Bionic Commando Rearmed 2

Above: He's back... and he's grown a middle-manager's mustache.

My review of Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is up at thephoenix.com. I liked it. Not having much experience with previous Bionic Commando games, even the NES version, I didn't go into this one with any expectations of how it should be. Whether or not that would have changed my opinion of the game, I can't say, but the debate about whether or not Rad Spencer should be able to jump is, at least, one that I have no stake in.

I liked this game's approach to difficulty. It was hard -- besides the instant falls to your death and the overwhelming boss fights, this is a game in which you can swing 90% of your way through the level, miss one grappling point, and plummet back to the start. But here's the key: none of this stuff erases any of the progress you've made before. You can always re-try levels you've beaten in order to find powerups that'll make your life easier. And even the game over screen just kicks you back out to the map, rather than letting you restart from a checkpoint.

When people complain about a trend toward easier games, this is the part that always confuses me. I don't think games are necessarily any easier these days. I've been dying plenty in Dead Space 2, for example. You just don't lose all your progress every time you die.

That said, some of those tricky parts are very tricky. The boss fights felt very much of the old school. Typically, they followed this pattern:

• Attempt 1: Immediate death
• Attempt 2: Almost immediate death
• Attempt 3: Possible weakness spotted, death
• Attempt 4: Strategy formulated, minor damage inflicted, death
• Attempts 5-9: Failed attempts to execute strategy, death
  
• Attempt 10: Victory!

And that's pretty satisfying, as long as you always feel like you're making your way forward. There's that tension between not knowing what to do, and knowing what to do but not having mastered the mechanics of doing it.

So there's that. I never felt transported or uplifted by playing this game, but I enjoyed it, and that's good enough for me.

Postscript: The Phoenix's legendary managing editor Clif Garboden died last week. Clif was a lifer. He was at the paper his whole career. Most of my interactions with Clif were in the Phoenix's smoking room, where he would enter, light up, hit filter after three powerful puffs, and then vanish, but not before making some acid remark about the state of the world. Clif terrified me.

Clif was also a true believer in the power of the alternative press. He never lost his sense of humor or his sense of outrage. He never stopped believing in holding the powerful to account. Often, when I read disparaging comments on my reviews at the Phoenix's website, it strikes me that the commenters don't seem to understand what publication they're reading. If you want to know what the paper is all about, Clif's personal recollection, published on the Phoenix's 40th anniversary, will give you a good idea.

Well, that and "Screw You, America," the op-ed that Clif published on November 12, 2004.

LittleBigPlanet 2

My review of LittleBigPlanet 2 is up at thephoenix.com. Flame away!

When I complained on Twitter about how lacking in imagination I found the suggested user levels to be, Joystiq's Ben Gilbert quickly recommended a few levels for me to try. They weren't terrible, but I had the same experience with them that I had with almost all of the rest: an initial burst of "Oh, cool!" followed by an extended comedown.

One was a roller coaster level that looked kind of neat, but didn't require me to do anything except hold down the R1 button. Another was a cute concept, with a pet Sackboy in a typical suburban house, but it had almost nothing in the way of interesting gameplay, and for some reason ended with Sackboy hopping in an ersatz UFO and shooting lasers. None would have been remarkable if they had come from a professional developer.

Oh, also, doing the "text search" for the names of those levels did not bring up those levels even close to the top of the search results. So there was that.

I don't deny that there is value in creation. To the extent that LittleBigPlanet 2 has merit, it is that: most games ask you to follow along with the creators' vision, and this one asks you to be the creator. I get that. You might not be able to tell from the review I filed, but it's true.

But just because you created something doesn't mean that it's worthy of adulation from the masses. People spend $60 on a video game that was made by professionals, and even most of those aren't actually any good. Why are we doing backflips about a game that lets users make pale imitations of other games? That was almost all I saw in this LBP2. Let's run down the list:

• A Vietnam-era first-person shooter in which the iron sights shot about an inch and a half to the right of where the crosshair was.
• A Batman film where, among other crimes against the English language, Batman saw the Batsignal and said "Look's like im in need!" In need of a copyeditor, maybe.
• A Donkey Kong clone in which it was impossible to jump over a barrel.
• A Super Mario Bros clone in which it was impossible to jump over a pit.
• A Wipeout clone in which there were no hovercraft.
• An inFamous clone in which there was one building to climb.
• A "Fun House" level in which the word "Buffoonery" was repeatedly written on the walls, in case you didn't get it.

And on, and on, and on. I genuinely do hope that some LBP2 players go on to bigger and better things. They could hardly go on to anything else.

I play demos: Bulletstorm

Above: Kids, tell your parents: "Buy me Bulletstorm, or go to hell!"

Next I downloaded the Bulletstorm demo. Count me among those who are pre-emptively embarrassed about this game. I’m already plenty embarrassed at the way its marketing team has been leading the games press around on a leash for the past several months. All this isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy a prurient good time as much as the next guy.

What I don’t understand about the Bulletstorm hype is the notion that killing people stylishly is a new concept. Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden have built empires on it. Bayonetta was one of last year’s best games, and that was the whole idea. Bulletstorm shares even more in common with MadWorld and The Club, both games from the past couple of years that I had mixed feelings about, but which employed basically the same formula: it’s not enough to kill people, you have to flaunt it.

The problem that both of those games had was that they got repetitive fast. MadWorld had, in the end, only a few different types of kills. Most were impalations. The Club seemed to want you to do a forward roll every time you killed anyone. In either case, the stylistic requirement seemed at odds with survival. Usually, as a player you refine your technique to find the most efficient way past your obstacles. These games, Bulletstorm included, ask you do to the opposite. They want you to find more and more elaborate methods to dispatch your enemies, while still finishing the level as quickly as possible. It’s a balancing act. If done well, you could see how it might soar.

I’m not sure if Bulletstorm soars. It looks great, and it controls well, and at this point I’m willing to roll with the humor. But after a couple of playthroughs I’m already repeating myself. You have a few different abilities in this game. Besides your guns (three available in the demo, each with an alt-fire mode), you have a kick move, and a leash, which I imagine is supposed to be the money shot. With the leash, you can grab enemies and pull them toward you, or hold the button down to launch them into the air.

Pretty neat idea, and it works – but how much you can actually do with it, I’m not so sure. I kept finding myself pulling people in with the leash, kicking them, and then shooting them. Not because it was the most stylish move, but because it was the most effective way to get them to stop shooting back. Obviously I was not pulling off the balancing act.

