(I plan on editing reviews in shortly, if some are missing don't hurt me)
1. VVVVVV ; This is the best platformer released in the last decade. There's absolutely no fat. Mechanics are introduced, tested, refined, developed, plumbed, and discarded within 10 minutes, and it feels totally organic. The open world feels even better than Super Metroid, and the individual world-segments are beautifully self-contained. Every single platforming puzzle works. Of the entire game, there is only one single screen that I feel is suboptimal. It doesn't overstay its welcome; it has about 3-4 hours worth of content, and that's exactly how long it'll take you. Every screen makes your grin wider as you realize that, yes, they did just pull that trick out of the bag. There's something to be said for perfectly executed modesty. What's wonderful is that despite the handful of mechanics, they all descend from one base mechanic--you can flip from ceiling to floor or vice versa but can't change directions during a flip. The crown jewel is an optional sequence called "Veni, Vidi, Vici" which is the single most challenging sequence I've played in a game in years and so so satisfying when you beat it. What's most poignant about the VVV sequence (and thus VVVVVV as a whole) is that the theme of being able to do these amazing space flips but not even make a little hop causes both thematic frustration--I can see that damn shiny trinket, why the hell can't I climb over this block and get there--and puzzle-related frustration. Wonderful.
2. Super Meat Boy ; I don't really like the aesthetic of Super Meat Boy, I don't really like the style of the cutscenes (although I do like the homages), and the music grates on me after a while. But it's here because it's got 300 levels of which at least 220-230 are really well made and it throws probably a solid 100 mechanics at you (of which almost all work--the repulsor magnets are pretty much just miserable). It really does it well, too, like a great student of all the great platformers. Each mechanic is presented in some surface level fashion, but a few levels later it'll come up again, and this time it'll be trickier. The replays are perfect, the game trimmed as much cruft as possible to make retrying a level an enjoyable experience, the Dark World levels are some of the best remixes in gaming and reminded me of games like Eversion that explore these concepts. The controls are dead-on, most of the extra characters feel as good to use as Meat Boy, the game is tough but very rarely frustrating. I ended up getting all the achievements and peaked around #100 on the leaderboards although I didn't go back to optimize my speed much so I'm sure I'm in the toilet by now.
3. Fruit Ninja ; Fruit Ninja is kind of the opposite of Meat Boy's kitchen sink approach. You're a ninja. Ninjas (?) hate fruit. Cut up the fruit. Although the game has been patched with more modes, the main mode remains the most compelling. Cut up fruit. Don't cut bombs. Works with a single finger or multitouch. This is the best pure arcade / score attack game this year. One of the real triumphs is the satisfying splat visuals and noises you get for slicing a fruit. It would have been so easy for the same game with a slightly more sterile presentation to not be half as enjoyable. In that sense, it had an almost PopCap-like sense of presentation mastery. The audiovisual success/failure cues stand up with Peggle on the most emotionally involving/rewarding.
4. Alpha Protocol ; What a trainwreck! This is very obviously a game that was made by a number of very intelligent very bold core designers sitting down, pitching some great ideas, and then pretty much utterly failing to make that game. Whole chunks of the game were clearly unfinished or rewritten at the last minute, the development process was obviously a disaster, and it got delayed over and over again. Many things remain unrealized; character development is interesting but it's super easy to back yourself into a relative corner, and this stinks from untested or unfixed design issues. Some mechanics are poorly explained, the game doesn't perform particularly well, and it's clearly very rough around the edges. But boy golly is this game more brimming with potential than pretty much any I've ever played. Absolutely killer writing, awesome characterization, and a far gutsier main character than Badass/Saint Shepard, it is possible to make Thornton a genuinely insane schizophrenic or a nerd trying to act suave. Secondary characters are rich and allude to a world that could have been even better with more time, more money, and more people working on it. Some of the best political themes in gaming ever--there are some really rich allusions about media control, terror-through-fear, mass panic, the psychology of crowds, to say nothing of the central premise of a government agent operating as a sort of rogue spy. Mission design is great, with the tense ice cream scene in Rome or the ambiguous sniper mission in Rome where you can choose to take a confirmed shot at an unconfirmed baddie or let him live until further proof is found play with the player's mind, the embassy infiltration mission... just three of the many missions I really adored on a design level. I'd rather more companies go big and release this kind of title than retreat to safe press-A-to-win pap.
5. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood ; Ubisoft critically mismarketed this game. Going in, I thought (based on everything--the ads, the boxart, the announcement) that this was a multiplayer sidestory with a short single player campaign. Bzzt, wrong. This is Assassin's Creed 3, it just happens to take place in the same time period as Assassin's Creed 2. They took everything they did right with AC2 and made it better (Temples of Romulus are worthy successors to Assassin's Tombs, city building metagame kicked up to 10, inventory/items/equipment all added to), added new layers, tried new experiments--some successful (recruiting new assassins) others not (stealth challenge levels). What amazes me is that the game has literally dozens of mechanics that do nothing. You collect art just to stare at it on walls. You upgrade equipment but you could easily finish the game with starting equipment. You upgrade a city to get money that's not useful for anything. You upgrade assassin trainees that aren't useful for anything. You do side missions that lead to nothing. The platforming Assassin's Tombs / Temples of Romulus lead to nothing. The reward for playing with the games mechanics is the gameplay itself, which is refreshing and fun. If you are looking for a more external reward, you won't find it. The ending cliffhanger is hilarious. The Subject 16 segment probably goes a little far past the "wonderful mystery" territory and into "thinks it is cooler and more compelling than it is" territory, but that was inevitable from the growing confidence of the series. Can't wait for AC3.
6. Mass Effect 2 ; I think this is also the most disappointing choice on my list. I pre-ordered ME2, paid full price, took the day off work to play it on release. I had previously finished ME1 6.5 times, and the original is definitely my game of the generation. So by that standard, ME2 is a disappointing sequel. I think ME2 is definitely a more fully realized execution of its concept. They came up with what they wanted to do and did it. ME1s failings are all failures to deliver on a grand, ambitious design. ME2s failings all stem from the utter modesty in its designs. Rather than fix ME1s problems, they just wholesale removed problematic mechanics. With Subject Zero, BioWare went for a cynically lame "badass" that seemed like a worthy followup to the Marilyn Manson ad campaign for Dragon Age, and the dialog is definitely written to have a harder edge, but then the sex scenes are shot as PG-13 style allusions. Either change in general would be fine--a harder tone is fine and a softer tone is fine too--but the changes combined constitute a fear of alienating anyone, and that's something that reflects in pretty much every facet of the game. I feel like a guy who is complaining that his favourite band sold out to make a buck, but that's what happened here. The idea was to turn a 3 million selling game into a 5+ million selling game, and they did that by toning down any elements that were characteristic. It's a beautiful, well written game with a huge number of well realized levels and a lot of fun missions, and it belongs on this top 10 list, but it's a shocking step back in terms of design from ME1. It's still an A+ game and a lot was done right, which is why it's so heartbreaking to have to put it on a top 10 list while simultaneously saying almost entirely negative things about the game.
7. Mafia II ; Here is an interesting game specimen. A lot of the backlash against Grand Theft Auto IV was that the game had a great campaign but nothing else to do in the world. Mafia II comes along, and despite the fact that it takes place in an open world, the exact same complaint is true. There are no side missions. There is no mission choice. There's no fun to be had in wreaking mayhem in the world and running from the cops. The open world is totally incidental to the main campaign, which is a linear action / adventure / third person shooter. With that in mind, the game knocks the campaign out of the park. The shooting feels great, the driving is fantastic, they kept Mafia's innovative "cops actually ticket or arrest you when you break laws" system--speeding is a crime, as are collisions with pedestrian vehicles. The arc is similar to any great Mafia story and there's generous pilfering from The Godfather, Once Upon a Time in America, Scarface, and others. But I think what impressed me the most is that about half-way through the game there's a major plot twist that results in the game skipping from 1942 to about 1951. When this happens, the world changes. The cars are different, the clothes are different, the music is different, the world just feels different. The dreary war years have given way to a liberating, modern decade. This distinction might seem subtle, but it's the best world transformation I've seen since Final Fantasy VI. Fun from beginning to end.
