Your Games of the Year

[JaoSming]

We probably could have done this earlier in the month but now that it is 2011 for some of us what were your games of the year for 2010?

In order mine were

1. Rock Band 3
You guys know I am all about Harmonix and their games but RB3 is undoubtedly the best music game made. Not only does it give me a platform to play games with randoms online and with "casual" gamers locally, but it does so much that I am overwhelmed. My drums were dusty tonight because I hadn't played them in 2 weeks since I had been playing the Pro Guitar, and while I was playing drums the keyboard was collecting dust. Actually having to hit cymbals gives me a great nostalgia feeling from when I used to have a drum kit, playing keyboard again is fun since I actually kept a lot of skills since grade school, and of course actually learning Pro Guitar and having it transfer to my real guitar is well worth the money. Nevermind that my musical horizons expand from RB, there was no chance any other game would take #1.

2. NBA 2K11
Really, an administrator of a PC basketball site loves the latest PC basketball game? no shit... I know people are bitching about the patch and I do understand that there are issues with Association mode and My Player, but I have played nothing but Blacktop and NBA Today since I got the game. Blacktop and me are kinda obvious, I'll make a street mod for anything, but to keep things fresh I switch up the court, I setup mini-tournaments I should really make into a Story to share, and I do "random" games while I watch TV. NBA Today is better with the updated rosters with no effort on my end and I LOVE playing the games and then watching the highlights and top 10s the next day to see if anything I did got reenacted in real life. (so far, no) Best part is, I just barely got that damn tool, the best is about to get better! I've actually been playing a nearly 100% vanilla game. This past week I have been playing with the Franchise Face Off mod but other than that it was only been uniform and other art updates. I haven't even completed 1 Jordan Challenge.

3. Halo Reach
So I played through the campaign in 1 sitting and was blown away by the story since I really didn't care for anything about Halo other than the multiplayer. A lot of Halo 3 experts HATE Reach. In the Bungie forums they love to say the only people who like Reach were the ones who didn't get the skill cap of 50 in a playlist in Halo 3. Fuck them. Once you get used to 5 shotting instead of 4 shotting the transition is simple. All the different game types and giving SWAT it's own playlist to keep it out of the other modes makes this multiplayer the best. I can't wait to play Reach Grifball and even though I've taken a short hiatus from the game this month, I'm definitely going to keep playing it for years to come.

[Andrew]

1. Fallout: New Vegas

Just as addictive as Fallout 3, though I have forced myself to put it aside while I complete a few NLSC projects. I like the familiarity of the FO3 engine combined with the new additions and enhancements, not to mention the less linear storyline with true branching options. I hope the DLC comes to the PC in the not too distant future.

2. NBA 2K11

I might surprise more people than Jon with this pick being that I'm still usually more about Live/Elite than 2K, but how can you not be impressed with NBA 2K11? I'm still holding off until the official patch for the PC version before I consider starting an Association though. I had to get the DVD version so that I could collect the cover.

3. NBA Jam

A standalone release was for the best and while a lot of people still get hung up on the whole "It was going to be free with Elite, why should we pay full price?" argument, which I don't really get when the version that would've shipped with Elite wasn't the full game, I think it's a great game with plenty of nostalgic value, very true to the original games. Arcade basketball games do get repetitive after a while though and in that respect it's nice to have the Remix Modes, but when it comes down to it I can't rate it ahead of a sim basketball game, particularly when that game is NBA 2K11.

4. Smackdown vs RAW 2011

I didn't actually play much of Smackdown vs RAW 2010 when it was all said and done but I've enjoyed Smackdown vs RAW 2011 a lot more. I ultimately couldn't be bothered unlocking everything though, so I opted for the Unlock Everything DLC after playing through a couple of Road to Wrestlemanis and unlocking a few things the legit way, so that I can play with everything before I'm completely bored with it.

