Results of the year 2010

Dear friends!

By the beginning of the second decade of the new century, the editorial office of Gamemia is forced to admit: the format of the results of the year is hopelessly outdated. Red carpets, gold palm figs and limousines will leave the film industry-over the long years of existence, this whole procedure has become something like a ritual and an extra reason to measure the Oscars.

Well, we can easily do without all this. Therefore, this time we summarize the results of the year in the format of inventory – we remembered, rewritten and marked with labels of 20 games that just need to see any playing person, and set them in the order in which they themselves would go through themselves. Well, in order to emphasize all the absurdity of the procedure once again – at the same time as the award of each place we will reward random games for random merits – just in case. Pleasant inventory!

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20. Metro 2033

Genre: Kyiv station

Publisher/Developer: ThQ/4A Games

Mania rating: 8.0

The Fantasy Brothers Strugatsky in the story “Monday begins on Saturday” wrote that a person is only an intermediate link necessary for nature to create a crown of creation: a glass of cognac with a slicer of lemon. We do not know about cognac, but we have a similar theory according to which the Internet writer Dmitry Glukhovsky and his book “Metro 2033” turned out to be only intermediate links, the necessary studio 4A Games To create the best action (what is there – the best game) made in the post -Soviet space for the reporting period.

With herself Metro 2033 , However, the situation also has a peculiar. She has a disgrace ai. Poor physics. The facial animation is such that every first character wants to give a slap, and every second one – peacefully sleep. Poorly set videos and an armful of small problems that traditionally accompany games with the tag "Made in Russia/Ukraine".

But at the same time, by means of interactive self -expression, 4A Games managed to make the game stunningly atmospheric, much more expressive than the source. The Moscow Metro turned out to be the developers such that, for the first time being in a tunnel overgrown with mold, you immediately understand that everything, hello, is not a return road. After all, it really is not: the metro is at the same time the place of action, the main character, and the main opponent in the game. It is dark in it as in a coffin, it is very crowded, and there is nowhere to escape – it is still worse on the surface. To strengthen this effect, the developers made the game physically inconvenient: the flashlight has to be recharged with a dynamo machine, manually play the air into the pneumatic gun, and the cartridges all the time, all the time is not enough, and the new ones are far from buying, because money is also cartridges.

All monsters, all these crazy scenes like a shootout between the Communists and the Nazis, all schizophrenic visions – everything seems to be a natural consequence of the environment. The heroes of Glukhovsky with their puberty philosophy quickly fade into the background (honestly, it would be better if some of them were completely silent), and the player acquires the most terrible experience not when the monsters bite him for the heels or twitch the neosexes for the whirlwinds, and when he is left alone inside the stone the intestines of the deceased city. The world Metro 2033 is so sinister and self -sufficient that it easily digested both far -fetched dialogs, and bad animation, and everything you want. Similar feelings (but a slightly different order) at one time caused S.T.A.L.K.E.R. , And we, for our part, regret only that 4a Games and GSC They no longer work together – in tandem, they, perhaps, could achieve a lot more.

Special drugs

Rabbit Neora of the year

American McGee’s Alice

The era of good games in films ended, without starting: after a slight blow of hope in the middle of the two thousandths ( Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay , Peter Jackson’s King Kong ) By 2010, everything again returned to their own. As for a computer game Alice in Wonderland , hastily blinded according to the (and also computer) misunderstanding of director Tim Berton, then she has a chance to surpass the glory of the Great American McGee’s Alice and there was almost no. With versions for PC and WII, it turned out, but happiness came from a completely unexpected side. French Etranges Libellules In extracurricular from the production of “correct” adaptation, the time made their own, really crazy Alice for Nintendo DS. Where actor Johnny Depp was not talking on PC and Wii, on the DS screen in the 2D draw, the true Carroll phantasmagoria was created: among the filthy swamps of someone's shadows, we saved the hare, saved pink-like Alice from card guards, and the characters communicated between exclusively ahas and sighs. It’s good or bad, but the best game of the movie last year was a project for a pocket console, in which, in order to blow the enemies from the path of the heroine, you need to stun away into the microphone. Welcome in a new decade.

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19. Vanquish

Genre: Hyperactive action

Publisher/Developer: Sega/Platinum Games

Mania rating: 8.5

Vanquish – This GEARS of WAR , Sonika naked profile. It’s like if your favorite action with shelters was turned on on the old video recorder in accelerated rewinding mode: everyone moves unnaturally quickly, everything flickers, the sound is squealing … In theory, you can play according to the old rules. Firing blindly, grenades, shelters – all in place. Another thing is that no one needs it. Moreover: Vanquish is not about that. Instead of tactical shootings, there is pathos, rapture by battle and undisguised, bordering narcissism on narcissism. When the main character, like a stripper, arched his back, caring out of the land of the spark, rushes from the ground of a gigantic boss, it begins to seem to you that the battlefield is a dance floor, and you are his main star. Actually, the way it is.

Vanquish structure also works in favor of this analogy. It is arranged as a composition in the style of trance: at first the melody accelerates, faster, faster, faster, then a surge – and attenuation. The same vanquish: at the moments of maximum stress, when the player is exhausted from super-speed shootings, Slo-Mo suddenly turns on, the world is immersed in a viscous jelly, and you only have to admire the frozen bastards of explosions and flashes of lasers. In order not to spend time replacing weapons, in Vanquish there is only one transformer barrel-it is even easier to keep the shooting pace of shootings. And if you get tired, again, there is always a pause. Sit in shelter, smoke (for indulging a bad habit from the protagonist, even the helmet took only from the chin to the nose) – and into battle. This very smoking, perhaps, is the brightest moment Vanquish. The game seems like a parody, everything is not serious, an absurd hero with a cigarette … But in fact, Shinji Mikami winks you: “I know that you need to tear the rhythm. I can immerse in a trance. You can't resist my game ".

Vanquish is also a great example of how to "japanize" the game. An ordinary zombie-chorror in Japan turns into Resident Evil. Ordinary slasher-in punk-rock Devil May Cry. Now the injection of Basabi has made GEars of War, and you yourself see what happened. We cannot wait until, finally, "declines" Call of Duty Or, for example, Half-Life.

Special drugs

Megamoll of the year

Dead Rising 2

The back of the industry – Capcom With his own Dead Rising 2. This respected publishing house in recent years seems to have gone somewhere in the wrong place. Another reason to make sippuka is a shame called Lost Planet 2. In the case of DEAD Rising, their main mistake was to preim the game of Canadians from Blue Castle Games. These people seem to have become for the Japanese some kind of Indians from call centers, which American companies trust the care of their customers: they themselves mainly develop a hammivated baseball simulators, have well-known abilities and a peculiar North American sense of humor, but the talent clearly walked around them side. With such initial data, it is not surprising that Dead Rising 2 occupied a trash-nishu, which he occupied nine years ago Postal 2 (and which, most likely, will never take Postal 3 ). In it, a hefty man is dressed up, God knows what, attacks zombies with flamethrowers made of children's water pistols, and defeats fat maniacs in latex and plush hare ears. We would love to forgive this game Humor of the level of the movie “Z*Pa” from the comedy “Idiocracy”, but the problem is that for Canadian outsourced this is a ceiling. All bosses, scenery and most gameplay situations are taken from the original game and diligently worsened. The opportunity that appeared in return to shoot on the run and other joys of the interface against this background look cheap populism – in Dead Rising 2 is banal boring.

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18. R.U.S.E.

Genre: Deceptive maneuver

Publisher/Developer: Ubisoft/Eugen Systems

Mania rating: 8.0

If you try to express our relations with strategies on the other side of Starcraft 2 This year, using the terminology of the VKontakte site.ru, it would turn out: “Everything is difficult with R.U.S.E. ". This is an ambiguous, universal, but what is there – all of itself crooking either RTS or Vargaim with RTS rules, chips and mechanics from the Texas Holdham. Innovative, it would seem, a project about which you have to state a bitter fact: if you buy a game in Steam and try to find partners in a multiplayer, in 50% of cases you risk running out for a blank, hopeless void. No one in R.U.S.E. Doesn't play. But what is there – we ourselves no longer play.

