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

Bayonetta - 20 points
2010's Big Ball of Fun

I don't know how Platinum Games did it. I really don't. By all rights, Bayonetta should have gotten too ridiculous to play about an hour in. And yet, somehow, it just becomes... like a car crash that keeps getting added to. You can't help but keep watching, just to see what the next fireball looks like, and how it comes about. That analogy was strained. But not nearly as strained as your suspension of disbelief as Bayonetta piles bucket upon bucket of ridiculous on top of you, and yet it never breaks. It's honestly one of the most refreshing things this year, that a game just said "Fuck it, going long" instead of trying to calculate where the line was and stopping just short. After Vanquish, it's become clear that this is going to be Platinum Games' raison d'etre, and I for one love it.

None of this would have been worth mentioning had it not been attached to, and lovingly woven into, the most solid game from a pure control perspective that has come out in a long time. Absolutely wacky combos, flips, and gunfire get pulled off effortlessly, making even the most amateurish Mexican feel like a badass. The animation's seamless transitions from move to move combined with lightning quick response to your controls, and correspondingly demanding timing on the part of the bad guys, always let you feel like a badass when you pull off a combo, while never becoming frustrating when you mess up.

It's a hard tightrope to walk between being so hard it's frustrating, and challenging while still allowing you to feel like you're the one screwing up, not the game. And Bayonetta walks that tightrope with aplomb, all the while shaking its ass seductively and whistling sweet Sega nothings.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX - 20 points
2010's Shining Example of How to Keep a Franchise Relevant

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX has no right to be as entertaining as it is. It's a fast-paced, techno-infused version of Pac-Man. Pac-Man's like 90 years old at this point, why aren't you playing BLOPS?

Because Pac-Man CE DX isn't your grandfather's Pac-Man. By changing the focus from simple survival to a fast-paced time-limited action session, suddenly every little move counts. The pulsing techno soundtrack and steadily increasing speed keep the tension mounting as you move through well-designed chunks of maze in the most efficient way possible.

DX didn't really have to do terribly much. Pac-Man CE already did a lot of the heavy lifting, with the paradigm shift into the shifting maze halves, and all DX really needed to do was give us more maze chunks to work with. Boy howdy did they ever, and they made them in such a way that it makes DX feel almost like the world's most ridiculously fast puzzle game. There's also so MANY of them, my god, it's awesome, and the time trials are an interesting, if repetitive, way of playing with them in smaller chunks.

Did they have to add giant chains of ghosts behind you that you can eat all at once? No, not really, but they provide a fantastic incentive to keep moving forward while keeping your eye out on the nearest power pellet.

The only thing this game really was missing was better leaderboards. For a game focused on high scoring, the way it chose to allow you to gauge yourself, especially against your friends, is opaque and annoying to use. Geometry Wars 2 is still the high bar in that regard. Doesn't take away from the experience of playing this game. Sonic Team should take a good hard look at Pac-Man CE DX as an example of how to not continue to fuck up Sonic 4.

Mass Effect 2 - 20 points
2010's Best Genre Pirouette

Mass Effect was a game with a shocking amount of potential, and an almost equally shocking gap between potential and reality. A smartly-written and gigantic world, a dialogue-driven plot that emphasized moral choice just a bit too much at times, and a clunky, slow-paced inventory and combat system teamed up to make... well, a weird game. Mass Effect wasn't sure what it wanted to be, but seemed to err on the side of clunky RPG whenever it couldn't make up its mind. About 80% RPG and 20% shooter, all it really needed to succeed on its second go-round was a tighter focus on making sure the game wasn't clunky.

And then Mass Effect 2 comes out, and it's... not terribly much like the first game. I have to give BioWare a massive amount of credit for taking a good hard look at their little mishmash and rather than sticking to what they know, which is the 80%/20% RPG/action hybrid of Mass Effect 1, they noticed (how, I have no idea) that there was a good shooter being hamstrung by too much RPG cruft. And they took the ballsy step of changing the genre of a series in between games.

Suddenly, Mass Effect 2 became a honest to god fun to play shooter with some RPG trappings. The dialogue stuff was still there, and arguably better done the second time. The wall between RPG mode and shooter mode was firmly erected in all the right places, and the overall pace of the game came off much better for it.

BioWare also smartly noticed that the single greatest asset their game had was its interesting sci-fi universe, and took great pains to make sure that it felt large without being overwhelming. While some may complain about the smaller areas than in the first game, by focusing better on populating everything properly, the world actually felt bigger without physically being so. The little corners of the mythology that got fleshed out were all interesting, and the amount of trouble the game went to to make sure that whatever you did in the first game somehow affected the second one was a really awesome flourish.