8. Alan Wake ; On a lot of levels, Alan Wake didn't work. The game design is far more modest than the original pitch, even with the DLC resolving the ending it still feels a little bit like gibberish, combat never really feels satisfying, Alan's apparent asthma is one of the most frustrating control failures of this year, the collectible placement is rarely rewardable. It's not technically great, it's sub-HD and very visibly so, and it really should have had a 60fps/1080p PC version. For all the complaining about the collectibles telegraphing plot twists, the camera actually telegraphs them far worse with the bizarre choice of doing cutaways to enemies who are sneaking up on you. I'd say it's Remedy's worst game. That being said, Remedy is an exceptional developer, and even their worst game is still amongst the best of the year. They nailed the environment. Whether you look at AW as inspired by Twin Peaks or just situate it in the Pacific NW in general, it really feels like you're there. The writing is quick and witty even if there are fewer lines than resonate as well as Max Payne's. The game constantly straddles the line between clever and too clever by half, but I think on the balance it is clever enough to justify the smug self-congratulation. It's a genuinely funny game in terms of the writing. The episodic structure works far better than this generation's two other episodic games (the dreadful Alone in the Dark 2008 and the even more dreadful Lost Via Domus) and the music choices are superb and show a keen awareness of the pop culture that the game plays with. The pacing, as well, is amongst the best in the year. I think this makes it clear that although Alan Wake is not a perfect game, the experience is much greater than the sum of its parts so it belongs on this list.
9. Heavy Rain ; Controversial!! Let me start with the gameplay. Indigo Prophecy had serious gameplay problems. QTEs basically suck. But what Heavy Rain has isn't so much QTEs as it is context-sensitive control. In Heavy Rain, the buttons logically map to the parts of your character's body that are moving at the time, which makes the controls feel more natural and less like Simon Says. There are no extended segments of timed button presses. But most critically, the game deals with failure in the narrative; maybe the impact of failure is basically nil until certain critical moments (of course you don't notice this until the second playthrough, so the illusion is great anyway) but the point is that unlike Indigo Prophecy which would mostly fall into "Sequence failed, repeat sequence" (a failure that RE4 and God of War also have), Heavy Rain looks at failure as another possible outcome, rather than a wall that needs to be overcome to progress. I like that. I don't care to classify it in genre; interactive novel or light adventure would be the closest. I think most people can agree that whether or not they'd like a more actiony game, Heavy Rain is an immeasurable improvement on the QTE-style control versus previous experiments. I like the story. I think many of the criticisms made are true; Norman Jayden has a comical accent and he's basically an exaggerated goon. Typical movie-style "if the characters just said what they were thinking this whole mess would clear up instantly" logic is present throughout the game. Madison is basically a floozy whose only purpose is build up Ethan, a guy who is basically a pretty big loser. But most of these are somewhat intentional. Ever watch a film noir? Detective stories always have larger than life, caricature-style characters. It's a hallmark of the style. They always have convenient logic that only allows the conclusion to happen exactly when it does, and always allows insane clues to be picked up where necessary and obvious ones to be missed when necessary. All of the best noir of the decade (Brick, Season 1 of Veronica Mars, Mullholland Drive, Memento, especially stuff like Sin City, or even the cheekier lighter Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) suffers variously from these "problems". The emotional tone of the game wouldn't work without this specific setup. I think the criticisms of the plot are more germane. Several plot choices, including the Ethan red herring / unreliable narrator twist are poor choices. The original direction of the game as detailed by Cage would have been a much worse story still and most of the worst elements of what did get released are holdovers from that story. Still, the pacing was aggressive, there was good use of tension and release, the perspective switching was fun, the story was a bit of a groaner but still a fun yarn, and the tone/setting were great. Combine all this with the fact that I think the gameplay was successfully executed, and you have in my opinion a great game.
10. Costume Quest ; Childlike wonder is a tough thing for an adult writer to capture because it generally tends to be mostly condescendingly treating kids like drooling idiots. Costume Quest evoked a lot of genuinely childlike spirit, but maybe mostly in a Pinky and the Brain kind of way. The battle system is basically four or five flashes in the pan; get a new costume, play with the timing micro-game (like Mario RPG), watch the hilariously over the top special move, move on. I think that's okay. Some of the best RPGs ever have pretty rote battle systems, and CQ has the benefit of having a fixed and low number of fights so that the weaknesses of the battle system don't have too much time to set in. The collection elements reminded me positively of early Pokemon or Pog. The atmosphere was really good and I didn't find myself missing voice acting or more intense background music. While both the game itself and the DLC are a little short for my liking, I find it hard to figure out how long I'd like them to be because if they were too much longer, the thinness of the substance would overwhelm the brilliance of the style, so I'll settle on saying that CQ did it just right. It's slight, but it's also slightly wonderful.
Quid pro quos:
- If a great game isn't on my list, it's because I haven't played it yet rather than having played it and not liked it
- Two of the games on my list I've played since December 25th so I suspect my full list 6 months from now would be different
- Although I own every system and bought games for every system this year, I didn't finish a single DS, PSP, or Wii game this year. I'll get around to them, I swear!