Game Of The Year!

Written By mista sense on Thursday, December 23, 2010 | 5:54 AM


So, we've done it again this year -- done a mammoth staff top ten games at Gamasutra. Please check it out!

My "personal favorite" game of the year is Bayonetta. It was inventive, interesting and well-executed. I'm pleased that it seems to be based on a strange vision, not on a "what will sell" market-research parade (as far as that goes, they probably got to 'naked chick' and then stopped).

I'm pretty sure most of the games in that top list will get sequels of some kind; some have announced them already, even. But as impressed as I am with the number one game, I feel kind of done with its world and its conventions. As it is there's no way I put as much time into our number seven game as I did into its predecessor.

But the idea of a Bayonetta 2, which seems possible although unannounced, of course, makes me excited. I would be eager to see what they'd expand on or polish more or deepen. In fact, just writing the blurb in the top ten made me want to go and put Bayonetta on again. That emotion means something to me.

It's strange. I feel that we've never seen such a dense crop of excellent and diverse games as we have in 2010 (although 2008 stands out in my memory). And yet I am at something of a loss to really feel much for any of them. They've sown no permanent furrows in my memory. I'm simultaneously impressed and disengaged.

Maybe because I'm well-installed in my career now and am trained to be less fan, more observer? I dunno. The idea that "something's missing" from the world of the AAA blockbuster isn't new. In fact, I don't think that there's anything "missing" this year, per se. Like, it's great. I just didn't fall in love this year.

Anyway. In case you didn't see it, earlier this year I wrote about how crazy bad-ass Bayonetta is a really cool game character in spite of -- no, because she's hypersexy-unreal. Oh, yeah, and while I'm thinking about that piece?

Tsk, oh, Leigh Alexander, you'll say anything to pander to your majority-male readership, won't you? No, fuck off. That was just one of the reactions to an article I cared about this year that made me realize that I am not interested in reactions to my articles.

Of course you're allowed to disagree with things I write or even insult me. Free country. I just don't have to care that you're doing that. You might have noticed the comments on SVGL are off. That decision has come at the expense of my traffic, but I don't really mind. I would rather enjoy what I do again.

I am pleased that people can no longer register their immediate, unconsidered reactions to everything I say. I hope this will also encourage people to distill out issues that are actually meaningful to them and discuss them in their own online spaces. If one really has something one feels one needs to say to me or about me, there's email, which I reserve the right not to read nor to respond to.

I am very grateful to you for your readership; should it be your holiday I hope you have a safe and happy one with your dear ones, and should it not be your holiday, I hope you at least get some downtime because of the other holidayers.

Blog Archive

Popular Posts

Ad

a4ad5535b0e54cd2cfc87d25d937e2e18982e9df

Ad