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: 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.

Limboned

Above: I'd even go so far as to say this game looks better in stills.

My review of Limbo is up now at thephoenix.com. I promise you that it is not intended as kneejerk contrarianism. The tone of this review is partly a reaction to the praise, yes, but I'll defend the substance of the criticisms any time. I'm not discounting the validity of the profound experiences so many other people are claiming to have had with this game, but, wow, I didn't see it at all.

All I saw here was smoke and mirrors. Some clever ideas thrown onscreen with no regard for how they fit together, and no semblance of anything I recognize as good game design. Games are about rules, with the occasional exception that throws you for a loop. Limbo is all exceptions and no rules. If there had been an open microphone in the room while I was playing this game, I imagine it would have picked up nothing but a steady stream of "What?" "Huh?" "Wait... what?" (Plus the f-word a lot of times.)

Not that Limbo is difficult, per se. The puzzles aren't brain-busters, and even though you die a lot, it always puts you right back where you started. It's just so capricious. It never bothers to set limits or rules for the world you're in. Its sole concern seems to be killing you for no apparent reason. Instead of asking you to apply what you learned from your previous deaths, the game keeps changing the rules so it can kill you again. It's as though it's making things up as it goes, like a rambling first draft that could use a good revision.*

As for whether Limbo is the long-awaited proof that games are art, well. We can agree that it sure looks neat. And we can probably agree that the big spider is pretty scary. Beyond that? I'm not buying it. The closest this game gets to something resembling truth and not artifice is the occasional appearance of larger boys who ambush your character and then scurry away. This is interesting, and feels unforced, especially compared to the rest of the game. As with everything else, Limbo passes over this tantalizing opportunity. The boys come and go, and nothing much happens.

Meanwhile, the game moves onto much less evocative threats, like buzzsaws and electrified rails. (Yes, those certainly speak to the essence of your childhood fears.) Doesn't that all seem backward? The big spider comes first. Then the creepy bullies. Then a bunch of clanking machinery with no character at all. Talk about diminishing returns. If there had been another level, our hero would be trying to avoid eating his beets.

Limbo just seemed so desperate to convince me of its profundity. I wanted to put my arm around its shoulder and say: You've got a lot of growing up to do, kid.

*See also: this post.