There are plenty of environmental options, too, which all seem telegraphed. Some are clearly setpieces, such as when you throw a switch that drops a huge rail car down the tracks, crushing several foes.* Others are smaller but similarly designer-directed. One of the first things you see in the demo is a highlighted piece of the ceiling with a prompt to use your leash. You do, and it dumps a bunch of debris on a guy. That’s cool and all, but I didn’t feel like a badass as much as I felt like a rat that was pressing a button to receive a food pellet.

I could believe that the Bulletstorm demo is playing its cards close to its chest. Crazy weapons and varied environments could help it to pull off the combination of zaniness and mayhem that it’s going for, and I’m always a sucker for the kinds of massive boss battles that play in the video at the demo’s beginning. But I’m worried. Getting extra points for shooting a guy in the ass is fun the first time. The tenth time? Not so much. I think I’ve already reached my quota.

*Note, I have no idea if it actually was a rail car, and it doesn't matter, because it was really just some huge thing for crushin’.

I play demos: Dead Space 2

Above: You've come a long way, demon space baby.

January was a dead month, even by January standards. I haven’t filed a review since publishing Lost in Shadow on Joystiq at the beginning of the month, and even though right now I’m playing LittleBigPlanet 2 for a review, spoiler alert, I find it hard to play that game for more than an hour without getting frustrated and wanting to move on to something else.

For the most part, I haven’t minded having these few weeks off from playing. A hiatus can refocus the mind. But after awhile, those old familiar urges creep back, and I find myself wanting to play something -- anything.

I’ve laid out my philosophically confused position on demos before. It’s not something I feel strongly about, but I try to avoid them when I can. They’re advertisements, not really games, and if I know I’ll end up reviewing something then I like to go in cold if I can help it. On the other hand, theoretically everything you’d see in a demo will be in the final game, and, if done well, a demo can be a worthy standalone product, like a good movie trailer. So given my lack of conviction on the issue, and my fiending for something new to play, I downloaded a couple of new demos: Dead Space 2 and Bulletstorm.

Dead Space 2 is a game I was looking forward to, but when circumstances kept me from being able to review it, I filed it under the “wait until it’s cheaper” category, which is never a bad idea for any game. Maybe I should be more excited. I liked Dead Space when I played it, and found that my opinion of it improved with time, even though I never revisited it. Then, I loved Dead Space: Extraction, the prequel that came out for the Wii (the inclusion of an HD version of Extraction on the PS3 edition of Dead Space 2 is reason enough to pick it up). I should have been a prime customer.

There’s something to be said for a game with such a polished presentation. People these days are so enamored of low-fi indie games that it’s almost become gauche to appreciate a game with good graphics and responsive controls. Which is not to say that Dead Space 2 avoids all of the problems of today’s AAA shooters – one look at the control scheme almost gave me heart palpitations. Then again, I am old, and eat a diet high in fat, so maybe it was something else.

The demo does not begin with a bang. Isaac walks through four identical rooms before anything happens, and when something does happen, it’s the same attack of the Necromorphs that was replayed endlessly in the first game. They jump out of cryogenic chambers, and ventilation shafts, and who knows where else. All I can say for sure is that there always seemed to be one behind me. This was enough to convince me that Dead Space 2 may not be likely to change its ways, and that it is satisfied enough that withering, high-tension action scenes are sufficient to be called horror.

Next, you encounter an environmental puzzle in which you use telekinesis to pull clearly marked clamps down from the ceiling. Hardly a brain buster, this felt a little rote and obligatory. I could almost hear someone in charge saying, “Y’know, we just had a big action scene, so we should probably put a puzzle here.” That’s not meant to be a damning criticism, just an observation. And it was followed by a zero-gravity sequence that I found heartening – Isaac is fully controllable in these scenes this time around. I didn’t think the zero-g scenes in the first game lived up to their potential, so I’m encouraged that they may do so this time.

Then, I walked into a church and was attacked by a bunch of screeching alien baby people. Not what I expected. I think that’s the first time I’ve been able to say that about a Dead Space game. This part of the Dead Space 2 demo accomplished a couple of the things that the first game never did. For one thing, it was an interesting environment. I liked the Ishimura as a functional space vessel, but I was never as enamored of it as some people were. It’s nice to see that the sequel branches out a little. As for the screeching space babies, they’d probably get old if the game relies on them too much, but they made for a nice change of pace.

So, good job, Dead Space 2 demo: You have kept my interest. But I’ll still probably wait for a sale.

Next: Bulletstorm!

The weapons of Hot Pursuit

Above: Roadblocked.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit shares a little of its DNA in common with games like Mario Kart and Wipeout. It's less fantastic than those games, but at heart it's a combat racing game, just as they are. Playing through career mode requires you to unlock all of the weapons available to you, so at first you may think that Hot Pursuit, like Burnout before it, is more about trading paint and using your car as a battering ram than about blasting your foes with high-powered armaments.

This turns out to be only partly true.

There are two essential things to understand about the weapons of Hot Pursuit:

1. They take skill to use.
2. They can't be replenished.

Those two facts make all the difference. Unlike Mario Kart, Hot Pursuit doesn't provide an on-ramp for unskilled racers by gifting them devastating weapons the further behind they fall. Unlike Wipeout, there are no uber-powerful weapons against which there is no defense. And unlike both of those games, the weapons you have at the start of the race are all you will get. There is no magical box, floating above the racecourse, that will re-stock your ammo for you.

So you have to be careful, you have to be skillful, and you have to be tactical. It is all too easy to blow through your weapons by mile 5 of a 14-mile race. Running on empty makes for tense moments, but it doesn't usually lead to victory. You need to deploy your weapons carefully. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. Each can be used to counter another driver's weapons. Each can be countered by another driver's weapons. Each can be confounded by agile driving.

As you progress, you'll gain a slightly different loadout for events in which you are the racer and events in which you are the cop. Either way, you'll find that you unlock the weapons fairly early, and then acquire more powerful versions of each. Getting them is easy; figuring out how to use them is hard.

Both cops and racers can use spike strips, which drop on the ground to slow down or wreck somebody behind you. Spike strips are the easiest weapon to use, especially late in the game when they are upgraded to the point that they can cover a wide swath of the road, and you drop two strips in one shot. Spike strips aren't very powerful, but they're great for slowing down somebody who is trying to ram you, or lock on with an EMP.

