Monday, December 27, 2010
2010 in Games
The year is nearly over. These are the games I played in 2010.
If you have posted your own "2010 in games" post somewhere (preferably with screenshots), feel free to post a link in the comments!
Disclaimer: These are the games I played 2010, not necessarily the best games 2010 (release date):
---
League of Legends
Never before did I have more fun in a free 5vs5 game (except for the HL:CounterStrike Beta maybe). Yes, it's easier than DotA. No, that's not a bad thing.
Lots of people complained about level grinding and RPG elements (runes, masteries) but I actually think it's a good thing: League of Legends allows you to understand the game while you're playing. It's "noob-friendly" (although your team mates will still call you names if you die too often).
The integrated matchmaking system will make you fight against equally clueless and underpowered players in the beginning. As levels proceed, the different character classes (caster, assassin, tank, etc.) become more and more distinct from each other.
Two Casters will for example deal much more damage to each other in the later levels. You kill faster, you die faster.
That means individual mistakes in a level one game are not nearly as devastating as they are in a level 30 ranked game.
The game is "100% free to play" so you can unlock all content (minus custom skins which are just visual enhancements) just by playing. I'll probably keep playing this for a long, long time.
Rating: 9/10
Dungeon Siege 2
I always wanted to play Dungeon Siege 2 after playing the demo back then in 2005 and never got to play it until this year.
Clearly, graphics are sub-par even by 2005 standards but the game still has a unique feeling to it. It's the small ideas which make the game unique:
It was one of the first major RPGs to use a natural skill tree (you level up skills by using them, not by clicking "+" buttons; full hybrids ARE possible).
A fun feature is that you can hire minions which grow by "eating" loot and get bonus stats according to the equipment they eat. If you let your minion eat everything you come along instead of using the gear yourself, it will become much more powerful than you in the early levels.
Obviously, the game is much more than a D2 clone which is mainly due to the freedom it offers. From an Oblivion-like solo experience (caster/meelee/archer specialists as well as hybrid builds are equally playable.
You CAN be a healer AND tank AND archer if you desire, although you won't deal as much damage as a pure archer) to a huge party everything is possible.
The main quest is about as long as the Diablo2 quest line but there are dozens and dozens of secondary missions available. Those side quests which are spread all over the game allows you to easily pass the 50 hours mark WITHOUT ever replaying a single mission in a higher difficulty (think: Diablo2 nightmare, hell).
And then there is online co-op play, mods, etc. etc. - I hope Dungeon Siege 3 will be as good as this game.
Rating: 8/10
Civilization IV
There is not much to say about Civ4. Playing huge world maps against dozens of other civilizations is recreation at its best. I didn't even have a look at Civ5 yet because this game is still awesome.
It is one of the games I would take on a lonely island for sure.
Rating: 9/10
MUD TV
This is a 3D remake of one of the best PC games of the early 90s, Mad TV.
As the name implies you are managing a TV station which includes producing talkshows and TV movies, organizing your program and ad blocks, etc.
The game is cute and funny, like the original. It only has two big problems:
1) The AI goes like IDDQD in free play mode. Starting on Day 2, they will magically be able to afford 3-star rated productions which attract way more viewers than the measly 1-star movies you can buy. That is at the lowest difficulty.
2) Due to bad programming, a memory leak crashes the game once you have played long enough. Even saving and loading won't help you. This bug will not be patched anymore, thus decreasing replayability to zero.
What could have been a great title is now a game I would not recommend to anybody but code reverse engineering specialists who want to patch to memory leak to become the hero of tens of thousands of unlucky buyers.
Rating: 1/10 (8/10 without bugs)
Dyson (Eufloria)
I picked up Dyson as a free copy when it was part of a developer contest.
Dyson promotes a calm way of gaming, much like a Zen experience. It's not a game that you can beat by clicking faster, shooting harder or planning your strategy better. Instead, it honors the time you take to play it.
You control seedlings which can be used to plant trees on a core. Over time, the number of seedlings increases based on the number of trees. Finally, you can move your seedlings to a near core and expand there.
Dyson is a great experience in that it is not important anymore to "beat" the game fast, or at all. In some levels I even slowed down to enjoy the athmosphere.
You can still find Dyson as a free download if you look around or you can pick up Eufloria as a better, more polished Dyson for ~$20.
I'm not sure if it's worth the money but even if you are not getting Eufloria, be sure to give Dyson a try the next time you need some stress relieve.
