Our Top Games Of 2010

What a year. So many fantastic games, so many hours whiled away in videogame bliss. With a new year only a day away, it’s customary for the industry to look back and pick apart the offerings to find the best games of the year, and we here at infinitecontinues would like to do exactly that. So put your slippers on, pour yourself the last of the brandy and relax into our (short) trip down memory lane to count down our top 5 games of 2010. So, without further ado, let’s begin.

5. Darksiders

January started with a bang, with two exceptional, and vaguely similar games, released on the same day. One of those, Bayonetta, was a slice of pure madcap action, tempered only by its steep difficulty curve towards its latter stages. As we’re a bit soft here at the IC Towers, being lovers not fighters and all, we prefer our challenges to be of the softer, more cerebral variety. Enter Darksiders. An unashamed amalgamation of Zelda and God Of War (with even a little bit of Portal lobbed in for good measure) Darksiders isn’t the most original new IP we’ve ever come across, but when such copied elements are handled with such care and polish, one soon forgets such qualms.

Players controlled War, one of the horseman of the Apocalypse, as he set out to take down The Destroyer. Why? We can’t remember. The story – as with most games of its ilk – is overblown nonsense, with angels and demons hurling burnt out cars at each other, some council ordering you to save the world, and Mark Hamill cackling in your ear and cajoling you ever onward to complete your next task. But satisfying (if simple) combat, married with the acquisition of new gadgets every hour or so, and clever puzzles to match, made Darksiders an absolute blast to play. It was brisk, breezy and beautifully paced. Only the sprawling final dungeon, the Black Tower, overstayed its welcome, but the overall package was enough to whet our appetites for the sequel, due sometime in fiscal year 2013, according to publisher THQ.

There was plenty of style to go with all that substance too, with comic-book creator Joe Mad heading up art direction responsibilities, delivering a gorgeous world filled with ornate, colourful characters. War himself, although being a little more squat than we would have envisioned a horseman of the Apocalypse to be, was beautifully decked out in gleaming platemail and a crimson cape lined with gold. As new characters go, he is certainly one to remember from hordes of identikit heroes. According to developer Vigil Games, however, he wont be player-controlled in the sequel, which is a bit of a shame, in our humble opinion.

A rank outsider then, and a game many may have missed, Darksiders is a superb cross-genre game that beautifully enmeshes pleasing hack ‘n’ slash combat with Zelda-esque puzzling, and drapes it in a style all of its own. With copies bound to be cheap now, a year after its release, this is one delayed Christmas present you owe it to yourself to buy.

4. Mass Effect 2

With the notable exception of Star Wars, which towers over our collective childhood memories like an enormous AT-AT, sci-fi isn’t a favoured genre around these parts. We find it a little too silly and a little too fantastical, which is ironic when you consider that fantasy really is one of our favourite genres. So it was with a certain amount of ambivalence that we finally loaded up Mass Effect 2, the original gathering dust on the shelf, abandoned because of fatigue settling in early and refusing to leave. The sequel, however, we found much more palatable. The combat seemed sharper and more precise, hitting a sweet spot between third-person shooter and RPG, the levels were snappier, the missions shorter but more memorable. There were still moments of tedium of course. The planet-mining for minerals with which to upgrade your allies, weapons and ship became tiresome after all of five minutes. The hacking and circuitry mini-games also lose their lustre after completing dozens and dozens of them over the course of a playthrough.

But these are minor quibbles when you pull back to see the larger picture. It’s Mass Effect 2’s universe which must be applauded, and its characters, even more so. Your assembled crew, painstakingly pieced together across remote planets scattered around the galaxy, are an eclectic but unforgettable bunch. How could anyone ever forget the gentle, but deadly assassin Thane, with his bulbous black eyes and green reptilian skin? Or the Asari Justicar, who we tried to get into bed throughout the entirety of the game before she finally crushed our hopes at the end, the tease. Or Mordin, the strange-talking, strange-looking Professor who builds the upgrades for Shepard. Each ally is as memorable as the last, and few games can boast such a well-realised cast of characters.

It is a mammoth game though, and we confess to having stopped playing for many months roughly halfway through our playthrough. It’s a slow-burn, with dialogue and exposition forming as much, if not more, of the experience as its combat. We needed a break from all those long-winded conversations, but when we went back, and stuck with it this time right up to when the end credits rolled, it knocked our proverbial socks off. The final mission has to be one of the single most thrilling passages of gameplay ever conceived, and leaves the story arc beautifully poised for Mass Effect 3, due out at the end of next year. Mass Effect 2 is a stunning game, and PS3 owners will be able to see what all the fuss is about when it releases next month.

3. Enslaved: Odyssey To The West

A truly divisive videogame this one, but one we loved to pieces. It was criticised and even derided in many quarters by its supremely linear platforming sequences and shallow combat, but as mentioned earlier, we prefer the softer challenges. Games are supposed to be fun, not frustrating, and too many developers forget this, cranking up the difficulty arbitrarily on even the easier settings. Enslaved eschews this all-too-common approach in order to craft a beautifully-paced adventure with a decent plot, fantastic script and astonishing facial animation in a gorgeously-realised environment of lush vegetation and crumbling rock, a far cry from the typical apocalyptic playground.

It borrows heavily from Uncharted 2 with its tightly-interwoven gameplay and story, and heavy emphasis on characters and the relationship between them. But it crafts these relationships with a lot of skill, eschewing typical schlocky romance and ribald commentary with a relationship that feels genuine and human, gradually evolving across the course of the adventure. Throw in an enormously entertaining third character in the form of Pigsy, and you have a wonderful alchemical mix.

