Picking my Game Of The Year was both a breeze and arduous. There were three games that I knew I wanted to write about — or at least three serious contenders for the title — but picking just one of those three made me a little crazy.
So, first, honorable mentions for the two games that nearly made it.
Super Meat Boy is the best Xbox Live Arcade game out there. Period. It is accesible and addictive, brutal and rewarding.
As a hyper-kinetic platformer, it has no equal. Heck, there aren’t many games at all that can compete with it. From its humble beginnings as ‘Meat Boy’ on Newgrounds, to the breakout XBLA game it has become, Team Meat has done a remarkable job.
Notch, you wily bugger.
Here’s a game (I have to use ‘game’ here loosely, since Minecraft is more of a creation engine with the odd monster thrown in) where you mine blocks for hours and then build stuff and then mine some more, build better equipment to obtain better materials to then build more impressive things. It sounds, frankly, boring when described.
But it’s not. It’s exciting and addictive, and it’s addictive because it presents you with so many crazy possibilities.
I don’t know precisely how many hours I’ve dumped into it, but I know I’ve seen a lot less of my wife.
And now … drumroll …
Game Of The Year:
This game…
As if I haven’t talked about Red Dead enough since it was announced, I’m also happy as hell to call it the Game Of The Year. Is that shocking? No. It’s actually a pretty safe choice. But there’s a reason for that: it is an epic, action-packed, emotional, mature tale of violence and vengeance. It is additionally one of few games in memory that actually deserves the insane amount of praise it has received.
That it’s a well-written western pretty much ensured my love for it.
Rockstar created a masterpiece. And then, with excellent downloadable content released over the course of the year, kept adding to it while making fans happy. Most impressive was Undead Nightmare, which essentially recreated the entire game world as zombie survival horror madness. Scary zombie survival horror madness to boot.
So, Rockstar, pat yourselves on the back: I think you made the entire world fret over the fate of John Marston and his family.
