass Effect, I will say this was probably my favorite game to 'play' of any of them. Ubisoft finally made their combat as satisfying as the Free-running.
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My arcade roots will never die and neither will the king of fighting games. I played more SFIV than any game in 2009 and Super is a phenomenal follow-up bringing more options, user requested features and balance. In the world of E-Sports nothing is more exciting to me than watching a Street Fighter match, and Super will continue to be the best game of that realm.
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Real guitar? Check. Keyboard? Check. 7-Piece drums? Check. I'm not sure where music games can go from here. This is the definitive music game. Harmnonix has made one of the greatest games of all time even better. More than just a new soundtrack, this is a new paradigm for games. Giving players the ability to truly learn the basic of many instruments with well done tutorial. This game scales to any skill level and that's hard to do with far simpler mechanics than this.
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While I still don't love the multiplayer in CoD, Treyarch raised the bar for single player storytelling in this franchise. The facial mo-cap, coupled with real actors, propelled this story to a full-on summer pop-corn blockbuster. In a similar way to Uncharted 2 last year, this is the kind of production values that make the rest of us take notice and makes our medium truly compete with Hollywood - and not just in revenue.
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Bungie is the master at crafting "combat-puzzle" encounters with their mission design that promote careful skill-based play; rather than the run-and-gun approach of most shooters. There is a reason why Bungie's GDC talks are wall-to-wall packed every year. Their AI is among the best in the industry and - at higher difficulties - forces players to evaluate their tactics. Reach has balanced multiplayer that rewards skill and not just investment in time through unlocks that unbalance the game. Much like Street Fighter; there is a reason why MLG and pro-gaming leagues play Halo over other shooters. It's balanced.
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This was a good year for MLG and other pro-gaming leagues games as a whole. A new SF, Halo and StarCraft. The three kings of MLG. StarCraft II modernized an already near-perfect formula from the original StarCraft. Coupled with Blizzard's amazing production values, a great campaign and awesome RPG-lite upgrades, this is another classic.
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I took my vacation when this game came out. I knew why I had to do it. I played this a lot. Firaxis took the lessons learned from Civilization Revolution - with it's streamlined UI - and added the depth of a classic PC-game experience. This is a game that will be just as playable 20 years from now. It's a brilliant game through-and-through.
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The sequel to my 2007 Game of the Year. Nintendo EAD once again demonstrated that you can make a good Wii-Game, running at 60fps, that looks good and plays great. This game took some of the crazy level design from the first Galaxy and stretched it to new heights. The addition of Yoshi was great and the Mario 3-esque map put the player in more levels rather than mini-world mode (aka menus).
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