Was Mass Effect 2 perfect? No. The story suffers from Middle Trilogy Entry Syndrome; you spend the entire game getting a team together, go on one mission, and then the game ends on a cliffhanger. While I found it just about right, the extent to which the RPG components got dialed back in this installment was a bit drastic for some people. It has room to get more complex on that front, to be sure. There also wasn't nearly enough Mordin Solus in the game. Fuck he's the best character.

Mass Effect 2 was, in my mind, the biggest franchise improvement of this year. BioWare took a risk on changing their gameplan, and it paid off in spades.

Halo: Reach - 15 Points
2010's Prodigal Swan Song

Halo: Reach is how you say goodbye to a storied franchise. Bungie has prided themselves on their relentless support of their Halo franchise, and has built an incredibly loyal fanbase that will follow them to their next project with open arms and wallets. I'm one of them.

When they announced Halo: Reach was going to be their last Halo game, I'm not sure too many people actively doubted they'd make a good game. It's not in Bungie's arsenal to half-ass something. What was surprising, though, was how much care they took to make sure that this game was going to last without them having to tend it. They wanted to send their franchise off to its new owners, 343 Studios, with a big giant sloppy kiss to their fans, and boy howdy did they ever.

A wonderful campaign, which impressed me far more than any other Halo campaign did, and a multiplayer that, while lacking the long-term hooks that BLOPS' has, is just as incredibly rock solid and balanced as it ever was, both serve as reminders that Bungie knows what they're doing. That's not an accident; when they have a game coming out that doesn't have the word "Halo" in front of it or a Marty O'Donnell score, their best bet is to make sure that what we last saw them do was their best work. And it was.

VVVVVV - 10 Points
2010's Best Masocore Platformer/2010's Best Soundtrack

VVVVVV is everything right with indie game development. It doesn't ever get too big for its britches, it has a wicked huge amount of charm, and most importantly, it's got fantastic game design going for it. It's the best in this year's crop of "masocore" platformers, a term I'm appropriating from somewhere I can't remember for the recent surge in games that pride themselves on being difficult without being unfairly so.

Its soundtrack was sublime, its controls were a neat twist on your typical platforming without being impossible to use, and I played the shit out of that game. That's pretty much it; unlike a lot of my other favorite games, VVVVVV was focused on doing one thing really fucking well, and it did it. Simple as that.

Alan Wake - 10 Points
2010's Reminder That Survival Horror Isn't Dead

Alan Wake hearkens back to old-school Resident Evil in all the right ways. It isn't afraid to take its time, allowing you to get sucked into the atmosphere it painstakingly builds before getting the bejesus scared out of you. It has a plot that dabbles in the supernatural without feeling like Harry Potter's Spooky Storytime. It uses awkward combat as a way to increase tension in the same way Resident Evil 4/5 did. And it also nails its own version of the cinematic vibe that old Resident Evils went for, opting for a TV-style episode structure that kept the game from dragging by guaranteeing something interesting would happen every hour or so.

Its central plot conceit was neat; finding pages that alternately predict the future or give you insight about things that already happened is a neat idea, and one that's never used too gratuitously. The combat got repetitive towards the end, but never failed to be tense; the use of light throughout the game to build atmosphere as well as kill bad guys is really great.

The last thing I want to mention about Alan Wake is that it actually earned its cliffhanger ending. Instead of feeling tacked on to sell a second game, it felt right. To avoid it, they either would've had to make the game longer than it already was (and it ends at just the right point) or they would've had to severely shorten what was already there. Ending the story where and how they did felt fair and earned while still getting me excited for the next game.

Call of Duty: Black Ops - 10 points
2010's Most Unlikely Success Story

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was incredibly hyped, and with good reason. Infinity Ward had, in the first Modern Warfare, created one of the most tightly polished and infinitely replayable console shooters of this generation. While they had some hiccups with the ongoing support, we were all able to brush it off, since they were working on making Modern Warfare 2 work really well, right?

Treyarch, meanwhile, struck accidental paydirt with Zombie Mode in Call of Duty: World at War, but not much else. They were the second fiddle to Infinity Ward in the grand dual-developer scheme of things.

And then Modern Warfare 2 came out, and... uh, how exactly did they screw this up? The campaign was relentlessly ridiculous, which was a letdown coming from Modern Warfare 1's savvy pacing, and their promised fixes to the quirks in the campaign were hit or miss.

