Farewell 2010!

I said it before and I’ll say it again: 2010 was an excellent year. I mean, as a date. How cool was 20/10/2010 or, of course, the day that answered the Ultimate Question of Life, Universe and Everything? And, in general, “twenty ten” is a far more stylish answer to any question, even if it wasn’t the year we also started curing AIDS, or proved CHNOPS isn’t the absolute basis of all life.

In real life, however, meaning our everyday personal lives, I’m sure some of us had a rough time and will be hoping 2011 brings something better, and others had an idyllic year and will be looking for more of the same. I am wishing you the best, either way! Hit the break for my views on something universal, the gaming scene in 2010 and a quick peek at 2011.

With Modern Warfare 2 scaring most other high-profile games away from the 2009 holiday window, unfortunately not because it was so bland they didn’t want to be anywhere near it but because people will buy anything with the Call of Duty brand by the millions, no matter how cheap it is, 2010 opened very impressively.

It was a much less impressive year in retrospect though, because, once the dust settled, it was apparent all those AAA titles had little soul. Plenty of venerable franchises brought us new installments and while a lot of people feel more of the same is a good thing, I am always excited by the spark of innovation and disinterested when something seems to have been designed by committee to generate income.

This is why I kinda liked the hopelessly broken Vampire: The Masquerade all those years back, but didn’t care much for the technically flawless Super Mario Galaxy 2. After all, hadn’t I played that game before? Nintendo does love building on its franchises, but we never quite had as calculated a recycle as this one. It’s almost as bad as when they remade Golden Eye. Which also happened this year.

At the same time, I also really liked Darksiders, even though it literally didn’t have one part that wasn’t borrowed from another game. You see, with Darksiders, you can tell it’s the product of a bunch of guys getting together and saying something like: “Zelda is awesome; God of War and Devil May Cry too, and that Portal business, pretty cool. Wouldn’t it be radical if, when we grew up, we made a game that combines all those things we love the most about our favourite games?”

Unlike the indifferent God of War III, which you can imagine came about with studio execs saying: “God of War keeps making buckets of money, let’s make it again for the PS3!” It’s a good thing pushing the hardware is an integral part of the God of War formula, so they are forced to give us some time to actually miss kicking ass with Kratos. Well, unless you buy the PSP titles. Breathers are important, people!

But even independent & multifaceted developers Ubisoft couldn’t heed the advice of their own staff and resist the urge to capitalize on the success of Assassin’s Creed II, by blowing some DLC out of proportion and releasing Brotherhood stand-alone.

Man, I didn’t expect I’d be bitching so much when I started this post. Let’s wrap up the negativity by bringing up Red Dead Redemption. Because every time I see it near the top of a “Best of 2010″ list, I risk having an aneurysm.

Guys, I wanted a good cowboy game too, but this isn’t it. Every time you praise Rockstar for creating boring games, you are pretty much asking them to make the next one even worse. You did it when GTA IV had Niko slouching in his room watching poker tournaments and that’s why RDR is now my favourite thing to play when I can’t sleep. LA Noire looks awesome, if they add stuck-in-traffic mini-games & Quick-Time-Events for brushing your teeth, Heavy Rain-style, it’s going to be your fault and we’re going to have words.

I’m already holding you responsible for the graphical mess most 3D games of this generation have chosen to adopt. I can see your feedback: “Horrible lightning and a spectrum of colours ranging from dark yellow to shadow brown? So realistic, five million stars!”

Anyway, while there was little thirst for innovation from the high rollers, we did have plenty of shining moments in the independent and smaller-dev scene. Some great iOs games like Cut the Rope, the phenomenal success of the Minecraft one man show, and even a few Facebook games that didn’t make you feel dirty playing them, like Fantasy University.

They are all proof that brand recognition, deathmatch multiplayer & taking yourself way seriously aren’t the necessary ingredients for success and they fill me with hope that the future will bring us more unique, more fun, more adventurous games.

Of course, somewhat ironically, the only new IP I have on my list of “Games of 2011 I am insanely excited about” is the aforementioned LA Noire, which is developed by a powerhouse anyway. That list also includes:

Elder Scrolls V – I love each & every Elder Scrolls game, if only because of the ambition it shows.
Batman: Arkham City – Asylum is still better than my 2010 game of the year.
Assassin’s Creed III – Please don’t phone this one in.
Max Payne 3 – It’s time for some exciting slow-mo gunfights.
Uncharted 3 – My ideal premise deserves an ideal game, it is statistically improbable to mess it up three times in a row.
Guild Wars 2 – First time I’ve been excited for a MMORPG since Everquest.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution – I fear they are just tricking us with the Deus Ex label, but I can hope.
Bioshock 3 / Diablo III / New Wii Zelda – Not quite “insanely” excited for either of them, but the three combined make the cut.
Mass Effect 3 – Full Stop.

Mass Effect 3, the sequel to my 2010 Game of the Year. It’s going to be hard to wrap the story up properly and there’s going to be temptation to leave it hanging for ever more sequels, but I remain optimistic. Mass Effect 2 was a great game and the best pen & paper RPG experience in a video game. Even if the story can prove tricky to pull off while still sufficiently maintaining the illusion of impactful choice on the player’s part, there are a lot of simple gameplay improvements BioWare can engineer: Less combat, or at the very least, less repetitive, tactical-less combat. Less or no grinding (I am looking at you, planetary exploration & mining). Less laziness & copy-paste scenes. More “Pyrrhic-victory” missions.

If I see all those changes I’m going to be satisfied, and seeing that I am mostly asking for less, they might not even need to delay the game to implement them! Still, we might see a lot of these games slip to 2012, because the competition for the 1/11/11 & 11/11/11 dates is extremely heavy. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, provided they don’t spend the extra time doing nothing but tequila shots. I’ll be happy if we actually get half of those games in 2011, so long as we keep getting the same kind of low-profile gems that surprised us this year!

So, yeah, high hopes for the next year even if the number itself doesn’t gel with me as much as 2010. There is lots of time for it to grow on me though: 2011 is, after all, a sexy prime.