All the Games I Played in 2010: Part 2 (June-December)

OK, I probably played too many games this year. In these posts I look back on all of them and comment as concisely or in-depth as I think each game warrants. See Part 1 to hear about the games I played from January to May.

 

June

 

Alpha Protocol– I truly loved this title, even though it was rough around the edges. I wonder how many of this games haters have actually, you know, played it? If more had, or perhaps if more of those that did had played without expecting a train wreck, then maybe they would give it the respect it deserves. In my book it was nearly as good as Mass Effect.  

 

Toy Story 3– This interesting game for kids took what could have been your standard platforming and made it so much more by adding in a sandbox mode with tons of unlockable items and quests.

 

 

Wipeout: The Game– Everything wrong about the Wii. This show could make for a fun game… Maybe. It definitely will never happen with this team or concept. Maybe if they took some ideas from Kinect Adventures…

 

Transformers: War for Cybertron– Hyped as good, but this game is really just a weak Gears rip off. The boring mission design had me snoring after just a short time period.

 

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor– Fun on-rails shooter that needed a bunch more content to be worth $50.

 

Singularity– A low-rent Bioshock knock-off with a few interesting ideas and lots more bad, or poorly replicated ones. I liked Raven’s version of Wolfenstein  from 2009, and was hoping this would be more like that good game, rather than badly mimicking a great game. Instead they ended up putting in blunders like audio logs you have to stand beside to hear. What were they thinking? Everything about this title felt like a poor imitation of something which has already been done better.

 

July

 

Crackdown 2- I thought I was OK with Crackdown 2 being Crackdown 1.5 until I saw exactly how little was added. This game has way too few mission types and recycles tons of content from the first game sloppily.

 

DarkStar One: Broken Alliance– This piss-poor port of an old PC game is offensively bad.

 

August

 

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair– If all you want from a game is a huge amount of possible play time, then Castlevania: HD is a game for you. That is, if you can stand grinding the same few, rather small levels over, and over again. I really wanted to love this title, but I could never shake the feeling that I would have rather had a high definition upgrade of one of one of the great DS titles.

 

Mafia 2– This game looks great, but the feel of the game play turned me off. Driving around offered little to do other than watch the lush landscape pass by, and driving and shooting never really felt right. I would be willing to try more of this title on a slower year, but in a year like this one I gave up after a few hours and sent it back to Gamefly.

 

Metroid Other M– Part of me loves this throwback to the Super Nintendo/NES era of Metroid games, while the other part of me absolutely hates the portrayal of Samus this game offered  and the horrible voice acting. The thing that really put this game on the naughty list was the way the levels seemed rather glued together without the cohesion of previous entries. Sure, the game had you backtracking, but it rarely offered the "wow" moments that opening up previously inaccessible areas from previous entries.

 

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero– This $5 downloadable title offered up something even the full priced sequel it was advertising could not–an experience that felt like an actual improvement on the years-old first game. The setting is the biggest draw for this slice of heaven. By being set in a small town, rather than a mall, Case Zero became the perfect nugget of Dead Rising game play. I would be absolutely fine with the series taking this format from now on.

 

September

 

Start the Party– This title was possibly the most fun I have had with the Move yet. That said it also feels like a complete rip off at $40. It stretches the term "mini game collection" to the breaking point, since you can experience pretty much everything this game has to offer in about a thirty minute session. What is there is brief fun, and I loved watching myself and others on the screen. I would be willing to explore more Move titles like this if they offered up more depth, but this title is baby-pool shallow.

 

Sports Champions– Bocce is about the best thing on the Move, but I found most of the other entries on this disk to offer only a passing entertainment value. Sure they work fine, but they are also mostly not very much fun to play. The visuals are also pretty dry and boring. The textures are high res, but does that really matter when the underlying art is so lacking in creativity? If this title had been bundled with Start the Party then Move could have had a (slightly) killer app. As they stand as separate entities, neither offers enough to warrant a purchase.

