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

Mass Effect 2 - An improvement in every possible way from the 1st. Gone are the largely superfluous weapons, albeit I missed some variety, gone are the repetitious sidequests, replaced by quests that actually feel like part of a mission, overall the pacing is hugely improved and it is an on-point, character drive narrative. Like a good movie trilogy, the 2nd installment really started to let us sink our teeth into the characters, after the first game did so for the world they inhabit. Still the only really good current-gen rpg series.

30 pts.

Limbo - This year's Braid for me, in that I bought it for an art style and discovered so much more. A sense of pervasive dread coupled with a really unsettling ending and great gameplay mechanics had me coming back to this over and over. Absolutely brilliant.

30 pts.

Transformers: War for Cybertron - See what Skills said. Vastly underrated game. Overlooked by many. Loved by those of us who got into it.

10 pts.

Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge: Special Edition - The MST3K style director's commentary alone makes this one worth the points. Still great. Still funny. The updated graphics are fantastic. Loads of enjoyment.

10 pts.

Civilization V - I miss the plague-like spread of religion. I miss diplomacy. But every single gameplay element was tightened up. Brilliant game in a brilliant series.

20 pts.

honourable mentions: Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Bayonetta, Costume Quest, Deathspank, Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue, DKC Returns, Etrian Odyssey III, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Scott Pilgrim, StarCraft II, Super Meat Boy, Vanquish, Pac-Man CE DX, Breath Of Death VII, Cthulu saves the World, Lunar: PSP, Death Smiles.

Specific Dishonourable Mention: Red Dead Redemption. This game could have been so much better if they had just managed to avoid the idiocy trap of the GTA series and actually have some goddamn pacing. I read an article about how the gaming industry resists the usage of a proper editor, and no game shows this off more than Red Dead. It suffers from the "two refrigerator" issue in spades. Just because something is cool, doesn't mean it adds to the experience. The game, at its center, is brilliant. But then they wrap it in a layer of distraction, which is fine, but then they add ten more layers, and by the end of the day there is just so much random crap, which was fun, but had the effect of making the game's narrative slow to a goddamn crawl. Just because you put together something badass doesn't mean it will help the experience at the core of the game.

Jam it back in, in the dark.