Posts tagged Black Ops

Looking at the rest of the release schedule for 2010 it appears I’ve got to the end of my gaming year already. For a guy who founded one of the biggest Xbox sites in Europe I play and have time for very few games. This year, Borderlands, Bioshock 2, Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, Bayonetta and Starcraft II are all games I’ve managed to miss. So, in no way is this a thorough review of the year. Merely a opinion on what I have played this year.

This mainly consists of 5 games, there have been others but these 5 got the most hours logged.

The start of the year was dominated with Modern Warfare 2, yes, it was released last year but for the first 4-5 months of 2010 I was addicted. The map packs hit just at the right times to keep me going. I mainly played with my brothers, we’ve got pretty good and we’ve had some good fun. People seem to have problems with it, but they tend to be the ultra competitive types.

I did find a game that drew my attention from MW2, Mass Effect 2. For me this game is without a doubt the current pinnacle of gaming. The story telling is better than 99% of current films and TV, add the improved gameplay over the original and it really is perfection. Later in the year the Shadow Broker DLC was great but just makes the wait for the third and final part of the story even harder. I’d love to see the series go MMO as the universe is set up in such a way that there could easily be a thousand stories told over many years from many different points of view and I could easily lose myself in it.

Then the gaming year only got going again during this final quarter of the year, marked for me with 3 big shooters all with huge hype in tow. Halo: Reach, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty: Black Ops. Halo: Reach delivered, it was truly worthy of being Bungie’s swan song to the franchise, though in the multiplayer I felt it was hard to adapt after such a heavy CoD addiction earlier on the year. Halo 1 will always have a special place in my heart and maybe it’s nostalgia for it that keeps me from loving it’s sequels as much. I don’t envy whoever has to make the next Halo game.

Then there was Medal of Honor and Black Ops. Two games that looked like they were going to head-to-head for the exact same market. First up was Medal of Honor, and it disappointed, badly. It felt rushed and heartless, buggy and unoriginal. It was a clear example of how not to make a game, luckily weeks later Black Ops turned out to be the exact opposite. The single player, which I finished just yesterday, is a prime example of story telling in an action game. Building to an epic final act. Sure there wasn’t the depth that Mass Effect had, but for a shooter, a genre that’s pretty devoid of story-telling, it’s up there in the top 5 easily. I’m still digging into the multiplayer, it’s early days, the good news is my CoD online addiction and the warm feeling it give is coming back.

So that’s my gaming year, I really wish I’d had the time to play more games and maybe of the xmas period I’ll get something else in, regardless 2010 has been a good gaming year.

Ashley.

P.S. in other news: We beat Derby 2-0 at the weekend which was glorious, I saw Jackass 3D which was good (I still think 3D is a gimmick though) and Apple have a big iTunes related announcement tomorrow! Should I get excited about Steve Jobs Reading my blog?