Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The Best Games of 2010: Part Two!

Best Game No One Else Seems To Be Playing – Lead and Gold

It took me a while to work up the courage to buy Lead and Gold. It has a lot to do with my friends.

I have a group of friends I play multiplayer games with on a regular basis. We get together once or twice a week on Skype and we get drunk and play games as a team. As a result we usually look for new and interesting multiplayer titles to enjoy. Some more successful ones include Heroes of Newerth and Starcraft 2. There was even a year where we played almost nothing but Dawn of War II, to the point that we were actually okay at it. Less successful titles have included Borderlands and Killing Floor, ugly repetitive games that involve matching wits mostly against a computer instead of a human player, games where success is measured in half steps and failures are monumental and frustrating. A game like Lead and Gold would seem like an ideal fit for my friends, but they hated it.

Hated it passionately. Their reasoning (it being bad) made it hard to zero in on just what the problem was, but it was also difficult to really argue against. If someone thinks a game is bad it will always be bad for them. You can’t make someone like something they’re set on disliking. But what was really bad was that I, with my limited funds, chose not to buy the fifteen dollar Lead and Gold. I can’t recall what I bought in its place (possibly a bottle of whiskey) but I always sort of regretted not getting a copy.

But during the second free weekend of Lead and Gold I finally caved and just got it. It was tremendously fun, and the free weekend gave the game a sort of party attitude and flooded servers with novice players who made a middling sharpshooter like me feel like a god. There are few games as solid on their message, mechanics and methods as Lead and Gold, and it deserves praise if only as a design model for cooperatively competitive multiplayer. Rolling through a rough battle with your teammates around you and the bodies of enemies strewn about is a hell of a feeling, on par with scoring a triple kill in Modern Warfare, and the art of Lead and Gold is just perfect. It captures its mix of serious and sarcastic effortlessly and, this is kind of key and often ignored, especially in western games: it just looks good.

The only problem is that no one ever seems to be online. Ever. I’m not sure if it’s a depopulation issue or just a server location issue, but whenever I try to play off peak hours I can’t find a single active game. Even at peak hours pickings are slim, and the number of players I actually see never seems to represent even a single percent of the proposed count of active players online at present.

The end result is a beautifully designed, excellent game that doesn’t seem to have any players, and a royal bummer for me. I do occasionally get a chance to hop online and lay about with my six shooter, but it’s less often than I’d like and it kind of bums me out. Still, I don’t regret handing Fatshark my money at long last, nor do I regret the time I’ve put into honing my skills as a sharpshooter. My only regret is that I can’t bring the game into any sort of regular rotation, and that playing it on the fly seems so impossible given the server population available.

Best Game That Ruined My Fucking Life – Starcraft 2

If Lead and Gold is Roanoke of legend, Starcraft 2 is a New Amsterdam a few decades later: overflowing with goods and peoples of varying cultures, constantly under the threat of overbearing Anglocentric rule, subject to crude, overdrawn analogies and occasional They Might Be Giant songs. There will never be a time of day when Starcraft will take more than five minutes to find you a match. In fact, five minutes is completely unacceptable as far as match making times run in Starcraft. It’ll probably take less than a minute. And the match will be over in twelve. And then you’ll be back in to try and get one more win on your record so you can unlock that sweet portrait of a zergling you hold so dear.

Starcraft 2 wasn’t the biggest retail release of the year, not by a long shot thanks largely to Call of Duty’s remarkable market share. But it might’ve been the biggest cultural release of the year and with good cause. Starcraft represents a refinement of a game play model mixed with the finest production values in the industry and pedigree second to none. Blizzard has become the greatest developer in the world at creating games that double as social lives, and while I’m not sure I’d call them the greatest developer of all time (certainly not the most ambitious) it is impossible to deny that their games are well crafted, well considered experiences that complete their own goals.

In Starcraft 2’s case, this goal is basically inventing a new way for me to talk to people.

I get how sport wankers work now. Talking stats, discussing how a game unfolded like they had some hand in it even though they were just planted on a couch watching a piece of cloth get battered about by overpaid assholes who will do nothing but whine in a few years when they finally get old, I get it. Because I do that with Starcraft. I can sit and have a beer with a buddy of mine and talk for an hour straight about tactics, strategy, the way that units play and which units I like. Actually, all of that involves stuff that I think about, control and study. Never mind, I still don’t get how sport wankers work.

