AtomicGamer 2010 Game of the Year Awards
2010 has been a great year for gamers, with the release of some of the biggest titles and surprisingly good (and bad) experiences. We saw the end of more than one major game series, and the birth of hopefully at least a few franchises. We'll start with the big categories, deliver our Game of the Year, and then move into a few other categories that we just couldn't stop ourselves from creating.
MMORPG of the Year
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: Blizzard Entertainment has done it again with one of the best MMO releases of all time, and probably the best expansion pack they've made - ever. Cataclysm stuffs in so many fun things to do, while also bringing in a level of challenge for seasoned players that was missing from Wrath of the Lich King. While the people who play can easily run the experience if you let them, and the amount of time you have to invest to get satisfaction out of it can be daunting, this is still one of the most polished, entertaining MMORPG experiences you can have.
Multiplatform Game of the Year
Mass Effect 2: BioWare's RPG masterpiece wouldn't have qualified for this category to us, except a PS3 version of ME2 is coming inside of the next month. This game excels on both PC and 360, and its superb storytelling, epic action, interesting RPG choices between your three characters, and huge, open galaxy full of interesting things to discover made this one of the most exciting, unique, replayable, and intensely satisfying games of 2010.
Portable Game of the Year
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future: Puzzle/adventure games have a long, rich history that spans decades and nearly all platforms, but this is a genre that has really found a great home on DS. The stylus allows for interesting plays on adventure titles, while the puzzles give you a bite-size chunk of gaming perfect for that bus ride, wait at the driver's license office, or a few minutes before lights out. No game of 2010 executed and refined the genre's long-standing formula quite as perfectly as the third Professor Layton game, with its lush art, great sound, and always-challenging puzzles.
Phone Game of the Year
GameDevStory: This little title, released for both iDevices and Android this year, has all the qualities of a good portable handheld game without the need for touch-screen gimmicks or segmented level-based design. While there were plenty of innovative and original phone games in 2010, this one pulled in an RPG uniqueness that we haven't really seen on the platform yet. It's a serious challenge to juggle everything just right to make good games in your little homespun studio, but when you do and the reviews and revenues roll in, it's extremely satisfying.
Sleeper Game of the Year
Enslaved: This action game by Heavenly Sword developers Ninja Theory wasn't quite an instant classic, but with fantastic performances by its two protagonists and a well-written story, this game has shown us that, without a doubt, game writing has improved in 2010. The main character, played by Andy Serkis - who also played Heavenly Sword's villain as well as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies - delivers emotion, intensity, and quirkiness, and his companion Trip isn't far behind at all. It's unfortunate that the combat's repetitive and some of the platforming is clunky, but the game world is lush and the plot is refreshing.
RPG of the Year
Fallout: New Vegas: This release on PC, PS3, and 360 excelled on all three platforms, delivering the Bethesda brand of FPS and RPG together with a new twist from the storytelling masters at Obsidian. After years of false starts and disappointing releases, Obsidian has finally released a game that lives up to the potential we all knew they had, and the unique characters, interesting locales, and branching and non-linear plot all pull together to make one of the most wonderful, addictive games we've played in a long time. The only bad thing I can say is that bugs often ruined the launch-day experience on all platforms.
On the next page, we'll crown our Game of the Year.
Strategy Game of the Year
Civilization V: It was difficult to not give this prize to the superb StarCraft II, but in a genre that's full of stagnation, it's satisfying to see a game developer fearlessly change so much about an established franchise that is loved by millions of gamers. Sure, some of the new systems in this latest Civ almost seem different just to be different, but the hex system of tiles, the changes to how wars are fought, and the highly cerebral nature of turn-based games put it over the top for us here at AtomicGamer.
Sports Game of the Year
UFC Undisputed 2010: The biggest growing sport in the world spawned what was, to us, the best sports game of the year. Where many yearly franchises stick to only adding a feature or two, UFC 2010 revamped its career mode, added new title belt modes, overhauled the stand-up striking, and smoothed out its ground game. Where it fell apart was in some iffy online play along with some odd balance changes and other adjustments that were unwelcome to many players. Still, seeing the visceral thrills of powerful knockouts and gut-wrenching submission moves, all put together into a great sports game, made us incredibly happy.