Although everything seems to be surprisingly successful. Mechanics Order of War (that is Company of Heroes plus speed minus construction), multiplied by scale Supreme Commander , Stylization under the command table, chips again … all this works. Even the World War II, about which we stopped joking the year in 2007, here to the place: you know in advance which tanks where you need to use, in the know what infantry is capable of, out of thousands of previous games have learned the strengths and weaknesses of all nations, the specifics of each individual artillery calculation model or anti -aircraft installation. Therefore, immediately, from the first seconds, they are ready to focus on the main thing – forgery and deception.

The most important achievement of r.U.S.E. – the opportunity to send wooden tanks to the enemy. A simple thing seems to be a thing, but it changes everything. The first ten hours of this game pass as if in sweet intoxication. Now your task is not only to smear the enemy, but also to try to understand what he thinks, to “read” him – as in poker. Thanks to this, you have to revise all your genre habits, all old tricks, all universal strategies, because they fail here in an expected way.

Unfortunately, it is with the tricks that the main problems of R.U.S.E. In the development of games for social networks there is such a rule: first you need to start a working prototype of mechanics until the competitors are ahead, and then you can increase content. Game Eugen Systems From this point of view – a typical Facebook application in the first weeks after launch. You understand how to use it all, but there are not enough tools. And to expect some new opportunities, new fraudulent schemes, in general, at least something new is clearly not worth at least before the exit of the sequel. Which, most likely, will never be.

But this, in spite of everything, is an important precedent: a big, expensive game that is trying to change something. And let few people play in it, but one way or another will have to reckon with her in the coming years.

Special drugs

Poapon of the year

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Another game with which we have “everything is complicated” this year is Super Mario Galaxy 2. We tried for a long time to find a place for her in the main twenty-we put it in different places, moved in every way-but they didn’t come up with anything. There are several reasons. It turned out to be so informative that it could be placed with equal success at least in the first place, at least in the last place. Like Super Mario Galaxy 2, it would be comfortable on our indie, but the scale, you yourself understand, is not the same-Nintendo made the game clearly not for three pennies. Finally, since the game has nothing so broken in comparison with the first part (Mario still consistently explores several dozen planets with different conditions and an ecosystem on each) that such an unusual game is perhaps worthy of its own nomination.

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17. Alan Wake

Genre: The horrors of Stephen King

Publisher/Developer: Microsoft/Remedy Entertainment

Mania rating: 8.5

2010 will go down in the history of the electronic entertainment industry as a year of disappeared long-term construction. The latest representatives of this proud tribe are already on the shelves ( Gran Turismo 5 , Starcraft 2 ), or finally (hope) we decided on their fate ( Duke Nukem Forever , Diablo 3 ).

Alan Wake We waited exactly five years since its announcement in May 2005. And when they waited, it suddenly turned out that Alan barely managed to jump into the last door of the last car of the train leaving for the future. The language does not turn to call this game an outstanding work: its too important elements are morally outdated along the way to the finish line. If you look only at the exterior, we will see how the writer who shaved the writer wanders in the pitch darkness for the pine forest for eight hours, drives a flashlight of a flock of raven, and with the onset of dawn, stupid conversations are sent to conduct stupid conversations.

But do not forget that Remedy Entertainment – Very talented people. In Alan Wake, the process of wandering through the forest does not catch the process of wandering, but what is happening around the writer. The authors somehow stuffed the whole modern horror-classic into the game: from David Lynch and Stephen King to Stanley Kubrick and Howard Lavkraft. When you sit down to play in Alan Wake in a dark deserted apartment (or at least a room), three thoughts are chaotic in your head: “nothing is clear”, “terribly interesting” and “wildly scary”.

Remedy Entertainment managed to successfully weave into the game that the authors did not succeed Alone in the Dark Two years ago: a serial structure with all these cliphhengeers, a brief content of previous series and a stressful narrative. And even more so – they also put pressure on the consciousness of the player by literary techniques, scattering by the levels of the manuscripts of Alan, which describe in detail what will happen to the unfortunate fictionalist in a few minutes. When you read: “Suddenly Alan heard the familiar sound of a chainsaw, and all his guts sank with horror,” and after a moment the same sound came from afar, I would like to immediately turn off the prefix and climb my head under the blanket.

Acting on the player at once on three sides, the authors of aspen stakes drive into the brain one scene after another: Alan puts it through the bushes from the police raid, the excavator first attacks Alan, Alan beats the attack of the creatures of darkness under the sounds and outbreaks of the rock concert, Alan and Alans get drunk with a friend in the trash and listen to gramplast. After that, scolding Alan Wake for uniformity and linearity is the same as wearing Silent Hill For crooked management. That is, of course, you can try, but everyone else will only be condescending at you and twisted a finger at the temple.

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Mrs. of the year

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

The choice between the Miss Universe title and the star of the district disco in front of Lara Croft for obvious reasons did not even stand – for the first age it was not the same, and no one was able to occupy this post for twice in a row so far. But suddenly changing the genre to a cooperative ten -dollar action with a view of the top, Lara again became the first – let it in her category. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light refused not only the phrase Tomb Raider In the name, but also from all that excess weight, silicone and cellulite, which the series again managed to form over the last three parts. Now it's easy to rise, moderately complicated and wildly cheerful Diablo for two and with pistols. It’s not even worth playing the game alone – only with Guardian of Light it becomes clear that the cooperative is not just a joint shooting at enemies, but primarily a mutual assistance and a sense of elbow. And thanks to the ever -going DLC, you can fight the ancient and terribly pathos evil even in the appearance of the constantly swearing scum of Kane and Lynch. Compared to their own Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days it turns out not only much funnier, but also much more useful for the nerves.

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16. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

Genre: Race

Publisher/Developer: Electronic Arts/Criterion Games

Mania rating: 8.5

WITH Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit In our editorial office, approximately such a story came out: for the first time when they saw the newly launched version of the game, most of the colleagues wandering idle were considered for the debt to approach the TV and stretch out a thoughtful comment in the spirit of “some kind of nonsense, although the cars are beautiful”. The worst thing is that about the same thoughts turned in the head and ourselves: when people who have actually re -randed the genre of arcade car lines with the help Burnout , Given the literary remake of the 1998 Hot Pursuit, it looks in some particularly cynical way to bury your talent into the ground.

Watch how expensive, but almost completely unprecedented foreign cars overcame a simple, poorly decorated route from point A to point B, at times dodging other expensive foreign cars (but already with flashing lights), in 2010 it was at least boring. And when playing for a policeman, other absurdities were also found: the outgoing offender could give for no reason the brakes and leave in the opposite direction, putting you before the choice-to go after him or to punish the rest of the five-mazh boys to the finish line "Lamborgini". And this is not to mention the fact that it was physically impossible to simply wipe the asshole to the side of the road and demand to get out of the car: the arrest was counted only when the offender’s car was already falling apart or flew from the cliff into the abyss. Why did it need to be methodically touched until a strip of health is completely exhausted.

Therefore, the invitation to participate in the multiplayer race with the developers we accepted without much delight – and in vain. Already after the first prematurely completed race, Igor Asanov (before that spent the whole hour to launch the game and secretly prayed that it would never start at all) enthusiastically dial the number of Anton Logvinov, who knocked him out of the highway a second ago. Both, characteristic, could not pronounce a single articulate sound, just about three minutes just Gogov in the pipe. Needless to say, not a single game from the list here was caused by such emotions?

Recently, the head of the whole EA John Rikitello expressed confidence that solitary games in the usual form have been living in their last years, and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is the best confirmation of this. And the point is not only that the classic battles “riders against the police” really bloom only online. The constant connection with the Internet fills the life of Hot Pursuit: at the next entry into the game, she accidentally tells you that all the works of yesterday’s in the evening to conquer the “gold” went down the drain: your friend Anton Logvinov drove the same race for a second faster. After this, to cope with the urge to immediately quit all things and repeat the record is almost impossible, so beware.

