Best Games of 2010

2010 was almost a lost year when it comes to these lists, because for about two thirds of it I didn't have much spending money to actually check out new stuff. I ended up with some lists I'm happy with though, even if I would have liked to have some more candidates available to get on. This list of games is pretty heavy on the first part of the year when I was actually getting paid, but it was a strong enough period that I'm comfortable saying these are all definitely worth playing.

Best of 2010

8. Shantae: Risky's Revenge (DSi)


The download-only sequel to the Game Boy Color cult hit seemed to get into a lot more hands, if only because it was on a system people were actually still using. The game's not perfect - I wish it had been just a tad meatier in terms of truly compelling stuff to do, but the dungeons that are there are fun, the platforming is solid, and the art and dialogue are completely charming. A fun, quick adventure.

7. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Multi)


I don't know if Call of Duty purists will ever allow Treyarch to think they made a game better than what Infinity Ward could do, but they managed their strongest effort to date with Black Ops. The campaign managed to avoid most of the series' traditional pitfalls and had an enjoyable if completely over the top story leading you from gun fight to gun fight. And judging by the fact that my brother is still playing the online almost nightly, I'd say they did a good job with that part as well.

6. Costume Quest (Multi)


Much like Shantae, Costume Quest is a game that could have probably used more content but was still pretty delightful while it lasted. The combat was simple but rewarding, and the adventure elements were clever without being obtuse. Add Double Fine's continuing excellence in the field of funny dialogue that actually amuses, and it's certainly worth a download.

5. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Multi)


If this year was any indication, DICE is going to have a hard time ever making a game that really surpasses Call of Duty's stranglehold on the hardcore modern shooter market. But those who played it liked it a lot, both for the multiplayer which nicely translates the grand experience from the PC to a slightly smaller scale, and the campaign, which while a bit sloppy, is also in some ways a lot more interesting than the chain of scripted events that has come to define the genre.

4. Heavy Rain (PS3)


Heavy Rain is a very polarizing game, and for good reasons. If you don't like quick time events you'll never get into it, and the plot really goes off the rails by the end. But it's also amazingly well presented, the kind of thing that designers with respect for actual story structure could do a lot with. Heavy Rain provided some of the most tense and thrilling sequences I played through all year, and I didn't have to kill hundreds of people to do it. If nothing else, it's a very interesting game.

3. Darksiders (Multi)


Darksiders is a game I wish we saw more of, something that came out of a true place of creative inspiration (even if it was a silly one) rather than a board room meeting trying to figure out what the kids are into these days, while still having the look and polish of a large budget title. The combat was imperfect but enjoyable, and the puzzle-filled dungeons were some of my favorites in a game in years. There, you see? You can write about Darksiders without mentioning Zelda.

2. God of War III (PS3)


I was surprised to see a number of people recently express disappointment at how this game turned out. God of War has always been about pairing bloody, over-the-top hack and slash action with light puzzle solving and platforming in a pretty game engine, and this game's PS3-backed visuals and new twists on the old ideas meant that it did them better than ever before. What were they expecting? God of War III is awesome.

1. Red Dead Redemption (Multi)


Grand Theft Auto IV was acclaimed upon its release but then seemed to leave a lot of bad will behind afterward, which is why it was impressive seeing how many people said that Red Dead made up for it. It has the best shooting in a Rockstar game to date, and the setting is one of their best realized as well. Add a truly likable protagonist at the center of maybe their best story, and Redemption has a real case as the company's best game ever. Add the best ending all year, and it's a heck of a product.

Notable Exception

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Multi)

I started playing this last week, and while it sort of feels like just more of the second game, that game was also sort of awesome, so I'm having a pretty good time. I haven't played nearly enough of it to put it on the list, but the campaign's potential along with how interesting the multiplayer looks makes me pretty sure it would have made it if I had. I just hope they don't keep pumping these out and make it tiring.

Game Update 15: DLC Round-Up 3

We ain't gonna stop this DLC thing.