Independent Game of the Year
Minecraft: It doesn't get much more "independent" than one guy making what was originally a web-based game from home, and Minecraft took the PC gaming world by storm in 2010. This sandbox adventure title doesn't really have an endgoal or a true point, but it does have the ability to break down the seemingly infinitely large world you're dropped into, then rebuild it in a ton of different ways. Minecraft isn't even officially out - it's for sale now, but it only just reached beta - and we will hopefully see new and exciting modes (maybe this time with endgame goals and such, to get those people off our backs!) for the eventual "official" release.
Music Game of the Year
Rock Band 3: This is a category that some will consider to be dying out, but we're keeping it on here simply because the experience is just as epic as it has been - good music never gets old - and there has been plenty of innovation in 2010. Rock Band 3 brought vocal harmonies, pro mode, and keyboards, and while the Fender Squier's delayed release date (to March) is a real letdown for those who wanted to play a real guitar right off the bat, there's still a ton of new and fun ways to play your favorite songs this year.
Console Game of the Year
Red Dead Redemption: Some said that Rockstar was out of ideas ever since GTAIV was released, but this free-roaming western action title showed everyone there's still plenty left in the creativity tank. Red Dead brought us a fantastic western story with an extremely interesting and entertaining countryside to explore, and while the cover-based shooting and awful AI wore on a bit thin after many hours, nearly everything else was top-notch - including the game's fantastic ending.
Surprisingly Good Game of the Year
Just Cause 2: The high-flying antics of this immensely entertaining action game reminded us all that cars aren't the only thing you can steal in a free-roaming environment. Combine that openness with exciting missions and a massive world to explore, and I think you'll find that this one is easily worth the price of admission. Sure, JC2 has awful voice acting and a pretty ridiculous plot, but who cares? Skyjacking helicopters and then using them to wreck a military base nestled on the side of a beautiful mountain was pure bliss.
Game of the Year
Mass Effect 2: BioWare's action-RPG sequel's biggest issue probably lies in its reliance on stereotypical cover-shooter level design, but the abilities and powers you could put into your version of Commander Shepard and his/her squad kept things very fresh and exciting. Add on an emotional quality that fueled the action, epic setpieces, and some of the best storytelling and voice acting out of any game this year, and it's difficult not to give this game the nod. Not only did ME2 deliver a satisfying story of mystery, action, and finally a huge battle for the safety of a galaxy, but it also delivered one of the most exhilarating endings that perfectly sets up the final game in the trilogy.
On the next page, we're going to go into some secondary categories that we think you'll find just as interesting to poke through.
Biggest Disappointment of the Year
Crackdown 2: Maybe it's unfair to give the developers of Crackdown 2 too much crap for this one, especially considering they are a rookie studio and they had less than a year to make this sequel, but you wouldn't ever guess that with Microsoft's hype machine. Crackdown was one of the best games to come out of nowhere on the 360, and this sequel, lurching its way to stores after a couple years of stops and starts, barely even changed anything beyond adding zombies. The continued insistence to only allow cooperative play over the network made this one a bomb in many living rooms, and the graphics and sound were no better - hell, in some cases worse - than the first. So disappointing.
Runner Up - Gran Turismo 5: Polyphony Digital's much-hyped racing game had a feature list so long that they couldn't even fit half of it onto the back of the box. At the same time, the game's races and license segments are stuffy and un-fun, and many features we expect out of a modern racing game were missing or locked behind hours of trying your best to unlock them. Most of the game's 1000+ cars were just ported over from past titles with few changes, making them feel like afterthoughts against the "premium" cars that had full interior modeling. It's an uneven, strange experience, playing GT5, one where adding go-kart racing was more important than including replay controls or polishing the full stable of cars.