[Angelo]

Mafia 2 and NBA 2K11 period

[kibaxx7]

NBA 2K11, Mafia 2, PES 2011, Assassin's Creed II, NFS Hot Pursuit...

[Lamrock]

The only games from this last year I've bothered to play extensively/finish were:
Fallout: New Vegas (buggy, but also great - probably my GotY)
NBA 2K11 (very good game - maybe the best NBA sim ever)
God of War III (kinda short but really fun)
Gran Turismo 5 (takes a few hours to get good, but I love racing sims)
Bioshock 2 (kinda shitty but the graphics were great and I had to finish it after how great the first one was)

[George7]

I'm a pc gamer,so I'll talk only about pc games, not console titles and versions of the same game.

1.NBA 2k11
After the great game last year,here comes the best basketball game ever. Despite it's flows ,the sucky online experience(i don't want to play on low settings) and the patch that hasn't been published yet to fix those,i just can't stop playing it. I love to play with the Bulls on NBA today and follow the real schedule,the association is the best manager game node on a sports title,and with some patches(just check those lighting ones guys on the boards made) it looks like I'm watching a real game!

2.FIFA 11
I know the console version is not so much updated from last year,but on Pc is the answer on our prayers! Great graphics, amazing gameplay,so detailed manager mode,loads of patches and a fantastic online experience so far,makes it the best football game on pc! In fact,i was near of ranking it first, but association and NBA today gave 2k's the little edge against FIFA.

3.Assassin's Creed 2
There are not many games that i enjoyed so much as the first two,but because i have to complete a top 3 i will add Ac2. A great game,really nice storyline,graphics could have been better,but it proved to be a great game which kept me playing it almost till the end(well,till my Hdd crashed and lost my save) and it was not boring at all after a while(like the first). Really liked it.

I don't like fps that much, that's why i didn't refer to CoD,who is popular. Good games were football manager,F1 with it's stunning graphics(just play it on rainy weather conditions and Dx11. Breathtaking!)

I would add definitely a guitar hero/rock band game any time on the top list if a pc version was out(i still play GH3! ). The same is with Gran Tourismo 5 and NBA Jam,which i really liked after playing them a couple of times on a Ps3.

[el badman]

My 2 nominees:

- Mass Effect 2: while the story was not as compelling as its predecessor's, Bioware improved most of the gameplay weaknesses from he first one, which made it even more of a blast to play. An outstanding achievement.
- Fallout: New Vegas: still hard to believe that the developers used a 5 year old engine for this, which made the game suffer from the same drawbacks that were affecting Fallout 3 (low-res textures, awkward animations, lack of physics and constant stability issues), but everything else was pretty much perfect: interesting main plot and side-stories, solid voicing, ridiculously addictive gameplay, highly customizable on PC,...Like Andrew, I also hope that the PC version will see the DLCs.

Other picks that need to be mentioned imo:
NBA 2K11 (far more polished than 2K10 and much more fun to play), Metro 2033 (outrageously overlooked, the best visuals since Crysis), Assassin's Creed II (gorgeous and not as repetitive as the first one, but crappy ending), Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (I only played the singleplayer part and it was certainly on par with CoD singleplayer campaigns), Mafia II (great potential and amazing attention to details, but ultimately a bit of a disappointment for me), Bioshock 2 (not as goundbreaking as the first one, but much more fun to play for me).

[deihatein]

Only pick those games that I like and played for like hours

Splinter Cell Conviction (PC): Only stealth game that I have bother to play and loving it.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (PSP): Big fan of the KH series for some reason, and the PSP version manage to somehow replicate the first two games combined in the PS2. It has it's flaws but it's still a great game.
VVVVVV(PC): Great indie game, old-school style of platforming and difficulty
NBA 2k11: Got to include because most of you included it

[|)e8*]

NBA 2k11
Red Dead Redemption
Fallout New Vegas
Mass Effect 2 (was that 2010?)