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The idle of the year

Split/Second and Blur

In addition to the successful resuscitation of the best racing series of the late 90s (we are, of course, about Gran Turismo and NEED for Speed: Hot Pursuit), 2010 I was also remembered by the return of another once popularly beloved genre-weapons races. That is, attempts, of course, were made earlier (see., For example, Full Auto ) but not the very first people of the industry were taken up for them, and therefore did not do much weather. In this sense, almost simultaneous output Blur And Split/Second It looks almost like an unexpected reunion of the ABBA group. Both games were made by one of the best specialists in the genre, very similar in the concept, but in reality each was completely about their own. If for Split/Second the best “Call of Duty on Wheels” was suitable, then Blur turned out to be a much thinner experiment, trying to cross the mechanics Mario Kart and the aesthetics of "adult" racing on expensive cars. Despite the fact that both games turned out to be more than outstanding, not one managed to recoup their development-in both cases, the sales account went to miserable two to three hundred thousand copies.

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15. Mafia 2

Genre: The godfather of the game industry

Publisher/Developer: 2kgames/2k czech

Mania rating: 9.5

As practice shows, at least once a year, such a game comes out, about which the editors and readers of "Gambrine" have a global misunderstanding. This year, trouble came from the most unexpected side – argued about Mafia 2. You will probably remember all the arguments “against” without us: there were plenty of complaints about the crossed missions and the non -zero gear. We, stubbornly counting the second “mafia” with a wonderful game, pay attention to its completely different sides.

The merit of the 2K CZECH is that they created perhaps the most true of the virtual gangster stories. The main characters of Mafia 2 are not intelligent romantics from a high road that has a brilliant career in the criminal world. On the contrary, Joe and Vito are two fools, with skull boxes, empty, like American glass during the dry law. In a other set of circumstances, they could become the heroes of Burrose and go into a protracted heroin jump, but they liked whiskey and cigars more, so they dived headlong into the world of robberies, extortion and smuggling. In pursuit of formal signs of well -being, they do not notice that their own authorities shamefully shut them, entrusts the most dirty work, does not allow serious things and simply substitutes as soon as this becomes profitable. It seems that there have not been such informal heroes in gangster epics, and therefore there is nothing surprising in the fact that most tasks in the game consist of trips by car and stupid fierce shootings – what other work can be entrusted to the boys on the escapes?

However, these wraps themselves would hardly attract our attention. The second important merit of the developers is that they placed the noise, in general, heroes in a detailed world. They played a brilliant performance of thousands of mise-en-scenes along the whole way of the player’s path, in which everything is strong-from the fan on someone's table to a random Zabuldygya on the stairs-worked to create an atmosphere. Here – a vital need for buttons personally, solve small life problems: drag drawers and throw smuggling blocks with cigarettes with cigarettes. Even the most fierce haters of Mafia 2 admitted that at first they bought on this effect and passed the first half of the game with bulging eyes.

Of course, Mafia 2 is not like a breakthrough, nor a masterpiece, or even the best game-2010. But for the grace with which the authors give an elementary, in essence, history, it can definitely be considered one of the brightest games of the past year. Anyway, no one better than 2k Czech knows how to reveal the theme of felt hats, jazz and Tommigans. Unless Rockstar with your l.A. Noir, – but before this glorious day there are still at least a few months.

Special drugs

Things of the year

Deathspank

In the modern gaming industry, the comedy is an extremely unpopular genre: the whole sense of humor seems to have focused on an indie sector, and in AAA-game-solid frowned eyebrows and nervous buttocks. Of course, almost everyone is trying to joke with varying success, but the games that were originally conceived as humorous are not enough to offended.

So, the best comedy of last year is perhaps the Deathspank dilogy, a game, after which it is impossible to seriously perceive Diablo. The protagonist, a man in a little and flirty lilac thongs, fights with the infernal unicorns of evil and giant humanoid deer, saves children, unceremoniously stuffing them into a bag, and pronounces every phrase with such pathos that the walls tremble. Ron Gilbert, the happy father of the Monkey Island family, once again proved that in order to chase people to the screen, you do not need an engine for a million dollars and support for 3D televisors-a sense of humor and a dozen like-minded people with more or less straight.

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14. Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Genre: Rota, rise

Publisher/Developer: Electronic Arts/Ea Dice

Mania rating: 9.0

Since the first Battlefield: Bad Company It only came out on the consoles, nothing could prepare PC players for the double blow of the Frostbite engine and suddenly developed in the series of the singleplayer. Many of us began to watch this film from the middle: well, where did the plot about the war with the Russians come from in Battlefield and rather bright characters?

Yes, the adventures of four caricature American infantrymen, driven into one “bad company” for various offenses, did not claim the laurels of Tarantino “inglorious bastards”. But in the previous issue of Battlefield on PC all the heroes in the single, bots were generally performed!

BC2 – just the second experience EA Dice in the creation of a Jamesbon plot with jumps on exotic locations and a final shootout during a protracted jump from a burning aircraft. IN Bad Company 3 With history, it will be possible to create something completely extraordinary, but for now, the Columbian jungle and destroyed by the artillery of the city folded into a stupid, but very vivid demonstration of the possibilities of the engine, hut up on the plot thread.

Completely destroyed buildings appeared in the first Bad Company, but are shocked even now, three years later. Against the backdrop of the opportunity to break through the passage in the wall with a rocket decoration Modern Warfare 2 (not to mention the single Medal of Honor ) seem unbearably conditional. After BC2, all other modern FPS is a stone age, a barbaric primitive, in which we played only the lack of a worthy alternative.

But this is all the way, the prelude to the main thing: multiplayer cards in BC2 manage to look even better than lovingly built levels of the single campaign. These are stylish scenery (who will forget the dams hanging over the battle in Laguna Presa!), where the same epic modern war unfolds in Conquest or Rush modes as in the single, only this time it is unknown. Not one of the direct competitors could not compete with the Bad Company 2 in terms of online – Dice could not surpass even themselves, but Call of Duty: Black Ops and completely disgraced at the start. A blow to mercy to competitors – addition Vietnam , in which flamethrowers and a healthy dose of Stanley Kubrick appeared.

Special drugs

9 company of the year

Medal of Honor

Creators Medal of Honor Humanly sorry. For the first time in a long time, the creators of a military shooter set out to not just shock the closed consumer for the next show of Chinese jokes, but to show a more or less real war, only a little embellished by the means of modern Hollywood. In Medal of Honor, no one explodes Washington, does not shoot politicians in the forehead, does not threaten the world with the latest technogenic weapons and Chechen tyrants. On the contrary, the developers always emphasized that the main characters of their game are the most ordinary soldiers who solve problems of much smaller scale, but no less importance than their colleagues from show-shutters. Any retelling of the events of the game sounds like a scene from the film “9th company”: suppression of a machine gun nest, storming the village, defense for the only clay hut surviving wall … Wait, where did we already see this? The correct answer is everywhere. Medal of Honor did not have her own face, she was completely lost behind the backs of more spectacular shooters, in which this year there was no lack. After that, all the words of the employees Danger Close Games (sincere, we are sure) their desire to pay tribute to ordinary soldiers sound especially sad: after all, besides tribute, there is nothing interesting in the Medal of Honor. Nevertheless, for an attempt to at least briefly distract people from the fake wars and pay attention to the real ones, they well deserved our special prize.

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13. Call of Duty: Black Ops

Genre: Caribbean crisis

Publisher/Developer: Activision/Treyarch

Mania rating: 9.0

We have already complained many times that over the years to praise Call of Duty It becomes more and more difficult: as the developers over and over again increased the scale of their file show, the reserves of enthusiastic epithets among journalists were exhausted before our eyes. But what is a sin to hide, this series is similar to a provincial master who bursts into a tavern with gypsies, actresses, cheeky cry “all champagne!"And a body, loaded caviar and vodka. This can be tired of radiculitis, but it is impossible to completely abandon his society – without him it is boring.

However, if Treyarch would continue pyrotechnic traditions Infinity Ward , nothing would have happened to them. But after the actual death of the latter, the eternal sodkiki finally got a chance to prove themselves and added Call of Duty healthy political ambitions. Black Ops It begins the murder of a person similar to Fidel Castro, in the following level we are arranged by a brief tour of the noisy as a fentagon, and around – the Cold War, Vietnam and other, very real abominations of the twentieth century. After Modern Warfare with its fake nationalists and World at War with its ethnic world, the Second World War with a moth was a sip of fresh air.

