[Question] The Gamingforce Game of the Year 2010: Vote a Go Go

Originally Posted by a_lurker

Man - 20 points

The most dangerous game of all.

Fuck, I can't believe I didn't think of this one.

I'll post my list probably later today, was waiting until I finished AC: Brotherhood before deciding on my list, and I finished it late last night. I think I've got my list figured out (I have a whole top 10 since that's what other sites do), but since we have to write something about it here I'll need to do that. Here's a hint though, my #1 is probably not what you think it is!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Bayonetta - 20 points

One of the first games I played this year (it came out in January), and at the end of the day the best game I played this year. I'm still not necessarily a huge fan of some of the music and cutscenes, but those largely won me over. This is probably overall the craziest game I have ever played, and I have played some crazy shit. The game starts with you fighting on the side of a falling clock tower that is falling off a mountain or something while you fight demonic angels, and it continues uphill from there. I won't ruin it here, but the entire last gameplay sequence in the game is easily the most absurd thing I've ever done in a game. And despite some misgivings I have with the over-the-top nature of some of the game, Bayonetta herself actually manages to be an interesting and not shallow character as you might expect. And forgetting all that, the gameplay is God-tier in execution; absolutely no other character-action game touches it. What's particularly exhilarating is that the game is pure skill, and rewards not button mashing. I always felt 100% in control, and when I fucked up or got hit, it was almost always my fault, whereas other games like Ninja Gaiden I don't feel like it is half the time.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: 15 points

OH FUCK ASSASSINS EVERYWHERE

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX: 15 points

I've never been a huge Pac-Man fan; the original Championship Edition was the first Pac-Man game I ever actually enjoyed. DX takes the original and dips it in a fever-induced Geometry Wars techno-dream. The music is phenomenal (Giant Bomb said it best when they said the title screen music was "like sleeping in a techno womb"), and is the perfectly complements the gameplay, which is super tight. The game is less about arbitrarily penalizing you with death; you're essentially a badass, the objective is how MUCH of a badass are you compared to your friends and the rest of the world. The game has a great a hook in that a game is either 5 or 10 minutes (mostly); I would not be able to count the number of times I popped on Pac-Man to play "a game or two" and spent hours on it, which is more telling than anything really.

Halo: Reach: 10 points

At least on paper, Reach is a fantastic sendoff from Bungie for the series; it's the best-looking and most feature-rich Halo game by a country mile. While I have a large number of issues with the game, I still spent about ~150 hours on the game across only about a 2 month span. A laughably poor cast with little to no character development hurts the campaign story badly (although the gameplay is fantastic for the most part), Firefight is still laggy as shit for people not in your country, and a wide variety of various multiplayer issues knock this down for me though.

Mass Effect 2: 10 points

Any game that features Wrex (you totally saved him, right?) as the king of his people is a-okay in my book. From a technical perspective they vastly improved on the original, the core gameplay is better, and the character cast is largely awesome. My main disappointments are mining (holy shit, I would seriously take the Mako again over this), and I really don't like the fact that because the inventory management in ME1 was poor they didn't try to fix it and just scrapped it altogether. You really only upgrade your guns a couple times across the entire game, and the lack of upgrading your dudes armor and weapons really took away a lot of the satisfaction I got from that in the first game. Also, the last boss is retarded.

Deadly Premonition: 10 points

Neither can I Zach, neither can I. Deadly Premonition is probably the most interesting experience I had playing a game in 2010. Quite frankly, the graphics and gameplay are mediocre at best. However the characters are oddly compelling (Francis York Morgan is probably my favorite character this year), and despite myself I wanted to know what the fuck was going on. Why does no one seem to acknowledge the fact that the main character talks to another person no one can see? What is Zach's favorite movie? These questions and more are all answered, in probably the craziest reveal/twist of any game this year. If you can stomach PS1-level gameplay (RE1-3 tank controls) I can't recommend this game enough, especially at it's $20 new price tag.

It was in the coffee all along.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: 5 points

Two words: Starship Mario.

Really, the worst thing you can say about SMG2 is that is feels like more of SMG. This is hardly a bad thing, but it's hard to reward SMG2 for being more of a great thing over more original experiences this year. Also Yoshi still sucks.

Final Fantasy XIII: 5 points

Let's be clear; most of this game's plot and characters are horseshit. Watching the ending at 2am, I literally threw my hands up in the air and said "Could they not figure out how to end this game? They just fucking waved their hands and said 'maaaaaagic!'" That said, once you finally fully unlock the battle system, it has possibly the best "traditional" JRPG battle system ever, making combat genuinely entertaining and satisfying. Also it helps that it has a mostly great score, and is pretty gorgeous graphically. If you have the patience to suffer through a story and cast that's all over the place quality-wise for about 15-20 hours to get to the good stuff, it's a good payoff.

Kirby's Epic Yarn: 5 points

...

Call of Duty: Black Ops: 5 points

A surprisingly number of people (both critics and users) seemed to really like the single-player in this game. I have no idea why. That aside, I do still have to give it some props for the multiplayer. While Black Ops continues the fine tradition of MW1, MW2, & WaW in terms of ridiculous bullshit happening in multiplayer (lag and hit detection issues, parties imploding), the game does a much better job in toning down the in-game insanity that MW2 had in terms of there not being 4 helicopters and jets and missiles and nukes happening all at the same time. The simple change of eliminating the super ridiculous killstreaks (aka Nukes and AC-130s that took multiple shots to bring down) and making kills earned from killstreaks not counting towards your next levels the playing field considerably. My k/d is waaay better than it ever was in MW2, because kids can't get 5 kills and then hide in a corner and get kills with their killstreaks; likewise it's now actually impressive when someone actually earns Dogs or a Gunship. The game is still a lot of bullshit, but it's a much more enjoyable experience overall, and no game does the carrot on a stick better (looking at you Reach).


I did not get to Fallout New Vegas, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, or Red Dead Redemption in 2010; these are the only 3 games that I didn't play that I think would have had a chance of cracking my top 10; anything else I didn't care for, or is not my cup of tea (ex. Gran Turismo).

Biggest Disappointment: Crackdown 2. This one's already been beaten to death, and I honestly don't dislike it as much as some people here do, but yeah in terms of expectations and the previous game this was pretty bad. I'd really like to see them be given actual time to make a proper sequel, but even if they do so many people got burned on this one that I don't know how well it would do.

And just because I like that Giant Bomb has an official category for it every year, my 2010 2009's Game of the Year (games that came out in 2009 but I didn't play until 2010): Assassin's Creed 2, followed by Batman Arkham Asylum and Uncharted 2.

There's nowhere I can't reach.