 

Playstation Move– While I am not in love with the stand alone software for the Move, I do have to say that I truly love the actual device. I think it has a ton of potential. It works great with Resident Evil 5, and Heavy Rain has some intensely captivating moments as well. I did notice that I was often pulled out of the action in Heavy Rain when the motions I was making did not offer up a 1 to 1 experience with what was happening on the screen. I also thought the camera angles could have been changed to place the player more in the shoes of the protagonists. As it stands now it feels like you are controlling someone through proxy rather than actually performing actions on your own. I would love to see a title like this specifically designed for the Move, but cannot say I suggest picking it up just to play it with the Move. As far as what Sony is showing long term for the Move, I have to admit that I am more than a bit worried that the device will fail to capture the masses it deserves. The first party software that Sony has announced so far seems rather lacking, and I am not seeing the flood of Wii ports that would so benefit Sony's choice of replicating the Wii, rather than offering something radically different like Kinect.

 

 

Halo: Reach– The only things that felt radically different about this title from previous Halo entries were later sections when you are flying around an (almost) open world and then lading to lay siege to surrounding buildings and the all too brief spaceship level. I would have preferred a whole game like this. Instead, most of this game felt too much like a repeat of all the other Halo titles. Sure, there were some cool backgrounds and a passably entertaining story, but there was not half the bang I expected from Bungie's final hurrah with the Haloverse.

 

Sonic Adventure(XBLA)- Say what you may about Sega not adding in anything of significance, but I still find the base game to be brilliant. I hate that they did not stretch the game to fit HD TVs, and charging for the DX version seems like kicking Sonic fans while they are down, but I still have a misguided dedication to this game staring the Blue Hedgehog that at least partially forgives these major flaws. I would not suggest this title to any but the most loyal Sonic fans, but those fans will probably have just as much fun with Adventure on XBLA as they did when it released on the Dreamcast.

 

Dead Rising 2– In many ways this game is a step back from the downloadable title released just a month before, but there is enough in Dead Rising 1.5… I mean, Dead Rising 2 to keep the zombie-killing gamer entertained for hours. I wouldn't suggest buying it at $60 or even $50. However, I got mine from Gamefly for $25 and feel really good that I waited on buying it rather than jumping on it day one. I wish Blue Castle understood that more zombies doesn't automatically make a zombie game better, the guns feel as powerful as pea-shooters, and the layout of the mall and the order your missions unlock can be terribly frustrating… but I still had enough fun with this game to be on board for another entry.

 

October

 

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow– I will have more to say on Castlevania in a later post, but for now I will just call this the most epic game I played this year. Lords of Shadow wasn't even on my radar until a friend recommended it, and I could not be more thankful that he did. The first few hours didn't feel especially like Castlevania, but I became deeply in love with this game by the time the plot was ramping up and I entered the first actual castle. It clocks in at around 24 hours, and that is ignoring the backtracking I could have done to open up weapon upgrades which are unreachable on your first play through. It marries a deep and rewarding combat system with a fabulously rich story and fun-to-navigate environments. It had a rather linear level design, but also some nice puzzles and tricky objectives. By the shocking twist ending this game had won a spot at the very top of my "Best Castlevania Games" list. It may be more Super Castlevania than it is Symphony of the Night, but it beat God of War 3 by a mile in my book.  

 

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West– I took a chance and bought this game after some great word of mouth, and could not be happier to have done so. Some bugs, glitches, and a combat system that could have been a bit deeper dim the luster of this title a bit, but the entrancing story, lush visuals, and likable characters more than make up for the rough edges. I was pretty down on Ninja Theory as a development house after Heavenly Sword, but Enslaved made me a true fan. Now I have high hopes for DMC, which is shocking to me considering how little I cared when it was first announced.

 

Sonic the Hedgehog 4– This throwback to the classic Sonic style is a nice HD experience, but I will always have a soft spot for the Adventure style of Sonic games. If you are a Sonic fan I would probably still wait to buy this on sale.