Assassin's Creed 2: Battle of Forli


Assassin's Creed 2 was a lot of fun, so I was excited when I heard they were extending its life with a couple of cheap add-ons. They were made up of content that had to be cut from the original release for time, but I was still interested in seeing those gaps get filled in. Unfortunately, both packs had a few issues that made me see why they might not have charged a ton for them. Battle of Forli adds a repeatable mission that lets you play with Da Vinci's flying machine if you want some more of that, and a little more of the story in Forli, a city that you passed through in the regular game but didn't spend much time in. I liked seeing some new details of what happened during that missing period, but ultimately the missions themselves weren't that fun. A couple were fine, but too many eschewed the normal stealthy, acrobatic gameplay for awkward, uninteresting battles between groups of soldiers. It's not that mixing it up is bad, but the game just isn't made to handle it well, and the chapter seemed pretty anticlimactic in general.

Assassin's Creed 2: Bonfire of the Vanities


Vanities cost a bit more and I was hopeful about it, since it unlocks an entire section of Florence that was missing. And it started off fine, giving you a bunch of small assassinations to take care of. Unfortunately, some of them are designed to be arbitrarily difficult with no justification for the ridiculous conditions they set, creating an uneven, sometimes frustrating experience. Most of the problems come from a few missions deciding that you can't be spotted by any guards before intercepting your target, which would be fine if there was any reason for it and if you didn't have to run away from all of the now fully aware guards in the area once you pull it off. It would also help if it was just a bit clearer about what did and what didn't get you seen. There was a more expensive version that also unlocked a few tombs that were exclusive to a special edition of the game, and they were pretty fun, though maybe not worth the five bucks. I don't really regret playing these, although they really didn't add much to the game in the end.

Heavy Rain: The Taxidermist


I don't think this is publicly available yet, but if you preordered the game like me you got a free download code for it. It's pretty much Heavy Rain in a nutshell. You're investigating a possible killer's house, and after a certain amount of time investigating the guy's extremely creepy house he shows up unexpectedly and you have to try to escape. There's a lot of different ways you can go about it, and at least five different ways it can end, some good and some bad. It's completely inessential to the main game's story, but if you had fun with it and want another little piece with the same strong presentation and tense gameplay, it's certainly worth checking out.

LittleBigPlanet: Pirates of the Caribbean Level Kit


I was lucky enough to play this for free thanks to a code from a friend. It's similar to the Metal Gear Solid pack, adding some new gameplay mechanics, pieces to make stuff with, and a set of five levels themed after something famous. I think they only cover the first two movies, which happen to be the ones I've seen, having you escape from some pirates, find a ship, and take on the Kraken. The water system certainly adds more to the game than the paint gun, and the levels are full of the stuff, letting you swim around and solve some new puzzles with some things that float and some things that don't. I'm not sure how I feel about all these premium level packs relying on other properties to sell themselves, but I can't say they aren't fun ways to extend the game's life and inspire players to create more interesting levels. Really, they could keep doing this instead of of releasing a sequel and I'd be fine with it.

Heavy Rain

I'm glad I managed to finish this before the massive failure of older PS3s last night. Here's hoping they fix it without too much trouble. Anyway, Heavy Rain is a different sort of video game. Its creators would have us all completely avoid the label if possible, preferring terms like "interactive drama". It's a video game though, that doesn't have to be a dirty word. It's a different sort of game than we usually play, but still a game. It's the evolution of what Quantic Dream tried a few years ago with Indigo Prophecy, what's basically an adventure game that works harder to immerse you in its story than to stump you with complicated environmental puzzles. That element is still there, as the game often sticks you as one of its four main characters in some limited environment, and lets you walk around, examining and interacting with objects in the world, with some ultimate goal in mind. Sometimes things are casual, like just walking around your house after waking up in the prologue. Other times the situation is more stressful and you have to think on your feet. It's made further complex with one character, an FBI agent who can scour crime scenes for clues using a device straight out of science fiction. The controls in these parts are a bit weird. Instead of moving with the analog stick, it merely directs the direction you're looking in, while holding a button down moves you forward. It's a bit awkward, although it didn't cause me many problems beyond sometimes having difficulty navigating when the camera switches.