The multiplayer, though? Oh god, how did they fuck THAT up so badly? What was a balanced progression became the Let's Wait Until I Hit Level 40 Game, there were multiple completely overpowered abilities created by adding perks/weapons because they looked like good ideas without seemingly testing them, and then some weapons were further broken by glitches that took months to fix. The post-release support was garbage, owing to the drama going on at Infinity Ward after release, and a lot of people were left skeptical as to what Treyarch could do by building off of such a wonky base.

Turns out, they just decided to ignore Modern Warfare 2 wherever possible. They sidestepped the engine wonkiness by building off of their World at War engine, removed a host of overpowered perks and guns, some of which had needed removal since the first Modern Warfare (Juggernaut/Stopping Power, anyone?), and somehow escaped with a balanced, incredibly fun to play online shooter again. Suddenly, the roles are reversed, and I find myself incredibly excited for Treyarch's next outing.

Sure, the singleplayer goes overboard on the CIA mystery stuff to the point that the narrative is clumsy, and the difficulty falls into most of the same pitfalls the previous games have, but at least they didn't break things further! There were so many things that could've gone wrong, and regardless of whether they did or not, it would've sold. It's too big of a brand at this point to get torpedoed. But it was heartening to see that at least someone in the giant behemoth at Activision was still interested in making a good game instead of a good marketing tool.

Close But No Cigar: Donkey Kong Country Returns, Super Meat Boy, BioShock 2

DKCR and Super Meat Boy go hand in hand with VVVVVV as the three gold standards of how to make challenging platformers. All three feature fantastic level design, while they all have different approaches to the platforming itself: VVVVVV goes with gravity, DKCR goes with nostalgia-tinged accessibility without skimping on challenge, while Super Meat Boy deliberately flirts with the line between hard and unfair using rock solid controls and completely classic gameplay conventions. I didn't want to put all three of these in my list, so I picked VVVVVV for its originality and, admittedly, for coming first.

BioShock 2 was a good gameplay improvement over the first. What got me, though, was that BioShock 2 had a huge question to answer: Why, after the definitive ending that the first game had, should we re-enter Rapture? BioShock 2 never really answered that question. While I have no objection to seeing more of Rapture, the plot of BioShock 2 hit just about all of the same story beats as the first game while feeling crowbarred into its overall narrative. It wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. Taken on its own, it's a better game than the first one. The problem lies in that the first game had arguably the most cohesive narrative a game has ever had, and by forcing itself into that continuity, BioShock 2 never escapes feeling unnecessary.

Biggest Letdown of 2010 - Crackdown 2

I know full well Crackdown 2 had a ridiculously short development time. That doesn't excuse the game from feeling like the warmed-over years late lazy sequel that it is. There was no reason to release a Crackdown 2 with an identical city. Absolutely none. The majority of the fun in that game came from exploring a giant playground with your superpowers, and the sequel decided to give the playground a liberal coating of Next Generation Brown and Worse Textures Than The First Game while not bothering to appreciably improve the lackluster combat, driving, or story progression from the first game. Adding zombies worked for World at War, but it didn't work here.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

VVVVVV - 40 points

I'm not gonna claim to be the biggest vidya to ever vidya. I only bought this game after chat was gushing about it for days, and Skills told me how the musician who made the music uploaded a lossless version of the soundtrack for him after he asked him to. But it was rad as hell! There was a lot of atmosphere for a game that had only 8 colors. That tall level was frustrating as hell (I missed an orb and had to start over all over again) and the ending sequence was rad as shit.

Dwarf Fortress 2010 - 40 points

Notch might be catching up but Toady still does it best. He reinvented every character in the game to make use of tissue layers in order to make procedurally-generated megabeasts. Gods made out of dwarven lungs? Check. Green glass giants (beware of their poisonous breath)? Check. Zombie elephants that could not be killed in the first release of 2010 due to the fact that they couldn't die because they had no blood to bleed out? Double check.

Also you can colonize Hell.

Man - 20 points

The most dangerous game of all.

Originally Posted by Put Balls

REFERRED BY: a_lurker

Use them well!

I'm using my extra five points for...

Tron - 5 points

As in, the game they play in the movies, not any games based off of the movies. That's sort of like reading a book based on a movie's in-universe book, isn't it? Anyway any game that is so spectacular that it gives us this man has to be worth the gamin'.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by a_lurker

Man - 20 points

The most dangerous game of all.

YouTube Video

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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!

