Release Date: January 26, 2010.
Platform: 360/PC (later PS3)
ESRB Rating: M
Developer/Publisher: BioWare/EA
GameRankings: 95.6%
Completely Arbitrary Personal Score: 9.6/10 (Legendary)
Look past the horrific box art. Look past the meandering, confused main plotline that only really pays off at the very end. Look past the relative lack of RPG elements. What's left is still one of the most daring, absorbing and best games ever made. The original Mass Effect, while certainly a great game, perhaps reached a little too far, a little too high. The concepts were great, but the execution (and more importantly the polish), was underwhelming at times, ending sequences aside. It was very much an experiment, albeit a high budget, Triple A one.
The second Mass Effect suffers from no such lack of polish. It's staggeringly massive and detailed, featuring a cast of characters at least double in size of the first, and yet no less intriguing. In fact, it's in the other characters in your party that this game truly shines. Their personal quests are among the most involving and high-stakes in the entire game, as they all look to Commander Shepard to help them put their affairs in order before what looks to be a suicide mission. Except that it isn't. Or it is, depending on how you play your proverbial cards, and how prepared those cards are.
This is possibly BioWare's magnum opus (at least until the third game comes out) and one of the best games of this new decade, full stop. I recommend it heavily if you haven't played it (or the first one), or even if hardcore, old school sci-fi mixed with adrenaline pumping action on a scale not usually seen in video games is your thing. It should be.
BioShock 2
Release Date: February 9, 2010.
Platform: PS3/360/PC
ESRB Rating: M
Developer/Publisher: 2k Marin/2k Games
GameRankings: 87.87%
Completely Arbitrary Personal Score: 8.5/10 (Very Good)
BioShock 2 is a game I wasn't sure I thought should exist. The original ended on a nearly pitch-perfect tone, and the sequel wasn't even being made by all the same people. By all rights, it was an unnecessary and possibly terrible game. It wasn't. While the plots and twists weren't as sharp and shocking as the first one, the protagonist and the pacing were miles better, and while the setting and ideologies behind the game were wearing a little thin, the gameplay was arguably better (which was a weak point I found with the original). It's not as good as BioShock, but few games are. It expanded and elaborated upon almost everything that was great about the original.
I will say this, however. It's probably a good thing that the next BioShock isn't set in Rapture. I'm would have had a hard time believing there are any splicers left to kill if there was a third game set in Andrew Ryan's underwater dystopia.
Final Fantasy XIII
Release Date: March 9, 2010.
Platform: PS3/360
ESRB Rating: T
Developer/Publisher: Square Enix
GameRankings: 85.17%
Completely Arbitrary Personal Score: 8.3/10 (Good)
The Final Fantasy series is one that has been slowly fighting the passage of time over the last decade. 2001 saw the release of Final Fantasy X, in my opinion one of the two or three best of the entire series, and the last entry to follow the tried and true turn-based methodology followed by all the others. Since then, the series has scrabbled to find it's way in a more modern gaming landscape. FF12, while a good game, held very little of the magic so often found in its predecessors. FF13 perhaps captures a little more of that old charm that made the Final Fantasy series one of my favorites growing up. The combat system is fluid and truly original, instead of being the clunky clone found in FF12. The characters, while still annoying for long stretches of time, were maybe a little more indelible than those found in 12. The setting, while not as iconic as Ivalice, is visually striking (even if a few too many hours are spent in the same places). FF13 is not a bad game. In fact, it's a better game than 12. But it's not great. And it's still a lateral step rather than a forward one. FFX was a last great gasp. Everything since then has been a wheeze.
Red Dead Redemption
Release Date: May 18, 2010.
Platform: PS3/360
ESRB Rating: M
Developer/Publisher: Rockstar North/Rockstar Games
GameRankings: 94.18%
Completely Arbitrary Personal Score: 9.3/10 (Great)
Manifest Destiny. If there's any phrase that describes Red Dead Redemption, it's this one. The year is 1911. The old west is at it's end. Civilization is spreading, unchecked and unstoppable. The only thing worse than the lawless men who terrorize the wilderness are the civilized men who control it. This might be sounding a little pompous, but if there's anything this game is about, it's the expanding moral bankruptcy of the fledgling American Empire.