Rating: 7/10
Oblivion
There are many reasons why I play Oblivion in 2010 and not 4 years ago.
2 official add-ons, lots of official DLC packages as well as thousands of inofficial mods were released in the meantime.
You can have the best of today (brilliant visual mods and sound enhancements) without the worst of yesterday (hundreds of quest bugs were patched in the meantime).
Inofficial mods also fixed what most people found to be the most obvious flaws in Oblivion's game design: Improper level scaling and the complicated skill system.
Quoting from an Oblivion skill guide:
Did that make sense for you?
Great, because for me it did not.
In vanilla Oblivion, roleplaying a character (as in "starting with major skills you want to use") meant playing a much harder and often frustrating game. On the other hand, choosing bogus skills as your main skills was the way to a powerful character.
This "feature" often led to less immersion and an overall diminished experience. By installing mods you can fix it with ease and play Oblivion like it was meant to be played: Without thinking about hidden game mechanics!
And in case you haven't read any reviews in the last 4 years: Yes, it is an epic journey and can easily take you 100+ hours.
Rating: 9/10
F1 2010
Possibly the best Formula1 game ever. With mods and without applying the "I want a hardcore F1 simulation" attitude that is.
Monaco in heavy rain is gorgeous. Most of the game is beautiful, except for the dull 3D models in press conferences.
Controls are pretty weird up to the point that an Xbox 360 controller can be faster than a G25 wheel because of input stabilization issues. Lots of racing games suffer from this problem in order to satisfy casual Xbox gamers sadly (PGR, Forza, GRID, ...). The right wheel settings make G25 racing a blast, albeit with less wheel feedback than the rFactor F1 mods deliver.
AI is sort of a mixed bag but it's still bearable. In the end, you are supposed to race online anyway.
Rating: 8/10
Need for Speed: SHIFT
Much better than other NFS releases (Underground, Carbon, Most Wanted, ProStreet, Undercover, ...). Almost as good as NFS: Porsche Unleashed.
Another title with stupid default settings for wheel use. The right settings, mods and a powerful PC make this a great racing game. Oh yeah, and drift mode is unrealistic and plain sucks.
Rating: 7/10
DIRT 2
Brainless off-road fun. It's all Codemasters promised, it's all they delivered.
Rating: 6/10
Minor appearances:
- RACE07 (+Race On, STCC, GTR Evolution). Still amazing online fun, especially in organized leagues. 9/10.
- Resident Evil 5. We finally finished the co-op campaign. Weird ending but well worth the time. 8/10.
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Still playing the campaign which is good enough to keep me interested. Also, stunning visuals at highest settings. 8/10.
- Forza 3. Before I unplugged my Xbox, this was the main game. Great online fun as long as there are no wreckers (which is another reason why they should have released it on PC instead: less immatures!). Sadly, to reach the top leaderboard ranks you have to own a Wheel/pedals combination with a clutch pedal which is $500. 8/10.
- Batman: Arkham Asylum. Finally got to play it, a title which was one of the big surprises back then. Starts off GREAT (like "Game of the Century"-great), then after a while ways become longer, story and action slow down a bit and everything gets a bit dull. Still a good game which does many things right, including hand-to-hand combat. 8/10.
- Portal. Picked up for free on Steam and never regretted it. 7/10.
- Heroes of Might and Magic 5. Picked up at Steam during a promo and never made it past the third mission or so. Not as good as I hoped, but far from a bad game. 6/10.
- Alien Swarm. Free on Steam. Played the first co-op missions which were good, then realized that you had to grind your way up to the better weapons to even have a chance in the higher difficulties. 4/10.
- iRacing. A great simulation except from the ultra-boring license grinding. Plus road racing with the interesting cars (Corvette et al.) is pretty much dead during european times which sort of sucks. Currently not worth the horrendous subscription and content fees, even as an avid sim freak. 3/10.
- Battleforge. Used to be a solid game with both, PvE and PvP being fun. Now is a great example of a fun game that has been patched to death. They released new overpowered, completely imbalanced cards that make it impossible to win without shelling out $200 for the same overpowered cards. Not that it would matter because online PvP seems empty as well. Laughable. 1/10.
- Freedom Force: The one and only game so far I gave up playing during the tutorial. Weird controls, laggy input, stuttering, bad graphics, unfair enemies. You name it. Maybe I should give it a serious try again. Maybe not. 1/10.
If you have posted your own "2010 in games" post somewhere (preferably with screenshots), feel free to post a link in the comments!