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'll preface my nominations by saying that there haven't been any games in 2010 that have really grabbed my attention. Sure, there have been some fun diversions, but nothing that sucked me in and left me wanting more. That said, here's my picks:

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit - 30 points: Back in the PS1 days, I spent hours playing Need for Speed, especially High Stakes. The transition to the current console generation didn't interest me, and I had transferred my racing game enthusiasm to the Burnout series. Honestly, I'd paid no attention to NFS: HP until right before it came out, when I found out it was a return to the same old NFS I remembered. The autolog gives me a special thrill every time I beat one of Omagnus' scores, and there's nothing quite like wrecking 4 police cars and speeding past your opponents to win the race.

Rock Band 3: 30 points: I'm a sucker for music games, especially ones where I can sing, and Rock Band 3 takes everything that was great about the first 2 games and improves on the experience. Keyboards are a nice addition, but I could take them or leave them. The big seller for me is the ability to seamlessly jump in and out of each player's career mode, switch instruments, etc. Just a solid game all the way around, and it's a shame it didn't sell better.

ilomilo - 20 points: You could argue that this is a 2011 release since it officially came out today, but those in the know have been playing it since November. It's a charming puzzler that oozes sweetness, and a fantastic co-op game. The satisfaction of solving a puzzle after an hour of deliberation is something that's hard to find in games these days.

Call of Duty: Black Ops - 10 points: I'm not the best judge of this game, since this is the first CoD I've ever played, and I'm not a fan of the genre in general because I suck at shooters. As an outsider, I've enjoyed how easy it is to pick up and play, and have a great party experience just running around shooting dudes. There doesn't seem to be nearly the effect of high-level folks steamrolling over casual folks; sure, it happens, but it seems perfectly easy for someone to pop in the game from scratch and do reasonably well.

Kirby's Epic Yarn - 5 points: What is there to say other than it's a Kirby game? I'd be less inclined to include it on the list if the whole yarn gimmick wasn't such a fantastic departure from the usual Kirby fare. Yes, you can't die, but just playing through and seeing the animation for each patch you collect is worth the price of admission.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - 5 points: A completely different puzzler than ilomilo, but no less a great co-op experience. Given the quality of recent Tomb Raider games, this title was a pleasant surprise. It's a bit too short, but it's fun while it lasts.

Honorable mentions (that I didn't play until 2010)

Tilt to Live: Looks like this one came out in December of 2009, so it's just barely ineligible. I steered clear of it for a long time because I didn't think they could possibly get the tilt controls precise enough to work, but boy was I wrong. This is at the top of my casual title list, and I've bought both the iPhone and iPad versions with no regrets.

Droplitz: Another title from 2009 that I didn't pick up until a PSN sale. The first few times you play it, you'll say, "How the hell am I supposed to score 150,000 points to unlock the next mode?" and then suddenly everything falls into place. Once you figure out how to chain your moves, the game becomes as addictive as Tetris.

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

FELIPE NO

There is a hole in the rules with which I don't know what to do. It is only passingly mentioned that the points for the games should add up to 100. Well, for me, this doesn't realistically happen, because of the arbitrary, pointless 40 points maximum. (You could do better with a minimum number of games one can have in the list. Or create any set of rules that apply with different cases.) Anyway, fail rules.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 40 points

I've been playing this for several months now, whenever I have time to visit my parents (where the Wii is). It was a seriously fun game to finish first, and then start collecting all the extra stuff. It's quite a different game than the first Galaxy, much more polished and I dare to say perfected. As a difference to the first game, all the levels are designed very well. Also, the collectible stars differ fundamentally more than the sometimes boring 90 different purple coin levels in the first Galaxy. This whole text is about comparing the second game to the first, and that's the whole point. It's just everything of the same, done just right. The difficulty level rises quite fast in the game, and it's from the start a bit more challenging to think and learn the quirks of the control mechanism. This was not necessary in the story line game in the first Galaxy.

The only negative thing that I can think of is that the game is not really difficult at all. The only thing making more challenging levels infuriating is the sloppy controls. I can imagine being just perfect in the game if it had the controls of Spyro, or whatever other 3d platformer. Nintendo dropped the ball already on 64 where Mario was a horror to control, and things haven't progressed much over the years. I've just generally learnt how to deal with it.

VVVVVV - 40 points

I just quickly played through the game since it was all chat was talking about one day. What an amazing little game. Reminds me of the similar old PC classics like Joe (Joe was too difficult to finish, though). Awesome music, easy enough and simply fun. I'll get to the extras soon.