 

Medal of Honor– I enjoyed this more respectful take on modern warfare than what CoD has become, but the grippingly intense moments were often ruined by endless waves of enemies and some rather poor artificial intelligence. I hope that EA can get this series up to speed in the inevitable sequel, but they really need to hire some top notch A.I. and scripting designers to boost the quality… At least that is what I would do if games were developed how they are portrayed in Game Dev Story.

 

Kirbys Epic Yarn– Satisfyingly easy platforming with a truly inspired art design. While it would have been nice to have a bit more challenge, this game deserves major kudos for using the Wii in interesting ways, rather than just duct taping waggle onto a control scheme that doesn't really call for it.

 

Fallout: New Vegas– If you are fine with more of the same after Fallout 3 you will probably love New Vegas. I am mostly in that camp, but would've loved to have seen the loading times significantly decreased and the text size increased. This game did have a good number of memorable characters and after playing it I would still be A-OK with more of the same in yet another sequel. It is a shame that bugs hurt this game’s hype so much after launch. I hope Obsidian gets another crack at this series and is able to finally shake off many of the issues that have plagued them the last few years.

 

The Sims 3– Every time I try to leave the Sims world alone they draw me back in. This is by far the best Sims title to release on consoles yet, but it still needs a bit more work to be as good as the PC counterpart. Not being able to walk around the whole town like you can on PC felt like a pretty big issue. Luckily, all the rest of the greatness remains.

 

Fable 3– Fable is one of my favorite series, but MAN 3 has some huge issues that keep it from being a banner release. I hated the way Lionhead removed so many options from the previous games. Now you can't even choose which emotions you want to talk to villagers with. This, along with a reduced impact of player choice and poorly implemented and looooonnng tutorial stages significantly hurt my experience. The worst part is that there is also some of the most interesting missions and story elements of any previous Fable games in this title. Too bad the game feels so hamstrung that I could never enjoy these elements as much as I would have if the game played just like Fable 2. I don't know if I can even recall a title that did so much to thumb its nose at fans of previous entries like this game did. It is like Lionhead only worried about catering to non-fans of the series. In the long term I think they created a game which will still not please these non-fans, and actively turns off long term fans. I hope Lionhead can recover from this title, but I don't know if I have ever had a development house go from as high as they were in my esteem, to as low as they are now. Fable 3 makes me sad. It is easily my biggest disappointment of the year. That said, it is not an awful game. Just majorly disappointing.

 

November

 

GoldenEye 007– Other than the very first level there is not a ton about this game that feels very much like Goldeneye 64. At the very least this is a very competent CoD clone which happens to star James Bond. It is a good game that doesn't scratch my nostalgia nearly as much as I thought it would. It sits near Fable 3 as one of my top disappointments of the year. It is still a fine game if you can play without expecting it to be Goldeneye 64, but since that is what I thought I was buying I have a hard time forgiving it. I am still dabbling with this title, so I guess it is a compliment that I have not thrown it to the side like I did so many games this year.

 

James Bond 007: Blood Stone– Yet another competent replication of yet another game. This time, Activision stuck James Bond into a Gears of War clone. Too bad Bizzare created a great base game, but forgot to add in any depth. The cover mechanics, graphics, story, and combat are all fine, but there is very little beyond walking through levels, getting in cover, using your almost magic cellphone, watching cut scenes, and shooting either pistols or machine guns. Sure, there are some cool driving levels, but these are so short and so rare that they don't feel like more than a brief respite from all the shooting and covering. This game feels like it could have been so much more than it was, but what it ends up being is a game anyone is safe taking a pass on.

 

Kinect and Kinect Adventures– Microsoft was smart to bundle the Kinect with this game. Adventures shows off what the Kinect is all about without trying to straight-up copy Wii Sports like Sony did with Sports Champions. Sure, Kinect Sports is there and is exactly that, but Adventures is how most will first experience Microsoft's attempt at besting the Wii. So, do they do just that? Yes and no. The potential for the Kinect is huge, and I have had much more fun with its library than I have with what Sony offered up so far. There could be more depth in Adventures, but unlike in Sports Champions, every gameplay type presented in Adventures is worth playing. How long you will be playing them is the real question. I got about four satisfying hours out of it. I probably should have gotten more.

