Knight's Game of the Year: Twenty-Ten Edition

It was a pretty good year for gaming, especially for fans of RPGs and FPSs. We saw the release of Bungie's "final" entry in the Halo franchise, Halo: Reach, the redemption of Obsidian Entertainment with Fallout: New Vegas, and Rockstar make a valiant effort in making American westerns cool again with Red Dead Redemption.

And let's not forget BioWare's major release for the year: Mass Effect 2. Can't forget that.

I had a lot of fun this year, though 90% of all the games I bought were released in Autumn. Needless to say, my holidays were busy - not to mention rewarding. Some truly masterful games were released in 2010, a year I thought was surely going to end up being a little dry for the most part. So, I figured I'd go over the best of them, the worst of them, and lead up to the game that, in my opinion, was the Best of 2010.

Hence the title of the blog.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

What's this game doing here! I can hear you asking yourself that from here, but don't worry, I'm not going to sit here and tell you Black Ops made this list because of its enthralling story, its amazing level design, or Sam Worthington's flawless American accent...because that would be a great way for me to lose the few strands of credibility I still cling to.

No, this game is a runner up because I had a great deal of fun with it. Call of Duty has become an annual event all its own, and because Activision is so afraid of dropping the ball, they throw a metric shit-ton of cash at whoever happens to be developing the next game; in this case, it happened to be Treyarch. The result is a game with an action-packed campaign and a very, very addicting multiplayer mode. It's no Bad Company 2, and just a short step below its predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, but it's definitely fun while it lasts.

MASON!!! I SAID IT'S FUN WHILE IT LASTS!!! ALL CAPS, MASON!!!

Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition

I know DA:O technically wasn't released this year, but this new edition certainly was. Buying it was a good excuse to replace my original broken copy and to play all of the DLC that was released for the game over the course of the year. On the whole, I mean, most of the add-ons were, ah...negligible? They really didn't serve any sort of purpose other than to earn BioWare some easy money. (How else to you explain a repackaged zone with no voice acting and no story as DLC?)

But the few add-ons that really did work for me did A LOT to make the whole DA:O experience much more enjoyable and, dare I say: complete. It was great returning to Ostagar, helping out the Dryden family, and giving my Warden a heartwarming ending on top of the one he already got. If you've never played the game, this version is the one to own.

I'm not buying Dragon Age II to watch how Hawke's story turns out; I want to see what happened to my Warden, plain and simple.

Fallout: New Vegas

I waited a very long time for this game, and it did not disappoint when it finally arrived. Obsidian have always been a company of talented individuals who find some little way, here and there, to improve upon the classic RPG model. Whether it was your influence over your party members in KotOR II: The Sith Lords, or the dynamic story line and the "intent" wheel in Alpha Protocol, Obsidian always finds some way to deliver...and then proceeds to shoot themselves in the foot almost immediately after.

Obsidian would be right up there with BioWare in terms of writing and immersion, if they didn't ALWAYS fuck up the quality assurance process. New Vegas was, in my opinion, Obisidan finally doing everything right. They were given all the exact same tools that Bethesda had used during the creation of Fallout 3, and still managed to turn out a game that throughly trounced its predecessor. The writing was superb, the lore was deep and well-defined, the world was beautifully depressing (depressingly beautiful?), and the amount of control that you had over the story was...well, that's Obsidian.

Don't wait too long to make another RPG, my friends. We need you on the frontline.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

This game really took me by surprise. When UbiSoft announced they were releasing another installment in the AC series so soon after the stellar, involving, and masterful Assassin's Creed II, I was sure, you know, that was that. UbiSoft had decided to make the series their Call of Duty, to rush out a sequel once a year, which would arguably lead to a decline in quality.

Oh, and they're adding a multiplayer mode to it, you say? Well, shoot, there goes the series. At least it ended on a high note...

