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This was a great year of gaming for me.  I was surprised by new titles I hadn’t heard of, pleased by spontaneous buys, and disappointed by games I had planned to buy for months prior.  Given how long it takes for me to get through games I usually just buy them or trade for them on Goozex, using the service as a long term Gamefly type setup.  As my rate of consumption increases I have to wonder if using Gamefly as a set rate of expense is a more cost effective solution, especially given the pain when I buy a stinker.  We shall see.

Below is a list of the major games I have played throughout this year.  With each is a little quip about them, and they are categorized by awesomeness.  Without further ado, here is the list:

Amazing adventures –

Borderlands – This game came out of nowhere and slapped me in the face.  I remember seeing some trailer for it, saying it was cool, then promptly forgetting about it in a sea of incoming games.  On release week, it was brought to my attention again.  The action RPG style, cell themed graphics and co-op features immediately attracted me to the title.  By release day I found myself in a Best Buy, shelling out my $60.  It was worth every penny.  Not only did it play awesome, and have great co-op, but Gearbox continued to put out DLC for this game.  In fact, I would say that I played it 6 to 8 months out of the entire year.  It had great legs to begin with, but the DLC made it into a supermodel.  At the time of this writing I have 2 days and 6 hours into my primary character, a siren.  I have enjoyed every minute of it, both on and off line, and continue to play it currently in between other games.  This was my game of the year.  Full Review

Mass Effect 2 – Literally taking your character from the first game and continuing the story (with story elements correct between games where you made hard choices) this game consumed a fair bit of my spring.  Like Borderlands, the action RPG style played really well, but the story and dialog options gave this game a lot of richness in its universe.  Leaning on my knowledge of how I never went back for a second playthrough on the first game, I played every major side quest in ME2 to their fullest.  I soaked it up like a kitchen sponge.  The plot twists and engaging nature of the story made the 30+ hours I put into the first play through worth every minute.  I knew myself well though, as I never picked it up again after the ending credits.  There was DLC released for it, but by then I had already pawned it on Goozex and was back into Borderlands again.

Splinter Cell Conviction – As a fan of Clancy games for years, this one really baked them all into one for me.  Taking the more agressive tactical elements from Rainbow Six Vegas and blending them with the assassin’s stealth of Splinter Cell, Ubisoft has created a game that tore me away from even one of my favorite games of the year Borderlands for a few months of distraction in a tight leather armor suit.  In order to take advantage of some online co-op opportunities I picked this up used off eBay of all places.  I played it online with a friend on some pre-planned weekends without ever having done the story.  I had so much fun with these couple stints that it spurned me to not only play through the entire game, but we also played through the 5 hour co-op storyline again on the highest difficulty but in half the time of the previous run through.  This game consumed a lot of time for me and I enjoyed every minute.  Previous SC games never had the pull into me that this one did and I look forward to future games if they take this direction and blend of game play elements.  Full Review

A nice fling –

Split/Second – I picked this game up after I had gotten too frustrated with Blur.  Like most games, I got it on a deal and always figured I could dump it on Goozex if I didn’t like it.  When I get into the game I was overjoyed by the gameplay and explosive graphical representations that the environment provided when you triggered events to crash your opponents.  The play and design reminded me a lot of Burnout 3 or 4, especially with the generic car makers and repeating tracks.  Though it was a rush to play up through episode 7, the game started to wain for me as the races became too difficult to get enough points to unlock progression in the game.  This lead me to having to backtrack and play previous episodes over again just to unlock newer races, which ended up being on most of the same tracks anyway.  Online play was decent, but more often than not it was hard to get a match together with a limited amount of people playing online.  It was an amazing game for a short time, but lacked the legs to make me play more than a month or so.