Cops and racers can also both use EMPs, bursts of energy that temporarily disable their targets. EMPs take some time to charge up, and need to be locked on in order to work. The EMP is the most "gamey" of the weapons available -- a lot like the Electrovolt in Wipeout. Activate it, and a white box will appear on your screen that you must keep centered on an opponent. You need to keep your target in view for several seconds (lock-on time reduces with each upgrade). Not terribly powerful on its own, the EMP is best used in conjunction with something else, like a road block, a sharp turn, or a well-timed collision.

Things diverge from there. Racers have a jammer, which shuts down all of the cops' tech, including their weapons and their on-screen maps. It's a great way to evade an EMP. Racers also have a turbo boost, which accelerates them to ludicrous speed for several seconds.

Cops can call in a road block, which is set up some distance down the course. As the road block power is upgraded, the road blocks gain more and sturdier vehicles, which can cause a racer to slow down or crash, but every road block has a weak point that racers can easily penetrate. The last tool in the cop's belt is the helicopter, which tracks down racers and drops spike strips in front of them. Forget its effectiveness: nothing beats barreling down a road at 180 mph, hitting a button, and seeing a chopper blast overhead with its searchlight blazing up the road.

All of the weapons collectively bring to mind a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Say you're a racer and a cop has an EMP lock on you. You could try to lose him through pure driving skill. You could use your jammer. You could hit the turbo and try to get out of range. Each of these comes with a cost. If your fancy driving doesn't work, or even if it does, you might cost yourself first place. If you use your jammer, you're still in sight and susceptible to crashes and other weapons. If you hit the turbo, you'd better hope there's a straightaway up ahead and not a series of S-curves.

This kind of mental calculation happens dozens of times in every race, all while you're navigating hairpin turns at top speed. You're trying to follow the route, keep an eye on your HUD for hazards, avoid oncoming traffic, and check your rearview for anybody speeding up behind you, all while trying to game-theory your way through your arsenal in the scant seconds you have to do something, dammit! It's enough to short-circuit your brain.

For all this, your car's chassis is still your greatest weapon. It's the one that'll last the whole race, provided you don't wreck, which is no gimme. Driving well is also a better alternative than using your weapons, but it's so much harder than pressing a button to instantly escape. No matter the weapon -- spike strip, EMP, road block -- you can dodge it without reaching into your bag of tricks. Even the racer's turbo power is only as useful as your ability to steer while using it.

If you aim to wreck another car, there's no subsitute for a good, old-fashioned ramming. Most of your weapons merely chip away at your foes' health. You either need to scavenge a takedown, or focus relentlessly on one opponent for your weapons to do much good. But if you can get behind them, hit the boost, and plow into their rear fender, you'll take big chunks off their health bar. It's the only way to go -- until they drop a spike strip, that is.

There have been lots of combat racing games before this one, which is why I started this post by comparing Hot Pursuit to two well-known ones. But none have ever been as deep in their execution.* Never in this game will you find yourself fumbling along, waiting to get bailed out by a lucky drop. Never will you fire your weapons willy-nilly instead of concentrating on the race.

Hot Pursuit has earned accolades for its mind-blowing races and the addictive Autolog feature, but who expected its combat system to be this exacting, even subtle? Forget Mario Kart -- maybe Street Fighter is the better comparison.

*Bold claim unsupported by evidence in post.

Mass Effect 2 debrief

Before I say anything else about Mass Effect 2, I'll say this: I played the whole thing. I can't say the same about many games, especially those that nobody is paying me to play. All told, it took just under 30 hours. I explored every star system I could get to. I completed every mission I found. Whatever criticisms I am about to make, that counts for something.

After all of it, I'm still not sure what to make of the game. None of my complaints about ME2's interface ever subsided. Quite the contrary, I kept discovering more of them. Some of the choices that BioWare makes, while not terribly significant on their own, defy logic. Consider: To upgrade your equipment, you need to mine planets for natural resources. This takes the form of a fairly boring mini-game.

That picture is from the PC version, but it looks the same on the 360 version. I'd like you to take note of the graphs on the right side of the screen. The one on the top shows the prevalence of each type of mineral as detected by your crosshair, which you can see on the surface of the planet to the left. As you move that target around, you'll see spikes and dips in the measurements.

You can tell, relatively, that you're likely to find a certain element when there's a spike. But you have no idea how much. There are no numbers assigned to each step on that scale. Further, the Y-axis is represented in a quasi-3D way, seeming to lean into the screen and away from the player. The vertical segments shrink as the chart gets higher, which may indicate a logarithmic scale, but probably not. Lastly, the graduations fade into nothingness instead of reaching a hard upper limit. It does not make sense.

At least that scale doesn't really need to make sense. All you need to know is that when there's a spike above Palladium, you fire off a probe. Boom -- you've got Palladium. The designers have exchanged usability for flashiness, sure, but it doesn't really harm the experience. Your goal is to mine for resources, and you can do that.

Such is not the case with the green bars underneath it. Those indicate, or are supposed to indicate, the quantity of each element that you already have. The quantities are represented as bar graphs -- they start empty, and fill up with a solid green color as you acquire more of each resource.

It may be hard to tell unless you click on the image above, but take a look at those bars and the numbers beneath them. The bars for Iridium, Platinum, and Palladium are all full, and yet their actual quantities vary: 35149, 41613, and 42602. respectively. Furthermore, the leftmost resource bar appears at least half-full, yet the count is only 14660. What's going on here?

After playing the whole game, I can safely say that the answer to that question is: who the hell knows. All of the bars fill up by the time you get about 25000 of each resource, but there is not actually a limit to how much you can collect. By the later stages of the game, I was rolling deep with about 150000 of everything. The bar graphs had long since ceased to be useful.

There I go again -- I intended to write a post about my fairly positive top-level impressions of Mass Effect 2, and ended up dissecting a minor point. It's not that the game rose or fell on the basis of the mining mini-game, it's that the minimal information that the mining mini-game needed to communicate to the player was totally garbled.

I thought it was perfect when, at the end of the credits, I was presented with another choice. I could either continue the game I'd been playing, and finish exploring the galaxy and completing sidequests, or import my powered-up Shepard into a fresh playthrough. Pretty basic, right? But when I saw the button prompts, I was only about 70% sure which was which. There was "(A) Continue" and "(B) Main Menu."

In other words, only one of the button functions I was presented corresponded to the options I'd been given. The other one bore no relation to what I might have been trying to do. The description of my choices had not included the main menu. I had no idea what might result from my inputs, thanks to the confusing, contradictory, and incomplete information on the screen.

And that was Mass Effect 2 in a nutshell.

