The 10 Best Games of 2010

"You like what you like."

That's a phrase that Vic and I often repeat to one other while shooting the show. We say it on camera. We say it off camera. The only other phrase that even comes close to being repeated as often: "Let's stop here for coffee."

"You like what you like," of course, is shorthand for saying, "I am not going to go out of my way to understand StarCraft II, or Civ 5, or Gran Turismo 5. Yes, they are all well-made games. Yes, smart people made them. Yes, I admire those people. They worked very hard. Good for them. And yes, there are people out there in the world who are dying to play Gran Turismo 5. Also: good for them.

"But that does not mean that I am suddenly going to develop a taste for, say, the Gran Tursimo series, a series that I have despised for many years because of its lifeless, bloodless worlds. I am not going to hoist a game onto my shoulders and carry it around the stadium for a victory lap simply because 1. the rest of the world is doing so, and 2. I am supposed to follow suit.

"Because, in the end, on my death bed, as I am breathing my last breath and no doubt trying to get in one last game of Angry Birds 14 on the iPhone 11.5GSVX, when it's all said and done, all I can do is like what I like."

Here are the 10 games that I liked in 2010.

10. Vanquish (Sega, Platinum Games, 360/PS3)

I know! Trash. The dialogue is horrid. None of it makes a lick of sense. And it celebrates the most filthy habit in the world: SMOKING. DEAR KIDS: DON'T LISTEN TO THIS GAME. DO NOT SMOKE. IT IS NOT SEXY. SMOKING IS THE NUMBER ONE CAUSE OF NONSENSICAL GAMES. Regardless, I loved Vanquish. Shinji Mikami's games speak to me. He is my Sid Meier. Though Fumito Ueda would actually be my Sid Meier, if only he made more games. Sliding like Rickey Henderson between a mech-beast's legs in slow motion while peppering its mech-crotch with futuristic fire power thrilled me enough to make me forgive and forget the rest of the game's horse shit.

9. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (Eidos, Crystal Dynamics, XBLA/PSN)

With her ever-shrinking pair of shorts and ridiculously oversized mamms, this anachronism--she was practically left for dead on the side of Game Industry Highway a few short years ago--continued her campaign for relevancy with this superb game. My first impression, sexist as it is, was that the long distance, overhead perspective would diminish my fun, since I would no longer be able to, you know, see as much. Yet after the opening level, after sniffing out treasure the way my mother sniffs out bargains at Wal-mart, and solving puzzles--some of the best puzzles of the year in any game--and leveling up, man alive, did this game ever get its hooks into me.

8. Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions (Activision, Beenox, 360/PS3)

Fact: I could give a rat's ass about super heroes and super hero games. But if I have to spend 15 hours in someone's virtual tights, that someone without a doubt would be Spider-man. His versatility, in the air and on the ground, along with his Borscht Belt "zingers" make Superman, Batman, et al. all look like brooding bores. The art style, the first-person boss fights, and the constant channel surfing between dimensions--Amazing, Noir, 2099, and the symbiote-infected Ultimate--all effectively distracted me from the fact that I was basically hitting light attack and heavy attack buttons over and over again. Well done, Beenox.

7. GoldenEye 007 (Activision, Eurocom, Wii)

Never having been a Bond man, I loaded up the do-over of the 1997 classic with the lowest of expectations. The original game probably should win some sort of award for Worst-Aging Classic Game of All Time. There's a reason why it's hasn't received a Perfect Dark-style XBLA makeover, and that reason is because it's terrible. Yes, it was great in 1997. But trust me, your memories outstrip the actual experience.

The do-over and I, like Bond and Vesper in Casino Royale, did not get off to a good start. We bickered back and forth through the first few stages. It wasn't until I'd finally ditched the Classic Controller in favor of the nunchuck-Wii remote control scheme that this game and I fell madly, passionately in love. No game in history has ever delivered the stealth/fisticuffs/mow-them-all-down trifecta as well as this game does. Though I kept waiting for GoldenEye 007 to betray me at the end, just as Vesper does to Bond, it never did. As soon as the credits rolled, I immediately started playing it again. It's that good.