I just get their intensity, their singular drive. Starcraft 2 is the finest realization of that sort of drive. It is intense in every sense of the word, from its planning to its execution, and to excel at it as a game you have to know it, take it seriously and, in a rather zen twist, remove your ego from the equation. If you refuse to adapt, refuse to accept responsibility for your mistakes, Starcraft will elude and frustrate you. To succeed you have to sublimate yourself and learn from your opponent. You must lose track of you and work to adapt.

Or you can just pound your head against the wall and hammer out plenty of wins against players of similar skill. One of Blizzard’s great accomplishments, along with building a totally fine multiplayer game for people who are super serious about this sort of thing, is also building a matchmaking system that presents you with a constant illusion of shifting skill level. Even if it ever finds where you belong, Starcraft 2 will make you feel like you’re about to shift by matching you with people who are way too good or way too crappy to be playing with you. In doing so it informs your knowledge of the playing field as a whole, but also gives you a chance to feel like a badass at least once a night. And the potent feeling of winning is sometimes enough to knock the flavor of even the most bitter defeats out of your mouth, especially if you’re not paying attention too hard.

Bear in mind, all of this is being said about the multiplayer product. The single player game doesn’t deserve mention on any sort of list, with one exception – the challenges. Cleverly named, they’re actually cute little training missions intended to introduce players to the finer points of Starcraft 2 multiplayer. Since the skill set you acquire in the single player game has about as much to do with multiplayer as I do with the aforementioned sport wankers it’s nice to see that they’re giving new players a chance to learn the basics of base defense and economy management in a safe, directed environment. It doesn’t always take (I have a friend who ignores the advice of the computer and frequently just plays the challenges, then doesn’t understand when he can’t break bronze on them) but the existence of the framework is a nice touch, and it shows that Blizzard gets how to convert people and help them experience one of the more impressive games they’ve made during their storied careers.

Best Game About Tying String Around Things – Zen Bound 2

I almost didn’t buy Zen Bound 2. I thought the idea sounded stupid when someone suggested it to me. I thought only an idiot would spend time tying virtual string around virtual items. I even feel kind of dumb saying it right now. Then I actually played it.

Zen Bound 2 is perhaps the single most relaxing experience I’ve had this year, bar none. It’s like you smoked weed earlier in the day and forgot about it. It is by far the most robust string-around-pieces-of-wood simulator on the market, and it has the whole industry cornered right now. Whenever I feel tense I just fire up Zen Bound 2 and play a few puzzles. So far it hasn’t failed to calm me down and help focus my mind, and it’s the one game I’ve ever shown my dad that has elicited a genuine “that’s actually pretty cool” response. Buy a copy for the aging hippy inside you, or the person who needs to attend court ordered aggression management classes but really can’t afford the time to do so right now.

Best Game That Made Me Realize I’d Be a Great Dad In an Undersea City Where the Only Responsibilities I’d Have Towards My Child Involve Murdering Plastic Surgery Addicts and Men in Diving Suits – Bioshock 2

You knew it was going to be on here, even though it came out so, so early in the year and it’s so easy to have forgotten it after such an exciting slough of new titles hit pavement over time. But let’s face it, Bioshock still gets cred for a reason, and Bioshock 2 continued that tradition of receiving due credit for its exceptional storytelling, spot on game play and masterful design in every respect.

It’s almost too easy to gush about the strength of the visuals, the iteration of the game play itself from the original and the obvious brilliance in letting you play a real, live Big Daddy with real Big Daddy powers. The improved variety of enemies, the new and interesting denizens of Rapture you meet and the streamlined plasmid/weapon/hacking exchange are all great. As a game, Bioshock 2 is nearly without peer.

But as a narrative it also succeeds. In fact I’d say it succeeds more than any other story told in the last year. Plenty of games might aspire to tell interesting stories, or use the medium of games to greater potential, but no one does what Bioshock does quite as well. No one else tells a textured, carefully constructed story with a set of themes and characters and weaves them together the way that Bioshock did. I’m not holding out hope for the upcoming feature film (there’s very little reason to, although it could be enjoyable as a diversion) but I am looking forward to the next game in the Shock cycle, and Bioshock 2 is a big part of why.