 

 

Kinectimals– This title might be for babies, but I still have to admit that I have had a pretty good time messing with it. It is by far the application which most shows off the potential of Kinect. It also shows off Kinects weaknesses as well. My biggest complaint is that the game tries too hard to direct your actions at every moment. That, coupled with the occasional glitchiness and the inescapable feeling that what is happening is a large part smoke and mirrors really dims this titles impact. With a bit more freedom and some added challenge this could have been a tent pole release for Kinect. As it stands I can pretty much only recommend it to parents or those who are still a kid at heart.

 

 

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved– This is the title that most made Kinect a part of my life. I am trying to get back in shape right now, and before the holidays hit the workout provided in Your Shape was an everyday routine. While I would love more modes and more customization (like the ability to set up a routine of my own choosing) I have to admit that I was very much entranced by this title. Maybe it is a bit sad that it took a game to get me thinking about calories, but this game did what Wii Fit never could- it got me thinking about everything I do to my body, from eating to exercising. I don't know if I could give a "game" like this any higher praise. I hope Microsoft will realize that this type of software is just as important to Kinects success as hardcore titles and Wi-like games. Nintendo mostly failed to keep pushing and creating more of these lifestyle games, and their sales have suffered greatly. MS would be remiss to do the same.

 

 

Dance Central– I really respect what Harmonix attempted here, but damn is this game more work than it is fun for me. While Your Shape keeps me engaged and offers (just) enough to keep me playing for a good thirty minutes per session, Dance Central wears me out after about fifteen minutes. Not just physically, but it wears out my patience as well. That is not a good thing. I can see the draw if you are a dancer, but the process of learning all the moves is strenuous enough without this games inability to effectively let you know how you are performing moves incorrectly.

 

Kinect Sports– Soccer with this game is like Bocce with Sports Champions. It is miles better than the rest of the mini-games offered. Also like Sports Champions, this collection simply does not contain enough content. If you are going to replicate Wii Sports as much as this title does, then you need to make sure the games offered are better than Wii Sports. They are not. I just got this as a gift for Christmas, so it may grow on me more, but as it stands, soccer is the only sport I see myself pulling this out regularly for. That is kind of strange when Rare could have so easily transferred the style of game play they use for soccer to work for hockey, and even possibly football. Sure, those would just be mainly cosmetic changes… but lots of good is better than one good and lots of "meh."

 

Call of Duty: Black Ops– I was extremely hesitant to buy this year's CoD after the Activision/Treyarch debacle, but I had to try it after all the hype and a $20 off promotion from Amazon. I am sure glad that I did. While I found the single player to be much better than Modern Warfare 2, zombies and playing against bots with my buddy using split screen really sold me. I had only put in about six hours before we started playing this way, but now we have put in at least 18 more! I still won't jump into online, but sitting with my friend in the room was a blast.

 

The Sly Collection– Yeah, these games are still great. I do feel like the visuals aren't THAT upgraded from the PS2, but the 3D is nice. I have yet to mess with the Move mini-games… because my Move has mostly sat unused since about a month after it came out.

 

Apache: Air Assault– Part of me loves this helicopter flying game, but the rest of me knows that there are way too many issues to recommend this. Even to hardcore flying fans. The helicopters are fun to fly around, but it feels like the developers tried to add too much depth, and didn't get many of the included features nailed. Switching to a camera to take on baddies CoD-style should be a blast. Too bad there is no A.I. to fly the helicopter for you while you shoot, causing a good bit of frustration as you get shot down by unseen enemies. Also, there are just too many darn buttons to use to keep the game fun. I understand this title wants to be a simulation, but sometimes developers need to go with fun over realism.