[el badman]

Mass Effect 2 (was that 2010?)

It was released late January 2010 I believe.

[Andrew]

NBA 2k11: Got to include because most of you included it

You don't have to include it if you don't consider it one of your games of the year, but given this is a basketball gaming website I'd be surprised if it didn't make most people's lists.

[Lean]

Mass Effect 2 is my GoTY. I just started with New Vegas so I really can't say much of it yet, but I read that Obsidian did a great job with the game reverting (almost) to the old character leveling system of Fallout 2.

[Houndy]

Well I'm a sport gamer so, here is my Top 3

NBA 2k11
NCAA Football 11
NBA Jam

[volsey]

Call me stupid but I don't even remember what came out this year. So I read through what you guys posted and I'll post my opinion.

Red Dead Redemption
- I think most people, including myself, were expecting GTA4 meets western. I thought GTA4 was somewhat of a disappointment personally, and didn't know what quite to expect for Red Dead. One of the best video game characters to date (Marston), large interesting map to explore, and fun original gameplay made this a must play and honestly surprised me.

Bioshock 2 (forgot this came out in 2010)
- The original Bioshock was probably the most memorable game of this generation for me, and that is a tough game to follow up. The sequel did a decent job, but it was probably impossible to live up to the first game due to the shear originality and imagination of the original Bioshock. The world of Rapture was just as creepy, eerie, and curious as ever, but just wasn't as fresh. I thought the decisions they made added to the game in a positive way, multiplayer was fun (although I've never been a huge online fan other than FPS). It was one of the best single player adventures this year, and had a story that always left me hanging on for a bit more.

CoD Black Ops
- Sold it for $20 less than I paid for it just over a month after purchasing it. Treyarch makes a decent game, but should not share the same game title as the makers formerly known as Infinity Ward. The CoD generation is over I think (hopefully).

Assassins Creed Brotherhood
- As the title suggests this is not Assassins Creed 3, and for good reason. A little over a year went by after I had played the second, and without reading reviews/info about the game, I wouldn't have been able to tell the differences between the second and Brotherhood's core gameplay. It was fun, and for the first while playing the game, I was in love. I got lost in the side missions, and exploring the city. But unlike the 2nd, there was only one city to explore, and it wasn't fully unlocked until the last few missions of the game. I explored what I could, when I could, and by accident, ended the game without fully exploring the city as I didn't even realize I was nearing the end of the story. This goes to show the story wasn't as engaging as it could have been, and parts of the game didn't feel fully utilized or incorporated properly. While I loved AC2, AC:Brotherhood didn't impress. Online was kinda neat, but again, not my cup of tea. Game was too easy, and story not as interesting. Great gameplay, and environment usually can go along way, unfortunately this game was a let down in my mind.

NBA 2k11
- This game was the most hyped, promoted basketball game ever. It got raving reviews, and supposedly revolutionized the genre. I don't know about that, it definitely added alot for the average user, for me personally, not a HUGE amount was changed. My player is still not a fully developed mode in my opinion, and association didn't see much of an overhaul. I think the gameplay is still phenomenal and overall the authenticity is great, but a few nitpicks still hold it back from the other games that come to mind.
- Truly I think it's unfair to compare sport games to other games for GotY. These sports games are basically produced once, then improved on year to year. They might say "this and that were completely overhauled this year", but in the end there isn't a drastic difference. But this is a great game period, and if any sport game deserves to be discussed for GotY, this is it.

Mass Effect 2
- Can't say a whole lot about it as I haven't played it. I just recently started playing the first Mass Effect, and love it's atmosphere and the amount of detail that is in the game, it makes the whole world so believable. From what I've read and heard, the sequel cleans up the problems from the first (even though they're hard to find) and even though I have never played it, I have absolutely no problem if this won.