6. Bayonetta (Sega, Platinum Games, 360/PS3)

I know! More trash! This time, it's not Shinji Mikami but his cohort Hideki Kamiya who is to blame-admire (blamire?) for this stylish nonsense. Bayonetta managed to make even less sense than Vanquish did--no small feat--yet it was more exciting to play. I had no fucking idea what was going on in this game approximately 70-percent of the time. No joke. See if you can make sense of any of it by watching this. What made this game so remarkable was that it starred a witch with long, magic hair that can occasionally be turned into a hair-dragon. Which describes exactly zero other games in videogame history. And for that, Hideki Kamiya, I salute you. Pro Tip: Keep pressing buttons and jaw-dropping, amazing shit will continue to happen. Which, if you think about it, is really what videogames are all about.

[Five thru one of my like-what-I-like selections are on deck. I'll post them in a day or so. -Jones]

Spiders: The Bane of my Gaming Existence

I was at a BBQ at Vic's place last Sunday afternoon--the incomparable Ryan Payton was in town visiting, and we were grilling salmon steaks in the name of feting him--when the topic of conversation suddenly turned to spiders.

Confession: I am no fan of spiders. Snakes? Fine. Heights? No problem. But spiders? You can keep your damn spiders, thanks.

"You should have seen the one that I killed this morning," Vic said. "It was right there." He pointed his spatula at the corner of a free-standing umbrella, just above our heads. "I knocked it to the ground. It was one of those mean spiders. It coiled up. Like it was ready to come at me."

Naturally, the question for me in this moment, without fail, is always the same: "How big was it?" I asked.

Vic made a circle with his forefinger and thumb. Much to my chagrin, his finger and thumb did not touch. Whatever hellspawn demon spider this was, it was larger than the span of Vic's finger-thumb circle.

"JESUS," I said. I started involuntarily brushing invisible things off my arms and legs and neck like a crazy person. (If you watch Reviews regularly, and you've got a quick eye, you can often see me swatting away non-existant bugs.)

Another guest at the BBQ overheard our spider story and weighed in with one of his own. "I remember going down into the basement in our old house a few years back," he said. "And I spotted this huge, black spider scuttling across the floor. I grabbed the closest weapon--in this case, it happened to be an old hockey stick--and went after it."

"JESUS," I said.

"I hacked at it a few times, but it just kept going. It was faster and tougher than I thought it would be. And though I'd landed several solid blows and wounded it, the thing still got away."

"JESUS."

"I never saw it again. I always wondered where it went. I pictured it down there, healing in our basement, one of its legs in a tiny cast, plotting its revenge on me. Then, about a year later, we were moving out of the house. I pulled an old sofa away from the wall, and there it was. Dead. Upside down. Its corpse was huge."

"JESUS."

"I went, 'Ha, ha! So that's where you went, you little bastard! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

"So. How big was it?"

He held up his hand, fingers splayed as wide they would splay. "It was probably just slightly smaller than my hand," he said.

"OH, COME ON," I said.

"Trust me, it was big," he said.

Again I started swatting at the non-existant bugs that were crawling on me. Goddamn invisible bugs!

Finally, a third guest at the BBQ overheard us and weighed in with his story. "When my girlfriend and I were moving out of our old place, I went down to our storage unit to get our things. I saw something moving around in the shadows and when I looked closer, I saw that it was this huge spider."

"JESUS."

"I'd never seen a spider like this around here before. It was a frigging tarantula. It had these thick legs and this fat body and hair all over it."

"So what did you do? Did you kill it?" I asked.

"No. I just grabbed my boxes and got the hell out of there."

