Again, Fallout 3 shipped with more bugs than you could shake a stick at, but despite the engine powering the game starting to look a little creaky, and all the usual animation issues looking worse than ever, Fallout New Vegas stole my heart (and my time!). With a far superior main quest to Fallout 3, loads of other stuff to see and do, and the introduction of hardcore mode and factions, Fallout New Vegas proved that hardcore roleplaying games are still relevant in 2010. The first batch of Fallout DLC is definitely the thing I’m looking forwards to playing most between now and the new year, and I’m sure I’ll also be swept back up into some of those pesky, but absorbing, addictive side quests that I didn’t quite wrap up on my first playthrough.

 

 

 

It may come as a big surprise that my game of the year is a updated version of a 1970’s classic available on the XBLA service. Costing a mere 800ms points this game offers exceptional value with numerous game modes, sublime gameplay and stunning all round presentation. A must have title that all gamers should experience.

 

 

 

Coming out at the very beginning of the year Mass Effect 2 has remained burned into gaming’s collective consciousness, and my own, through out 2010. Offering a follow up to one of the best original space RPGs ever made it refined systems, and changed key element to make it almost feel like a whole new experience. Moving the combat from a RPG heavy dice roll system to a more skill based duck and cover style game (similar to Gears of War) it may have ended up as a strange mix of the two, but allowed for a far more accessible action sections of gameplay that allowed players to focus on the fantastic stories of the characters, and the choices contained with in them, that really tied together.

 

 

 

 

I like me a Western. Give me a Dollars Trilogy or a True Grit and I’ll be a perfectly happy gentleman. So I mean no small amount of respect when I say that Red Dead is among the finest Western stories ever seen on screen. But this is a game, it’s more than seen, it’s played. Rockstar transported their GTA style to the turn of the century America with consummate ease, blending it perfectly with a well established sense of character and context. Video game protagonists are generally vaunted for their machismo, but John Marsten was more than that. A rounded and engrossing character unsurpassed in any other video game. His sweeping narrative was heart rending, warming, and breaking in equal measure, and I was there. I did it. Me and John riding out into the sunset on our ill-fated mission of redemption and betrayal. Video games have never been so transcendent.