But imagine the shock I got when I actually played the game and found it to be BETTER than Assassin's Creed II, and by a very wide margin. The improvements were small, but they made all the difference. The storyline was just as long as its predecessor, but much more dramatic and immersive. Fixing up Roma and training up assassins made the whole journey much more personal, and the sidequests were many and most were unique enough as to not feel so repetitive.

And the much dreaded multiplayer actually turned out to be original as hell. It was fun, addicting, and frustrating beyond all belief. Whoever thought it up and refined it to this level should be given a medal. Definitely one of the best multiplayer experiences in a very long time.

However, I do hope that UbiSoft tries not to leave off on such a confusing cliffhanger for the next game. Does wonders for dramatics, but it definitely sours the overall feel of the story. Endings are important, UbiSoft. A bad one can leave a lasting impression that might actually bring down what was a flawless experience. Just ask Fable III.

Mass Effect 2

ME2 a runner up?! Blasphemy, says I!

For that, I'm sorry, but lemme defend myself here. The Mass Effect series is shaping up to be one for the text books. It has a well-defined universe, unique races, fantastic characters, and a story only gets better as it progresses. If people want to argue that it is BioWare's magnum opus, I won't be waiting outside your house the next day to throw bricks through your window.

But see, I buy BioWare games because they make RPGs, not because they make Gears of War. Mass Effect 2, to me, represented a big step back in what RPGs rightfully should be. Your decisions have little impact on the story, most of the tried and true elements of the genre were stripped away in favor of a streamlined experience, and, frankly, most of ME2 revolved around gathering your team - like a space-bound version of Ocean's Eleven.

Ugh, I should be talking about the good things. There were many. This game was beautiful, I loved the characters, and going to new planets for the first time was very exciting. I loved this game, I love this series, and I'll be in line to buy the final chapter at midnight at the end of this year. Definitely.

Game of the Year: Red Dead Redemption

Gah! What can I say about this game that hasn't already been said! I've sunk dozens of hours into Red Dead Redemption, and I've not regretted one second of it. The story, though flawed in a few respects, is absolutely amazing, not to mention emotional. The ending encouraged one of the few moments in my long history of gaming where I simply could not react. My jaw dropped, I stared blankly at the screen for a long time, and then slowly regained my grip on reality long enough to save my file.

But even setting the amazing story aside for a moment, there are just so many things to do in this game. You can do a whole lot of nothing and still feel like you're being productive; the world is just so vast, so beautifully crafted, and it seems to take on a life of its own no matter where you look. You can stand on a hill, look out into the distance, and watch as a storm comes rolling in, darkens the land, makes the trails go soggy. Sometimes I boot up the game just to do some sightseeing, that's how remarkable New Austin and the piece of Mexico it borders really are.

And let's not forget Undead Nightmare.

RDR is an intense and unforgettable experience. I can't wait for Rockstar's next release, LA Noire, nor can I wait for the other big releases this year:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Mass Effect 3

Poke'mon: Black and White

Dragon Age II

Modern Warfare 3

Gears of War 3

The untitled Assassin's Creed release.

This is going to be a great (and possibly better) year for gaming! I know it! MASON!!! THIS IS GONNA BE A GREAT YEAR FOR GAMING!!! MASON!!!

Red Dead Review

Here's how it is: I'm standing outside of Chuparosa, an adobe brick town in Mexico just below the border. I had just finished turning in a bounty and purchasing a map of the surrounding area when the skies start to get darker and darker. Lightning flashes up north, I hear the loud crash of thunder a few moments later. The wind picks up and plays at my duster which begins to flap around the more the storm gets closer. Finally, the rain catches up to me and begins to fall heavily across the dusty plains. Puddles form around my feet and the trails get muddy.

I call my horse and I ride out west through the rain with lightning flashing, bringing everything under white light, and thunder rolling through unmercifully.