Lost in Shadow

Above: Cool shadow, bro

My review of Lost in Shadow is up at Joystiq. I'm trying to remember the last time my reaction to a game followed a similar trajectory to this one. Generally, after a couple of hours, my mind is 90% made up and the rest is a matter of details. Sometimes, games get better after you become more familiar with them, and that can take a long time. In this case, I felt like Lost in Shadow was flirting with greatness at the start, then settled into a trough of acceptable mediocrity, before, eventually, I wanted the damn thing over with.

The things that are good about Lost in Shadow never get better after they're introduced, while the things that are bad about it keep piling up. You can put up with rudimentary combat for a time, awful hit detection and all, but by hour 10, and your second sword upgrade, you ought at least to be able to make contact with your foes more than half the time. And there's very little variety in the enemy type, which wouldn't be a problem if the combat were more fun, but it gets to the point where you return to an area to find all the enemies have respawned and you can't help but sigh.

I'm a sucker for games that look pretty -- that may not have the most graphical horsepower under the hood, but that have interesting and inspired art direction -- and Lost in Shadow does. It definitely cribs from the Ico playbook, but I'll take that over another space-marine corridor shooter any day. And its beauty isn't skin-deep. Forcing your mind to understand the connection between the three-dimensional objects in the foreground, and the two-dimensional shadow in the background, is challenging and novel.

It's because this game started out so strongly that I ended up so disappointed. I really can't recommend Lost in Shadow, especially not at the retail price, but I'm not sorry I played it. An interesting failure can be the most valuable kind of game.

And, hey, it was better than Limbo.

---

Buy Lost in Shadow from Amazon (affiliate link)

Winter games preview

Above: My most-anticipated winter game, pretty much by default.

During all the excitement of shoveling snow for three straight days last week, I plum forgot that my winter games preview was going up at thephoenix.com.

Weak slate this year, even as these things go, but it was a fun piece to write for precisely that reason. I have no special insight into any of the games that are coming out, and I'm tired of always giving everything the benefit of the doubt in previews, so instead I decided to go negative. Massively negative. Every entry explores the ways in which the games could fail, even for games I am legitimately looking forward to.

Looks like it worked, since the one commenter on the piece so far called me a massive tool. But I was hurt that he called what I do "mainstream videogame journalism." Only one of those words is accurate.

Happy new year, everyone!

Year in Review: The best games of 2010

Above: Not even a game of the year nod can make Ethan Mars smile.

We're wrapping up our recap of the year that was. Today: the best games of 2010.

We've saved the best for last. You can click through to the feature on thephoenix.com to read all the blurbs. Here's my list of the 10 best games of 2010.

1. Heavy Rain
2. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
3. BioShock 2
4. Rock Band 3
5. Red Dead Redemption
6. Dance Central
7. DeathSpank
8. Halo: Reach
9. Bayonetta
10. Final Fantasy XIII

That about wraps it up for 2010. As always, thank you so much for reading. Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year. We'll meet right back here in 2011.

Year in Review: The worst games of 2010

Above: "It's just me getting killed by a giant spider for an hour and a half. It cost 80 million krone."

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: The worst games of the year.

As I keep darkly alluding, I found this to be a challenging year in a lot of ways.* Nowhere was this more apparent than with all the supposedly great games I struggled to play. Every year there's crap, and everybody agrees it's crap, but this year, more than any I can recall, there was crap that people kept telling me was an ice-cream sundae.

In chronological order of when I played them, here are the games I liked the least in 2010:

Army of Two: The 40th Day: I was sad to see this game go in the wrong direction, because I thought the first Army of Two showed a lot of promise. But the sequel ditched the humor, kept the monotonous duck-and-cover shooting, and added a terrible checkpoint system to boot. Nothing was worse than laboriously customizing your weapons, dying in the next firefight, and finding that you had to do it all over again. Ugh.

No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle: This is where we're talking about disappointing sequels, right? I loved No More Heroes so much, and I thought the sequel wasn't fit for the tissue box next to Travis Touchdown's easy chair. I can't even talk about it. It makes me sad.

Aliens vs. Predator: Never wrote about this one. In fact, I'd forgotten I played it until I saw it on somebody else's worst-of list. Whoever that was, damn you for reminding me of this awful game.

God of War III: Mechanically, God of War III was sound, but it was the moment when Kratos stopped being cool. Dude needs to get over it. He's like the guy who shows up at his 20th high school reunion wearing the same leather jacket he wore in the twelfth grade. It's embarrassing at this point.

Splinter Cell: Conviction: I get what Ubi was trying to do here. It just didn't work. Even if the aggro-stealth concept had worked, we'd still have had to deal with Fisher's motormouthed antagonists. Who the hell signed off on them?

Crackdown 2: We are drowning in awful sequels right now. Pinpointing the failure of Crackdown 2 is difficult, because in every way that matters, it is exactly the same game as its predecessor. Except the first game is still one of my favorites of this generation, and the second one is... not.

Limbo: Man, I don't even know. To me, this seemed like just another too-difficult indie platformer with delusions of grandeur.

Mafia II: Not without its charms, I still wonder what sane person would keep playing through this game's terrible action scenes unless somebody was paying them. It still wasn't enough for me!

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: This, not Limbo, is the game where I feel the most like I missed something. I read too many positive things from too many people I respect to discount it as simply a crappy game. But that's what it felt like to me: lousy camera, bad controls, dumb story. I can't get past these things.

Medal of Honor: If there was a more generic, mediocre shooter out there in 2010, I didn't play it.

Tomorrow: The best games of 2010.

*I'm just trying to seem dark and mysterious, for the ladies.

Year in Review: Honorable mentions

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: 2010 honorable mentions.

Rough as this year was, there were still plenty of games that I played and enjoyed, even if they didn't end up making my list of the best games of the year. In chronological order of when I played them:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2: I don't think I ever wrote about this game. I am generally tired of military-themed shooters, but I dug the big maps and the vehicles, and I want to apologize to the dozens of teammates I inadvertently murdered whenever I was driving.

Alan Wake: A terrific-looking shooter with a decent gameplay gimmick and a nice sense of pacing. If only this bestselling author hadn't been such a terrible writer.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: Even if I find myself reaching the "it's not you, it's me" stage with a lot of these Nintendo games, the quality is undeniable. You still can't screw with Super Mario.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane: A super-fun throwback arcade racer for Xbox Live Arcade. I really, really liked this game. It almost made my top 10 for the year.