Kinect Adventures – I played this force fed game that comes bundled with the Kinect sensor for several days.  Given that it was my only Kinect title out of the gate it’s not like I had a lot of choice unless I wanted to keep playing with swipe and voice controls in the dashboard.  Overall the play experiences were very tight and controlled at a level of accuracy that easily surpassed the Wii we have.  With only 5 main game types and a dozen or so levels in these types you can easily see all there is to see in the game after a long day of playing.  Granted, they are still fun to go back into, but only to get a next higher level of performance or score.  Gold medals seemed to come a little too easily but Platinums were rather challenging to get.  Lots of fun, but it certainly spurns you to get more games for the Kinect in short order.  To be fair, how many people just stayed at Wii Sports when they got the console?

Doritos Crash Course – I have to say, this is one of the best platformer games I have played in a long time.  Taking your XBL avatar and running it through a physical obstical course is both fun and entertaining.  A lot of great features were put into a game that was obviously setup as an advertisement.  That’s the real rub though, you only see the Doritos name in the title screen and at the start of each level in small letters.  Small things like the screen cracking in a virtual spiderweb of your TV glass when you get thrown towards it and a collection of falling animations spice up what could have been a fairly boring game.  For a free game, it’s easily better than many paid XBLA games I’ve nabbed in the past.  Good job Doritos!

Red Steel 2 – This game was picked up on a whim.  Mostly it was because I wanted to play with more swords than Wii Sports Resort would offer.  Since the second iteration of Red Steel required Motion Plus, I figured it had to be fairly accurate.  For $7 I got it from the Target clearance rack.  Needless to say, the game play was fun, but it didn’t keep my interest very long.  The combination of sword and shooting works out pretty well, however the Wii seems to get out of sync with my movements if the action gets too heavy, causing me to get a beatdown while waiting for it to figure out what I’m doing.  I love the concept, and the game is fun overall with a fairly decent set of story cutscenes to string you along, but it just doesn’t have the staying power to be played more than a few times for me.

Missed connections –

Blur – I had a lot of excitement about this game.  When both Blur and Split/Second came out around the same time, I had to make a choice.  Ultimately what won for me was the ease of slipping into play with this game (Mario Kart on steroids), the social challenge pieces and the 4 player split screen (where S/S only had two).  Once I got it for a third of retail within a month of launch via a Kmart sale and a publisher coupon.  I figured worst case I could make a “profit” by dumping it on Goozex if I lost interest.  The first couple brackets of play were a bit of fun, and I leveraged social challenges to a couple people on my friends list, played split screen with my kids and played a bit online.  After about the third bracket I found that though I was still gaining fans, I was unable to progress.  It seemed as though they had designed the game in such a way that you would have to build up enough fans in order to unlock some car that would make you win.  I tried several more play sessions to progress and could not.  At this point I basically gave up and put it on Goozex for trade at a high point value.  Bye bye Blur baby.

Crackdown 2 – As mentioned in my previous post, I was deeply invested in the first game, so naturally I thought this one would hold true and be at least the same if not better.  With so much pent up anticipation it was only a matter of time before I finally got the game and its true colors were shown to me.  For the most part, the game had less story and structure than the first, leaving me with only a checklist of objectives to roll through.  No amount of new features like wing suits or helicopters or zombies could keep me from the fact that I was plopped down in an open world and merely told to just go out and have fun.  The fun lasted for a while, but without major plot points or really any guidance it came down to just blowing things up and collecting orbs.  Fun for a while, but not enough to even complete any set of tasks.

My DS – I swear I played something on my DS this year, but I have no idea what it was.  Most likely it was Peggle…still.  Recently the DS almost falls into phone gaming for me:  something to quickly pull out and use for short sessions.  It’s too bad because when I have a large amount of time (airplane) I love sinking a bunch of time into games like GTA: Chinatown Wars and such.  This just wasn’t one of those years.  We have Wario DIY in the house now, so maybe I’ll start playing with that.  Full Review

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And there you have it, a year of gaming for me tied up in a pretty little bow.  For the upcoming year I have a hard time getting excited about anything I have seen on the horizon except for Mass Effect 3 and Portal 2.  However if 2010 was any indication, I’m sure a game will come out of nowhere and slap me about the face with its awesomeness, just when I need it most.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

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