Disclaimer: These are the games I played 2010, not necessarily the best games 2010 (release date):
---
League of LegendsNever before did I have more fun in a free 5vs5 game (except for the HL:CounterStrike Beta maybe). Yes, it's easier than DotA. No, that's not a bad thing.
Lots of people complained about level grinding and RPG elements (runes, masteries) but I actually think it's a good thing: League of Legends allows you to understand the game while you're playing. It's "noob-friendly" (although your team mates will still call you names if you die too often).
The integrated matchmaking system will make you fight against equally clueless and underpowered players in the beginning. As levels proceed, the different character classes (caster, assassin, tank, etc.) become more and more distinct from each other.
Two Casters will for example deal much more damage to each other in the later levels. You kill faster, you die faster.
That means individual mistakes in a level one game are not nearly as devastating as they are in a level 30 ranked game.
The game is "100% free to play" so you can unlock all content (minus custom skins which are just visual enhancements) just by playing. I'll probably keep playing this for a long, long time.
Rating: 9/10
Dungeon Siege 2I always wanted to play Dungeon Siege 2 after playing the demo back then in 2005 and never got to play it until this year.
Clearly, graphics are sub-par even by 2005 standards but the game still has a unique feeling to it. It's the small ideas which make the game unique:
It was one of the first major RPGs to use a natural skill tree (you level up skills by using them, not by clicking "+" buttons; full hybrids ARE possible).
A fun feature is that you can hire minions which grow by "eating" loot and get bonus stats according to the equipment they eat. If you let your minion eat everything you come along instead of using the gear yourself, it will become much more powerful than you in the early levels.
Obviously, the game is much more than a D2 clone which is mainly due to the freedom it offers. From an Oblivion-like solo experience (caster/meelee/archer specialists as well as hybrid builds are equally playable.
You CAN be a healer AND tank AND archer if you desire, although you won't deal as much damage as a pure archer) to a huge party everything is possible.
The main quest is about as long as the Diablo2 quest line but there are dozens and dozens of secondary missions available. Those side quests which are spread all over the game allows you to easily pass the 50 hours mark WITHOUT ever replaying a single mission in a higher difficulty (think: Diablo2 nightmare, hell).
And then there is online co-op play, mods, etc. etc. - I hope Dungeon Siege 3 will be as good as this game.
Rating: 8/10
Civilization IVThere is not much to say about Civ4. Playing huge world maps against dozens of other civilizations is recreation at its best. I didn't even have a look at Civ5 yet because this game is still awesome.
It is one of the games I would take on a lonely island for sure.
Rating: 9/10
MUD TVThis is a 3D remake of one of the best PC games of the early 90s, Mad TV.
As the name implies you are managing a TV station which includes producing talkshows and TV movies, organizing your program and ad blocks, etc.
The game is cute and funny, like the original. It only has two big problems:
1) The AI goes like IDDQD in free play mode. Starting on Day 2, they will magically be able to afford 3-star rated productions which attract way more viewers than the measly 1-star movies you can buy. That is at the lowest difficulty.
2) Due to bad programming, a memory leak crashes the game once you have played long enough. Even saving and loading won't help you. This bug will not be patched anymore, thus decreasing replayability to zero.
What could have been a great title is now a game I would not recommend to anybody but code reverse engineering specialists who want to patch to memory leak to become the hero of tens of thousands of unlucky buyers.
Rating: 1/10 (8/10 without bugs)
Dyson (Eufloria)I picked up Dyson as a free copy when it was part of a developer contest.
Dyson promotes a calm way of gaming, much like a Zen experience. It's not a game that you can beat by clicking faster, shooting harder or planning your strategy better. Instead, it honors the time you take to play it.
You control seedlings which can be used to plant trees on a core. Over time, the number of seedlings increases based on the number of trees. Finally, you can move your seedlings to a near core and expand there.
Dyson is a great experience in that it is not important anymore to "beat" the game fast, or at all. In some levels I even slowed down to enjoy the athmosphere.
You can still find Dyson as a free download if you look around or you can pick up Eufloria as a better, more polished Dyson for ~$20.
I'm not sure if it's worth the money but even if you are not getting Eufloria, be sure to give Dyson a try the next time you need some stress relieve.
Rating: 7/10
OblivionThere are many reasons why I play Oblivion in 2010 and not 4 years ago.
2 official add-ons, lots of official DLC packages as well as thousands of inofficial mods were released in the meantime.