Metroid: Other M: Uneven, especially where the storytelling was concerned, but Other M was a fun and fast-paced update to the Metroid universe. I just wish it hadn't gotten better after it ended!

NBA Jam: I almost forgot it existed, but I had fun with this game while it lasted. God, is that the most mild praise you can imagine, or what?

Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!: My first review for Joystiq was also my biggest surprise of the year. This game's reach doesn't exceed its grasp; it accomplishes everything it sets out to do.

Donkey Kong Country Returns: Rock-solid 2d platforming marred only by -- what else? -- shoehorned waggle control. Apparently there's a classic controller mode available, which probably would have helped to know when I was playing it.

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom: Another surprise. I predict that, a year from now, one of two things will happen: either you'll be able to get this game for five bucks from every bargain bin in the country, or you'll have to get it for a hundred on eBay. Both outcomes seem equally likely.

Mass Effect 2: All right, you bastards. You win. I like Mass Effect 2. Sure, I still find the moment-to-moment play excruciating, just trying to accomplish the simplest tasks, and the plot isn't that good. I've pretty much lost track of the whole thing at this point. The non-stop recitation of alien races and planets is stupefying. And, come on: The Illusive Man? Seriously? WTF kind of lazy storytelling is that? He smokes so mysteriously! And where the hell is he? Is there a bathroom on his solar observation deck?

But, on the other hand, my renegade FemShep is awesome. I like her dark humor and her clear-eyed take on things. She doesn't do the things I would do in her position, but neither do I feel like the game is forcing my hand. I'm trying to get inside this character's head. There are times when it seems like this is exactly what a roleplaying game is supposed to be.

Now let's never speak of this again.

Some Games I Wish I Had Played: Split/Second, Blur, Metro 2033, Joe Danger, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Pac Man CE DX

Can't win 'em all.

Tomorrow: the worst games of 2010.

Year in Review: Year-end superlatives

Above: A winner is you, everyone.

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

Welcome Trend: Critical Non-Consensus

With the annual "Year in Swooning" quiz, I'm trying to point out how carried away game sites often get when it comes to the flavor of the week. But there is some progress in this regard. This year, I felt like there actually was legitimate, respectful disagreement about some of the highest-profile games, both indie and major-label.

Consider:

• Deadly Premonition, a game with a Metacritic score of 69, nevertheless becomes a cult hit, thanks to word of mouth and the work of impassioned critics.
• Heavy Rain, a game with a Metacritic score of 87, nevertheless is savaged mercilessly in Boston's second-biggest newspaper.
• Some idiot calls Limbo "the worst sort of art-for-art's-sake garbage."
• Even Seth Schiesel doesn't like something.

I think it's a sign that gamers are feeling more self-confident that we don't have to band together all the time. This is a good thing!

PR Knuckleheads of the Year: Gabe and Tycho

Count me among those who thought the original comic was not only hilarious, but took aim at a worthy target. But the followup was a disaster. When some readers objected, Gabe and Tycho could have taken the criticisms in the spirit they were intended. A simple apology would have done nicely. At the very least, acknowledge the complaints respectfully and move on. Hell, ignoring them would have been better than what actually happened.

Instead, Gabe and Tycho doubled down with a comic that not only mischaracterized the complaints, but essentially said that the people who were offended are stupid. And then followed that up by selling Dickwolves merch.

All this was uncharacteristic for two guys who are so generous and inclusive, both with PAX and with Child's Play. These are the guys who banned booth babes from PAX, with the blessing of a majority of their readership. So I certainly don't doubt their motives. To their minds, a joke is a joke, but a bunch of their readers disagreed and I think they they did real damage to their brand by assuming a defensive posture instead of listening. To this day I don't think anything approaching an apology has come out, not for the first comic or for the followup.

For myself, I don't think they would have needed to apologize for the original strip, but they could have dealt with it in a better way than becoming the latest and most ironic exemplars of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory.

Game Blog of the Year: Gamer Melodico

Barely one year into it, Kirk Hamilton and company have already made a big impact with Gamer Melodico. They did it all: good-natured jabs at obnoxious game design; satire; finding inventive ways to comment on topical subjects; round-table discussions that make you feel like you're sitting in a coffee shop with the writers.

All of it's done with a good attitude, a healthy sense of humor, and keen minds. I can't sum up the site any better than they did themselves: "Gamer Melodico is a blog about games, written by friendly people who like to play."

(And, what the hell, an honorable mention for Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits. Paddon's not on-target all the time, but, in the words of Han Solo, "I must have hit real close to the mark to get her all riled up like this, huh kid?")

Developers of the Year: Ex-LucasArts dudes

No big-budget studio jumped out at me this year. Rockstar San Diego did great work with Red Dead Redemption. Retro Studios successfully rebooted Donkey Kong Country. Quantic Dream accomplished most of its very ambitious goals with Heavy Rain. 2K Marin not only stunned me by releasing a worthy followup to BioShock, but by all accounts the "Minerva's Den" DLC was even better (unfortunately, I didn't play it).

But I have to give a shout-out here to two people that I am always rooting for, who found their voices this year with downloadable games. Ron Gilbert, via Hothead Games, brought us the hilarious DeathSpank, which was followed almost immediately by a surprise sequel. And Tim Shafer's DoubleFine Productions rebounded after the disappointing Brutal Legend to release Costume Quest, a funny and light downloadable game that's gotten plaudits from a lot of people whose opinions I value. 2010 was a good year for both of these guys, and they're two of the best we've got.

Publisher of the Year: Nintendo

Even though I still struggle a bit with a lot of the newer Nintendo games, it's hard to argue that Nintendo isn't the big-name publisher that is consistently putting out the highest-quality products. On the Wii, Super Mario Galaxy and Donkey Kong Country Returns were both worthy of their names, and Metroid: Other M was respectable. On the DS, a little game called Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem! was my biggest surprise of the year. Maybe sales of the Wii are flagging, but year in and year out, Nintendo never disappoints on the software side.

Game Console of the Year: Xbox 360

We've long since reached the point at which everybody has made up their minds on this generation of game consoles. Five years into it, the Wii's star has started to fall a bit, the PlayStation 3 has never gotten on track, and the Xbox 360 has almost defaulted to the head of the pack, massive hardware failure rates notwithstanding.

So why choose the Xbox 360 as the game console of the year? For one thing, the only hardware this year that even approached the level of buzzworthy was Kinect. The jury's still out, but it's got a lot of potential. It was the Xbox that once again had the lion's share of big exclusives, both in retail and download. And, price hike or not, Xbox Live continues to be the best online gaming option around. That's why I bought my second Xbox 360 this year.