 

NBA Jam– A downloadable title that EA rushed to retail to make up for the NBA Elite blunder. What is offered is brief fun, but trying to wrestle $50 from B-ball fans for this feels a bit like extortion. Luckily, I bought it for $25 from EA’s holiday sale. The controls are more than a bit awkward if you prefer buttons over analog sticks, and the other control options available aren't any kind of an improvement. The visuals are fun to watch and the game still plays like old school Jam fans remember.

 

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit– Man, everything about this game screams that I should like it… but I really don't. It started with visuals that weren't as good as I expected, and the disappointments continued as I got to play the game. Who knew cops always choose to wreck the suspects they pursue rather than, you know, stopping them. As someone who prefers to race in 1st person, the tracks are designed at an uncomfortable level angle, which means that I often can't see but twenty feet in front of my car. Auto-log is fun, and despite my disappointment at wrecking over stopping, the wrecks are always shocking fun. What is not so fun is the random traffic, which seems programmed to run head-on into police, even when their sirens and lights are blaring. This is one of my bigger disappointments of the year.

 

Sonic Colors– Possibly the best 3D Sonic game ever made, and close to one of the best platformers released on the Wii so far. Sonic Colors concentrates solely on Sonic, and is all the better for it. Interestingly, the game developers also obviously knew that Sonic is actually NOT all about speed, no matter what most other gamers claim. Like the first Sonic, Colors often has you pausing to wait. This makes you measure your actions a bit more than in games like Adventure, and offers up even more reward as you replay levels to earn better scores. Why Sega only put this gem on the Wii mystifies me a bit, but hopefully they just wanted to concentrate on nailing one version. A 360 and PS3 upgraded port could help spread the word about how great Sonic Colors is.

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows– Eariler this year I posted that this Harry Potter game could actually be good because reducing the layers of game play could allow the developers to concentrate on getting what they do include perfected. Too bad this game seemed to be designed by people who willfully stuck with painfully bad shooting, magic, and cover mechanics, rather than iterating until they all felt "right." This game is an abortion, only made worse by trying the Kinect controls, which are by far the biggest travesty I have seen yet on the new device. For shame, EA!

 

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood– If this game had a few less-frustrating missions and more payoff with the story, then it could have easily been my GOTY, but there were some appallingly bad missions, and the story did not have half the weight of 2. I loved concentrating on getting one city perfected, and there were many modes that were excellent inclusions, but it simply was not enough to make the game feel like it was more than a yearly iteration. The mechanics are still awesome, and I do highly recommend the title, but I would be lying if I didn't admit that I wanted a bit more.

 

Game Party in Motion– This game is what happens when a Wii developer shuttles a game to Kinect and doesn't even stop to think about the best way to implement the controls. All they did was haphazardly attach motions to actions, with very little logic and no sense of what would feel natural.

 

Adrenalin Misfits– This game would have made a fine downloadable title, but for full price (well, full priced for Kinect standards) this game just felt too low budget. Everything worked fine, but you never see much that feels impressive. From the rather weak attempt at cartoony graphics, to how small every level felt, there just is not much here that is worth checking out beyond a few minutes. As a proof of concept for a game like SSX, this game at least shows that snowboarding can be done well on Kinect.

 

Donkey Kong Country Returns– Retro gives a nice graphical and game play boost to the old Rare Country style of Donkey Kong titles. Too bad Nintento seems to not want their first party developers to give alternate control schemes that are not motion control heavy. While shaking the remote is not broken in any way, it is totally unnecessary. This wasn't enough to ruin this game for me, but is an annoyance.

 

 

Gran Turismo 5– At times awkwardly constructed, at other times simply enchanting, Gran Turismo fails to immediately live up to expectations. The great thing is that the goods far outweigh the bads with this title. Sure, the menus may be awkward, it may be hard to always find a race you want to be involved in, and the car shopping feels totally unintuitive… but the racing feels amazing. GT5’s biggest knock is that the graphics are not quite as good as I expected after all the nearly life like videos. The rest seems like it will be fixed in time thanks to Polyphany’s obsessive developers.