And, of course, Reznov. This strange bearded man in the unique performance of Gary Oldman became the main and only noticeable hero before last Call of Duty. But there, his charisma was limited to a earflame, enormous tesak and pathetic cries “Ura-aa!»In every second stage. Black Ops is a completely different matter. The frantic, infernal riot in the Vorkuta “river”, a suicidal breakthrough on the truck through the cordon, bloody showdowns in the Viet Congs tunnels – the bearded sergeant again stole all the shows, and even in the most insidious manner settled in the skull of the protagonist, continuously recalling that the Stainer, that the Stainer, Dragovich and Kravchenko should die from our hand.

Having mixed Call of Duty with the movie A Beautiful Mind, Treyarch managed to get out of a hopeless, seemingly situation-for this we forgave them even a ruined multiplayer and the absence of at least some modern technologies. Of course, until the developers attach something radically new to their concept, the path to the top ten in our top was ordered by them. But the fact that Treyarch made us again plunge into the vulgar linear shooter, with dignity at least respect. Even though half of their success is a merit of a man named Gary Oldman.

Special drugs

Caunterstraik of the year

Alien Swarm

If you remember, eleven years ago, one interesting free multiplayer mod for Half-Life came out. In it, two teams were purchased by weapons, after which they went ruthlessly to shoot each other, capture bombs and, in general, to have a benefit of time. The modification was called, of course, Counter-Strike. What happened next – you must be so you know, but pay attention to what a curious coincidence. Last year, Valve released a free multiplayer game on the Source engine on Steam, with the appearance of Alien Shooter and the ideology of Left 4 Dead: the team of characters was torn through the vast sea of ​​stimulation, claws and false knives, mutually helping and complementing the qualities of each other. This, of course, is about Alien Swarm, behind which the editorial office of Gamery almost in full force spent more than a dozen hours. Of course, now the mass hysteria around it has subsided, but a dense community has formed around the game, fanatical maps, modifications and all other attributes of popular recognition appear. It is too early to prophesy Alien Swarm CS for now, to put it mildly, but our gratitude to the developers for one of the best cooperative experiments of the past year, we are warmly expressed now.

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12. Fable 3

Genre: Fairy tale without a happy ending

Publisher/Developer: Microsoft Game Studios/Lionhead

Mania rating: 8.5

Moral choice in games today is not a luxury, but a quite ordinary replacement for a real human drama. Each second “serious” game strives to put a gun into our hands and start impatiently pushing into the back: well, you will shoot this unfortunate drug dealer, who has a wife and two children, or that?! We have long been accustomed to solve virtual ethical problems of any complexity. Perhaps the only people who in our time can approach this issue in an original way is Lionhead.

Fable 3 , Preserving the invariable pastel-fairy palette, goes to a new level of moral choice-to the state level. Perhaps after it you will be able to go to the marches of disagreed (and at the same time consonant and vowels) once and for all, because Peter Molinya gently, but intelligibly hints: to govern the state is horror as difficult and nothing to be cursed to scold power. The country is on the verge of war, the treasury urgently needs money, but at the same time, the economy, social security and standard of living are below the horizon, and subjects require the king (this is you) urgently corrected all this. As a result, you have to choose in a panic between the construction of a children's or brothel, turn natural reserves into mining enterprises, turn a blind eye to crime – and all this, ultimately, for the good of the inhabitants of the kingdom.

But the most important thing is that at any time this game is able to cheer you up. Lionhead relate to matters of state importance easily and carefree, like children who dumped a box with soldiers on the floor and started the game in the war. It is obvious that all these torments of choice, all social subtext need Peter Molinjo as an occasion to put on stupid triangles on all NPC, invite famous actors and British comedians to the voice acting, as well as start a series of jokes about chickens. The same approach easily explains all Fable troubles: for three parts, the developers have not learned how to come up with any interesting endings and catch bugs. But they devoted everything to the characters, design, dialogues and inventing ridiculous inscriptions on the tombstones of rural churchyards. As a result, Fable 3 turned out to be a rather useless game, but this is the best useless game in the world, made by people with an excellent sense of humor and in love with their job. In the age of funny peasants and funny farmers, this is a rarity – please appreciate it, please.

Special drugs

Bondian of the year

Alpha Protocol

Contrary to the name, this nomination will not get Golden Eye 007 (because this is a rimm of the game 1997), not even more so James Bond 007: Blood Stone (because this mediocre is not clear what). This year the best spy game has become for us Alpha Protocol. As expected, this game skillfully disguised as a clone shaking from weakness Mass Effect , but at the most unexpected moment shot us right in the heart of a gun with a muffler. Alpha Protocol has terrible animation, the basic mechanics curve, but at the same time she managed to become the most non -linear role -playing game over the past few years. Here, an inadvertently dropped replica can cause the death of one of the beloved heroes, and the set of perks fundamentally changes the style of play. So that no one is relaxed, the game gives a few seconds to choose replicas in dialogs and rewrites the only slot for auto -care after each of them: they made the wrong choice and lost a valuable ally? C’est la vie, good luck at the next passage! After Alpha Protocol, few have doubts in talent left Obsidian Entertainment , Well, I finished off the last skeptics Fallout: New Vegas.

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11. God of War 3

Genre: The god of war

Publisher/Developer: Sony Santa Monica/Sony

Mania rating: 9.0

The shaved athletes of Kratos, whose open, good -natured look and red tattoos throughout the body clearly give out a football fan in it, has done a black but well -paid work on the order of the Olympic Party of power – arranged provocations at rallies of disagreed centaurs, and also placed in the entrance individual prominent opposition figures like God Ares. But once the party in power treacherously betrayed our hero, thereby making the strongest enemy. The entire Spartan fan club refused to obey the will of the party and walked along Olympus with pogroms, arranging mass riots and beating riot police in golden helmets. In response to this, Kratos was thrown back from Olympus back to Lyubertsy, from where he was forced to break up again throughout the game, killing the loyal batch of gods along the path of the right -winging opposition in the person of Athena.

But even such a short and figurative retelling of the plot God of War 3 (And it was he)-the lesson is extremely ungrateful, because the plot in this game still consists of a ferocious crath-kratos “I will punish you, gods!", And the most important innovation is an increase in the maximum number of enemies on the screen to 50 pieces.

But, oddly enough, this is exactly what, coupled with the incredible PS3 graphist and makes you go through the absolutely the same game for the third time. Kratos and his enemies became plastic and convincing more than ever, the cards became more, and on the stage there were somewhere running or hiding unarmed citizens, who are also allowed to brutally kill. And this is not counting that the guts of enemies have become three -dimensional, and blood now flows through the skin almost like a real.

It is not for nothing that we list such unpleasant details here: the developers know very well why people play God of War, and each time they make it more and more cruel. In the third part, for example, in the course of passage it is proposed to tear off the head of the living God Helios and turn his neck of Her, Zeen Zeus (he himself will have to kill). Moreover, the cruelty of God of War is not caricatured, as in some Splatterhouse , And the real – and therefore repulsive in places.

To do something even more cruel than God of War 3 will be difficult, and it is hardly necessary. The mechanics of the game, which seemed incredibly fresh in 2005 (unlike the overwhelmed Devil May Cry This game seemed to play itself, no matter what you press, and the battles with the bosses were furnished with Quick-Time Events), in 2010 no longer caused surprise. This was best shown after six months later on PSP God of War: Ghost of Sparta , in which there was all the same, except for three -dimensional intestines.

Special drugs

Lazarus of the year

Duke Nukem Forever

Some editors of "gambling", people with beards and higher education, are able to recall how they laughed at the constant transfer of Duke Nukem Forever output in the eighth grade of secondary school. During this time, the project went through all the Adovas of Flour and to top it off – he survived his own death, not yet having time to be born. Randy Pichford and his faithful vassals from Gearbox Software picked up a project from a landfill of history and now, it seems, are seriously intending to bring development to a happy ending. And this, of course, causes involuntary admiration for the figure of Duke Nyukem: while Kratos unscrews the horns to the characters of the book “Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece” and falls into a three -dimensional Hades, his obscene ancestor actually dies, returns from the dead and generally – does not give up. What is it really there, Kratos.