That, and my first one red-ringed after almost five years. It was like the death of the last living World War 1 veteran.

Tomorrow: Honorable mentions.

Year in Review: The best of the blog

Above: Actually the best of Insult Swordfighting.

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. First up: the best of Insult Swordfighting, 2010.

It's been a strange year. My output was lower than usual. I spent a couple of months without playing anything at all. When I did play games, I often felt uninspired, or even gloomy. Without making things weird between us, I'll just say that a lot happened this year, personally and professionally, that made me question the role of video games in my life. But it's all good. As we head into 2011, I'm excited about the way things are going, and I'm looking forward to playing and writing a lot more.

Without further ado, here are some of the better Insult Swordfighting posts you may have missed from 2010:

January: Bayonetta. How is it possible for one game to be so awesome, yet so embarrassing?

February: I returned from the disabled list. If you're wondering, I have made nearly a full recovery. The doctor and my occupational therapist both told me that it's extremely rare for people to heal so well from this type of injury.

March: I made the first of many impassioned defenses of Heavy Rain. And I spent way too much time writing about PAX East. Speaking of which, I still haven't gotten my pass for the next one.

April: I was about to vanish from blogging for awhile. One reason was Peggle.

May: N/A

June: What's with the collectibles in Alan Wake? Plus, my banned review of Splinter Cell: Conviction finally saw daylight.

July: I think a lot of people thought I was trying to stick it to Ebert, but actually this post was about how much I disliked Limbo, and the critical conversation surrounding it.

August: Seriously, I didn't like Limbo.

September: Why did Metroid: Other M wait until after the closing credits to get good?

October: 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die is released, becomes a runaway bestseller, and revenue from its sales through my Amazon Associates account makes me an instant millionaire.

November: "The Year in Swooning" is always fun.

December: My vendetta against BioWare knows no bounds. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I stayed up until 4:30 AM on Sunday playing Mass Effect 2.)

Tomorrow: Year-end superlatives.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

Above: It's the man, bringing you down.

Autolog recommends that you read my review of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit at thephoenix.com. If you follow me on Twitter (why don't you follow me on Twitter?), then you know that I love this game with a passion bordering on obsession. I found myself thinking about it as I went to sleep at night, and when I got up in the morning. When I load the title screen, my heart starts beating a little faster. This is shameful, but it's the truth.

In the limited space I have for reviews, I prefer to focus on one or two major points rather than trying to cover everything. In this case, it seemed most important to talk about how flippin' awesome the hot pursuits are, so that's the majority of the review. I didn't even mention the social features, despite how prominently they feature in the game's marketing, and even though I'm about to discuss them now, the bottom line is that the social features are a nice extra and not a game-changer.

For Autolog is, at heart, just a leaderboard. In that sense it's no different from the high score list on a Pac-Man machine 30 years ago. If no one else has played an event, you hop right to the top. If they have, your incentive is to beat them. Occasionally, you return to the game to find that you have been displaced. Your friends' scores update automatically, which, again, is not new or unique to Hot Pursuit.

Where the Autolog departs from tradition is in the ease of use. You might finish a race and return to the menu to be interrupted by a breaking news update that someone has just beaten your score. With one button press, you can immediately load that event and set to work getting your revenge. More than once, this feature resulted in an asynchronous multiplayer game between me and some of my friends who were online. We could have raced each other head to head; instead, we were trading lap times in what felt like a 21st-century update of playing chess by mail.

That's intended as a compliment.

---

• Buy Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (PS3) from Amazon
• Buy Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Xbox 360) from Amazon
• Buy Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (PC) from Amazon

Mass Effect 2

Above: Mass Effect 2 cast members plan their revenge against me for this post.

In advance of turning in my list of the year's top games, I decided to play a little catch-up this weekend. What better place to start, I thought, than with Mass Effect 2, one of the best-reviewed games of the year, and one of my favorite excerpts from this year's "Year in Swooning" quiz?

Despite Chris Buffa's command that I buy it immediately, I skipped ME2 the first time around. You may remember that I hated the original. That's not a word I use often, or lightly. I seem to have a mental block when it comes to BioWare, and it didn't seem fair to me or to them to keep reviewing their games when I'm just going to say the same things over and over. So Maddy reviewed ME2 for the Phoenix and loved it, and I went about my merry way.

Still, with the year ending, people starting to tweet about their best games of the year, and the price having dropped to $20, I figured: what the hell. Let's give Mass Effect 2 a try. I picked it up on Friday and put about six mostly painless hours into it over the weekend. Without question, it is a huge improvement over the original. But I remain baffled by so many of the design decisions, most of which have the effect of making the game hard to play. I don't mean that the game is difficult in the traditional sense, I mean that performing the most basic actions is always twice as complicated as it needs to be.

Over a year has passed since Krystian Majewski's epic three-part dismantling of the interface in Mass Effect 1, and despite minor improvements in this regard, that's still your best resource for understanding how and why Mass Effect 2's interaction design fails. When it comes to maintaining a consistent control scheme, to conveying appropriate information to the player, and making it easy to parse your character data, BioWare doesn't get the most basic things right, not even by accident.

This is but a sampling of the problems I encountered in my time playing Mass Effect 2.

Press A to confirm, or press B to... confirm?

Mass Effect 2 likes to change what buttons do from one screen to the next. By now, it is accepted convention that on the Xbox 360 controller, the green A button means "yes," "accept," "confirm," and so on. The red B button means "no," "deny," "cancel," and so on. Sometimes this is the case in ME2, and sometimes it isn't. When you select a costume for Shepard, the icons helpfully tell you "(B) Confirm." I think this is the first game in history to do that.

In other screens, the game doubles up on functions. At the end of each mission is a debrief screen that runs through your stats. When you scroll to the last menu option, you read "Exit (A)." And at the bottom of the screen, you also read "(B) Exit." That's hardly game-breaking, since it's hard to imagine what else you would want to do at that point. But it's BioWare's approach in a nutshell: never use one button when two will do.

Bait and switch

There are two primary modes of playing Mass Effect 2. Either you're walking around and talking to other characters, or you are shooting other characters. Both modes look exactly the same. They control the same, at least as far as moving your character goes. They transition from one to another seamlessly. Yet, when you move from one to another, certain buttons swap functions. Some things stop working. It is bizarre.

