2010 was kinda disappointing to me

Mass Effect 2 was nice but felt like it didn't progress the main story at all. Good character stories but it felt lacking compared to the first game's narrative.

Red Dead Redemption was good but I dropped it halfway, picked it back up later to finish it. RDR2 is so much better it wiped the first game off my radar.

God of War III had the production values, mega spectacle, but I liked GoW 2 better game play and pacing wise.

Heavy Rain was a great experience, had many highlights but also tedious sections with questionable motion control like inputs.

DKCR got frustrating, never finished it.

Super Mario Galaxy 2, also never finished. Wasn't as good as the first one.

Xenoblade Chronicles I couldn't get into. I played for a couple hours and was just bored.

And so on.


I did play GT5 a lot but it's overshadowed now by GT7 in VR.

I also really enjoyed NFS: Hot Pursuit but wouldn't consider it goty material either.


Yet one game I did enjoy from start to finish despite some hard crashes and having to load an older save after getting stuck on a broken path. It's the best in the series now imo, Fallout New Vegas. Choice mattered in that one, it was great to try out different paths.

Great stories, great characters, kept me engaged from start to finish, multiple times.

Thus my choice is for other: Fallout New Vegas

PS It's missing from the list ;)

Between Starcraft 2 and Mario Galaxies 2

Another one not on the poll nor shortlist (smh): Alan Wake Me Up When September Ends.  It's a tight fight between that and RDR.

Cultural Impact: I remember hearing mostly about Call of Duty: Black Ops in and around this year. That was like people's game of the century up to that point, it seemed like, sort of just continuing trends that took hold in the culture in a big way during the prior decade.

That said, I think it's also worth mentioning Xenoblade Chronicles here in this category because it started a trend in JRPGs toward seeking to mimic the open-world type structures of their Western counterparts and downgrading the narrative emphasis in general. This is where they began to lose their Japanese-ness, or at least the aspects thereof that I'd found more appealing anyway. I've generally been less interested in the subgenre since.

Favorite Games: If my tone toward the above seems negative, it's because I didn't relate much to gaming culture at this point in time. My favorite game in 2010 was Heavy Rain, which felt like a breakthrough for interactive movies owing to the consequential nature of one's decision-making and range of different player characters and the roles they play. Looking back at even this entry today though, the truth is that it's not as special to me anymore as it once was. These days the inevitable genre flaws (like the unavoidable disruptions to the flow of conversation that come with voiced dialogue choices) have an immersion-breaking affect on me that didn't seem as pronounced at the time when this type of game design felt fresher. Still a 2010 favorite with real nostalgia value for me nonetheless though.

Final Fantasy XIII was actually another favorite of mine from this year in that it launched in 2010 here in the U.S., but obviously isn't a voting option since it had come out the prior year in Japan.

I also remember liking Enslaved: Odyssey to the West a good deal. There was just a sweetness to the relationship between Monkey and Trip and the way it evolved over the course of the game that got to me. This and the fact that Rock Band 3 continued that franchise's tradition of awesomeness pretty well rounds out all the commentary I feel the necessity to offer on this particular year in this category.

Other Notes: This was kind of the trough for my interest in video games really. The 2010s were actually my favorite decade in gaming so far, contrary to the impression my commentary here may have just given you. Seriously, most of my top 50 favorite games of all time were released in this decade! My relationship to this medium did improve and you'll start to see that soon. The shift in my perspective was closely related to the ascent of the indie gaming scene that I slowly began to take more notice of soon after this point.

Of the ones I’ve played it’s Vanquish. I should get around to Mass Effect 2 and Starcraft 2 though.

1. Vanquish
2. Alan Wake
3. Ghost Trick
4. Revenge of the Titans
5. Splinter Cell Conviction
6. Super Meat Boy
7. Red Dead Redemption
8. Limbo
9. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
10. God Eater

Super Mario Galaxy 2. Really like DKC Returns, Xenoblade Chronicles, Vanquish and Mass Effect 2 as well. Great year.

VanQuish. Best SP TPS ever made

I'll vote for Limbo, since it is a wonderful atmospheric puzzle game, with perfect pacing. Truly a masterpiece. But good year overall, also really enjoyed Halo Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops, God of War 3, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Metro 2033 (PC, Xbox360)

This was a difficult year to pick from. Not because I played a huge number of amazing games, but because nothing I've played from the year is quite among my all time favourite games. Red Dead Redemption was good, but I found a lot of it cumbersome and very few things in it were actually great. Xenoblade Chronicles is a very good JRPG, but has plenty of issues of its own. Seemingly a third of the characters you meet are various shades of annoying, you could cut about 20 hours from the game and lose nothing of importance, it takes ages for the story to properly get going, and the gameplay can get really repetitive, especially early on. Alan Wake is a good horror game with wonderful atmosphere that suffers from annoying and repetitive gameplay and  Birth by Sleep, Peace Walker, and Valkyria Chronicles 2 are the three best PSP games I've played, but all of them pale in comparison to their home console counterparts.

AC: Brotherhood was a great open world game, and still one of my two personal favourites in the series along with 2, but it isn't quite in the GotY range. If I was judging these on just their stories and characters, then I'd give the nod to Nier, but the gameplay in the original version really isn't all that interesting or engaging and holds it back. Limbo was a wonderfully atmospheric platformer, but it didn't leave quite the impression on me than it did on a lot of others. Vanquish was also very close to getting my vote on the sheer strength of its impeccable gameplay. I don't think I've ever played another 3rd person shooter that is as exciting to play. However, it's also a very short game that barely cracks four hours on normal difficulty, and the story and characters are mostly just an excuse to go and shoot things. That's not a bad thing, but not the kind of thing I would ever consider the best game of the year.

Super Meat Boy is a great platformer, but unlike the very best in the genre, I've never felt much desire to go back to replay it after finishing the game. Finally, though its actual western release didn't happen until 2022, The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero is technically a 2010 game since we're going with their original release dates. The series is also a perennial favourite of mine, but Trails From Zero is also the weakest game I've played in it thus far. 

So what exactly do I pick? No game from this year would win my GotY in most other years, and since at the moment there's the yearly greatest games event happening on the site, I noted that there isn't a single game from 2010 on my personal top 50. I think I'll just give it to Trails From Zero purely on the strength of the series as a whole. While it doesn't quite reach the heights of the other titles, the storyline connections to those other games do lift it up by association. It's not going to win, not even close, but it's probably the one I'm most likely to go back and replay at some point. I suppose Xenoblade Chronicles is a close second, but it annoyed me far more so it falls short of the top spot for the year.