"THAT MEANS THAT IT IS STILL ROAMING THE EARTH," I said. I was beside myself with worry now. No one told me, before moving to the Pacific Northwest that this was THE LAND OF THE GIANT SPIDERS. Nobody warned me. If someone had informed me of this before I moved here, I might have reconsidered. We have cockroaches and waterbugs--and yes, large rats with pink tails--in New York City. But the spiders, if you do see any in NYC, are usually only modestly sized. Before I travel anywhere for a vacation, I always do some research, to get some idea of the size of the local spiders. If they are above a certain size--bigger than a silver dollar or so--THAT DESTINATION IS OFF. (South America, for example = OFF.) I had some friends who honeymooned in the south of France about 10 years ago. They stayed in an old manor house, with high-beamed ceilings and stone walls. It sounded like just about the perfect place to honeymoon--roaring fire, red wine, blah, blah, blah--until they discovered A MAMMOTH SPIDER in the room. They covered it with a shoebox, and then mummified themselves inside their blankets for the night and didn't sleep a wink that night. (South of France = OFF.)

Yesterday I was playing Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light on the 360 when I received a new objective: ENTER THE SPIDER TOMB.

"OH COME ON," I said out loud, even though it was just me and the cats in my apartment. No sooner had I opened the door to the Spider Tomb than a horde of spiders the size of German shepherds came rushing out to greet me.

Spiders are one of the most ubiquitous enemies in all of gaming, second only to zombies. Almost every videogame ever made features a fight at some point with a spider, or spider-type creature. Here are a couple off the top of my head: Brutal Legend (heavy metal spider), the entire Resident Evil series, Devil May Cry, all MMOs, Doom II, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of T., Earth Defense Force 2017, Ghostbusters: The V.G., Overlord II, Bomberman 64, Darksiders, and Spider Fighter for the 2600.

I stepped inside the Spider Tomb--which is far more intimidating-sounding than "Spider Picnic Area" or "Spider Wild Times Fun Park"--and, naturally, there were webs EVERYWHERE. Suddenly, more of the German Shepherd-sized spiders came galloping out. After I dispatched them, a second horde arrived. Fine. Then a third horde. Fine, again. In the middle of the third horde AN EVEN LARGER SPIDER APPEARS. (JESUS.)

I traveled deeper into the Tomb, and things got worse when a BEHEMOTH spider appeared. I have a 42-inch HDTV, and this thing practically filled up the entirety of it. It was so hairy that it appeared to be wearing a $16.99 JCPenny Mohair sweater.

But what I feel when I play through spider levels of games is not fear, or anxiety. I'm not literally afraid of these virtual spiders. Mostly what I was yesterday while playing through the Spider Tomb was really fucking annoyed. I was annoyed with the lack of creativity on the developers part for yet again trying to draw water from a well--call it The Spider Well--that has long gone dry. Using spiders as enemies is cheap and unimaginative.

Think about it: a bunch of Mohair sweater-wearing game designers are sitting around a table at the Crystal Dynamics offices, brainstorming their way towards a new Tomb Raider game, when, glory be, one guy says, "Eureka, I have it! People have an irrational fear of spiders. Let's USE THAT TO OUR ADVANTAGE. Let's play off of their irrational fear! LET'S BUILD AN ENTIRE LEVEL CENTERED AROUND SPIDERS. That will really give gamers a jolt! Ha, ha!"

A second guy says: "And let's put all of those spiders...IN A TOMB."

A third guy says: "HOLY CRAP, THAT'S IT."

Fourth guy: "I can't believe how wildly inventive we are!" (Rampant back-slapping and high-fiving ensues.)

I'm a zombie fan, and an exploding-barrel fan. I will argue passionately for both zombies and exploding barrels to be integral elements of videogames until the day I die. But Mr. Spider: The sun has set on you. Yes, tales of your exploits will continue to cause me to involuntarily say the word "JESUS." But your presence in videogames is no longer required. Good day, sir.