In Red Dead Redemption, things like that just happen. It's all part of this greater environment that makes up this almost-fictionalized area on the border of the United States and Mexico. A place where revenge can be a philosophy to live your life by, and charity is always in short supply. But ultimately, this game is what you make it out to be. It can be a great story, it can be a world that needs saving, it can be a land worth exploiting, or it can just be a place of leisure. The game demands nothing of you, only offers. And if you think this review is too melodramatic so far, then be prepared to be annoyed. ><

As I mentioned before in my initial impressions of the game, I bought RDR on a whim of circumstance. I had no intention of buying it until the day before, and even then I was hesitant - but more importantly, I was desperate. I needed a new game after using up Fable II, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect 2. I was so totally bored, but I do love westerns, and that's just about my only reason for buying this game: Bored. I like westerns. I knew I'd probably like it, but I didn't think I'd ever like it this much.

I've already gone over the premise of the game in my first impressions, but what I've learned since then is that although the story gets kinda silly at times (on account of John Marston getting pushed around by nearly everyone he meets, across two countries), the ending was downright emotional. I was nearly teary-eyed, and what the game allows you to do afterward was just genius. So, though I had hang-ups, they disappeared after the amazing finale.

Simply put, this is one of my favorite games now. I know I've been saying that a lot, but that just shows how particular I am about video games these days. I won't buy it unless I'm sure I'm gonna like it, and I LOVED this game. I'm playing it right now! But at the risk of repeating myself from the impressions, I'll go down the list of things I loved and didn't love in this game.

PROS:

+The environments are amazing. The world is massive; if I had to make a comparison, it's probably bigger than either Oblivion or Fallout 3. On the fastest horse in the game, it takes a good half hour to get from one corner of the world to the other (there's actually an achievement for that). The weather is completely random, and doesn't repeat itself very much. I played a three times without seeing rain. There are many animals inhabiting the world, all of which can be hunted, skinned and sold for profit. Plants can be picked. Birds can be shot out of the sky. I could go on.

+The story crosses paths with some very unique characters, all of whom are fascinating and, occasionally, hilarious. They're some of the best of any game I've ever played (some of them topping even BioWare's. Yes, BioWare comparisons had to happen), with Nigel West Dickens being an absolute highlight.

+There is so much to do! There are sidequests and minigames, but there are also random events scattered about the world. You might be casually riding along when you find someone being hanged, and you are given the choice to save him or leave him to his fate. You might pick up a little lady who's gone and got herself stranded in the middle of nowheres. There are bounties to hunt down, games to play, horses to break. There are some jobs you can take on, too. This game will keep you busy for a good long while.

+Did I mention this world is absolutely gorgeous?!

+In addition to the main quest, the minigames, the sidequests, the jobs, and the random events, there are also things called Ambient Challenges. There are akin to the World of Warcraft challenges, where you are rewarded a new level once you complete said challenge. For instance, you might be tasked with shooting five birds from a train, or killing a bear in one shot, or shooting the hat off an enemy. Random things that get really fun as you level up, and there's a TON of them to do. If you have XBox Live, the Rockstar Social Club actually gives you more to accomplish every now and then.

+And in addition to ALL THAT, you have the multiplayer. It features literally hundreds of those Ambient Challenges, along with quests that you can do with your friends, a leveling system that gives you better guns, characters and mounts, and the entire world is open to you. You can become public enemy and massacre a town, or you can bring swift justice to the random people wandering the lands. It's up to you.

+There's a settlement called Plainview. I loved that.

+No Indian massacres. Thank you, Rockstar.


CONS:

-There were quite a few glitches that forced me to reset the game a few times, sometimes at the very end of a long mission. Rockstar have expressed their apologies for this and insist that a patch is on the way, so that's good.

-This world is indeed huge, and while there is a fast travel system, it's a little cumbersome. You have to either hop on a stagecoach or travel out a fair distance into the wilderness to set up a camp. And I wouldn't necessarily mind that, since I like to stay immersed and travel by horse most places, the horse mechanic itself is cumbersome, too. To get your horse moving as fast as it can, you have to repeatedly tap the A-button. This can get tiring: monitoring your horses stamina whilst tapping the A-button for long stretches of time.

