1. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
Creating something based purely on nostalgia is a very easy and a very tricky thing to do well. Human beings possess the natural instinct to overly romanticize their pasts, to filter out all of the bad moments and the crushing moments of minutiae that make up 99% of our time and turn those small fleeting moments of greatness into defining movements of mankind. Because of this, something that is designed to be so retro-friendly is at once advantaged and disadvantaged to meet and indulge the high expectations of the past.
With that said, Scott Pilgrim vs the World is an amazing game that does just that. It's a perfect adaptation of the 32-bit 2D golden age era of video games, and it's really fun to play. I can't think of the last game that I was compelled enough to play through with each character, but on this one I did and I'm still not bored with it. The fact that it's a tie-in for an awesome graphic novel, a mind-melting movie (alliteration!), and features a soundtrack by 8-Bit band
Anamanaguchi is a definite plus too.
2. Super Meat Boy
With video games, there's frustrated and
Super Meat Boy frustrated. Probably not the best way to open a description for the second best video game of 2010, but there is no game out there that is more challenging and more rewarding than Super Meat Boy. Every level is cleverly designed and well-executed, requiring a very specific rhythm and pattern to beat it that will often run counter to every expectation you have. As a Game Informer reviewer said, you will die in this game more times than you've ever died in every game you've ever played put together. While that will deter a lot of people from ever playing it, no other game that came out in 2010 will feel more satisfying to beat than this one.
3. Red Dead Redemption
What a lot of developers don't realize when making open world/sandbox type games is how dependent the level of interest people have for the game is to how much fun it is to explore the world the game is in. Red Dead Redemption - with it's endless frontiers, wildlife, and wild west atmosphere - is an incredible game
just to wander around in. While the mature storyline holds its own as some of gaming's greatest, it's the intricately detailed environment and the very distinct world that will suck you in to one of the best games of this generation.
4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Bad Company 2 continues to build off the successful formula of the Battlefield franchise - it's the best multiplayer experience of 2010 (the single player campaign isn't that bad), and it's incredibly easy to lose way too many hours playing it. But go ahead and just try to not feel like a badass when you charge across the battlefield as everything is blowing up around you and you stab a mofo in the face.
5. Limbo
Acknowledging artistically rewarding games over the usual trough of things released every year is practically a requirement of credibility for critics, but while previous contenders like Braid or Rez had the artistic good will - they weren't as fun to play as their usual big blockbuster counterpart releases were. Limbo, on the other hand, is an incredibly fun to play game that's aesthetically pleasing as well. While the game length (about 3 hours) looks way too short on paper, there's not a second wasted.
