The 12 Awesomest Games of 2010

2010 should be an awesome year. At least for those of us outside the Bird Flu Plague Zone. And for those of us not fighting in the wars against Iran, North Korea, Syria, China, Iraq and Afghanistan. For us, it'll all be about the games ...

These are the glorious games glowing down at us from the peak of the 360/Wii/PS3 generation, when developers will be making the hardware sing and when every PC will have 8 gigabytes of RAM to play with. Games like ...


Mass Driver
360/PS3

"This load of heroin has to be in Philadelphia in 10 minutes. And, Philadelphia is 150 miles away."

"Don't worry. I know just the guy."

Mass Driver is Grand Theft Auto at 1,000 miles an hour. Your character has the magical ability to enhance the acceleration of any boat, airplane, car, truck, tractor, tank or little red wagon to insane, mach-plus speeds, thundering across a game world hundreds of miles wide. Get going too fast and the vehicles can burn up in the atmosphere. The only way to slow down is by smashing through buildings, trees, mountains, other cars, livestock and crowded amusement parks ...



... with each errand ending with charred damage proportional to the brutal laws of mass and velocity.


Add in a slow-motion feature to see the looks on your roadkill's faces milliseconds before impact, and you've got a crank-addled adrenaline-junkie game for the discerning lunatic. This could be the game that finally makes Jack Thompson take up arms.



Star Wars: Jedi Saga
Wii

First of all, this is real Wii swordfighting. Not that half-hearted "flick to activate sword swing No. 1" Red Steel crap. Real lightsaber fighting, the glowing blade mapped to your Wiimote.

And, it's every lightsaber battle from all six movies. You lightsaber your way right the damn hell through waves of storm troopers, then the boss battle is some famous duel from the movies. Darth Maul, Count Dooku, that one retarded four-armed robot thing with the completely unprotected heart, all of them, leading up to a climactic duel with Darth Vader.

In the bonus levels, you get to switch sides and cut down the good guys


Then, if you beat the whole game, unlocking every secret, you get to lightsaber George Lucas. Just screams and burning flannel, man, I'm telling you.



DC vs. Marvel Superhero Brawl
360/PS3

Us survivors of the Cold War know one thing: If superpower ever meets superpower, everybody in the vicinity is getting fucked up. Therefore, any game that features superheroes fighting that doesn't also feature them knocking down entire buildings with each errant blow, is nothing but filthy digital lie. See THIS VIDEO for evidence:



Further research can be found in the climax of Matrix: Revolutions.

That's why Superhero Brawl gives you 10 city blocks to annihilate. If you want to damage Iron Man, you got to fling his ass through a building ...


... and if you really want to damage him, throw him through the foundation and make the freaking building collapse on top of him. Throw him into a tanker truck hauling rocket fuel, throw him into the core of a nuclear reactor and trigger a meltdown.

Do it right, and the last minute of each fight will look like a nuclear aftermath, smoke and rubble stretching to the horizon.

This is the scale of game Sony implied the PS3 could pull off during their ridiculous hype campaign. Let's see if they can live up to it.



World War Omega
PC

This is the Combined Arms Simulator PC gamers have been dreaming about from the first time a shot was fired in anger over a modem. A sprawling world war, a Battlefield 2 but with one gargantuan, persistent map that everybody plays on.

There'll be AI units to do grunt jobs like holding positions and supply lines. There'll be RPG elements like statistics, character growth, and chain of command “guilds.”

And, Normandy-sized invasions with 5,000 players.


Oh, hell yeah.

Give the Chinese control of one army and the United States control of the other, and we'll fight all of our wars this way. Nobody gets hurt except the millions of neglected girlfriends.



Total Kung Fu
Wii

This is for all of us who secretly think those Dance Dance Revolution style rhythm games look like fun but fear they'll threaten our sexuality.

Total Kung Fu has the same frantic, spastic stepping and flailing as DDR ...


... only instead of dance moves, your movements are translated to vicious, bone-crunching kicks and punches.


We're talking lightning-fast blurred fists, '70s kung fu movie-style fighting where punching and blocking is done with the same desperate, heart-pounding frenzy it takes to keep up with the beat in the harder levels of DDR. You wouldn't even need a floor pad, just an extra Wiimote and nunchuck to strap to your ankles.

