No one else stood a chance: My Game of the Year

Only one game stood head and shoulders above the rest this year.  2010 turned out to be a pretty good year for gaming, and it turned out to pretty much be the year of the sequel.  We had some surprises, namely some sequels that exceeded expectations such as the absolutely amazing Red Dead Redemption, and the surprisingly enjoyable Halo Reach.  Obviously, Black Ops offered one of the better story experiences in recent Call of Duty memory and has attempted to shake up multiplayer a bit.  I believe that Karma has an Assassins Creed brotherhood review in the works, but in my opinion it is the best in the series.  Also Bioshock 2 and Fall Out: New Vegas were fun rides(even though ive barely scratched the surface of New Vegas).  Also being a new PS3 owner im excited to dig into God of War 3 and Heavy Rain.  However, none of these even comes close to my game of the year.

Mass Effect 2.  I have played a lot of great games, read the great sci-fi novels, and seen the movies.  There has never been a story as deep and meaningful in video games.  I loved the Baldur’s Gate series and not the crappy console ports the real version on the pc. Mass Effect is better.  Mass Effect elicits emotions that few other games can.   

The second installment of this series improves from the original in every way.  I’ll admit the first one had its flaws, but the story kept me going.  I can’t think of a single problem that I had with Mass Effect 2.  Mass Effect 2 did a great job of keeping the characters that you grew to love in the first one around (some more than others) and introducing and developing new characters along the way.  Every action that you take in this game has a significant impact on not only this game but the entire trilogy. 

I’ll try to do this without giving away any spoilers, but depending on how you handle the last sequence of the game your whole party can survive, or all of them except a few(including you) can die.  Considering your save is read at the start of the next game this is going to be very important. This game has grown and expanded and consistently makes you make the difficult choices.  Other games(like fallout) made it very obvious which was the good choice or bad.  You know save the town or blow it up.  Decisions. Decisions.  There is none of that in Mass Effect.

Additionally I have purchased (although not completed) all of the DLC and I must say that it is brilliant and well worth the money.  I would have paid even more money for the best DLC of the bunch as once again it advanced both the stories characters and will affect a major plot line in the next game.  I hope that other developers will start to do DLC like this.  I think that prequels or story gap fillers to many games would be a huge hit. 

I won’t drone one too much longer.  The combat is perfect and the graphics are stunning.  However, you can tell that they are still trying to figure out the pacing “problem.”  The beginning is intense, so is the end.  In the middle you do all the “optional” missions and build up your team, which I guess could be considered tedious to some, however those missions are always fun and build the story.  If you don't care enough to try to do missions for each of your team members, and build the story this probably isn't the game for you.  

I am and will be driven by story and character development.  I can forgive a game for minor and even major technical hiccups if it has a great story.  That is probably why I love LOST, and why I hated Fallout 3 so much for its ending.  Mass Effect pulls me in on both the character development and the overall story.  If I ever wait at midnight for a game to release again, it will be for Mass Effect 3.

So for me Mass Effect 2 was the clear winner.  I was going to make out a list of the top 3 but I honestly couldn’t.  Read Dead Redemption is definitely second.  If I had to pick a third id say Black Ops for the story, I haven’t beat Brotherhood yet, but unless the story blows my socks off im gonna say that all those other games before the break get kind of mixed in  for me. 

This is just my opinion obviously there are a ton of games to pick from so feel free to disagree with me and write your own fellas.

Smooth Op