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10. Gran Turismo 5

Genre: Game-epoch

Publisher/Developer: Sony/Polyphony Digital

Mania rating: 9.5

For example Gran Turismo 5 It is very noticeable that the Japanese are completely unable to make games according to the standards of the 21st century. The passage of Gran Turismo 5 is the process as exciting as a game of “funny farm” or free Chinese mmorpg, because it consists of 90% primitive, meaningless Grinding (t.e. Making money and experience) and 10% – from the drive, the smell of pale rubber and all that we love the races. In order to facilitate this activity, Polyphony Digital They even came up with a special B-SPEC mode, in which the game, naturally, plays itself, allowing the player to relax and drink tea while GT5 earns dollars to buy a ten millionth “Ferrari” (without which they are not allowed into high-level race).

But there is one reason why all of the above nonsense cannot spoil the impression of Gran Turismo 5, moreover, it is logically complemented by its image of the most “long -playing” race on Earth. Unlike most Western developers, the Japanese still know how to turn games from a simple enteric into a real art, even if it comes only about motorbike. Gran Turismo 5 is not just 1000 cars and about the same amount of passage, it is not about that. This game knows how to speak a player in a language that is understandable only to those who in childhood loved to look into the salon of any car parked at the sidewalk and learned to distinguish them from each other even earlier than to confidently count to a hundred.

And this is not only about the love of graceful substete on the hood or a leather steering wheel stolen into a line. Each of the 200 with a small premium machine (soon they promise to increase their number, gradually updating simple “standard” models) here is felt almost like a living creature to which you need to stubbornly look for your approach. If possible, then, together with your favorite car, you can hold almost the entire game, gradually turning it from a family sedan into a thunderstorm of supercars. Only in Gran Turismo 5 can you think the thought of taking the car for a walk along Nurburgring to listen to how the muffler has been installed yesterday sounds. Only here you can spend as much as half an hour after the race, photographing arrival from different angles: a real photographer simulator is built into the game. Only Gran Turismo 5, the only one of all games, is capable of growing a real racer from a beginner without a driver’s rights. The game teaches the basics of driving, from tests on the site to toothbrusting races for endurance, and does not forgive mistakes, forcing to constantly grow over himself.

In fact, this is no longer a game in the usual sense, but rather an independent game platform, for which PS3 is still needed. Gran Turismo phenomenon has long grown beyond the game industry. The best virtual racers pass through the qualifying Sito GT Academy, drive the real Nissan 350Z and are already on the real highway for the opportunity to spend a fully paid racing season in a professional team. Spaniard Lucas Ordoneses – the first winner of the GT Academy – now quite successfully continues his career in the European FIA GT4 championship. And it seems to us that after that any comments about 800 standard machines and a bad model of damage to GT5 look completely unnecessary.

Special drugs

The formula of the year

F1 2010

The car races in 2010 lived not only thanks to Gran Turismo 5 – as if conspiring, almost the entire licensed world motorsport returned to the genre. But if the game under the license of the World Rally championship turned out to be frankly weak, then the “Queen of Motorsport” performed quite at the level. For Codemastersf1 2010 was the first experience, therefore, even having made a bunch of mistakes (flashing AI, strange graphics, uninteresting repetitions), they were able to recreate the spirit of the most expensive races in the world. The career of the racer always began with a weak team-depressor, whose car loses to leaders three seconds in a circle. Therefore, busty fashion models and prize champagne at first replaced the fuss with the settings of the anti-wing and the most severe struggle with her own partner for the right to be alpha-semitz in the team. Even the smallest victory did not go unnoticed – competitors proposed millions of contracts, and the manager’s phone was torn from the requests for interviews. Many at the moment relax, thinking that it will always be so. But this is the main catch of large sports, which Vladimir Vysotsky once said very successfully: “Only a moment you are upstairs-and you are rapidly falling down”. We hope that with games about Formula 1 this will not happen soon.

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9. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty

Genre: Strategy

Publisher/Developer: Blizzard Entertainment

Mania rating: 9.5

This year it became completely clear that the seams came officially to the genre of strategies in real time. Only Blizzard Entertainment has the necessary resources, experience and, most importantly, a desire for creating a chic classic RTS. The rest of the games cannot repeat their success, even despite all the innovations (see. R.U.S.E. ) and a noble name ( Command & Conquer 4). Suddenly it turned out that in 2010 people are already completely uninteresting to circle units with a frame and send them in crowds to the enemy.

Starcraft 2 It seems only Koreans were waiting for all their might. The rest with an evil smirk watched how Blizzard tolerates and transfer the date of the game, and then completely divides it into three parts and enters a paid subscription for developing countries not only into multiplayer, but also for a solitary campaign. Evil languages ​​have already rehearsed many hours of speeches that Blizzard has been screwed up for the first time in its history. But then the game came out, and evil tongues had to hastily put in evil indecent places.

Yes, at first glance it may seem that we were given the same game as in 1998, but with more or less modern graphics. Here it is still necessary to build a base, produced gas and crystals with cosmic peasants, build an infantry in huts and equipment in factories, circle the units with a frame and send them in crowds to the enemy. So why is it so interesting to play in Starcraft 2?

Yes, simply because Blizzard does not suit boring cards for battles, they are not satisfied with the same type of missions, banal ways of serving the plot, an inconvenient in the nuances management, poor balance and a million more things. But where others wave their hand and say “and it will do so!", Blizzard bite his teeth into the problem and tries to solve it.

Something turns out excellent-in no strategy, we have not seen such exciting missions in which the rules of the game change almost on the move. And such attention to the details that the landscapes want not only to blow up, but also to look with a magnifying glass in his hands (despite not the best picture in general). Something turns out worse-with the plots of Blizzard, not everything is smooth yet: to follow how Reinor drinks the bitter in the bar is still much more interesting than listening to what he says.

The main merit of Starcraft 2 is that he clearly showed: there are no dead or unpopular genres, but there are unfinished, boring or frankly bad games, from which even the largest fan is very quickly tired. If you tightly squeeze a box of this game in your hands, you can feel its holy, cosmic power. This is the biggest, most correct, most verified, most expectedly good RTS era. Like any project of such a value, it is very easy to criticize, but its scale, the level of execution cannot be admitted. In the end, Starcraft 2 is worth passing at least then to make something to tell my grandchildren.

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Waterloo of the year

Napoleon: Total War

As you know, the game Napoleon: Total War is also available in a special edition for Russia and other third world countries, which have not yet held normal Internet. This version of the game does not require online Activation, but at the same time it does not provide for installation of patches and does not allow you to play multiplayer. The last paragraph turned out to be a stumbling block: the fact is that a single campaign in Napoleon is a strongly cut version of Empire and therefore looks like a mockery. The players were driven into the strict framework of historical justice, while the key feature of the series has always been the opportunity to thoroughly rewrite the chapter of history textbooks that the developers chose as a setting. On the other hand, the online regime was finally revealed: the campaign mode appeared in it, the function of dynamic search for opponents and in general-so many joys that you can’t take it to the hump. Therefore, what is the Napoleon – Austerlitan or Waterloo – depends on the availability of a decent communication channel -.

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8. Halo: Reach

Genre: Deceive, but stay

Publisher/Developer: Microsoft/Bungie

Mania rating: 9.0

When Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was serving the last weeks of his presidency, KVN had a wonderful number: the head of state is listening to the radio, and it seems to him that every song calls him to stay for the third term. Probably the employees felt the same Bungie , when they sent a master about the workshop with Halo: Reach. Master Chif probably winked at them from advertising posters, a television screen, Internet banners, and you don’t need to strain a fantasy for this: in the West, everything is hung with an advertisement for the game, from the heroic, she took the Spartan not even in the museum of wax figures. The difference is that Putin is still with us and is probably still afterwards, but we can hardly wait for the real, genuine Halo.

Reach – not impeccable game. There is a stupid scenario (and this is with such a spaciousness for drama!). There an old engine falling apart. There are no, no, and stupid runs are cut through the trenches in the style of old Call of Duty. There the scale is not the ones that presented. Or this level in space is funny, of course, but why is such a small and vaguely similar to the game " Storm »Ten years ago?