Again, this is something that I could look over, but it is an annoyance to me. Hasn't stopped me from racking up the miles, though. I have 251 miles on horseback alone. xD

-The trains are awesome, but I wish there was a way to pass the time faster so it's worth waiting for them. If you want to catch one, you either have to jump onto one robber-style or ride out to meet it, which defeats the purpose kinda.

-There are many quests that are only available at certain times, so you'll either have to wait or find a bed to rest, which sucks sometimes. And you'll have to save the game each time for six hours to pass. Yes, I want to be able to wait for the train, and wait for time to pass like on Oblivion and Fallout 3.


RDR is a masterpiece, to be frank. It's fun as hell, there's so much stuff to do you'll likely not get around to it all, and the environments are some of the most gorgeous and fully-realized places in any game EVER. Buy this game if you're in the mood for a good story, or if you want to shoot some folks, or if you want to slap some bears, or tie women to railroad tracks. It's all up to you. The game doesn't demand that you do any of these things, it only offers.

Draw, Partner: Red Dead Redemption Impressions

I'm a Wild West aficionado. Living in California, ground zero during the Westward Expansion, has certainly helped that interest. Thirty minutes away, you can visit a region near the Merced River where the hills had been blasted away by hydraulic mining during the Gold Rush. Thirty minutes more, and you can visit one of the oldest Wells Fargo offices, the store where Ghirardelli Chocolate got its start, and where there's supposedly an abandoned Pony Express station (though, I dunno where it is). So when I heard this game was actually enjoyable and provided an immersive Wild West experience, I went out and bought it the very next day. And I am not one to impulse-buy brand new video games these days.

My teacher asked us during one of our classes: What is the West? Is it an actual location? Is it California? Oregon Country? Nevada, Utah, or Colorado? Or when we say "West," are we actually talking about a certain essence of it? The gunfights, the saloons, tumbleweeds, and train robberies? The hats and spurs? Maybe, maybe not. We all sorta decided it encompassed everything west of the Mississippi, but it's up to interpretation.

Rockstar Studios has chosen to give us a quasi-realistic interpretation of the Wild West for their game, Red Dead Redemption, because, more often than not, people can't help but think of Clint Eastwood or John Wayne movies whenever the subject is brought up. To most, it was a place where a man's revolver was the only law of the land. Where the day wasn't done until someone was killed in a duel and bleeding out in the sand. By putting this all in a game, they've given us the Western adventure that we've always wanted, or didn't know we wanted.

The story revolves around a man named John Marston, a man hired by the government to bring a wanted outlaw to justice. Things, of course, don't go according to plan. Marston goes and gets himself shot, gets fixed up by a local ranch owner, and proceeds to conjure up a plan to get revenge by enlisting the aid of some of the craziest characters to ever be put to disc. They are the reason the term Motley Crew was coined.

The story leaves much to be desired. It's a MacGuffin-driven plot, for sure, but its enough to allow for some truly great character development. Marston himself is great, but even though he's meant to be the badass gunslinger (kinda), he gets pushed around A LOT. Nearly everyone in this game gives him the runaround and even with the scars across his face, he starts to look like a pussy as the game goes on. Everyone else in the game outshines our main character, unfortunately. You've got the snake oil salesman, a man who's lost his livelihood looking for buried treasure, a lawman, and a drunk weapons expert by the name of Irish. As I said: a motley crew to be sure.

Though the plot is simple and the main character is meh, the twists and turns are great. The voice acting is comparable to the best moments of any BioWare game, and the expert use of motion capture adds quirky realism. It's odd not to be able to react to these cutscenes, since I'm coming down off another playthrough of Mass Effect 2 ( I keep waiting for a Paragon or Renegade option to pop up), but the cutscenes are still magnificent, and manage to draw me in like a really good movie would.