In non-combat play, clicking the right stick will bring up a static map (clicking the left stick will bring up the map, too -- again, why use one button when two will do?). Clicking the right stick again will not exit the map, despite how much sense that would make, but that's not really pertinent to this point. If you have an objective, you can click the right bumper to bring up a little arrow on your HUD that'll point where you need to go.

Once you're in combat, this changes. Now there's no map screen at all, and clicking the right stick brings up your objective arrow instead. This is necessary because the right bumper has been re-mapped to activate your ammo power. Makes sense, right?

The worst part of all of this is that I might have gotten the details wrong, but I would never be able to tell.

If the light is red, move ahead

Games can communicate information in lots of different ways: through text, through color, through sound, through force-feedback. When an interface is designed well, all of these elements work together to tell the player a story in the blink of an eye. When it is not, they will provide confusing or contradictory information to the player.

The best example that I saw in Mass Effect 2 came the first time I entered a mass relay, which is the device that lets you jump to another star system. The screen showed me a zoomed out galaxy map, and I could move a crosshair with the analog stick to select my destination. When I highlighted the nearest star system, I heard a buzzing noise, and a red line appeared connecting that system with the one I was on. "Whoops, guess I can't go here yet," I thought, and exited the map to try to figure out what quest-critical task I had not yet accomplished.

It took me three trips into the mass relay to realize that nothing was preventing me from proceeding, and that a tiny "travel" icon was also appearing at the bottom of the screen, along with the buzzing and the red line. This could have been avoided with a "ding" sound and a green line, don't you think?

Iconoclastic

Mass Effect 2's icons make no sense. When you're in combat, you can give your squadmates orders by pulling up a wheel that is studded with icons representing everybody's special powers. It is impossible to tell just by looking what any of these powers are. Even when you point the cursor at one of them, it's still not easy to tell because they all have sexy names that don't reflect their actual function. (Why is the command to heal your squadmates called "unity" and not, you know, "heal"?)

So in order to tell what anything does during battle, you have to scroll around reading fine print, most of which is hidden from view until you highlight a specific part of the radial wheel. This is a stunning feat of communicating as little information as possible to the player, while still taking up the maximum possible screen real estate.

(Just to rep Krystian's article again, he did a much better job of demolishing Mass Effect's iconography than I ever could.)

Ordering off the menu

Trying to navigate the menus in Mass Effect 2 feels like you've stumbled into an M.C. Escher painting. They never go where you expect, and they're full of extraneous information that doesn't help you accomplish your goals. You can read detailed paragraphs about your weapons, but you can't compare their stats side-by-side when you're selecting your loadout. That's the most important function I could imagine these menus serving, and it's just not there.

Or take the process of making upgrades. You access a console on your ship that brings up a top-level list of available upgrades, broken out by category. But the top menu item isn't selectable, and it isn't an upgrade. It provides a general description of what upgrades are. It looks like a menu option -- it just doesn't behave like one.

As you scroll down through the menu, detailed descriptions of each category display in a box to the right. I get that a lot of people who play games like this are interested in lore, so I'm not too bothered by so much of the screen being taken up by information that seemed superfluous to me. But guess what happens when you select one of the categories: in the next sub-menu, the first highlighted option is, again, a description of that category, which tells you nothing you didn't already know. But it does take up the first spot in the list, despite not sharing the same function as the other items below it.

Once you make an upgrade, you are booted back out into the ship, and must re-enter the console. You can't go immediately to the next upgrade you wanted to make. Which makes sense. Who would go to the upgrade console wanting to make upgrades?

That really got out of hand fast... I think Brick killed a guy!

Whoops! This was supposed to be a short post. I didn't even cover every problem I encountered, and remember, I only played for six hours. As with other BioWare games, I felt like I was playing a video game that was made by people who had never played a video game before.

This is probably a good time to go for the deathbed salvation and say that, despite it all, this time I can at least see what other people like about Mass Effect 2. Visually, it's a massive upgrade over the first, with vibrant alien worlds to explore. The storyline seems like pretty standard space opera stuff, but there's nothing wrong with that, and various individual scenarios I played were well paced. And the characters and dialogue trees remain the game's best achievement. Unlike in the first game, I started this one as FemShep, and I don't regret it. It's really nice to be able to play as a female hero who isn't defined (confined?) by her gender.

Will I keep playing Mass Effect 2? Maybe. I hear it gets better as you go along.

Let's get ethical

Hi there! I would like your opinion on something.

For several years now, I've had an Amazon Associates account, which lets me earn a small commission off of purchases I refer to Amazon. I rarely use it. For the past several months, all I've done with it is keep a persistent ad in this blog's righthand column to the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, which is awesome and which you should totally buy. No problem there.

One of the quirks of the Associates program is that if I refer somebody to the site, I earn money on any purchase they make during that session, even if it's not the specific item that I linked. Recently, somebody bought a pricey television set via my affiliate link, which single-handedly resulted in my first payout in the three years I've had the account. That was exciting.

This week, you may have noticed that I posted Amazon links to both of the games I reviewed. The logic is simple: I put a lot of time and effort into writing about games, and I'd like to be compensated for it as much as I can. I think this is reasonable.

My concern is that if I stand to profit off of the sales of a video game, then I appear to have an incentive to praise the game, in hopes that I will convince you to buy it. It doesn't even matter if this is true or not. As they say in journalism, the appearance of a conflict is just as bad as the conflict itself. This has been my chief criticism of Game Informer over the years. As a subsidiary of Gamestop, they clearly have an incentive for you to buy more games. Whether or not that accounts for their surfeit of 9+ scores, I don't know, but it sure makes sense to me.

If I don't have the credibility with readers to know that I'm being honest, then I have nothing. No amount of money is worth losing that. On the other hand, I think it's reasonable to treat this blog as a commercial enterprise, same as anywhere else. It's not uncommon to see, for example, links to buy tickets alongside a movie review. Nobody thinks Roger Ebert is fluffing a movie so you'll click his Fandango link.

What do you think? Do these Amazon links constitute a conflict, or an appearance of one? Is there a better way to include affiliate links that maintains a wall between advertising and editorial?

And can I interest you in a Sony BRAVIA XBR Series KDL-52XBR9 52-Inch 1080p 240 Hz LCD HDTV, Black?

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom

Above: It's a good thing he's a vegetarian.

My review of Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is up at Joystiq. This was a nice surprise. Definitely not a game I'd have sought out for myself, but I was glad to have played it.

