It’s the end of the year and we’ve seen one of the best years in console gaming to date. With great games from both the indie developers and the mainstream publishers, the Xbox 360 contains a wealth of fantastic titles to choose from this year. Here are ten of the best games released in 2010 for the Xbox 360, and none you’ll want to miss if you know what’s good for you.
#10 Super Meat Boy
As many have noted, Super Meat Boy is one of the most difficult games ever created, standing as the number one title in the “frustrating as f***” genre of insane platformers.
Super Meat Boy takes the best parts of I Want To Be The Guy and countless other nightmarish games and puts it in one colossal bundle of masochistic goodness. You play the role of titular character Super Meat Boy who has to rescue his princess, Bandage Girl, from the clutches of some bad guy who has nothing better to do than to kidnap helpless characters.
Along the way, you can unlock allies from various other games, including Braid, Castle Crashers and Minecraft (If you’re playing it on the PC) as a substitute for Super Meat Boy. The game has since been parodied by those jerks over at PETA in a poorly made game called Super Tofu Boy. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery, but Super Meat Boy is worth playing only in its original form
#9 Alan Wake
From the makers of Max Payne comes Alan Wake, a novelist who, with his wife Alice, seeks refuge in the sleepy town of Bright Falls to alleviate his two-year long writer’s block. As someone who’s suffered from it from time to time, I can totally relate with Wake’s wanting to get away.
When Alice goes missing, it sets in motion a sinister plot that envelopes the town of Bright Fall in a mysterious darkness. Alan realizes that the events reflect the pages of a manuscript written in his handwriting, and knows that he’s the only one who can get to the bottom of it. Armed with only a flashlight and a gun, he sets out into the dark to recover missing pages of the manuscript, intent on solving the mystery and figuring out how the story ends.
Like Max Payne before it, Alan Wake is an excellently written action thriller that not only plays well, but reads well.
#8 Bioshock 2
Bioshock 2 is a return to the underwater city of Rapture. Taking place ten years after the events of the first game, a collectivist cult lead by the enigmatic Sophia Lamb consumes the city’s inhabitants, left lost and astray after the death of Andrew Ryan. The Rapture Family, as it’s called, fills a niche in the hearts and minds of many.
You play the role of a sentient Big Daddy whose Little Sister Eleanor (whom you regard as your daughter, really) was taken away from you by Sophia Lamb. Finding yourself awake once more, you wakl through the city of Rapture in its dilapidated state on a mission to rescue Eleanor. Along the way, you discover the identity you lost and recover the humanity that was stripped from you when you were forcibly made into a monstrosity.
Bioshock 2 is a story of what it means to be a father, and what it means to be human.
7. Call of Duty: Black Ops
Black Ops, the latest title in the popular Call of Duty series is also arguably its best. You’re Mason, a Black Ops operator for the US Government, and you’re strapped in a chair as a man behind a glass calls out your name and tortures you in an effort to get you to tell him what you know about who you are, and what you’ve done.
You relive a decade of Mason’s life through flashbacks as you move through the streets of Cuba, escape a Russian gulag, and fight your way through the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia during the war–all in an effort to discover the truth about yourself.
It’s a surreal, but entirely visceral first person shooter experience that leaves almost every other FPS released this year in the dust. Not only is it awesome to play, it also tells a damn good story.
#6 Red Dead Redemption
There’s not too many games that take place in the Wild West, and most of them tend to suck. Red Dead Redemption doesn’t suck, and contrary to what you may have heard, it does the game an injustice to call it Grand Theft Auto with cowboys. It plays the same, but it’s also a lot more than that.
Playing the role of John Marston, a former outlaw hired (or forced, really) by the Bureau of Investigation (a precursor to the FBI) to hunt down an outlaw by the name of Bill Williamson and exterminate his gang. You’ve got a history with Bill and his cohorts, having run with them before, and the agents think that you’re the only man who can pull off the job. That, and they’re holding your family in custody as leverage for getting you to carry out their dirty work.
That’s the storyline. Most of the game consists of shooting down cowboys with a wide range of weaponry (from pistols to WW1-era rifles) and riding a horse across the desert in search of bounty. You can even play poker, liar’s dice, horseshoes and do a whole lot of other things if you ever need a break from the main narrative.
#5 Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
It’s a sequel to a sequel but it’s not quite Assassin’s Creed 3. Taking on the role of Ezio once again, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood takes place after the events of AC2 and this time, it puts you in charge of a whole brotherhood of assassins (hence the title). They can earn experience, level up and undertake missions in this iteration of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which has more RPG elements than ever.
Aside from the fantastic single player game, one of the Brotherhood’s greatest draws is its multiplayer mode. Players earn points by carrying out assassinations in stealth and escaping after each kill. Breaking cover makes the players visible, turning them into targets for other players. Like the single player game, Brotherhood’s multiplayer is rife with RPG features so players can level up and earn new perks, abilities and streaks for playing well. Players can choose from a variety of different characters and classes and earn unlocks based on their choices. It’s fun as hell.
#4 Fallout: New Vegas
You were dead, but you got better. Your head feels like hell and someone needs to pay. Enter Fallout: New Vegas, the latest iteration in the Fallout series and in the opinion of hardcore fans, the true successor to the series.
Set in the Mojave Desert, Fallout: New Vegas follows the events of Fallout 2. The New California Republic has expanded its borders to the north and is encountering resistance from a Roman-styled army called Caesar's Legion. As a courier trying to make a living in the wasteland, you stand directly in the middle of the warpath.
Staying true to form, New Vegas takes everything good about the previous Fallout games and delivers a solid experience.
#3 Limbo
Limbo's a game that spun out of no-name independent Danish developer Playdead Studios to become one of the best games ever made. Developed under a meagre budget, Limbo puts the player in control of a little boy who has to run through a series of obstacles in search of his sister in one of the bleakest environments ever imagined. Mistakes will get the little boy killed, and the graphics, though minimalistic, are utterly gruesome to behold. Presented in monochromatic black-and-white tones, Limbo is truly a work of art.
#2 Halo: Reach
Halo: Reach is a prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, taking place a few weeks before the events of the original game (which is currently rumored to be in development with the Reach engine). The game takes place aboard the colony of Reach where the UNSC is fighting a losing battle against the Covenant. Taking control of Noble Six, an elite member of the Spartans, you have to participate in a war that’s ultimately futile.
The gameplay is a lot closer to the original Halo game than later titles in the series. With the addition of jetpacks, the game also shares some similarity to the Tribes series.
Halo: Reach is an unmissable chapter in the Halo series and any fan of the game should pick this up.
#1 Mass Effect 2
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call Mass Effect this generation’s Star Wars (or Star Trek, if you prefer). The quality of the game’s writing, the depth of its universe and the memorable characters who populate it are just a few of the excellent elements that make the series as great as it is.
Playing the role of Commander Shepard, Mass Effect 2 takes place two years after the events of the first game, where Shepard’s ship, the SSV Normandy is destroyed by an unknown alien vessel as they were attempting to answer a distress call. Presumed dead, Shepard was in fact retrieved by the mysterious Cerberus corporation and brought back to life with the help of various cybernetic implants. Back from the dead and stronger than ever, Shepard must rebuild his crew aboard a new Cerberus-constructed Normandy by recruiting unique individuals across the galaxy, and take the fight back to the mysterious aliens that killed him the first time.
Mass Effect 2 is a major upgrade over the first game, featuring a completely revamped combat system making it more of a third person shooter than the first game ever was, while retaining all of the dialogue and RPG elements that made Mass Effect an excellent, choice-driven game.
It’s also our Xbox 360 game of the year.
