Nintendo DS

Second Verse, Worse Than the First

HIGH The game's climax, which does a magnificent job of tying its plot and its relationship arc together.

LOW Completing the game for the third time and realizing I'd have to do the first puzzle again again.

WTF Lady, we are about to die of hypothermia. I do not need to hear about ice-9.

I actually remember that section of that level in Super Mario World quite well. If it's any consolation to Yoshi, it wasn't an easy decision to make at the time.

Some of you may view this as a cop-out, but rather than do a fairly common Game of the Year piece, I'm doing things a little differently. I'm going to run down a list of great games that I played this year. I'm not going to say that one was necessarily better than the other, but I hope this gives you some idea of the games that got me to believe that 2010 was a very good year for video game software.

I hate reading and making top 10 lists. Usually. Generally I just don't like it when I see something meaningless like "TOP 10 ASSES OF VIDEAGAEMS" or something similarly silly. A top 10 games of the year or top 10 games of all time list is really the only time when I can excuse the use of a list in such a fashion. Even still, up to this point I resisted making one. I mean, isn't it enough if I say I liked a game? Do I really need to use some kind of imaginary metric to rank them?

Well, it has reached the time of year when we harvest the crop of retrospectives, the best-of and worst-of lists that one can accuse of gratuitous iconoclasm, corporate servitude, or trolling as suits your fancy. I continue my habit of not naming a "Game of the Year", nor even a "Game (that I played) of the Year" because it's a hollow designation, and (rightfully) nobody cares. That said, since it is customary to roll out some kind of year-end wrap-up, here is one.

Mario needs to be more careful with those stars. We could have wound up with a new series of games like Super Koopa 64, Super Koopa Kart, Dr. Koopa or Koopa Party.

Another year, another breakdown of the year's best games—according to me. Looking back, 2010 was an odd twelve months. Catching many players and critics by surprise, a large number of the most hotly-anticipated titles ended up being unexpectedly disappointing, leaving the top honors wide open for a number of lesser-known, smaller-budget projects. Unfortunately, while many of these smaller games displayed promise and creativity, most of them were flawed or uneven enough to give pause. The result? A year where (in my view, anyway) there really was no single runway pick for the year's best.

Needs an Upgrade

HIGH Breakneck parkour and neon everywhere.

LOW Battles with too many enemies are a jittery, frustrating mess.

WTF was the story about?

Good Things Come in Small Packages

HIGH Finding a rare piece of equipment in one of the game's numerous optional dungeons.

LOW Grinding for hours on end so you can afford to buy new gear.

WTF Why is it so damn hard to unlock most of the advanced jobs? We're not masochists, Level-5...

This particular video really hits its mark. Part tribute to Super Mario Bros., part tribute to Grand Theft Auto and completely awesome. As an homage it captures some popular Nintendo catch phrases and mixes them in with altered non-Nintendo catch phrases. My favorite part of the video though is that frequent sad sack and third wheel, Luigi, is particularly badass. Though clearly the second in command in The Brothers Mario, he's not the pathetic, attention-seeking sibling we see in other fan videos.