Also: Online Multiplayer. Yes, it's tough to do for a rapid-fire twitch fighting game. But this is 2010, Nintendo. Figure it out.



Hard Cell
360/PS3

Ah, who can forget the first time we directed the guy on the screen to walk across a narrow catwalk suspended over lava, only to have the guy turn to the screen and say, "Eat my fuckmeat, muchacho! In case you didn't know, lava is hot."

Hard Cell is a third-person game where you control an avatar that isn't particularly happy about being controlled. You can see the character and you can give him commands, but he doesn't necessarily agree with your goal.

Doing a good job of not getting your character hurt or killed will make him happier, filling your “Rapport Meter." Filling the meter makes him faster, more responsive, and overall more willing to work with you rather than against you. But lead him into dead ends, forget to take time to find food, fail to look out for his safety ...


... and things get ugly.

You're working with a deep (that is, well-written) and complex character, operating from the most advanced A.I. ever to appear in a game. You'll build trust, you'll become friends.

Which you'll think is great, until the end of the game when you find out you have to sacrifice his life to win. This is an hours-long affair during which he will lie bleeding on the floor, screaming "WHY, DAVID? WHY?!?!?" over and over again at the screen. Did I mention that the guy knows your name?



Whipping Boy
Wii

Here's the secret of the Wii. In the markets where Wii Sports isn't included as a pack-in game, and you have to buy it separately, it still outsells Zelda: Twilight Princess. Why?

It's the boxing. Punching something with your actual fist wrapped around the Wiimote is enormously satisfying. It taps into something primal, releases those violence endorphins that fuel all mankind. Hell, even in tennis, the satisfying THOCK! from the Wiimote speaker when the racket smacks the ball, plus the rumble jolting your hand with the impact ... you can just feel the frustrations of the day lifting through the soothing salve of simple violence.

So you take Wii Sports Boxing, add in the most detailed character creation system the hardware can handle (after all, wrestling games have been perfecting this for years). Let me create the exact replica of my old boss, or my neighbor who kicked my dog, whoever. Their voices, too, we'll have a huge range of sound clips and accents to pick from so they sound almost like the real life counterpart. And then, we beat the shit out of them.

The Wi-Fi connection will let gamers somehow download and trade whipping boys, borrowing from people who have made perfect Tom Cruise or George Bush dummies. They can even download user-created custom weapons to beat them with ...


And that's it, that's the whole game. What else does it need? You come home, in a bad mood. You turn on your Wii, you pound your tormentor until you feel better. It'll be the first game to ever sell 50 million copies.



Deconstructionist
Wii

Take Whipping Boy even further. Here you work for a demolition company. You got that job because you happen to be a gigantic robot.

Take the Wiimote and nunchuck and guide your crushing robotic hands to tear out walls and roofs and support beams with the satisfying sound of snapping timber and crumbling stone.


It's not just mindless smashing. You've got to take out this building without damaging the ones next to it, you've got to make it fall a certain direction or collapse in its own footprint, etc. Until you get to a level where there's an emergency and you've got to clear two blocks in two minutes, then it is just a mindless, frantic rampage of destruction.

Seriously, you're going to see workplace violence drop through the floor once these bastards hit the shelves. I feel less murderous just talking about it.



Killchain
360/PS3

A puzzle game for people who hate puzzle games and love brutal death. In Killchain you are an assassin who has no weapons, and no fighting skill. What you can do, is freeze time.

So, with each level you'll find yourself in a bustling city, then, time will slow until all of the people are frozen like statues. You can then position any person or object, arranged so that once time resumes you'll create a chain reaction of chaos that will ultimately kill the target.

Cut the brake lines on this car over here, make this lady spill her groceries, set this dog so that it runs across the sidewalk, event triggering event in a ridiculously roundabout Rube Goldberg chain of accidents.

By level 12, you're trying to kill a target who's two miles away, on the sixth floor of a locked office building. By level 30 you'll be studying the TV watching habits of your target, realizing he watches baseball every afternoon, then sneaking onto an airfield, reprogramming a plane's flight path so that it crashes into the stadium where his favorite team is playing, the sight of which will give him a fatal heart attack.

