So, the Steam Summer sale didn't do it for you. You've still got that hankering some quality games on the cheap. Well, here at Gameranx we're total cheapasses! We've been paying Matthew Stewart in fish heads, and he still hasn't wised up. Here's his list of five overlooked games from 2010 that you can find for a couple nickels and a hog's head down at the penny store.
#5 – Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game
If you hadn't heard of the indie-pop cross anime cross teenage angst mashup of Scott Pilgrim, I'm gonna level with you: you'll either love it, or you'll burn Michael Cera in effigy. It really depends on whether or not you need references to Mario 3 and other 8-bit classics just to fill up the emptiness inside you left by a childhood of being picked last in kickball, or the fact that none of the other kids in class wanted to talk to you, because you wouldn't shut up about reptiles for 15 seconds.
That said, I'm not a fan of Scott Pilgrim the comic, or the movie. Just doesn't do it for me. I was picked only second-to-last in kickball and my reptile obsession was turtles of the ninja persuasion.
So when a friend of mine, who happens to be a very well-adjusted individual, suggested we turn on his PS3 and play Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, I was a tiny bit stunned. First, by the fact that my bro suggested that we play a video game (let alone the Scott Pilgrim game). Second, that the game was actually really fun.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game scratched a very real itch for me – it was a total homage to one of my favorite NES games – River City Ransom. RCR is a very clever beat-em up with some light RPG elements. It's highly addictive, challenging, and freakin' fun! It's the perfect game for wasting a Saturday afternoon with your best bud.
The Scott Pilgrim game is every bit the blast that RCR was. If you missed RCR, you owe it to yourself to play Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game. Bring a friend. That is, if you didn't scare everyone off with your snakeskin collection.
#4 – Monday Night Combat
When this game first came out on Xbox Live, a lot of people wrote it off as a knock-off of Team Fortress 2. While it's no Final Combat it's hard to shake off the similarities between MNC and TF2. Both games are done in a similar aesthetic, and both are classed based, team shooters – and there's like, objectives and junk.
That's where the similarities end. “But Matt,” you might say, “what you just described is the entirety of Team Fortress 2!” Yeah, it was. But it's not the entirety of Monday Night Combat, smartypants! Ten pushups!
Monday Night Combat is a mutt with a healthy genetic contribution from the MOBA genre – games like Defense of the Ancients, or League of Legends. In MNC, you, the player, have to escort AI controlled bots that walk along a fixed path from your base to your opponent's turf. There, they have to have lived long enough to assault the Moneyball – a giant spheroid filled with love. Pfffftthahaha. Just kidding! It's filled with fucking money!
You're the worst caricature of a pro-athlete in Monday Night Combat – complete with the willingness to kill anyone and everyone who gets between you and your precious Moneyball, where all your paper is stacked. Also you can pick up “sponsors” which are basically ways to customize your character class with faster run speed, or more health and what have you.
The art, when coupled with the game's entirely manic announcer, shows that there's a lot of personality in MNC. And it's fun! People like that in their games, right? Fun? I don't even know what you people want anymore!
#3 – Fallout: New Vegas
OK, so you passed on Fallout: New Vegas because you saw that Obsidian was developing for Bethesda on the Gamebryo engine, and thought there's no way it won't be buggier than the crawl space under a midwestern farmhouse. Well, look who doesn't know their shit – because it's certainly not you!
Yeah, I got roped into this game on Day 1. In my defense, it's actually a lot of fun – and I love fun. I also love Fallout. And I heard there was some Fallout to be had in Fallout: New Vegas. Go figure, right?
All that aside, if you passed on this game the first go-round, I can't blame you. However, if you still pass on this game, I'm now going to personally mail you some animal poo until you at least rent this game.
Is it still bug-ridden? Possibly. There was a major patch released that has supposedly fixed most, if not all of those game-breaking, obnoxious, squirmy bugs.