Fallout New Vegas
- I didn't buy it, but played if for 360. Considering I wasn't as impressed with first one for this generation of consoles as most people, I didn't like this one either. I think it's inexcusable the little amount that they changed to the game. I liked the story more from what I played, and the environment was cool, but atrocious gameplay and technical problems piss me off when people even mention this game. Mind you I played the first on PS3, New Vegas on 360, and never touched PC.

Mafia II
- Played and loved the first, really truly want to play the second. I don't believe it will live up to the first, but the demo was fun, and I love the authentic mafia genre. Sadly this game will have to wait till this summer for me to give it a shot.

GT5
- Bought the Logitech wheel for Prologue, loved it and then didn't get to use it for a year (maybe 2?), haven't really gone that deep into 5, but already it's lost a little of it's magic. Call me a weak driver, but the farther I progress, and the faster the cars get, the less enjoyable the overall driving gets in some cases. Driving seems tougher and in the end less authentic. But overall I say I haven't given this a fair chance, one leg in my cheap tv dinner stand that my wheel is attached to ended up bending one intense race, and I haven't touched it since. But this game is truly satisfying.

I don't remember/too lazy to check, but I think FF13 was released this year, fuck was that a disappointment, X and XI were such amazing games. God of War III, never really finished I or II, and didn't play III. Just didn't interest me, it'd be like a quick action movie to me, little bit of fun and interest, but not memorable or essential for my gaming needs.

Id say its down to Red Dead, Bioshock 2, and Mass Effect 2.

[Murat]

NBA 2K11

[benji]

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (I only played the singleplayer part and it was certainly on par with CoD singleplayer campaigns)

You realize this is damning with faint praise.

I honestly can't fathom how you still buy games like this and don't partake in their multiplayer which retains all of the mechanics but makes it dynamic. And was almost all of the development effort. They only added a campaign to Bad Company because it was going to be the console version of the series. They spent the money on the multiplayer, so should you is my feeling with all these shitty FPSes.

It may be the best casual multiplayer FPS on the PC since TF2. (I don't really consider L4D2 to be inherently multiplayer.) Starting a match in a city and at the end while waiting to spawn recognizing that huge swaths of the map have been leveled from the battle is incredible. It changes your cover, changes your path, and next time you fight on the map a completely different situation will occur. There's one map I've played on, once the opponents side was leveled because we were overpowering them, next it was our side. Next time I played it the straight path was the one leveled and chaotic with little cover, another time through one team was flanking very well which wound up as that becoming the focus of battle that wound up leaving things in rubble while the straight path was more untouched. This lone mechanic makes up for all the flaws left from trying to copy MW and inability to learn from BF2.

You already have the game, might as well get use out of it. There's at least two people you know from here who will play it and let you in their squad.

If you didn't buy it, all you did was waste your bandwidth on the copycat single player with three brilliant design moments.

[el badman]

I honestly can't fathom how you still buy games like this and don't partake in their multiplayer which retains all of the mechanics but makes it dynamic.

Because I'm a selfish prick.
I've never played multiplayer with any game, but I do admit that some of them, like Bad Company 2 or Borderlands, certainly sound like fun playing with other peeps. It's just that, even though I don't have a crazy busy schedule, I can't even imagine how much coordination it would take to play multiplayer with "known" players (as opposed to completely random ones). Compared to you guys, I don't spend a whole lot of time online...
Also, if I'm gonna play a game, I do want it to have some sort of story, good or bad, but like a campaign. I really can't see the point of capture-the-flag kind of gameplay, and I might wrong, but I think that's mostly what most multiplayer games are about.

[benji]

Maybe in like 1995. Or in crappy games. Good games now have territorial control design where the two sides fight over control of the map. Either through a dynamic system of control or attack/defend model. TF2 does even more clever and unique variations. We'll always have deathmatch and capture-the-flag though.

And Bad Company 2 you can more than hop into any random game. Plus it, Steamworks games, etc. all have friends list where you can easily see if someone you know is playing and one click join them.