I focused primarily on the mechanics in this review, because they're interesting, they work, and they overcome most of the game's problems, instead of being overshadowed by them. It didn't seem worth mentioning the bizarre voice acting, because it is so bizarre that it is the first thing I'd expect a reviewer to mention, and I like to keep things fresh.

But, so you know, the voice acting is weird. You talk to a bunch of animals throughout the game, and they have the strangest voices. I don't even know how to describe it. None of the American voice actors attempts a dramatic accent (though many go for silly voices), and they all sound freakishly laid-back. It's like the casting calls were posted exclusively at community colleges near the beach.

That said, although the storyline is boilerplate fantasy stuff, I was surprised by how much I grew to care about the Majin. His dialogue can be annoying at times, but he is such a reliable partner that I actually started feeling anxious when we got separated. It was always a relief to turn around and see him lumbering toward me, his knuckles practically scraping the ground. At the game's emotional climax, I wouldn't quite say I was moved, but I did care, and I think that's an achievement worth celebrating.

• Buy Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom (Xbox 360) from Amazon
• Buy Majin And The Forsaken Kingdom (PS3) from Amazon

Donkey Kong Country Returns

Above: A serious mine furor.

My review of Donkey Kong Country Returns is up now at thephoenix.com. I'm starting to feel like a broken record with these rebooted Nintendo games. I like them, and can't deny the quality, but don't feel especially compelled to keep playing them. Often it seems like my complaints come down to "this game is too hard," but that's not exactly right.

Honestly, DKCR isn't that hard. You die a lot, but it's not stingy with the 1-ups, and nothing in it is insurmountable provided you put in a reasonable effort. What bothered me was its old-school approach to recording my progress. Which is to say: it didn't. In any given level, there are several goals you might try to achieve. Several times I'd successful pick up the K-O-N-G pieces, but die before reaching the exit. Then, I'd complete the level but miss one of the pieces. Of course, I could go back and try again. The game is expressly designed that way. But it doesn't mean I wanted to do it.

In other words, I enjoyed DKCR well enough to play through it, but not well enough to shoot for 100% completion. In some games, that might not be a knock, but in this case I could tell that I was supposed to. So I'll put it in the "good but not great" category, with the caveat that it's not my kind of game anymore, but it's probably yours.

Yep, these are the hard-hitting videogame insights you come to this blog for. Say, have you heard about this Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit game?

• Buy Donkey Kong Country Returns from Amazon

A milestone in the Laser Orgy 500

Awhile back, I mentioned the Laser Orgy 500, a battle royal put together by the Phoenix that lets users vote in randomly generated matchups between hundreds of video games. It's fun and incredibly addictive. If you haven't voted in the LO500 yet, you should start voting now.

This week, the paper ran a special selection of the current top 50 games, which includes short write-ups from several writers, including Garrett Martin, Chris Dahlen, Maddy Myers, Ryan Stewart, and myself. And it's not a bad list.

As with the entries I wrote for 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die (which makes a great Christmas gift!), I found real value in revisiting these games and trying to come up with something new to say about them. For instance, I hope my story about Mortal Kombat II isn't just funny, but says something true about the nature of arcade competition.

People like to complain about best-of lists, I know. What's great about the LO500 is that if you don't like it, you have the power to change it. What are you waiting for? Give it a shot!

(And also check out the slideshow of videogame characters invading Boston.)

Quiz: The Year in Swooning

Match each of these games with the breathless quotation from its review.

1. Bayonetta
2. Mass Effect 2
3. Heavy Rain
4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2
5. Red Dead Redemption
6. Super Mario Galaxy 2
7. Halo: Reach
8. Rock Band 3
9. Call of Duty: Black Ops
10. Donkey Kong Country Returns

A. "A knockout in just about every way it can be... you owe it to yourself to rush out and buy this."

B. "There are so many aspects... that make it an experience above and beyond all other open world sandbox experiences that we can't even begin to list them all. Some of the reasons that stand out are a wealth of content, a beautifully rendered and detailed world, an interesting and engaging storyline, a fantastic roster of characters with their own personalities, great and believable dialogue, the ability to experience the game world online with or against others; the list can go on forever. Rest assured that this is one of the greatest game we've played in 2010 so far, and possibly ever."

C. "There is simply not a better, more complete shooter on the market, and with all this content, there isn't any way you can find something that you cannot sink your teeth into."

D. "I have never played anything so momentous or revolutionary... In the coming years I expect the game's influence to be felt throughout the industry in terms of gameplay, storytelling and interactivity. This is a game that deserves all the plaudits it can get. So please go out and buy [this game] and reward those that have made such a groundbreaking videogame event."

E. "Far exceeded our expectations and is without question one of the best games we've played. Use whatever positive description you'd like. System seller, potential game of the year, landmark achievement; just make sure you buy it immediately."

F. "With a ton of incredible levels to conquer; gorgeous, perfectly designed graphics (wait until you see the first sunset level!); retro-inspired music; and smooth, flawless gameplay, videogames don't get much better... I can't recommend this game enough."

G. "Easily the best FPS I've played in a long time. Dialogue that makes me want to watch a feature film starring these guys. A virtually flawless single and multiplayer experience."

H. "One of the best first person shooters this year, and is obviously a must have for any action fan. Intense, gory and quite brilliant, maybe it's not refreshing but at the same time it's a stunning game."

I. "Across-the-boards perfection [that] can't be measured by any scale. It's simply in a class by itself. This is where games need to go for my money... A modern-day masterpiece."

J. "This is a rare occasion when the hype can actually be justified; ...quite simply, a masterpiece."

ANSWERS:

1. I (Play Magazine)
2. E (GameDaily)
3. D (Boomtown)
4. G (GamePlanet)
5. B (Level7.nu)
6. J (Gamestyle)
7. C (ZTGameDomain)
8. A (Atomic Gamer)
9. H (3dJuegos)
10. F (Destructoid)

BONUS SECTION:

Which game is Destructoid calling close to perfect?

1. The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
2. Rock Band 3
3. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
4. Deadly Premonition
5. Limbo

A. "Judged as a piece of entertainment, as a game that consistently surprises and amazes and leaves jaws hanging... It's pretty close to perfect."

B. "About as close to perfect as you're going to get."

C. "It's warm and satisfying with a near-perfect consistency throughout."

D. "It delivers a near-perfect competitive experience, in a way that few games... can."

E. "...as close to perfect at what it does as a game can get."

1. C (link)
2. B (link)
3. D (link)
4. A (link)
5. E (link)

Compiled with thanks, and apologies, to Metacritic.