Regardless – it's Fallout, man! What's wrong with you? Are you trying to make me cry? It's fun! And there's like nuclear space cowboys and junk! You can head to the small, dusty town of Primm and make the casino robot the town's Sheriff! He wears cowboy boots and a little cowboy hat! He rules over Primm with a cold, steely logic of a machine! I dare you to name another instance of robot Sheriff! I dare you!
You can't. I win. Go play New Vegas.
#2 Amnesia: The Dark Descent
It's safe to say that Amnesia was the PC indie darling to come out this year (sorry, Minecraft, you're still in beta – quit hogging the spotlight). It's a Lovecraft inspired trip down insanity lane where everything is creepy without even trying. Don't get me wrong. Amnesia has its fair share of cheap pop-up monster scares, but the atmosphere is even creepier than that middle-aged guy who hangs out the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. Everything is so sparse that tension just pops into the air like electricity. The smallest thing can set the most grizzled, bearded man into the girliest of screaming fits.
There are no guns, no exploding barrels, no knives, no pipebombs, no nothing to defend yourself. Here's what happens when a monster comes after you in Amnesia: you hit the “Esc” button on your keyboard to just before nearly soiling yourself, maybe go have a cigarette if that's your thing, then you put your quivering mitts back to the keyboard, unpause the game, turn the main character around, and run like a pack of angry wolves just smelled your bacon scented deodorant.
Then you hide.
That's what you do in Amnesia – you hide in a closet. Closets are your greatest ally. Whilst in them, you get the chance to wonder if monsters, like raptors, are able to open doors. Turns out they can't. But they're still fucking scary.
#1 Just Cause 2
Some games may take the “less is more” approach, but with Just Cause 2, more is more. It's so much more, your feeble mind can't comprehend the amount of awesome this game puts onto a shiny piece of plastic. More explosions, more guns, and more tethering a boat to a flying airplane. Yes, that happens in this game that I'm telling you about now – and it's so awesome that if there's a pregnant lady in the room, you might need to ask her to step out before you pop this game in. [Actually, if there's a pregnant lady in the room, and she's not completely dominating your ass at this game because hormones can make people really aggressive sometimes, YOU should be the one to leave the room, lazyarse. Unless you're pregnant too, in which case the winner of "not having to leave the room" is settled by a measurement of whose feet are the most swollen. -ed]
Let me put it this way: if, at some point in the future, archaeologists are trying to figure out why so many of us had all-consuming obsessions with little shiny circles that made our picture-boxes put out funny colors, I hope that Just Cause 2 is the only surviving relic of the video game age. Once you play it, you'll understand.
This game takes so many high concepts and does them total justice. Huge, interesting open world? Just Cause 2 has it. Multiple factions to work for? Got it. Multitude of ways to get from point A to point B? Yep. Cool story? Eh, sure. A billion ways to screw around? You betcha'. Guy with spicy Hispanic accent, a parachute, grappling hook, AND PENCHANT FOR JUMPING OUT OF AERIAL VEHICLES? A MILLION TIMES YES!
The best part is, Just Cause 2 takes off the kid gloves. It doesn't try to box you into one part of the map until you unlock everything else. It doesn't try to get in your way by shoving a story down your throat. Scientifically speaking, there are assloads of different places to explore in Just Cause 2. If you can see it, chances are you can go there, walk through it, and blow it up. You can whip around buildings like Spiderman, and fly a helicopter into said buildings as you parachute out the side, cackling like a madman.
The truly open world allows you to actually complete missions (assuming you're not like me and you just want to steal jets in order to fly them into other jets) any way you want. You wanna parachute down into that enemy base? Maybe you want to drive through the front gate? Or perhaps you're the kind of person who wants to blow shit up with a helicopter first? Whatever you want, you can do it. You can approach from any angle, use any vehicle, any gun, level everything, or sneak in and out like a ninja. With this game, it's truly up to you. Just Cause 2 is criminally under-appreciated.
