Briareos H on 27/12/2010 at 13:27

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Since everyone's doing it, the best games I played in 2010:

Best sequels (incidentally doing everything better than the first one): Bioshock 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Pripyat, Just Cause 2.
Best new titles: Super Meat Boy, Metro 2033, Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Best only console game I played this year: Red Dead Redemption.
Best old games that I finally got to play this year: Capitalism 2, Aquaria, Blood.
Best consolized game that I didn't expect to enjoy: Aliens vs. Predator 2010.
Best game that made me eat my hat after saying that I would never play on a phone: Angry Birds.
Obvious first place: Minecraft.

Best TC: TDM 1.02/1.03 and most missions released in 2010.
Best mod for quick scares and doing almost everything better than F.E.A.R. 2: Nightmare House 2.
Best DLC: (lol)

Games that I couldn't bear to play more than two hours before uninstalling them, formatting my hard drive and ripping out my cornea with bleach and sandpaper: Call Of Duty: Black Ops, Singularity, anything Fallout 3-related.

Most anticipated games of 2011: Batman: Arkham City, Portal 2, Skyrim, Rock of Ages.

Sulphur on 27/12/2010 at 21:35

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GotY: Heavy Rain. Because who's taking the risks this generation? Sony. That's right. While the global indie fratparty never ends and churns out ever-mutating postmodern interpretations of the 2D sidescroller, Sony finances David Cage to go and make the most forward-looking, technologically expensive, and possibly incredibly nichey interactive fiction title on a console. It's an interactive drama. A whodunit. A somewhat badly plotted one. A slightly, at times, terribly acted one.

But it's excellent anyway. It's a study of four people whose paths intersect, collide, and affect each other, and at various points, you're given the choice of whether they should or how they should. Just thinking about how they planned all the situational branching and trees makes my head ache. It shares this narrative malleability with only one other title this year. Which would be...

GotY 2: Alpha Protocol. Yeh, they're sharing the space. As dumb as AC can be in every department sometimes, it's fairly brilliant otherwise and also on those motherfucking consoles. An RPG shooter that's a healthy hybrid of Deus Ex and Fahrenheit's conversation system taken to the Nth level. It's got some awful RPGness to the skills that don't translate to the real world very often (I shot him with my handgun point blank in the face, but because I didn't level up my skill in pistols it didn't even scratch him? If my stealth skill is high enough, people see right through me even if I run right into them?), awful consolitis, awful environmental negotiation, and awful bugs.

And yet, it has a story that can bend and flex and sway this way or that, depending on what you do. That's the power of interactivity, baby, and that's what games, the one medium that's perfectly poised to leverage this, need to start doing more of.

So... huh. The most forward-thinking examples of the medium barring a couple pretentious indie lightweights are on the consoles this year. Who'd a fucking thunk it.


Best 2D Art in a game ever released that I only got this year: Machinarium. (Drawn: Dark Flight is a very close second.)

Game that's totally awesome and dethtoll's so completely whacked to not understand: Amnesia. I can't even bring myself to click the icon at night. Halp!

Game that I'm too afraid of to invest time in because I know that climbing its rough-ass difficulty curve is gonna scrape the skin right off my fingers: Super Meat Boy.

Best Game that I'm gonna take my time completing until some time next year: Fallout New Vegas.

Best Game that I liked but can't be arsed to gush about because everybody else is like it's the best thing since sliced fucking bread and I think it's good but not that good: Mass Effect 2. (The Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC fucking rocks, though.)

Best Game I don't want to play because there's no PC port and the PS3 version can suck it: Red Dead Redemption.

Best Game I can't give two shits about in general for no real reason: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

Worst fucking game that played me this year: Valve's Steam Sales. Up to 140 games and counting, and the sale isn't even over yet. AGHHH

old toro on 31/12/2010 at 00:05

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For me, the only outstanding game of this year is Fallout NV.

demagogue on 31/12/2010 at 00:44

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Me too, if you read the "What are you playing" thread. I can't say I "discovered" it now, since I wanted to play it for a long time, but just got to it now.