The other part of the gameplay is the use of infamous quick time events. It seems wrong to refer to the more cinematic segments as "cut scenes", because they're so pervasive through the game that they seem to be the point of the experience instead of more traditional gameplay set-ups. Any complex interactions beyond walking are controlled by various actions indicated by on screen prompts, including movements with the right analog stick, pressing buttons, or holding multiple ones at once for particularly difficult or intricate actions. Sometimes they're simple, sometimes you're in great stress and doing them to stay alive. The game makes a point of letting you know that the characters are vulnerable, and capable of being killed before the end of the story. This isn't true in every dangerous situation, but often enough that you want to pay attention whenever things aren't looking good. From fighting off home invaders to escaping from the police, these sequences are always tense and thrilling in ways that games usually aren't, and while messing up the control prompts occasionally won't necessarily kill you, they will at least make things go badly in ways that usually show up later. I never became totally comfortable knowing exactly which sort of action was expected when they do things beyond simple button presses, but this didn't become a huge issue.

I've spent a lot of time just talking about how the game works, though the most important factor to the experience working is the story. And... it's not great, but not bad. In some ways it's worth playing just to see this kind of story in a game, which is very uncommon. It plays out like an eight hour suspense/mystery movie, and the fact that it doesn't completely fall apart under all that weight is something of an accomplishment. Despite the lengthiness of the plot, it doesn't feel like that time is used completely effectively. A lot of the game time is spent, especially early in the different characters' respective stories, doing things that aren't very important. Playing with your kids, wandering through your apartment at night, they help establish personalities a bit but aren't the most elegantly presented character development you'll see and take time away from what could have been more useful. I liked the main characters for the most part, but their relationships aren't developed well enough for some of the directions they take, and certain twists later on make you feel like a lot of what you're doing was wasted and that you were lied to. Most stories with big surprises do a bit of pulling the rug from under you, but in a game when you directly control these characters' actions, it seems especially disingenuous.

Like I said though, I didn't hate the story, and in a lot of ways it deserves respect just for its ambition. It's genuinely intriguing and disturbing in places, and while the fact of player interaction makes certain things weaker, it also increases the drama and impact elsewhere. It puts you in the shoes of people who sometimes have to make very tough decisions, and while I didn't have as many qualms about some things simply because I wasn't actually feeling whatever they were, it was still pretty impressive in places. I wasn't sure about Madison, the female character for a while. It seems like she's exploited pretty often just for being a woman, and some segments with her with a bit uncomfortable. If that sense of vulnerability is what they were actually going for with her, which seems likely, then it was very effective, though resorting to making you play an attractive woman in compromising situations isn't the most elegant way to do that. I'm not sure the story was as dynamic as advertised. From what I can see from my experiences and reading about what you can do, the main plot seems pretty set in stone, with only the extraneous details being highly variable. The ending is basically stitched together, sort of like Fallout 3, except with a lot more effort put into it.

I guess I should touch on how well the story is presented too. Both visually and aurally, it has successes and failures. The graphics are technically very good for the most part. Characters are pretty impressive looking, especially in some facial details, environments look great, and just the visual atmosphere is very strong throughout. There are some hiccups here and there though, and some of the issues with things like soft materials, mouth movements, and the occasionally stiff animation are all the worse when the focus is so heavy on the presentation. The voice acting has its problems, although it's only really an issue because so much of the game is talking. A lot of the actors aren't bad, some even occasionally great, but almost all of them are clearly Europeans imitating American accents, some a lot worse than others. The music though is fantastic, with the strong orchestral score being one of the game's best assets. It's haunting and moving in all the right places. Ultimately, Heavy Rain is far from perfect, but worth of praise and attention just for its ambition and how admirably close it comes to achieving it.