Winning will take thought, patience, creativity and the ability to think outside the box. Who says you can't stimulate those things and have grotesque decapitations in the same game?


H vs. Z
360/PS3

It starts out as a standard zombie-killing game, you and your strike force beating back the hordes of the undead as they slowly take over the civilized world. You take out the undead, you level up in strength and experience, you get better weapons. But in H vs. Z, if you get bitten, or get bitten enough times, you become a zombie.

And, you stay a zombie. You're now preying on your squad mates, eating their flesh to upgrade your own strength. As a zombie you can "smell" their internal organs so you can pick out the choicest meat needed to upgrade your zombie skills.


The whole time your former mates are begging and screaming your name, saying "FRANK! It's me! Don't you recognize me! FRAAAAANK UGGGGHHhhh ..."

Your game is stored on a locked file on the hard drive. Reset the game, you're still a zombie. You can't change it. Not until you finish the game. Hey, that's life.


World of Starcraft
PC

This is the gaming version of the flying car. Everybody wants it, nobody wants to give it to us. It was even the subject of a famous April Fool's hoax on Gamespot.com.






Starcraft stands today as the most compelling fictional world ever created in gaming. The three-way intergalactic war between the humans and the Zerg (insects whose entire technology is organic, from their cities to their flying transports) and the Protoss (a race so highly-advanced and civilized they make the humans look like the Zerg).

I realize that knowing all this makes me some kind of sci-fi geek. But that's OK, because the whole world knows a sci-fi geek is about six steps up the social ladder from a fantasy geek and studies show they have more sex.

That's why there are more of us. We're outbreeding them. Even now, even in the shadow of the Lord of the Rings craze, Sci-fi movies and TV shows outnumber anything starring dragons and sorcerers 3-to-1.

There are 8 million WoW players right now. Give me World of Starcraft, with ships and technology and lasers, and the Zerg splicing their genes to create huge-ass bugs that can bite through tanks ... hell, we'll triple that number.



S.N.A.F.U
PC

There's never been a war simulation.

Oh, they've made lots of games like Command and Conquer, but those aren't war simulations. They're "strategy games," fancy versions of Risk, pushing little toy tanks around a game board.

No, I want a war simulation. The ultimate war simulation, where our noble battle against an international terrorist organization quickly turns into a gut-twisting quagmire.

In S.N.A.F.U., you have to worry about civilian casualties, and fuzzy intelligence, and negative media coverage, and funding ...

... and backstabbing allies and lying politicians and faltering popular support.

Rumors will circulate that the single-player mode is, in fact, unwinnable. People will play online, only to find the map objectives changing half an hour into the game, completely against their will.

final fantasy xiii PS3

the good ,a diverse and mostly excellent cast of characters A great original world, fleshed out by a compelling story Fun combat system keeps you on your toes Magnificent production values. The Bad Exceedingly linear exploration and character progression Vanille will get on your nerves in a big way. A cocky self-proclaimed hero with a charming sneer and a heart of gold. A sultry, no-nonsense ally you can rely on for a sly quip and a warm hug. These characters sound like standard role-playing stereotypes, but to Final Fantasy XIII's credit, they transcend formula and wriggle into your heart. Like many other Final Fantasy ensemble casts, the misfits at the center of this tale feel like old friends, and like old friends, they will excite your spirit, move your heart, and sometimes exasperate you. Their story is grand and compelling--as absorbing as you could hope for in a long role-playing game. That's just as well, given the fun but flawed game woven around this excellent tale. This is an intensely focused, exceptionally linear adventure that offers a few illusions of choice but never makes good on them. Fortunately, the battle system is fun and engaging once all of its elements fall into place, and it will keep you pushing forward even when the story lulls in the second half. Yet don't let the flaws dissuade you from playing and enjoying Final Fantasy XIII. It's a gorgeous RPG that delivers the emotional poignancy and slick production values you expect from this beloved series.



When this magical triad gets together, they create sparks.


