My games of the year

My friend Steve made a short Facebook (It's a little weird that word is still considered misspelled.) post the other day about the games he has played, rating them and then saying what his favorite game of the year is. I meant to copy him, doing the same thing with the games I have played this year, but then I realized why don't I just take this chance and return to my blog with some game of the year talk. So I am gonna do something I am not always fond of doing. I am going to apply number grades to the games I talk about. Everything will also get a brief review, colored through the lenses of hindsight, as I am not gonna sit down and play these games again simply for this article. Alright, let's get started, well we'll get started after the break.

Transformers: War for Cybertron is a game I should like more, and I did initially. Anyone who knows me knows that I am indeed a fan-boy of all things Transformers. While playing the game, I loved it, as the writing was yanked right from the 80's camp the original cartoon had, and the voices, when not done by their original voice actors, still captured the spirit of the character so well I really got sucked into playing the game, all the while not being able to take a step back and realize what a generic shooter it really is. I am not usually a person glued to the TV plugging away with any gun game I can find, so after I finally beat Gears of War for Cybertron and stopped playing the multi-player (another thing I so rarely do in games) I kinda stood back and realized the game play is not that inspired. It was actually more like a rip-off of other games, cough Gears of War cough. It's worth playing through if you're an utter fan-boy like me, but otherwise it's a meh title at best. 6.5/10

Crackdown 2 is exactly what a sequel should not be, bland, and containing less. After sprinkling brown on the landscape from the first game, and hollowing out some buildings, Crackdown 2 decided to go into the campaign and get rid of the multi-tiered system of gang elimination, instead making you run around turning on all the zombie killing flashlights. And if you stopped engaging in this activity for more than 5 seconds, the narrator berates you for not doing your job. Add that to ruining the individual looks of different agents, instead going for the generic space marine cop soldier clone thing look, and the un-fun weapon selection you somehow got a game that was less than its predecessor.  But wait! This installment has multi-player! While this was actually a lot of fun for a while, some technical issues I suffered, and horrible game balancing in the Rocket Tag event, it was nothing that lit a fire under my ass. In the end, I ran around from roof to roof collecting every orb I could find, and I killed plenty of people online. Not the worst game ever, but by no means a good game. 5.5/10

Final Fantasy 13 was one of the biggest wastes of time in my life. I am not even going to go over it, just the memories are making me cringe. 2/10

Dragonquest IX is a game that proves old school RPGs can still be awesome, even in the glitzy and glamorous world of modern games. Engaging dungeons, a great, time-tested battle system and charming music, topped off with bright, beautiful graphics that make every character burst with life, at least when given a personality. My big gripe about this game was that while the jump in/jump out multi-player is great idea, the game is definitely geared a bit too much for it. The grinding gets to be a bit much when playing by yourself, like I mostly did. 8/10

Poker Night at the Inventory is...funny. That's really it. The poker portion of it to me is not the star of the show. I would actually prefer if a series of internet shorts were made with these characters. Have them play poker, sure, but I don't need it, or even want it to be a game. Sometimes I will get knocked out just so I can sit back and listen to the well written dialogue. I also wish Jerry Holkins actually did the voice of Tycho, but hey, that is pretty nitpicky. It's a basic poker game at the end...and in a world of online poker for real money, well let's just say I paid five dollars for the game, and that is basically the max one should pay. Gameplay- 4/10 Writing and Humor- 8/10

Flat out...there need to be more games like Just Cause 2. This game did not give a shit about presenting a story that mattered. It was really just one big excuse to blow up as many things as possible, while having some of the best run and gun gameplay ever presented in a sandbox format. My only real complaint about this great time was the sheer size of the game. It is by far the largest sandbox game ever...and really it's too big at times. It is, in this case possible to have too much of a good thing. Thankfully those planes fly really fast. 9/10

Pokemon (A rightly spelled word in the eyes of Blogger) Heart Gold/ Soul Silver was a re-trekking that the series needed. Often cited as the best region Pokemon ever had, we finally got a DS re-hash that while offering those...to me pointless extras, the core Pokemon gameplay is blessedly intact. I feel like this game was somehow made to be somehow less of a timesink than the other games, as I noticed the time it takes to grind has been greatly reduced. I would welcome this change to extend itself to the upcoming Black/White, as the best parts of the game usually happen after you actually beat the Elite Four. However, the time required usually just to get to that point is typically insane. So this may signal a trend coming that I would be first on line to cheer for. 8.5/10

World of Warcraft Cataclysm. Hm...what do I say about this. It is honestly an expansion of a game that has already devoured my soul...and time. Most people who know me personally know I spend entirely too much time on this game, and this game has done nothing but redouble my addiction. The new zones for high-level players are fun and well designed, and the new 1-60 is an altoholics dream. I am not going to talk about this game a lot, as you already know if you like it or not. I won't even give it a number, as it is a MMO, and always evolving, just know I like it.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood continues the tradition set forth by AC2 by being fucking awesome. While the gameplay is largely unchanged, it really did not need to be. The extras thrown into the game such as the training sequences are largely fun, and sometimes actually informative. I did have a couple of gripes with the game though. While training your boyscout troop of would be Assassins, the idea it is done entirely through text based adventures makes the whole experience ring a bit hollow and tacked on. However, when taking your little group into the real world of things also has the effect of making the game entirely too easy. Any mission in which killing one person was the goal, they would usually instantly die under a hail of crossbow bolts. While this was often mitigated in the main game by making the whole story mission process multi-tiered in nature, any side mission, especially the ones in which you would kill a Templar agent were just silly. However, honestly pales in comparison to the top-notch story, with superb pacing and a well-thought out and satisfying payoff, on both the Ezio side and Desmond side. This would have been my game of the year if...9.0/10

...Mass Effect 2 did not exist. This game took all the stat balancing crap out of ME1 and threw it to the wayside to a level-up menu that is so trimmed and perfectly lean I want to make every RPG like it. As I stated earlier, I am not a shooter person by any stretch of the imagination, but this game took that generalization, and made me throw it right out the fuckin window. Fun gameplay mixed with writing that is...at the very least unparalleled and I find myself gripped fully in a space opera that makes me forget all about George Lucas' space-witches. The morality system that was started with the first Knights of the Old Republic is faithfully carried over, allowing you to fully realize the personality of your Shepard, male or female. Looking past the fully realized main character, there is also a fleshed out secondary party of characters that make your space ship come to life. It is hard to honestly name a favorite, as even the one's I did not use in the game, I loved in terms of a talking-buddy when hanging out on the hub ship. This is something that never really happens to me with a game, but Bioware found a way of writing characters that while they may not be for you combat-wise, you still wish to have them represented in your game. This is one of the few modern generation games I have played through more than once...and probably the only one I have played through more than twice. The first trailer for the third game is already out, and I honestly could not be more excited. While this is not my favorite game ever, it is definitely in my top five, maybe in my top three. To me it also represents the zenith of what 2010 had to offer, in terms of graphics, gameplay and writing. Everything came together in a way that made every moment a seriously rare joy. 10/10

Now while these were not the only games that I played throughout the year, these were the ones I played that not only came out in 2010, but they were also the ones that I played enough to fully feel qualified enough to review. 2011 already seems like a year in which...many games will come out. I honestly feel a bit fearful for modern games, as all the major systems now have their motion controllers out, and this is just to me...gameplay tends to suffer when waving your arms around gets shoved down your throat. I hope dearly Microsoft and Sony keep their motion controllers at the niche area they are in right now, and let game studios concentrate on the continuation of refining gameplay, and the upbringing of great game writing.