You can have the best of today (brilliant visual mods and sound enhancements) without the worst of yesterday (hundreds of quest bugs were patched in the meantime).
Inofficial mods also fixed what most people found to be the most obvious flaws in Oblivion's game design: Improper level scaling and the complicated skill system.
Quoting from an Oblivion skill guide:
Picking major skills incorrectly or based on preference can end up hurting
your character and therefore hurting your experience. The system is somewhat
counter-intuitive as if you think about it the best descisions for picking
major skills are usally comprised of the ones you don't want to use.
Did that make sense for you?
Great, because for me it did not.
In vanilla Oblivion, roleplaying a character (as in "starting with major skills you want to use") meant playing a much harder and often frustrating game. On the other hand, choosing bogus skills as your main skills was the way to a powerful character.
This "feature" often led to less immersion and an overall diminished experience. By installing mods you can fix it with ease and play Oblivion like it was meant to be played: Without thinking about hidden game mechanics!
And in case you haven't read any reviews in the last 4 years: Yes, it is an epic journey and can easily take you 100+ hours.
Rating: 9/10
F1 2010Possibly the best Formula1 game ever. With mods and without applying the "I want a hardcore F1 simulation" attitude that is.
Monaco in heavy rain is gorgeous. Most of the game is beautiful, except for the dull 3D models in press conferences.
Controls are pretty weird up to the point that an Xbox 360 controller can be faster than a G25 wheel because of input stabilization issues. Lots of racing games suffer from this problem in order to satisfy casual Xbox gamers sadly (PGR, Forza, GRID, ...). The right wheel settings make G25 racing a blast, albeit with less wheel feedback than the rFactor F1 mods deliver.
AI is sort of a mixed bag but it's still bearable. In the end, you are supposed to race online anyway.
Rating: 8/10
Need for Speed: SHIFTMuch better than other NFS releases (Underground, Carbon, Most Wanted, ProStreet, Undercover, ...). Almost as good as NFS: Porsche Unleashed.
Another title with stupid default settings for wheel use. The right settings, mods and a powerful PC make this a great racing game. Oh yeah, and drift mode is unrealistic and plain sucks.
Rating: 7/10
DIRT 2Brainless off-road fun. It's all Codemasters promised, it's all they delivered.
Rating: 6/10
Minor appearances:
- RACE07 (+Race On, STCC, GTR Evolution). Still amazing online fun, especially in organized leagues. 9/10.
- Resident Evil 5. We finally finished the co-op campaign. Weird ending but well worth the time. 8/10.
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Still playing the campaign which is good enough to keep me interested. Also, stunning visuals at highest settings. 8/10.
- Forza 3. Before I unplugged my Xbox, this was the main game. Great online fun as long as there are no wreckers (which is another reason why they should have released it on PC instead: less immatures!). Sadly, to reach the top leaderboard ranks you have to own a Wheel/pedals combination with a clutch pedal which is $500. 8/10.
- Batman: Arkham Asylum. Finally got to play it, a title which was one of the big surprises back then. Starts off GREAT (like "Game of the Century"-great), then after a while ways become longer, story and action slow down a bit and everything gets a bit dull. Still a good game which does many things right, including hand-to-hand combat. 8/10.
- Portal. Picked up for free on Steam and never regretted it. 7/10.
- Heroes of Might and Magic 5. Picked up at Steam during a promo and never made it past the third mission or so. Not as good as I hoped, but far from a bad game. 6/10.
- Alien Swarm. Free on Steam. Played the first co-op missions which were good, then realized that you had to grind your way up to the better weapons to even have a chance in the higher difficulties. 4/10.
- iRacing. A great simulation except from the ultra-boring license grinding. Plus road racing with the interesting cars (Corvette et al.) is pretty much dead during european times which sort of sucks. Currently not worth the horrendous subscription and content fees, even as an avid sim freak. 3/10.
- Battleforge. Used to be a solid game with both, PvE and PvP being fun. Now is a great example of a fun game that has been patched to death. They released new overpowered, completely imbalanced cards that make it impossible to win without shelling out $200 for the same overpowered cards. Not that it would matter because online PvP seems empty as well. Laughable. 1/10.
- Freedom Force: The one and only game so far I gave up playing during the tutorial. Weird controls, laggy input, stuttering, bad graphics, unfair enemies. You name it. Maybe I should give it a serious try again. Maybe not. 1/10.
