Harold's Most Important Games of 2010

2010 was a very strange year in gaming, with the two high definition console makers (Sony and Microsoft) deciding to chase the motion control bandwagon as it speeds past hardcore gamers and right into the comfortable realm of soccer moms and old folks home. The selections of games available for the typical gamer were at an all time low.

I personally found myself digging deep into the bargain bins and Gamefly queue in order to find games that perked my interests. This year three games in particular strike a chord with me and I would like to highlight them here, in a little something I call “ Harold’s Most Important Games of 2010."

First on deck is Rock Band 3. Since 2007, the very talented people at Harmonix have been producing some of the best games of our generation. With the third entry in the Rock Band franchise, they've hit every goal imaginable of a music game.

This is one of the most user-friendly games I have ever touched. As a person of the drinking age, I have discovered that Rock Band is best enjoyed with some adult beverages in a party setting. It is very easy to get lost in the moment and forgot that as your blood-alcohol level goes up, your hand-eye coordination goes down.

In previous Rock Band games, if you chose Expert level drums and failed you'd get booted from the song and be subjected to the jeers of your friends. Now you can adjust your difficulty settings on the fly, thus preventing the social embarrassment that comes with failing a song.

This one feature alone makes for a fantastic co-op game. As much as I may love "powning noobs" in a Halo or Call of Duty, there is something that should be said about having three or four of your friends playing a game with you in the flesh.

The addition that really put me over the top and allowed this game to feel so important for me and for this year in gaming, is the new ability to delete a song you in your library. While it sounds simple to those of us with computers and smart phones, the ability to erase songs you don’t want to play in a music game is monumental. Even the best video games struggle sometimes with getting to the fun stuff. With Rock Band 3 you can tailor the game to your wants and needs.

I can’t think of a game that has ever allowed me to enjoy its content in whichever way I please. Part of me is sad that the height of the instrument based music game is past us, because a game as great as Rock Band 3 should be praised by every person who has every picked up a controller.

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From the absolute pinnacle of dexterity based gaming, to a game that made me feel like my hands were dancing on the controller; we come to Platinum Games’ Bayonetta.

To give you a better idea, and maybe convince you why Bayonetta is important, I will describe the first level. The game opens with you fighting on the face of a blown off top of a clock tower as it plummets to the ground. I am going to repeat that; you have your first enemy encounter on the face of a clock tower as it falls to the ground.

Game developers agonize over how to draw a player into a game, and Bayonetta manages to grab me hook, line, and sinker within the first-five minutes of booting it up. The reason I wanted to champion it is because of my love for a well polished and complete Japanese game.

Since the first time I played games like Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry, and Super Mario Brothers, I've noticed a certain elegance in games from the east. Bayonetta oozes that Japan appeal, and underneath the silly story line and crazy set pieces lays what is in my humble opinion the best character action game to date.

Words like smooth and fluid are overused when describing how well a game controls, but this one deserves a new adjective to describe the way the it feels. Something like devilishly silky, or deceptively responsive. Hopefully you get the idea that the game controls well. Really well.

Putting my nerdy love for all things polished and Japanese aside, Bayonetta offers varying degrees of difficulties. This elevates the game into the "important" realm for me. By having settings like "Easy" and "Easy Automatic," it opens itself to a wider range of the gaming public. For the first time anyone of any skill level can enjoy some of the craziest moments and situations ever created in a video game.

As the supposed “Death of Japanese Game Development” continues to drive conversations and force designers to focus more on something that will appeal to the western market, Bayonetta stands on the other side of the line. This is a game that is so good, and so unfiltered, it feels like actually being in Japan. At least the part of Japan where you fight demons on the faces of clock towers as they fall to the ground.

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I began with a game that has next to no story, and now I'm moving on to a game that has a story too crazy and wild to fully understand. Heavy Rain lives and dies on the strength of its story.

Ethan Mars is a father and husband, as well as an architect that loves and cares for his family. One day, while at the mall, a series of events occur that change his life forever.

Flash-forward two years in the future, Ethan is now a divorced and depressed man trying to do his best to care for his son, Shaun. But the game also tells the story of Scott Shelby , Madison Page, and Norman Jayden. The identity of The Origami Killer is the thread tying this cast together, and it is also the mystery at heart of my Most Important Game of the Year.

Playing Heavy Rain is a very unique experience. The control scheme chosen by developer Quantic Dream is one that can be alienating to those who've been playing games since the Atrai era those who only just picked up an Xbox 360 alike.

By stripping away the kind of “gamer short hand,” they force everyone who plays back to square one. You are never quite comfortable with the controls, and part of me really enjoyed that fact. Still, after an hour or so you'll have the hang of the controls. I found that I didn't even notice I was pressing R2 to move instead of the left analog stick.

The developers also tried their best to make difficult activities in the game translate into difficult activities to perform on the controller. The emotions I felt while playing Heavy Rain were emotions of discomfort and frustration -- Just like walking up a wet hill in real-life is hard to do, it was a difficult task to perform in the game. No other game has ever communicated to me the challenge of performing a task the way Heavy Rain did.

Choice and the illusion of choice is something video games have been trying to master for years. Gamers have always felt the urge to walk down one end of a fork in the road, only to retrace their steps once they become unhappy with the path they're on. Heavy Rain is a display of choice rarely seen in games.

Almost every interaction can go in multiple ways. Every fight or shoot out could lead to the death of your character. When I say death, I mean death in the gone-forever way, not in the game-over, restart-level way. How many big budget, AAA games can even approach that level of tension? Heavy Rain is able to create it with a simple fist fight in a junkyard. I found myself heart broken when a character I really liked died. Never have I felt so attached to a digital being.

The tagline of Heavy Rain was simple yet effective. It posed a simple question: How far would you go to save someone you love? I found I'd go pretty far; from crawling on my hands and knees through a glass-covered, rat-infested tunnel, to cutting off a limb. But the line I couldn't cross was taking my own life.

I agonized over the choice to kill someone in the hopes that I would get a clue to the mystery I was so desperately seeking an answer to. I eventually came to the conclusion that I was not a killer, and that killing was something that my character would never do. The very fact that I had this internal debate only further speaks to how important Heavy Rain is as a video game.

Five or ten years from now I will look back on my experience with it, holding the same type of nostalgia reserved for the first time I rode a bike or saw a concert live. Not only was Heavy Rain the best game of this year, it was the most important. I only hope that other game developers make the choice to follow this trail-blazing title down the path to new and exciting experiences.