REFERRED BY: a_lurker

Use them well!

I've still got 20 more points, but not really anything to use them for, since I didn't do much playing of new games this year. I could give 20 hypothetical points to the new Assassin's Creed, since based on the first game, I'd seriously like that one too, but that's not possible.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Done and done, Kishin.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Put Balls

There is a hole in the rules with which I don't know what to do. It is only passingly mentioned that the points for the games should add up to 100. Well, for me, this doesn't realistically happen, because of the arbitrary, pointless 40 points maximum. (You could do better with a minimum number of games one can have in the list. Or create any set of rules that apply with different cases.) Anyway, fail rules.

Or, you know, fail at reading on your part, but who's keeping score:

Originally Posted by OmagnusPrime

2. If your points allocation totals more than 100 points [unless affected by 2a] your vote won't be counted (totals less than 100 are fine).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Ah, that clears it, thanks. You should put the important rules with a little bigger font.

How ya doing, buddy?

Put simply, I haven't played a whole lot of games that were released last year, but here's my tiny list:

Deadly Premontion - 40 Points

Y'all don't even fucking KNOW what this game did to me. As already mentioned, there's some awful mechanics, but I don't fucking care when the story/presentation/characters are as fucking compelling as this game was. Lots of people seem to enjoy the game ironically, but it's impossible for me. I love this game.


Isn't that right, Zach?

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 30 Points

this was a joy to play. Except for the comet on the bonus stage. Whatever. Brilliantly built platformer.

VVVVVV - 20 Points

Another brilliant platformer, and challenging without feeling cheap. Getting the trinket on "Doing Things the Hard Way" was one of the most rewarding game experiences this year.

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition - 10 Points

This really doesn't count, since it's a rerelease, but whatever. It's a great new version of a fantastic game.

Addendum:

Best game starring a Drag Queen that happens to be Biologically Female:

Bayonetta. Seriously. She's a fucking drag queen. That was born female, but we don't let gender get in the way of such things.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Well, I was going to make this all nice and fancy, but now there's not much time.

Nier - 40 points
Fuck yeah, cavia was the shit. After giving us a shitton of depressing weirdness in the two Drakengard games, we get a (comparatively) normal story that has an incredibly cool plot twist/tie in to Drakengard. Then more weirdness ensues.

Monster Hunter Tri - 40 points
Oh man, this game is soOH GOD NOT DEVILJHAUGGHHH

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom - 20 points
Best game no one played, and probably my favorite game this year. Go to Amazon and buy this game for cheap, you nerds.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I think I am sneaking in under the deadline here...

Mass Effect 2 - 40 points. There isn't much I can say about this game that probably hasn't been said already. I love the atmosphere. I love most of the characters. The combat was excellent and a huge improvement over the last game. I love the visuals, the music, the lighting, the voice acting. The only real negative with the game is that the overarching plot is a little thin. The game even had several DLC missions that were excellent, especially The Shadow Broker mission pack.

Call of Duty: Black Ops - 20 points. It is like they took Modern Warfare 2 and made the multiplayer more balanced. And also made the guns sound way sissier. Each of the multiplayer maps manages to be pretty good. There are no giant, wide open maps that result in six snipers against six snipers. That's generally a good thing. The killstreaks are more balanced, or rather, at least now you really have to earn them. And even though I always bitch about lag, I can tell that the netcode is much improved over the last game (and that the lag issues are 90% on my side).

Battlefield Bad Company 2 - 20 points. Ok, so the combat doesn't have the depth of a Call of Duty game, but this game managed to be just plain fun. Running around repairing tanks, landing choppers to have your buddy hop out of the copilot chair to repair it, piloting UAVs into buildings to defend a bomb plant, sniping dudes from a mile away, reviving dudes, hitting bad guys in the chest with defibs. I could go on. Lots of fun to be had in this one.

NCAA Football 11 - 10 points. I probably put more time into this game than any other game all year. The only reason I am not giving it more points is because it was just a slightly improved version of the previous year's game.

Alan Wake - 10 points. This game was a lot of fun, with a great Pacific Northwest setting, and an awesome secondary character (Alan's agent). Also featured one of the best special editions of the past couple of years.

I think that equals 100. I apologize to such games as Halo Reach, Fable 3, Rock Band 3, etc. I put a lot of time into you guys, and even managed to enjoy you, but you don't quite make my list.