How does this translate to a game instead of a concept? Quite well. Few games, if any, quite capture the essence of loneliness like RDR does. It's not the biggest open world in gaming, but sometimes it feels like it, taking place over an extremely diverse landscape that combines pastiches of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and, like all good westerns, Mexico. Speaking of good westerns, many of the characters, towns and situations are homages to many of the great westerns (most noticeable is the Man With No Name's poncho).
Red Dead Redemption sits alone in the history of gaming as a singularly lonely work, one that combines the reality and the fiction of the old west into a sad, desperate game that is as affecting as anything Rockstar has ever done. And it's damned fun to boot.
Halo: Reach
Release Date: September 14, 2010.
Platform: Xbox 360
ESRB Rating: M
Developer/Publisher: Bungie/Microsoft Game Studios
GameRankings: 91.71%
Completely Arbitrary Personal Score: 9.1/10 (Great)
The Halo series has never been one praised for it's realistic depictions of war. And for good reason. For the most part, these games are high sci-fantasy, starring an invincible cyborg as he fights valiantly against an unstoppable alien horde and boogeyman from the darkest corners of the id. But there is, despite what you might think, despite what you may have been lead to believe, more. The same sort of "more" that was in 2009's dark little masterpiece ODST. The same sort of "more" you might find in an actual wartime scenario: the prolonging of the inevitable. It's readily apparent, early on (even without the sort of familiarity with the background material of the Halo universe that I'm writing from) that the battle for Reach will be lost. No matter what you do, no matter what your squad does, you will lose. But that doesn't mean you can't die trying. And die trying you do.
With every "we just need to buy some time," to every "we still have a chance" in the script, that experience of sacrifice paints the narrative of Halo: Reach in shades the other Halo games never really had to use. As Bungie's swan song, it does as good a job as possible in encapsulating what made the Halo games maybe THE premiere series of the 2000s, while simultaneously being different enough from the other games in tone to be it's own legitimate game. From the start, you that it's the end, in more way than one.
Fallout: New Vegas
Release Date: October 19, 2010.
Platform: PC/360/PS3
ESRB Rating: M
Developer/Publisher: Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks
GameRankings: 83.8%
Completely Arbitrary Personal Score: 8.6/10 (Very Good)
New Vegas is another 2010 sequel that, to begin with, I wasn't sure should exist. Fallout 3 was such a singular, wonderful title, that I wasn't convinced that a sequel, a sequel developed by another studio nonetheless, was necessary. And, much like BioShock 2, I was wrong. Where that game built off what was good about the original, with minor additions, Fallout: New Vegas builds off of what's different about it than it's predecessor. It's similar to Fallout 3 in setting and name. That's about it. Set in the significantly more developed area around what used to be Las Vegas, New Vegas takes place in a more political world. Notice I didn't use the word "civilized." Nothing in the Fallout universe can ever hope to have such lofty aspirations.
Fallout: New Vegas isn't as good as its decorated predecessor, but then again, few games are. It comes close enough (while being different enough) to come wholly recommended to anyone who knows that war never changes.
Fable III
Release Date: October 26, 2010.
Platform: Xbox 360/PC
ESRB Rating: M
Developer/Publisher: Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios
GameRankings: 80.52%
Completely Arbitrary Personal Score: 7.9/10 (Above Average)
Fable III is unique among the series for finally, finally, living up to at least some of Peter Molyneux's lofty praise and otherwordly hype. After twice promising the moon and delivering just a Polaroid, Molyneux's final (?) entry into the Fable series is the biggest, most ambitious, most tensely plotted entry in the series. That doesn't mean it's the best.
Where the third game differs from the others is in it's political aspirations. The hero does not become any more powerful, in a video game sense, than either of the other Fable protagonists, but he or she does become significantly more powerful politically. Where the second game saw you become a king, the third game sees you become a ruler. Alliances, economics, treaties: everything that one could reasonably expect to come with being a monarch is present in some form or another, and it adds a touch of Real Time Strategy that I found both surprising and refreshing for a game of this type. Another great addition is the co-op feature, which allows a friend to join your game (with their hero) at any point in time, building their character to be just a strong physically as you. While it's nothing novel, it is well implemented.
Why isn't Fable III the best in the series? For precisely the same reason. The first game was simply the journey of a kid growing into an adult, and maybe saving the world along the way. There was a sense of anonymity and...wonder that seems to be lacking (purposefully so) in the sequels. I really can't describe it. That being said, Fable III is still wonders better than the second game. Also, Stephen Fry and John Cleese are in this game. That's certainly never a negative.
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