Platforming was incredibly empowering and cinematic, as failure was impossible; if you weren’t holding the stick in the right direction, Monkey simply wouldn’t jump. This riled up a lot of players the wrong way, but it cant be argued against that this made these sections fluid and slick. Puzzles were simple but still pleasing to solve, and the combat, which was admittedly a little simplistic, was still rather visceral, with dramatic camera zooms accompanying brutal hits on the mechs that Monkey and Trip encountered on their journey west.

With such a beautiful, well-crafted story, its a shame that the ending was pretty dire. And there’s no guarantee of a sequel remedying that considering Enslaved’s poor sales. A crying shame if you ask us, so go out and grab this while it’s cheap.

2. Heavy Rain

When you play certain games, it can be feel like an experience you’ve had many times before, just with different characters, having different adventures in different worlds. The rules are generally the same, its just the assets are different. The same charge cannot be levelled at Heavy Rain, the videogame/cinematic cross-over masterpiece from the fertile imagination of David Cage and the talented team at Quantic Dream. Heavy Rain is unlike anything we’ve ever played before, with the exception of Fahrenheit, Quantic Dream’s previous game for the PS2 and Xbox. It’s a story superbly told, through the eyes of four different protagonists; Ethan Mars, the father whose child’s abduction forms the basis of the plot, Norman Jayden, an FBI agent investigating the Origami Killer’s crimes, Madison Paige, a journalist investigating the murders and Scott Shelby, a private detective doing the same.

Where Heavy Rain takes a radical departure to every other game is its approach to death. In this game, as in real life, death is permanent. If you lose a character during the story, he or she is no longer playable, which in turn effects the outcome of the ending. This leads to Heavy Rain having many possible outcomes, encouraging multiple playthroughs in order to see the many different strands of the divergent plot. Its over-reliance on QTE’s may put off some players, but they are handled sensitively – often, the buttons used mimic the actions the character takes on screen, and the ‘failing’ of a QTE often allows a scene to play out differently. Only the clumsy mapping of walk to the R2 button feels a little awkward, but that aside, Heavy Rain allows tight control over its enveloping action.

Part interactive movie, part videogame, Heavy Rain could be criticised for its relative lack of action compared to other big blockbuster titles of the year. But that would be missing the point. Quantic Dream has crafted an engrossing experience here where choice and consequence plays a key part of the plot. These four characters have substance and nuances not commonly found in videogames, and the player cares about their outcomes. Very rarely has a game made us cry out when we thought we had lost a main character – Heavy Rain can claim that singular distinction.

1. Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Its singleplayer campaign is short and linear, with only a few vehicle components providing any memorable highpoints in what is otherwise a fairly standard corridor shooter. So why have we made it our best game of 2010? Simply because we have spent so much of the year engrossed in its stunning multiplayer battles. When you play a game on both consoles, to play with friends and peers and get the achievements/trophies all over again, you know you have a winning game on your hands.

In total, we’ve spent 230+ hours on its battlefields of sand, snow and grass. Time well spent reviving fallen allies with defibrillators. Time well spent repairing stricken tanks, cowering behind its bulk as RPG missiles rain in. Time well spent knifing snipers in the back, completely unaware of their impending death. Time well spent arming M-Com stations and spraying bullets from an M60 light machine gun into the defenders rushing over to disarm it. Time well spent guiding rockets from stationary guns into helicopters as they swoop overhead. Time well spent delivering an impossible headshot with an M95 sniper rifle from across the desert, sending a VADS gunner flying in a fountain of blood. Time well spent scoping out enemies with the UAV and sending down death from above with a well-placed hellfire missile. Time well spent loading up a quad bike with C4 and driving it into an enemy camp, detonating it at an M-Com station in a last ditch bid for victory. Basically, just time well spent.

So balanced is Bad Company 2’s online multiplayer that those who lack the speed and reflexes to come out on top in a one-on-one faceoff can still excel. It’s a strategic, thoughtful game, a deep experience that rewards team play much more than a Call Of Duty game ever could. Your friend forming a front line with grenades and assault rifle fire? Why not keep him alive with medi-packs as a Medic, reviving him when he falls in battle? A squad member just got in a tank and needs a gunner? Play as the Engineer and hop out when the tank tales damage, keeping it alive in order to press forward through enemy lines. Enemies hiding in the bushes all around an objective? Spawn as Recon and flush them out will a well-placed motion mine and a devastating mortar strike. With such varied tactics, and no two games ever likely to be remotely the same, Bad Company 2 online just never gets old, even after hundreds, and in some people’s cases at the top of the leaderboard, thousands of hours of play.

Developers Dice sometimes get flak from their fans for repurposing existing maps from other online game modes to release as map packs, but as free extras, we find it difficult to see how people can complain. Premium DLC such as Onslaught mode (where squads team up against computer AI to achieve adjectives, like Rush mode) and the recently released Vietnam expansion, increase the shelf-life still further. A more fully-realised singleplayer campaign, with the epic thrills and spills of a Modern Warfare or Black Ops may well have been the cherry on the icing on the cake, but your money is being spent on the multiplayer in this franchise. And, nine months and hundreds of hours later, that money has been incredibly well spent. For being the go-to game of choice whenever there are periods of downtime in our busy schedules, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is our best game of 2010.

Honourable mentions: 2010 was an embarrassment of riches, and we found it difficult to stick to just five games. How could we leave out Red Dead Redemption, for instance, with its beautiful depiction of the Wild West? Or the gratuitous ultra-violence of God Of War 3? Or the hair-eating antics of certain sexy witch Bayonetta? Or perhaps the thrill-a-minute, epic rollercoaster ride of Call Of Duty: Black Ops? These games are good enough to be on many ‘best of’ lists, but just fell short of our final five for this year.

What were your favourite games of 2010?