Also:

YouTube Video

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Metroid Other M - 40 points. Finally a sequel to Super Metroid we've always wanted and a story decades in the making that completely expands the Metroid universe in a huge direction while answering age old questions and posing new ones. The character of Samus Aran is fleshed out in a way we've yet to see and she's a character we can relate to and understand each moment of anguish, triumph, frustration, and even panic. It's an interesting narrative that is fleshed out through mostly silent posturing and facial expressions as Samus interacts with her old team that we learn even more about through short but intriguing interactive flashbacks. These flashbacks which some have annoyingly and wrongly accused of Family Guy Syndrome also serve a purpose for Samus to relearn some of her more advanced techniques by reliving certain moments of past Metroid games recreated completely in stunning 3D. Excellent gameplay with a multitude of optional controller setups. I particularly found the dual wiimote setup a blast but thought the myriad of ways to configure the Gamecube and Classic controllers to my taste to be very thoughtful of Nintendo. Everything about this game was just perfect from the short but incredibly well thought out stage design that you will revisit again and again in between bouts of cleverly used wank wagon homages to the Metroid series which even includes certain pieces of Metroid Prime finally giving it proper canonization by master Sakamoto. This is an engaging romp Metroid has never seen before and hopefully opens up the world for more sequels that I am dying to play. I won't spoil the ending but if you've played Metroid Fusion you probably know a few things but you'll understand and fully appreciate why a certain fellow is so respected. I'll have to admit I cried towards the end. Play. This. Game.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 - 40 points. It takes the best of Sonic 2 & 3&Knuckles, improves the Sonic physics while still retaining the properties which made controlling the blue blur a blast, and goes all out crazy with stunningly animated pixel graphics individually made for 480p, 720p, and 1080p resolutions - it is drop dead gorgeous. Sega's bold decision to go back to the drawing board and relook at what made Sonic good in the first place while using the best techniques they've learned from their Genesis era to make an incredible looking game in the year 2010 using pixel graphics was something I just wasn't expecting and firmly destroys the Sonic Cycle for good as long as they keep this up. The game has a simple story in the background that is told similar to how Sonic 3 was able to have a few silly things at the end of a stage that would then lead to the next stage. Everything is seamless and while mostly linear we get to see the lush and varied world of Mobius like never before. It's true that we do visit a few older locations but the game cleverly disguises a few of them as ruins or inbetweens or simply has them in the background as homage to past games. Also as with Sonic 3 the second player isn't completely useless and is actually required to get through a couple areas. Don't worry though if you don't have any friends available because they included online co-op and also a very clever computer AI if you are just a complete social reject which isn't an uncommon thing in the Sonic community (but I guess that can be said of any fandom). And while it's true we're still mostly facing off Eggman/Robotnik who has decided in this game he'd rather just be called Dr. Ivo or just Ivo if all the sign's and classic colorful level swipes like Ivo's Casino Palace and Ivo's Laboratory and Ivo's Flying Ivory Fortress are any indication he serves as a great antagonist just the same with old tricks and new tricks alike. There is a little bit of voice acting in this game but it's mostly just Ivo talking over the loud speaker in some of his abode's to sick robot guards if Sonic is spotted by his security system or in some of the laboratory files you can access to get a bit more background on what Ivo is trying to achieve. There are some really interesting blueprints you can view which turn out to be critical in some later stages. All and all I can't say enough good things about Sonic 4. I even found Amy's help in the background to be done in good taste. No unnecessary characters, no demon hell spawn, no awkward moments, and no taking itself far too seriously to have a fun time. Welcome back, Sonic. You've been missed.

Kirby's Epic Yarn - 10 points. It's a short, easy game that presents very little challenge if we're just going for main game completion but it's an incredibly enjoyable romp through a world rendered through yarn and felt that feels and plays exactly like a world made out of yarn and felt should. There's just so much that is right about this game and as a massive Kirby fan there's just no way I couldn't mention this game. If you feel you need to relax and have a nice time instead of blasting away fools over Live then get this game now if you haven't already.

Donkey Kong Country Returns - 10 points. Retro Studios has done it again. They've resurrected a franchise and breathed fresh life into it while maintaining the feel of what made it amazing originally. DKCR is a challenging game but it is worth the trouble. This game kicked my ass. It kicked my ass hard. I loved every moment of it. Even the moments I completely was fuming trying to achieve KONG while wasting tens of tens of balloons. If you have a Wii and call yourself a fan of platforming games then you NEED this game.

Well there we go - 100 points. I think this year has been an absolute smash for restoring fresh life into old franchises. I look forward to 2011. Maybe we'll see some of these with more sequels. =)

FELIPE NO