I've just spent a couple of hours playing Dead Space 2 on my own, in my flat, at night. This might mean nothing to you, but trust me, this pretty much makes me a goddamn superhero. Horror games are the perfect example of the power of the interactive medium. I get scared watching [REC] or Night of the Living Dead, but the difference with horror games is you're expected to actually do something about the awful things happening on screen. The whole appeal of horror is putting yourself in the shoes of someone experiencing a terrifying ordeal, and there's no better way to do that than to pick up a controller and take part. Anyway, to distract myself from thoughts of horrific mockeries of nature ambushing me from air vents, I thought I'd do a quick round-up of some of the best games of the past year. 2010 was a pretty strong year for gaming, with a great mix of reliable sequels that built on the work of their predecessors and new titles to expand our horizons.
There were disappointments - Fable III and Vanquish spring to mind - but for the most part last year's games delivered. 2010 also marked a bit of a turning point for the games industry, as publishers began to release more top-drawer titles outside of the traditional pre-Christmas period. This is a great thing for gamers and for the industry itself as it begins to realise that quality speaks for itself, no matter what time of year. With the success of early-year titles like Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2, and now Dead Space 2 in 2011, this promising trend looks set to continue.
Bayonetta (Platinum Games)
The third-person action genre is a pretty crowded one, with the likes of Ninja Gaiden, God of War and Devil May Cry filling our screens with musclebound anti-heroes grunting and shouting for our entertainment. Bayonetta trumps all of these games on most counts, and adds a healthy dose of batshit insanity for good measure.
At the game's core is a rock-solid combat system. Titular (not to mention tit-tacular) heroine Bayonetta feels lithe and responsive to control as she pirouettes between enemies unleashing a wide array of crunchy, satisfying combos. But the game really separates itself from the crowd with its sheer eye-humping visual splendour. The design of levels and enemies is consistently surprising, throwing an astonishing variety of extra-dimensional environments and enemies at the player. The story is pretty inscrutable (something about witches and motorbikes and angels with glowing vaginas?), but when a game offers you the chance to throw a reborn god-queen into the fires of the sun, the wheres and whys are pretty irrelevant.
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare)
Hands-down the best videogame story of 2010, as Commander Shepard recruits a new crew on his space-faring mission to defend the galaxy against the planet-harvesting Reavers. Yeah, it might sound like an episode of Stargate SG-1, but the appeal of Mass Effect lies in making the story your own. With the best conversation mechanics of any game so far, the ability to make meaningful choices that alter your game world in sometimes unexpected ways, and some of the best characters this side of the Omega-4 Relay, there's a real feeling of consequence behind the superb firefights. I got my entire team through the game unscathed because I am the King and Queen of Cheese, but the very real chance of losing treasured teammates before the game's end adds consistent tension and even (whisper it) a hint of emotional resonance.
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)
How did it take this long for an unreservedly great cowboy game to come out? All the elements are right there - quickdraw duels, roaming the open plains, fisticuffs in smoky saloons... you know, cowboy stuff. Whatever the case, it wasn't until 2010 that a game brought all these elements together, bundled them into the back of a rickety ol' wagon and rammed them into our eye-holes. Rockstar San Diego has made expert use of Grand Theft Auto's game engine to create a gorgeous natural game world, spanning pine forests and great plains in the north to the ochre-tinged sandstone monoliths of Mexico in the south. The diversity of gameplay options is more than a match for Red Dead's setting. The long journey of blackmailed ex-outlaw John Marsden makes for a great story, filled with imaginative diversions and the colourful characters that have made Rockstar releases so special over the years.
Limbo (Playdead Studios)
A brilliant X-box Live Arcade puzzle-platformer with a unique atmosphere. Players control a little boy searching for his sister in a spectral purgatory realm. That's all the story there is, and this game needs no more. Everything else in Limbo is conveyed through its shadowy, silhouetted world. Threatening little details emanate from every crevice, from the world's mysterious and hostile inhabitants to the shockingly gory death animations when the player slips up. The game's puzzles, which revolve around using physics to move through areas, constantly introduce new mechanics to keep things fresh for the duration. Limbo is an excellent puzzle game, but it's the melancholy ambience that makes it great. Oh, and the giant spider chase sequence. Can't go wrong with a giant spider chase sequence.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft Montreal)
After two games that struggled to match their immaculate sense of style with equally engaging gameplay mechanics, Brotherhood is the first game in the AC franchise that's an unmarred pleasure to play. The action may see players jump back into the bejewelled pantaloons of AC2's Ezio Auditore as he murders his way up Rome's corrupt Borgia hierarchy, but Brotherhood comprehensively refines the series' ideas that work and overhauls those that don't.