But here are miracles – it is amazing how all these factors do not affect the final impressions. Halo: Reach is the only genre game this year, which we once called a “living shooter”. And here we mean not only the advanced AI and the ability to flexibly solve any gameplay problem – in Halo all the pros and cons are entered into a special chemical reaction, thanks to which the project turns out to be such that you can’t do it on purpose. Nowhere else in the reporting 12 months it was so interesting to shoot. This is all, of course, from great love: Halo for Bungie is like “Citizen Kane” for Orson Wells. And for you and me is the same as the Cameron Avatar, without environmental howls, but with the inherent scope and pathos, sinister spaceships, destroyed cities and all such other. You never do anything as monumental Bungie, even with Bobby Cat money. It seems that the hour has just come for the ill -fated film adaptation, which there is still no financing.

A couple of months ago there was a rumor that the next game with the word “Halo” in the name would be a remake of the original 2001. If the information is confirmed, this will be the best recognition of success that you can come up with. Then only the statue of Chif next to the Lincoln monument. Therefore, please remember that Halo: Reach is your last chance to touch the story.

Special drugs

Mouse of the year

Epic Mickey

There were many examples in the past year when the great gamemeracies left the industry and began to engage in games for Facebook, mobile phones and other promising, but empty nonsense from the point of view of eternity. Against this background, the continuation of the career of Warren Spector, who has already worked out his duty to eternity with the help Deus Ex , It looked much more interesting. Spector showed the board of directors Disney The project of their new game in the RPG genre, and those, after conferring, offered him in response … make a platformer about Mickey Mouse. And then, as they say, it rushed – in the game EPIC MICKEY The idol of all American children of the 40s falls into the gloomy cyberpunk-united one, where the rabbit of Oswald refueling crazy. Which, of course, is terribly complex because he (the first-born of Walt Disney!) There was no gram of glory of eared upstarts, and therefore builds his manual animated reality from his improvised trash. Further, the number of jokes with non -child’s subtext only increases: the heroes of the game are tormented by lactose intolerance, and the mouse itself solves some problems with small theft. Epic Mickey, maybe not the most ingenious game in the world, but you certain.

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7. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Genre: Slasher

Publisher/Developer: Namco Bandai/Ninja Theory

Mania rating: 8.0

Enslaved Last year was one of the warmest games adopted by the press, which no one played in. It is not necessary to guess why it happened for a long time: she did not become a single sexual scandal, she was not forbidden to sell at the American military bases, the committee of soldiers' mothers, deputy Seleznev or South African Zulus did not spoke out against her. Simply speaking – publisher Namco Bandai , Most known in the game PAC-Man , Simply leaked an advertising campaign of a strange overseas game from the authors of a curious PS3-SLASher Heavenly Sword.

The game also inherited from him the only drawback is that behind the magnificent world and acting game there was no interesting mechanics. The single -flowing slasher bored in the first five minutes, and spectacular acrobatics was fully automated and did everything herself. On the other hand, digging on some level of level 25 is a little not what I would like to do in the world of game. Enslaved is not about blood, sweat and RPG elements – it is much more pleasant to observe it, without missing a single stroke and dialogue.

Like any truly mature work, Enslaved speaks with the viewer in a simple and natural language: it does not have a drop of amateur stray Heavy Rain , Whose creators insert a delusional episode into the game only to arrange another spectacular fight of a journalist with four men. She does not interrupt the story in order to introduce another on -duty clown into the plot, as he does Red Dead Redemption. Her heroes never replay, do not pronounce unnecessary remarks, do not lie at the fool – they just behave, as they probably would behave normal living people who did not see anything in their lives except war and destruction. They rejoice at the blue sky and the bright colors of the overgrown New York, discuss the first time he heard Shakespeare and are still very afraid to lose each other. Когда вокруг нет ни одной живой души, а по руинам опустевшего города грохочут железом роботы, зачищающие развалины от любых форм человеческой жизни, это отнюдь не пустая осторожность.

Watch how the relationship of the characters gradually develop (one of which, a red -haired beast named Trip, holds a finger on the Activation button of a deadly collar of Thunderly Grimila named Monkey) is a very rare pleasure that is almost not found in games comparable to good cinema. Heroes, unlike other games, live not only in the framework of magnificent KAT scenes, but throughout every minute of the game-instead of initial hatred and fright, they gradually learn to trust each other, comforting and holding out their hand at the right time. Where others have not changing standard replicas, in Enslaved – a subtle acting: views, gestures, intonations. If you think about it, then a deadly collar with a remote control for a red -haired trip is such an obvious metaphor for love, with the only difference being that it is always worn in life voluntarily.

Special drugs

Burger of the year

The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom

There is such a special kind of thoughtful and strange games that are commonly called "meditative". To The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, this term can also be applied, but it is important to understand what is the difference between this game and, say, Flower. The Settlers is not a contemplation of the Sakura Little Expel to the backdrop of Mount Fuji, this is the meditation of a successful tungsten burgher who watches with satisfaction how things are arguing in his militant farm: farmers cultivate the land, miners mines ore, and butter Shards. By the seventh part, the series reached the desired balance between the contemplative and economic part, therefore, once having mastered the basic production chains, it was possible to observe the reproduction of material goods to complete nirvana.

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6. Fallout: New Vegas

Genre: role -playing game

Publisher/Developer: Bethesda SoftWorks/Obsidian Entertainment

Mania rating: 8.5

Surprisingly, but Fallout: New Vegas It doesn’t work like this in the forehead attribute at least one merit in comparison with the original. Obsidian Entertainment I did the same thing that she has been doing now for seven years: a large, solid sequel to the magnificent game Fallout 3. But there is a subtle nuance – the same people who once came up with Obsidian Fallout. And this small fact turns everything upside down.

At the first glance, we find the same Fallout 3: the same picture, the same role system, the same control. Moreover, the game (according to the old tradition of Obsidian) to the second patch glowed, slowed down, flew out, did not count the quests and generally not at all in a gentleman. Take it to the crematorium immediately after the purchase, burn it in the furnace, and dispel the ashes in the wind. But, as you know, no sane player began to do anything like that.

As the experience showed Alpha Protocol , Obsidian is still unable to make an unconditional masterpiece from scratch. They are not engineers who develop the project, collect a prototype, test it and engage in thin balancing. They are employees of a tuning workshop who are able to sort out the already finished device and squeeze out of it all possible and impossible juices. And then they also fell into their hands, a model familiar to tears of emotion. As a result – Fallout: New Vegas.

All changes were introduced into the body with jewelry subcutaneous injections. The world began to play with new colors, the hardcore regime of survival in the wasteland appeared, the craft system improved, the meager flora and fauna were updated, new sounds were added to the post -core emboss, but most importantly, the density of events has repeatedly increased in the vicinity of Vegas. The quests are given by each counter-transverse one, and most of them are absolutely informative, as it should be in Fallout. We will recall for a long time with a smile on the face of how Guli flew into space or as a rural fucker with the manners of the black hip-hop stars entrusted the role of the chief engineer at the power plant because he was the only contender for this vacancy.

Fallout fell into his native hands – this is evident at least by hundreds of references to the original games, which the developers left for the most sentimental veterans of the series. Bethesda, with all due respect, could not do that-for them it is still someone else's game. In this sense, we would recommend Obsidian employees still think: maybe if our own developments are not yet possible, to do their own classic? For example, we missed Planescape: Torment.

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The serpent of the year

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm does not participate in the overall standings for a number of reasons. Firstly, this is still an addon. Secondly, this is a online game, cast in a completely different test than the rest of the participants of today's cabbage. Well, thirdly, it would be simply dishonest: WoW and every addition to it are so frantic in the world that the industry frames have long outgrew: up to the fact that the company Razer I recently announced a whole Subnetbook with a seven-inch screen, created primarily for the game in WOW (of course, there is the possibility of going to the Internet and Windows 7 on board, but we understand). Fallout: New Vegas was sold by a five millionth circulation in three months. Cataclysm (reminded, addon) over a month reached sales of 4.7 million copies, which is approximately equal to the population of the hero city of St. Petersburg. And stop, of course, is not going to. WoW is a gigantic machine to grind your money and free time, and this cannot be ignored. Therefore, we take off the hats as a sign of respect. And move away – you never know what.