But let's get into the bread and butter of the game, which is the environment. Rockstar practically invented all that a free-roaming sandbox game should be, and they've push it to the limit with RDR. This game is vast, dreary, yet alive. Time passes; day turns into night. Some days will be cloudy, others completely clear. Sometimes you'll be able to see a storm begin to roll in from afar and overtake you with rain as lightning crashes all around you. Trees sway with it, trails become muddy. You could sit there and just watch it all and still be entertained. I know I did for awhile.

Though what you're mostly going to be dealing with the most are trails and open, dusty plains, there is still plenty to see. Sometimes, you'll stumble upon a group of rabbits jumping away to their warren, or deer bounding along, hawks soaring over your head or circling a corpse of something off in the distance. And, yes, you can kill 'em all. Animals of every shape and size can be shot and skinned for hide and other bits so's you can sell them for cash money. You can even get various awards depending on different hunting challenges the game provides.

So, that's the environment, now on to the gameplay. RDR plays almost exactly like GTA 4, so if you're still familiar with those controls, you probably won't have to think to much about it here. Everything handles very well. Most of your traveling will be done on horseback, and though I STILL have some troubles getting the horse to do what I want it to, 90% of the time everything works out.

Throughout the world, you'll have various missions to attend to at your leisure. You have: the main quests, which will open up different parts of the world as you progress; sidequests such as stranger requests, bounty hunting, horsebreaking, or nightly patrolling; games like poker, blackjack, horseshoes, and that one game where you stab a knive between the gaps of your fingers really fast like; then you have the random events. When these random events occur, you'll be given a task on the spot. For instance, you might come upon a bunch of thugs hanging a man who didn't deserve it. You can choose to ride on by, help the man, kill the man, or kill everyone. Which touches on the amount of freedom you have in this game.

Very much like GTA, you can kill just about everyone. You can rob banks, stores, and even trains. You can get your lasso, strap people to the back of your horse, or be a complete douche and drag them behind you for awhile (which I did, yes). You can even do that dastardly deed no villain should ever neglect to accomplish, and that is to tie a woman to the railroad tracks. You can do all that, or you can be the honorable sort, and help people that need it. Stay out of temptation's way. It's all up to you. The game leaves a lot of room for role playing.

But even with the 20 hour campaign, the sidequests, the free roaming, the bounties, the hunting, all of which could keep you busy for 20 hours more...there's still a multiplayer mode. This is basically where it becomes awesome. The world is completely opened up to you, and you're set loose to complete various challenges, missions, or just goof off. By the way, ANYONE can kill you. This whole thing reminds me a lot of the PvP zones of World of Warcraft. You could be sitting there, trying to shoot a certain amount of birds for a challenge and you'll randomly get your brains injected with a bullet. It's certainly not as bad as WoW, where you could get camped for hours, but the game does encourage grouping up.

The first time I tried this, I entered the game and was immediately chased around the world for hours by these two guys. I was alone, but I put up a fight, killing them enough so that I was able to get the high ground every time. Eventually, they invited me to their posse, and we then ran around killing people, completing missions, getting achievements, and riding around in a stagecoach, taking shots at any player who happened to pass by. It was amazing. And you gain XP and levels by doing just about anything, be it riding on your horse, walking, or shooting things.

Basically, I'm really liking this game so far. The story leaves much to be desired, but I wouldn't trade away the marvelous characters throughout. The missions are fun (expect shootouts aplenty), the world is fantastic and creatively designed, and the multiplayer is practically an MMO in itself. (Also, the game gives you items for your Xbox avatar as you unlock certain things! Yeah!) You're getting a huge package when you buy this game, and the sheer amount of things to do will all but convince you that the $60 you shelled out for it was well worth it.

See you, space cowboy.

(EDIT: I should also point out that the soundtrack is spectacular! Case and point: the game's opening scene.)

(ANOTHER EDIT: There's a settlement in the game called Plainview that's packed with oil derricks. Fucking win.)