Best of 2010
This is a list of my top 10 electronic video games from the year of our lord MMX.
List items
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I really liked the first Mass Effect, but it never really grabbed me and didn't let go like Mass Effect 2 did. The sequel took the neat conversation wheel idea from the first game and made it even better, streamlined the interface and RPG elements, and actually made the combat fun. With amazing visuals, a great story, top-notch voice acting, and an insane amount of polish, Mass Effect 2 is the best game of 2010.
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I like Westerns. I like Rockstar open-world games. Riding the horses was fun. Riding across the frontier at dawn in John Marston's quest to find his family with amazing visuals and one particularly great use of vocal music was one of the most mesmerizing experiences in 2010. The only reason this is #2 is because I found the Mexico part of the story to be rather meaningless in the long run.
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Super Mario Galaxy is my favorite Mario game of all time. I know that may seem strange, but it's true. It had gorgeous visuals, amazing music, tight controls, and wonderfully original level design. All of those are true of its sequel, except for they are all ratcheted up to the maximum level of greatness. I'm no fan of Yoshi, but his inclusion actually ended up being fun, and axing the hub world and increasing the difficulty made this the game that Galaxy should have been. Obviously, being a sort of Mario Galaxy 1.5, I can't really say this is my favorite game of 2010.
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Holy hell, I didn't see this one coming. I hated the first game, liked the second game, and expected to simply like Brotherhood as well. I was wrong. I spent some 31 hours in the single player campaign before I was done with it. I then proceeded to spend about 10 more hours just running around and summoning my fully leveled up Assassin's guild on unsuspecting guards in the dirty streets of Rome. A fun and creative, if not long lasting, multiplayer mode and interesting ending made Brotherhood one of the biggest surprises of 2010.
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This is another one I didn't see coming. I'm normally not a huge fan of multiplayer games. Sure, I play the latest Call of Duty and Halo when they come out for a couple weeks, but then I shelve them for good. Not so with Monday Night Combat, the inaugural game from Uber Entertainment. Tight controls, well-designed levels, wonderfully balanced classes and an emphasis on teamwork made this my favorite multiplayer game in years, and one I keep coming back to again and again.
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While I liked Guitar Hero 2, I've always otherwise felt a vehement hatred towards music games. The Guitar Hero series in particular has always been filled with cloying attempts at being "metal" that I just find so f*cking obnoxious. The first music game to really nail the style while actually being fun to play was the first DJ Hero. It felt respectful of its admittedly niche audience, but its unique brand of mashed together music and a cool-as-shit peripheral that's just fun to use made it awesome. The second game only made it better with freestyle sections and a better overall track list. The new multiplayer modes and cleaned up interface also helped to make DJ Hero 2 the only rhythm game you'll likely see me playing any time soon.
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Yeah, I get it, Kratos is as unsympathetic as can be. His voice is ridiculous, and he's basically a living incarnation of an old Linkin Park song. Still, amazing visuals, incredible scale, versatile and polished combat, and extraneous amounts of gore made God of War III incredibly satisfying to me. I played it through in one sitting on day of release. I don't do that with most games.
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This is a weird one. I hated everything they did to the Samus Aran character in this game. Still, they managed to make a fun combat system with a strange control scheme, and its great visuals, soundtrack, and good old Metroid style structure made this as fun as any other Wii game I've played this year.
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Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was originally here, but after finally playing Epic Yarn, I had to say goodbye to demonic Jason Isaacs and hello to the most adorable thing I have ever seen. Winner of the Best Looking Game award from Giant Bomb this year (and rightfully so), Epic Yarn sees Kirby and the world around him transformed into yarn and other kinds of fabrics. This is one of the most beautiful visual styles I have ever seen in a video game. The direction also serves the gameplay, with Kirby's inhaling ability replaced with an incredibly satisfying "yarn whip" that can affect the environment in some really interesting and sometimes unpredictable ways. Everything about this game is designed to murder the pleasure centers in your brain. The only thing that holds it back is the lack of any real challenge.
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This is another game that isn't incredibly polished or innovative, but is just plain fun. The main character may have looked stupid and the post-apocalyptic world may not have looked that post-apocalyptic, but it was the only Zelda game we've gotten since 2006. The story was interesting, the voice acting was mostly good, and the flaming horse was pretty cool.
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