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5. Mass Effect 2

Genre: Odyssey of Captain Shepard

Publisher/Developer: Electronic Arts/Bioware

Mania rating: 9.0

In recent years, the company BioWare is engaged in the fact that reciprocating movements drain all superfluous from the RPG genre. This is especially noticeable if compared, for example, Mass Effect 2 And, for example, Baldur’s Gate. Over the past decade, heavy, like Irididia, has fallen, role -playing system with complex obscene words such as “Armor Class” and “Thac0”. Following them, a combat system set off (partly revived in Dragon Age ), inventory and other rags. The modern role -playing game of the 2004 sample according to BioWare looks like a mixture GEARS of WAR and Santa Barbara: if the heroes do not wrinkle Shepard on the shoulder about their personal life, then they rush through the space stations, propagate the boxes with their backs and buzz with laser rifles to brave music.

But, despite all these simplifications and conventions, the developers retained the main thing-a sense of involvement in something big and very important. Today it is customary to artificially erect a worked out universes around any popular game (see. Gears of War, Halo and the same S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) but in the games themselves, the events rush past the player at the speed of the Sapsan train. Mass Effect, being a role -playing game, leaves the user the joy of the discoverer. The first descent to the native planet of the Krogans, a personal visit to the heart of the Quarian Roy, exploration of minerals at the asteroid lost in the hell … Mass Effect 2 is an adventure with a capital letter and a light spraying Dragon Age: The dead and the resurrected Shepard works on a ultra-right human The corporation and opposes the race of gigantic thinking bugs-robots who abduct people and process them in terribly to say that. Final boss-a terminator.

And even though the developers did not manage to reveal the potential of their own characters even half, Mass Effect 2 remains the most swift, epic role -playing game, shining like Bender’s metal ass. Neither Fallout: New Vegas with its garbage romance, nor the buffoon Fable 3 cannot boast. Meanwhile, in the Thizer of the third part, the reapers are already shamelessly rammed by the earth. So everyone who seems to be that after Heavy Rain about the pathos dialogs of Mass Effect can be forgotten forever, there will still be the opportunity to change your mind.

Special drugs

Neogotics of the year

Arcania: Gothic 4

So far, the Mass Effect revised the concept of fighting in RPG, and in Alpha Protocol represented an unprecedented nonlinearity, the cult roeled series of Gothic unexpectedly degenerated into an unknown animal. The new developers decided to simplify the concept of the game, but forgot to fill out the liberated vacuum at least something interesting. As a result, her own know-how, like a simulation of life and an informal pumping system, disappeared from the without that conservative game. The logical result-once the legendary Gothic was equal in quality with the Middle Armonic East European RPG.

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4. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhouse

Genre: Roman holiday

Publisher/Developer: Ubisoft/ubisoft montreal

Mania rating: 9.0

If members of anti -globalist organizations would have turned a critical view of video games, Assassin’s Creed would fall under the distribution of one of the first. Created by a transnational corporation Ubisoft , This series is one of the most convincing analogues of Big-Maka from the interactive entertainment industry.

Ubisoft Montreal Mercilessly grind in one homogeneous mass dozens of their own and other people's ideas, from a variety of games. The concept of capture of the districts – from GTA: San Andreas And The Saboteur , Acrobatic puzzles from Prince of Persia , parachute from Just CAUSE … The basis of all this, of course, is the powerful basic concept, but in the bare form it, as the experience of the first part showed, no one really needs.

For all this, the developers, to put it mildly, could be reproached for dishonesty, but Brotherhood – a rare case of harmony between talent and marketing department, and the result is amazing. In the giant Sendbox Rima, the player, despite the freedom of movement, is almost never left to himself: as soon as plot tasks are temporarily annoying, there is a difficult-explanatory desire to fulfill a couple of contracts for murder. Or participate in the race. Or come to the enforcement of the city from the totalitarian papal regime. In the middle of the game, we are trusted with the command of the Roman cell of the Assassin Brotherhood, and the crazy whirlpool of new affairs again twists the player no worse than any carousel from the Park of Culture and Rest. Somewhere in the background at this time, the science fiction Beliberd about the disappeared civilizations and the coming end of the world habitually unfold.

Well, when the insides from all this techno-surveillance begin to ask for a plaintively outward, the relaxed player finds the Multiplayer item on the menu, and there is a completely different story, a simulator for the tracking of inadequate personalities and an advanced analogue of the game The Ship , With levels, upgrades, rating tables and features know what else. You have to make a forced stop for another week or two.

No matter how harmful Big-Mak is, he almost always leaves behind a sense of painful pleasure. In this sense, Brotherhood, of course, is in an unconditional gain: it delivers several times more positive emotions, but is much less harmful to health (however, in combination with the sofa and potato of FRI, the last statement becomes controversial). Extremely saturated with the best achievements of the Sendbox housekeeping, it is about to fail under the load of its own giantism. Hence the most important question: what will happen next? Personally, we would not mind seeing Assassin’s Creed 3 In the surroundings of Japan, the era of shogunate – with ninja and geishas. Or in Rus' of the era of Ivan the Terrible and missions to eliminate the guardsmen. Stop bets.

Special drugs

Splinterille of the year

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

Despite the random nature of the nominations given here, we still could not help but pay tribute to traditions and continuity, especially since the reason for this is the most suitable. Last year, the new part of the Splinter Cell came out again and again turned out to be what 99% of the games of the series usually turn out to be, except for the very first. That is, good, high-quality, in some ways an innovative, but completely passing stealth explosion about an impersonal spy with three eyes. But for us Tom Clancy’SSPLINTER CELL: Convaction Still, something is the road. Firstly, with its cooperative regime, which opens up by an unforgettable scene of the output of the submarine near the walls of the Moscow Kremlin (task: find and neutralize Russian generals, secretly shaking nuclear warheads). Well, and secondly, completely ingenious-and then not yet too hackneyed-visual feint, thanks to which all the obvious and not very information is projected by huge white credits to the objects of the environment surrounding you. Sometimes it seems that for the sake of demonstrating this technique Ubisoft And they started all Conviction, but even this will not allow us to scatter such good.

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3. Civilization 5

Genre: Eternal values

Publisher/Developer: 2k/firaxis

Mania rating: 9.5

On a large and noisy festival of life, which we call “summing up the results of 2010”, game Civilization 5 suddenly found herself in the status of a wedding general. At the end of the first decade, it turned out that the “civilization”, this great game with a twenty -year history, was simply not to compare with – they didn’t do it anymore. Not because they have forgotten, there is simply no one, and no one. As a result, to explain why the Civilization 5 is so great, you have to almost include an excusable tone, which, you see, is already completely shame.

The first “civilization” was born at a time when the fascination with games was the destiny of geeks-computer, and in terms of marginality was somewhere between such fascinating classes as collecting matchboxes and gluing plastic “tanks”. From the player in the early nineties, a serious imagination was required: to be able to see a whole planet with its empires and peoples, in color cards with men – to see the great armies to see the great armies on the site of the contour map. But the most important thing was to force all this from the numbers and pixels in a couple of hours to play history before your eyes – the history of all mankind.

It is curious that over the twenty years of evolution and five sequels, nothing has changed completely globally and Civilization 5 also shows the public its contour maps (well, perhaps now in science, with all shadeers), and in return it still requires imagination only. Of course, something changes in Civilization over the years-no, even the most perfect formula for the game will not work without a break for twenty years. In this sense, a fifth part is also an amazing case – this is the first “civilization”, in which the authors did not, as usual, plunged a dozen concepts, units and scientific branches, but went on sacrilege and, conversely, abolished some critical (as it seemed) for the game things. The result surpassed all expectations: so skillfully embedded, to the brilliance of polished and perfect "civilization" the world did not yet know.

From the huge, clumsy colossus, which, in terms of complexity of management, was approaching the programs in Buchochki, the old Civilization suddenly turned into a frying, emasculated and almost invited strategy. Now there is no digging in the long lists of cities and a manual enforcement of a stack of thirty units – all the most routine and boring classes are automated in Civilization 5. Diplomacy finally works for weak countries, cultural influence can be avoided by war, and military operations themselves are more likely to resemble graceful chess parties and do not end, as before, by collecting an army of fifty tanks and the complete destruction of all your color. Despite the age, the “civilization” is quite successful in maintaining posture and it is quite comfortable to feel among all these young and impudent games that you have already read about or will still read on the nearest pages. Already for at least such unbending – our third place.