Few artistic works still elicit emotion from me at this point in my life. It’s tough to make people who study books or films feel for them. For example, Jonathan Franzen, for all his critical aplomb, is really easy to distance yourself from as you read. His likably unlikable characters, the manner in which their lives feel constructed, are all enjoyable and great, but they don’t make me care in the least. Whereas Junot Diaz drew me into someone’s shitty life and really made me feel for them. Both books were competent, but one managed to do something incredible – it managed to make me connect with it on an emotional level. Works that do this are rare.

In game it has occurred for me relatively few times. Myth was likely the first and best example, where I actually cared about the struggle of my troops. Bioshock and the Path were other excellent examples, games that took ideas about vulnerability and wove them into their stories and designs in beautiful, haunting ways that can be analyzed and examined without ever losing their heft. Bioshock 2 told me a story about fatherhood. It told me a story that, in a way, changed the way I look at children, a story about responsibility emerging not from blood but shared circumstances and existence, a story about endurance and sacrifice and nobility, the lessons you teach in life reflecting themselves in someone else, someone you’re actually proud of.

There, I said it. Bioshock 2 made me proud of what Eleanor was capable of. And the final frame of that game, just like the first Bioshock, made me tear up. It’s not about playing with emotions, it’s about making people connect with a work, and Bioshock 2 gets that. It wasn’t quite my favorite game this year, but it was certainly my favorite game that could also be viewed as a work of art.

Best Game I Didn’t Think Really Needed to Exist Which is Now Just My Favorite Game From 2010 – Fallout: New Vegas

I’m as big a Fallout fan as the next guy. I played the shit out of Fallout 3. I even kinda replayed it, as a neutral character, no mean feat, and I still enjoy it every time I hop in and mess around. Sure, it gets a little boring at the endgame, but the feeling of putting a .308 round into a Super Mutant’s skull from thousands of miles away never gets old. Watching the Enclave shed body parts under a hail of plasma fire is satisfying in a way that a therapist would probably have some things to say about. But I didn’t see any reason for Fallout: New Vegas to exist.

Van Buren was, in my mind, buried. It was a project that died, sadly, in the arms of Interplay and was best left dead. I saw New Vegas as an attempt to resurrect it. Boy was I off.

From start to finish this game drew me in, a game I didn’t want to like but played out of a sense of duty. The first time I actually looked down the iron-sights of a weapon I actually shouted “oh snap.” I would spend minutes checking my supplies, considering where I could find water or food nearby as I, like any true nerd, played through the game in Hardcore mode. I chose my weapons carefully, thought about how much gear I’d be able to carry back with me after my next run out into the wastes. I talked to my companions and tried to get a sense of how they were, who they were.

I lived in the world of Fallout: New Vegas.

It is a marvelous achievement that a game can transport you as expertly as Fallout: New Vegas does, and while it does take some work, with abundant tech issues and constant sprouting quests and status updates, exploring the world of New Vegas, growing relationships and changing the landscape with tiny steps is deeply satisfying and intensely immersive. I definitely lost sleep over Fallout: New Vegas, and I have no regrets to that end. The hundred-some-odd hours I’ve dumped into that game tooling around with weapons, appreciating a refinement of a system that seemed just fine before… They’ve been great. And I plan to come back when I have the time, I promise. But the game is one of those rare titles that can suck me in and just hold me, and as much as I’d love to be with a game in that way right now I’ve got to split my attentions. So Fallout: New Vegas gathers dust.

But it stays on top of the mantle, the finest game I played over the last year and perhaps the game I’d most readily recommend to anyone who wants to see the amazing capacity the medium holds for telling interesting, engrossing stories that could not be told in any other way. I’d like to close by saying that Fallout: New Vegas is the other game that actually made me feel an evocative connection this year, though not to any specific character (except Rose of Sharon Cassidy, my whiskey soaked video-game love). It made me feel tied to the world itself, the landscape and its people as a group. It made me want the best for them, made me want to learn more about its secrets. I felt rage reading of the inhumanities of Caesar’s legions and frustration at the ineptitude of the NCR’s fledgling efforts. I felt hope speaking with Julie Farkas and resolve standing with Marcus against bigots and bandits alike.

Few games have the ambition of Fallout: New Vegas, and few manage it nearly as well as this title developed by an under-funded, oft derided developer of reaching, buggy works of brilliance. If you haven’t, please play Fallout: New Vegas. And may you be one of the lucky few to play through it without a single bug barring your path.