The aforementioned cocky hero is Snow, the spiritual leader of a ragtag group of rebels in the world of Cocoon, though he isn't the soul of Final Fantasy XIII's story. That honor goes to Lightning, a likeable, strong-willed beauty on a vision quest to save her sister. In the first few moments of the game, you meet both Lightning and her accidental companion, Sazh, a good-hearted former pilot whose afro serves as home to a chocobo chick. (Don't worry: This bit of silly humor is not taken to extremes.) Eventually, this duo is joined by four others, drawn together by dramatic events, intertwined pasts, and a seemingly unachievable goal. The cast is diverse and the members play off of each other well. Tension between the resolute Lightning and the stubborn Snow is relieved when anger gives way to honesty. A young man called Hope blindly lets revenge cloud his judgment, even while admitting that nothing will stop his broken heart from bleeding. With a single exception, these are winning characters that are easy to relate to, providing a haven of comfort and familiarity in a beautiful but unusual world. That exception is Vanille, an incessantly irritating waif whose superbubbly voice and high-pitched monosyllabic chirps exceed tolerable limits, even in a genre known for squeaky, bright-eyed heroines. Fortunately, the bulk of the voice acting and dialogue is quite good, though RPG purists should take note that there's no option to hear the original Japanese voice tracks.

It's best to discover the intricacies of the narrative on your own, given the constant stream of shocks and high drama it provides. But the excellent setting deserves special mention. Metal behemoths called fal'Cie lord over two distinct worlds: The raw and dangerous underworld called Pulse and the high-tech, elaborately designed world of Cocoon that floats above it. Cocoon is all shiny sleekness and crystalline craftwork, a fascinating marriage of the organic and the synthetic. Sophisticated machinery and finely wrought buildings dominate the urban backgrounds, and every last stone and spire looks as if great care went into creating it. The attention to detail is astounding, so there's always something to catch your eye, whether it is the fancy latticework of a fence, the decorative patterns spreading across a wall like ivy, or the complex networks of pipes and planks. The art design is beautiful and varied, yet it's also consistent. Not a single detail seems out of place.

toy soldiers xbox 360

Your goal in Toy Soldiers is always the same: Protect the toy box representing your base that sits conspicuously on the battlefield. Suitable build points for defenses are arranged close by and, occasionally, across the entire battlefield. They come in two sizes: Small build points are suitable for anti-infantry guns, chemical weapons, and mortars, while large build points can accommodate antiair guns and long-range cannons. The victory condition for campaign missions is that no more than 20 enemies can reach your base, and unlike their counterparts in other tower defense games, enemies don't all follow the same route--even if their movements are still tightly scripted. Infantry, cavalry, armored cars, tanks, fighter planes, and bombers all pose different challenges, and keeping an eye on the enemy's unit queue to see what two or three types are coming next is key.

As you start each mission, the limited resources at your disposal are rarely enough to build more than a few defenses, but you earn money for every enemy that falls so it's not long before you can put all of the build locations to good use. Money is also used to repair and upgrade defenses, though you only gain access to upgrades as you progress through the campaign. And that's just as well, because while the simple controls make all of the build and upgrade options easily accessible, it takes a while to figure out which defenses are the most effective in which situations. A level-three weapon isn't always preferable to a level-two one, and you can often get by with lower level defenses if you're manning them yourself. You can hop onto defensive turrets at anytime, and using them is as easy as pointing them in the right direction and squeezing the trigger button. When they're available, vehicles work in much the same way, though it's worth noting that any vehicle that you leave unattended for too long or which gets destroyed takes a minute or so to become available again.

A good understanding of how all of your defensive options work is especially important in missions that end with a boss fight. Bosses include giant tanks, zeppelins, and trains, and although the same bosses appear in both of the campaigns, your fights with them play out quite differently. Even more so than regular missions, the boss levels often require some trial and error to beat. You need to memorize the boss's movements and position your defenses accordingly. Sometimes you have to tear down one defense to replace it with another in the middle of a fight just so that you have a weapon with the correct range, or manually reposition an existing defense so that it's pointing in the right direction when the boss moves. It can be frustrating to replay the same level over and over again, but every failed attempt makes you better prepared for the next, and because you do a little better each time, you're less inclined to give up.

Online Game Rentals - Try New Games, With New Experiences - Stop Struggling to Find Your Favorite

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