Combat is smoother and more interesting; assassination missions are better structured and reward good planning; stealth sections are now a joy rather than a chore. The most impressive thing about Brotherhood is the sheer amount of content there is to distract the player in Rome's vast play area, from the simple pleasure of chasing thieves and couriers across the city's terracotta rooftops to piloting a frankly absurd 16th century stealth bomber. The story continues to be sub-Dan Brown secret society wankery, but if the franchise's gameplay continues to improve at this rate, all that nonsense can be forgiven. Now let's have Assassin's Creed III set in Victorian London, please.
Halo: Reach (Bungie)
The only straight-up shooter on this list, Bungie's swansong to the legendary series just radiates the experience and dedication of its development team. The Call of Duty franchise might have overtaken Halo as the number one blockbuster FPS, but for my money Reach outstrips Black Ops both as a single-player story and a multiplayer playground. The game's premise of fighting a losing battle against overwhelming Covenant forces on a doomed colony world packs more emotional punch than most other shooters (including a brilliant ending), and the enemy AI is superb, creating combat moments with a real sense of space rather than the shooting galleries that have become so popular of late.
Online, Reach is the best of the best. I may have spent more hours compulsively logging into Modern Warfare, but Reach makes every new game a unique encounter. The game types are varied, the maps are stupendously well-designed and playing Firefight mode with friends is like a whole extra game. And for hardcore fanatics, there are the well-featured Forge level creation tools. With this treasure chest of riches, Bungie has ensured that Reach will continue to thrive long after the studio has moved on to new projects.
Alan Wake (Remedy Entertainment)
Not a smash hit by any means, but if Alan Wake doesn't get a sequel it would be a great shame. This isn't necessarily because of the scares and solid combat (based on giving your corrupted enemies the willies by lighting them up with your torch), both of which are excellent, but because Alan Wake is quietly revolutionary in its approach to interactive storytelling. We guide our titular confused writer through the town of Bright Falls and the surrounding forests in search of his missing wife who has been abducted by a dark presence that's infecting the whole area.
The fascinating layer buried beneath the narrative is that Wake has lost time, during which he seems to have written about the events he's currently living through. Pages found on the forest floor or strewn about rusty old sawmills serve to deepen the narrative as well as warn players about dangerous encounters ahead. It's an amazing way for the developer to communicate with the player, not to mention push some pretty far-out ideas about authorship and the constraints of moving through a world that has been designed for you. As the game progresses the rabbit hole only gets deeper, with Wake beginning to question why he wrote the things he did and realising that his words might be the key to breaking free of the town's strange curse.
Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment)
After 60 hours or so of exploring Fallout 3's post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, the thought of diving back in to a sequel that uses the same creaky engine and transports the story from Washington D.C. to the ostensibly less memorable Mojave Desert didn't seem all that appetising. New Vegas didn't immediately prove me wrong - the first couple of hours is filled with the critter hunting, stat-levelling and V.A.T.S. combat strategies that had become all-too familiar from the previous game. The story's opening is also a little contrived. The player wakes up after being shot in the head and having his courier package stolen, and decides, with a slightly incredible level of job dedication, to hunt down his ambushers and get it back.
It was only when I arrived at the New Vegas Strip, filled with decay and corruption but a bustling vibrancy that was missing from Fallout 3's communities, that it all started to come together. Obsidian, a team that contains some of the original Black Isle developers who worked on the first Fallout PC games, has pushed the modern franchise forward by thrusting players into a more rich and morally confusing world. None of the Strip's factions are unblemished, which makes choosing who to support (if any) all the more thrilling because there are no convenient signposts. You begin to realise that you are, much more so than in Fallout 3, a catalyst for massive change across this seedy desert, and by leaving you to make your own mind up, New Vegas burdens you with the full weight of your actions. It's a scary prospect, and one that provokes real thought. After another 60 hours of wandering the wasteland, I really would like to see the back of the game's charming but tired and buggy engine. Then again, I've been proved wrong before...
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