Best Paid DLC
Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx: After the disappointment that was Max Moxxi's Underdome, many had doubted Gearbox's ability to deliver fun DLC for this breakthrough FPS/RPG from late 2009. But then came General Knoxx which added tons of playable area, a new level cap, new enemies, a slew of interesting randomly-created weapons, and an actual satisfying ending to what was of the most disappointing game finales we'd seen in years. Simply put, General Knoxx didn't just add on to Borderlands: it fixed much of what was wrong with the game in the first place.
Best Voice Acting
Mass Effect 2: Led by Commander Shepard (the female version, voiced infinitely better by Jennifer Hale than Mark Meer's male version), this game delivered many hours of fantastic dialogue from a huge cast of characters. From Martin Sheen's slippery Illusive Man, to Carrie Anne Moss' cool and collected Aria, and on to pretty much everyone involved in Tali's trial, there's something for everyone here. Ok, maybe Jack was a little too angry, but it was easily made up for by the return of "Archangel" and Legion's obsession with Shepard. In the end, the sheer amount of stellar voice acting is what puts this game above the rest.
Best Original Soundtrack
Dark Void: Let's look all the way back to January, at Capcom's jetpack-fueled action game. Sure, it was a disappointment, but the sountrack by Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary made everything you did in this lackluster title feel hugely epic. This was one of those rare soundtracks that made us feel like the actual game was much better than it really was, and it was only after stopping did we realize that it simply wasn't nearly as fun as the music made us feel. For that reason, Bear gets our not for the Best Original Soundtrack of 2010.
Best Licensed Music
Fallout: New Vegas: There's a whole era of music that you just don't hear very often anymore. It's too old for the oldies stations, but too out-there for a classical station. This music comes mostly from the 1940s, and there were some amazing songs that don't get radio play and are largely ignored by today's pop culture. The Fallout games tap into this by capturing and bottling the best of those times, from the art and architecture to the patriotism and, of course, the music. New Vegas' soundtrack stumbled a bit by only slowly opening up its full soundtrack, leaving players to get stuck hearing the same songs repeated for quite a while during the initial few hours. Once you started hearing the full range of songs, though, it quickly became one of the most interesting, unique soundtracks of any game we've seen in a while.
Best Writing
Mass Effect 2: Science Fiction isn't just about spaceships and lasers. It's about pulling modern-day, real-world issues out of their normal context and laying them out bare in an entirely new one. ME2 has done a better job than most games have of making us think about brotherhood and the willingness to make sacrifices for people you care about. The game itself was really about building loyalty between a group of people that you fight and bleed together with, and what surprises me most is that this game, taking place hundreds of years in the future, did it better than any modern-day war game (I'm looking at you, Black Ops and Medal of Honor) has done. With thousands of lines of interesting and power dialogue and many interesting, realistic good guy/bad guy choices given to Commander Shepard, Mass Effect 2 gets our pick for best game writing of 2010.
Best Multiplayer
Battlefield: Bad Company 2: After the spectacle that was Modern Warfare 2 and its desperate need to highlight the individual in all areas of the game, both offline and online, Bad Company 2's multiplayer mode was a breath of fresh air. It brought us back to using teamwork to win, and the huge maps meant that combine tactics with vehicles, gadgets, and simply good aim all came together to make for one of the most entertaining, challenging, and fun multiplayer experiences all year.
Biggest News Surprise
Duke Nukem Forever is Reborn - In May of 2009, the Duke Nukem Forever saga game to its close. 3D Realms laid off most of its employees and the vaporware king of video games was lost. After 12 years of stops and starts, it was dead. Then, at PAX this year, Borderlands creators Gearbox Software not only made the hugely surprising announcement that they'd taken on the burden of reviving Duke Nukem Forever, but they had been working on it for most of a year and actually had something to show. Not only was the game back and in development, but it was playable at PAX on the show floor. PC gamers who had been waiting for this game for over a decade completely lost their minds with this news, and for good reason: it was the biggest surprise of the year.
