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Pasta's Game of the Year Nominees
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
This follow up to the very well received Assassin's Creed 2 had many fearing that this new installment in the series would be rushed and perhaps just a money grab by Ubisoft. However this game did not disappoint. The series returned with all the strength of Assassin's Creed 2 and built on it to make a better game.
The addition of multiplayer provides the gamer with something new and different, but where this game excels is clearly in the single player. A deep and detailed story, both in and to a less extent out of the animus, keeps the gamer engaged. Tons of things to do on the side as well as just goofing off by climbing buildings and assassinating unsuspecting guards provide many hours of gameplay outside of the story. Add to that a fun training mode,which also adds the element of competition with it's leaderboards.
Brotherhood was clearly one of the top games of 2010.
Call of Duty: Black Ops
No matter how you feel about Black Ops relative to the others, no one can argue that November 9th wasn't the biggest date in the gaming world this year. Sentiment had largely turned negative on its predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, and eyes turned to Treyarch to 'fix' the series. As the release date approached Treyarch was talking big and as more and more people got to play the game(both in the private beta and through pirating) their talk was being confirmed. The release of Black Ops set records surpassing Modern Warfare 2, which no one would have believed not too long ago. It was deserving.
The single player campaign was unique in some ways to any other in the Call of Duty. The playable character is actually defined as a character. There is no bouncing back and forth between story lines. While it is unique, it is still kind of ho-hum; it's another solid Call of Duty campaign with the same type of elements and gameplay.
The Multiplayer is the strength of Black Ops. It took fantastic strides to improve the multiplayer experience in Call of Duty. The game is balanced and frustrates the player as little as a Call of Duty game possibly can. Of course there's Zombies. That helps.
Minecraft
The surprise game this year was Minecraft. These other games, one could have predicted last year that they would be on lists similar to this. Minecraft largely came out of nowhere and sort of took over this summer. Thanks to Machinima's Seananners' promotion, this game filled a void when most gamers had grown tired of MW2, but little else was out there. It was the perfect game to fill the void.
A game with no story, no objectives and still in Alpha shouldn't be fun, but Minecraft was all of those and gamers fell in love with it. Elaborate structures were built, zombies and exploding penises were pwnd and many chickens were no-scoped.
NCAA Football 11
I know a lot of people won't like this. A sports game for Game of the Year? He's gone mad.
NCAA Football 11 is the first Football game in the era of the Next Gen consoles that has truly impressed me. Pretty much everything about this game was made better. The game play so much better than anything that came before. The menus have a nice interface. It is the first time that I can say the NCAA is decidedly better than Madden. NCAA Football 11 is perfect for what it is meant to be.
Red Dead Redemption
The tale of John Marston's path to redemption in the dying days of the old west, Red Dead Redemption was arguably the most ascetically pleasing game ever, but it didn't stop there. It featured an amazing plot set in a vast open-world environment. Aside from playing the story, the player could do everything, from hunting Grizzly Bears to playing some hands of high-stakes poker.
One could spend all of his or her time in the single player and probably not run out of things to do in Red Dead Redemption, but there was another aspect to this game. Multiplayer in Red Dead Redemption was fun, but it really lacked any sticking power. The best part of the multiplayer was the free-roam mode. One could run around in the single-player environment with other players and go and bust up gang-hideouts or just have shootouts in Armadillo. Of course, one antagonistic asshole could ruin the fun of that experience and unfortunately there were plenty of those around.
There was also, the Undead Nightmare DLC that came out in October. It added a few more hours of story and loads more to complete challenges and to just pwn some zombies. Did I mention it had zombies?
This game has been pulling in loads of hardware from far more legitimate sources than this and deservedly so.
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Those are the nominees for my Game of the Year. I will announce the winner in the final Gaming Tuesday post of 2010 on December 28th. There will be a poll in the sidebar where you can vote on which one you think deserves to win*. Please do take the time to vote and perhaps leave a comment below this post to tell me your choice and why you feel that way. Those will definitely be factors in which game I choose.
You may think my mind is made up, but it is not. I'm actually quite torn between all these games.
Thanks for reading and please comment.
-Michael
*The poll will close at midnight, Tuesday, December 28th