Special drugs

Effective manager of the year

Bobby Kotik

Our special reward (originally called the "man of the year") retreats the president Activision Bobby Kotik. Even after the film “The Devil's Lawyer”, it became clear that if a real devil exists, he probably hides his tail under the floors of an expensive costume and controls the transnational corporation. The cat is suitable for this position as well – from the side it seems that he spent the whole last year, without stopping, closing the studios subject to him, filed laws against colleagues and frying gaming developers on a spit. However, it must be remembered that in 20 years the cat has turned Activision Kong Casino from a small office with a 30 millionth debt into an locomotive of the industry, whose best games bring billions of dollars of income. And all the decisions that he makes at his post is dictated exclusively by the interests of the business – the cat himself never played and will not, but he feels perfectly what the market wants. And if this market is ready to endure World of Warcraft or regular DLC to Call of Duty – The cat will sell them to him. And Bobby owes his “demonization” first of all to his own unrestrained language: his arrogant statements brought a lot of pleasure to readers of news tapes, but, unfortunately, they only confirmed that he himself was just a cynical businessman slightly confirmed from success.

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2. Red Dead Redemption

Genre: Western

Publisher/Developer: Rockstar/Rockstar San Diego

Mania rating: 9.5

“Iron horse is replacing a peasant horse!" – broadcast from the rostrum of the rack of Ostap Bender, but at Rockstar Everything came out exactly the opposite. Birth, and most of the (to be honest) incredible success of Western Red Dead Redemption became possible only thanks to three magic letters: gta.

Therefore, even if in Grand Theft Auto 4 (two years ago, who received a fat “ten” from us) suddenly replace the iron horses with alive, and emigrants in tracksuits with strongly smelling whiskey of unshaven men in hats and boots, it will not become much worse from this. Why, then, Red Dead Redemption did not become a game of the year, you ask? The answer is simple: because it is still GTA, with all its inherent shortcomings. The game is still really interesting to observe only at the beginning and at the end of a long 20-hour history, and most of the binding missions are ordinary ballast in the spirit of “Take, bring, find and shoot”.

And if recognized geniuses from Rockstar North In GTA 4, they managed to almost avoid this, filling even the most passing tasks with a lot of curious dialogues and scenes, then their less experienced American colleagues from Rockstar San Diego Alas, they could not do this. But this cannot be called defeat in any case, because most of the team’s forces went to build the real wild West, which turned out to be much more interesting than trying to find out how everything would turn out for the tramp and bandit John Marston.

A man without a specific profession, but in his prime itself there is always something to take himself in the town near the border with Mexico: you just need to be able to hold the colt in his hand and quickly saddle the horse. You can provide the Sheriff Service and drag some Fernando Cortes from the poster “Wit” to the threshold of the prison threshold. You can graze cows, hunt for armadillos, watch a dumb movie, save beautiful ladies or go on a trip for treasures. And you can just fall into the saloon, lower all the money available in poker, drink whiskey, and then fight a duel with a one -eyed Irish, who was managed to look at you askance.

But the main merit of the Red Dead Redemption is not at all that at some point he gives Jack London with obvious pleasure and wakes up small adventurers in us. This is a truly mature game that for a second does not allow you to forget that in real life it will never be able to wake up with a completely new person, even if you are on the MacPherian Ranch forgotten by God, and a pretty blonde wakes you up. Every new murder, every new effort and every new day John meets only one thought: "This is all for them". He remembers that at that moment his beloved wife and son growing without a father are waiting for him somewhere far away. Yes, and whether they are waiting for? The time of vagabond -winged gold miners and bandits is rapidly coming to an end, and the most bustled of them are forced to lead each other's heads. Here they even kill somehow without hatred, and exclusively out of better motives, because, as the singer Dolphin sang, “it is better to die so that no one is loving”.

Special drugs

Greenho of the year

Just Cause 2

The first part Just CAUSE I went out at that magical time when every second developer looked at Napoleons and dreamed of repeating success GTA. The Swedish variation on this topic was distinguished by the fact that there were tropics, a parachute, a harpoon and … in general, everything. Since then, the futility of attempts to verbatize the formula Rockstar became clear even to those whose totem animal is a turtle. The remaining enthusiasts began to develop their own know-hows within the concept of the concept, and it so happened that for Avalanche These were the same parachutes, harpoons and tropics. Just Cause 2 – This is GTA without shame, conscience and feelings of proportion. In it, helicopters are stolen right on the go, after having previously checked the teeth with the pilot. With the help of a double harpoon, heavy jeeps on palm trees are suspended or, conversely, attach unfortunate soldiers to the car rushing at cruising speed. Against the backdrop of all this, an unbridled plot unfolded about the accomplishment of the revolution in conditional Cambodia-with forever drunk partisans and a dwarf-prisoner with Iguana on his shoulder.

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1. Heavy Rain

Genre: Wait, rains, rains

Publisher/Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment/Quantic Dream

Mania rating: 10

When we called five years ago Fahrenheit the game of the year, everything was extremely obvious. One hundred percent RSP project, a new word in the genre (although many could not decide-in which), a breakthrough of the five-year plan and high hopes.

WITH Heavy Rain Everything turned out more difficult. Firstly, formally in “Gambling” there was no review of this game, it came out exactly on the threshold of our transition to the multi-platform format. Secondly, somewhere at the same time, the famous forester and Kinooman Oleg Stavitsky quite fairly presented a number of complaints on Heavy Rain on the grounds that no cultural breakthrough happened that the script remained at the level of the television tile, characters and their problems are sucked out of the finger , and David Cage does not have a moral right to call himself a director (with the full text of the column, as well as with a review, you can easily familiarize yourself with Igromania.ru ).

The reason that Heavy Rain is still on the first position on our list is the phrase “Game of the Year” itself. We choose the best game. Not a script, not characters, not a director. And the main feature of the video game in comparison with other types of media is in interactivity. In the ability of the developers, to bring the player to a fundamentally new level of immersion, to make him a direct participant in the events at which in the cinema you have to watch from the side.

And in this art, Heavy Rain today has no equal. The same hands, which in the cinema usually hold a stake and popcorn, we erase the border between the one and these sides of the screen for several hours. Without individual nonsense like an episode with brushing your teeth and scratching your ass in your soul, but when you are a heroic lamp of a gamepad (without any Move and Kinect), you bring down a blow to the enemy’s head – the air sparkles. When you are frantically trying to choose the only one you need from the blurry words over the character’s head – here it is no longer up to intelligence on the topic of the inferiority of the script. Well, the scene with a shoot from a rapidly flammable apartment in the intensity of emotions outweighs the entire God of War 3 with its spraying testosterone.

But only spectacular QTE (even if performed at an inaccessiblely high level) would not be enough. The genius of Heavy Rain is also that there are no only correct solutions, but each action will certainly have consequences, so which of the main characters will live to the final credits and which way will reach them – exclusively your business. The possibility of an experiment and an unprecedented level of immersion – this is what Heavy Rain does a great game. David Cage, of course, is not a brilliant director and, probably, no director at all. But he is a really talented game designer, and for us players, this is much more important.

Special drugs

Your year of the year

Mass Effect 2-Best 2010 Game according to Igromania visitors.ru

On the eve of the New Year at the Gamery Forum, we asked you, dear readers, to choose the best, in your opinion, game of the past year. Fortunately, your opinion did not coincide with ours – there should be many opinions. For the same reason, we will not talk about Mass Effect 2 (bypassing Heavy Rain with a margin of 252 votes) Nothing new, but better let the word voters (author's spelling and punctuation are preserved).

“In the first place is certainly a sort of revelation of the year – Mass Effect 2. This infection, like a leech, sucked into my brain and did not let go for several months ” – Demascus

"Mass Effect 2. I have not received such emotions and such an epic in one game ” – Desert Eagle

“I also voted for Mass Effect 2 – a chic project stuffed with power and pathos” – Tron

“Against the majority, I have not harened the Mass Effect 2 game of the year and who don’t like it, I don’t know, go, go kill the wall” – Broul

“There are games where the role system is better than in Mass Effect 2. There are games where the combat system is better than in Masseffect 2. However, games where they would not be so competently combined. Except ME 2, of course " – Redmurza

"Mass Effect 2 – for the plot and muzzle of Shepard" – Alex_1942