Every year there are numerous games that I do not get to play.  They fall under the radar, they succumb to the financial difficulties, or they just get forgotten due to other games.  Others have published similar blogs so I will add my own.

10. Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days

I wanted to jump on this game as soon as it came out so I could witness first hand the joys of the brutal story line and the highly original online mode Fragile Alliance.  Nothing beats an online mode where you BEGIN as a team of thieves re-enacting the hold up in Heat (robbing a bank).  The goal is to leave the bank with the most money.  This mean you will HAVE TO betray you allies soon or later, it’s just a matter of when.  But the fun doesn’t end when you are killed, if you die you come back as a cop, you mission to stop the other players from succeeding in their robbery and you get a bonus if you kill the man who popped you.  It sounds like Chaos but it is nothing but fun.

9. Army of Two: The 40^th Day

This is the sequel to the game that decided co-op play is more than a mode, it is a game.  Rios and Salem are back and are now stuck in Shanghai during a terrorist attack and occupation.  The game brings back the ideas of Threat and attention in an FPS and team work.  There is also a lot chest bumps, manly grunts, high fives, and headbutts.

8. Fable III

The latest sequel in Lionhead’s most successful series, you play the sibling to the King and must take back your kingdom and manage it so that your people deem you as a good ruler.  It was wildly praised both by consumers and critics.  The game leaps forward 50 years from Fable II to give us a new world to explore.

7. Transformers: War for Cybertron

Long before the Autobots and Decepticons brought their war to our world, they fought like drunken cheerleaders on a planet of their own, bringing it to ruins and damnation.  Optimus Prime and his band of good bots battled to the death against Megatron and his evil cons.  The third-person shooter allows you to switch from vehicle to bot at any time and use a wide array of weapons.  This Transformers game is not only the best of this generation but of any.

6. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

This essentially large expansion takes place mere moments after the finale of AC2 with Desmond Miles escaping and building a new base so that he can do deep into his memories to revisit the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze.  In this not-quite-a-sequel we are granted a new multiplayer system that parallels the main story as Ezio recruits warriors and thieves to rebuild the Assassins all while making every woman within a 400 miles radius instantly fall in love with him.

5. Donkey Kong Country Returns

Donkey Kong Country was the series that built the modern plat former.  It was Rare when Rare was just warming up.  It was ahead of its time and raised the bar for games even now.  Since the final DKC3 on the SNES DK has simply vanished.  It tried to come back in 64 but was unsuccessful, and aside from Nintendo’s lemming rip-off and the occasional sport/kart/brawl appearance Donkey Kong was all but forgotten, until now.  Nintendo brings us back to a simpler time, back when women didn’t need saving or kidnapping and Apes went on adventures for Bananas.  DKCR did to Donkey Kong Country what New Super Mario Bros. did to Super Mario Bros.  It was a modern platformer that drew heavily from its past but with major improvements.

4. Star Wars: Force Unleashed 2

After the success in our galaxy and in one far, far away the inevetiable sequel to the Game of the Year launched, and I missed it.  Starkiller returns, mad as hell and he is not going to take it anymore.  With new powers, a ticked off Darth Vader and a second lightsaber Starkiller lets nothing stand in his way be they stormtrooper, rebel scum, or freaking rancors.

3. Alan Wake

The fact that I missed this game hurt me greatly.  I was very excited for this one.  A horror game about a writer living through his own horrific creation as his own book comes to life, a book he hasn’t even finished yet.  With very few weapons available to you, and a flashlight and a couple flares being your only hope to survive.  Alan Wake not only brought survival horror back to the realms of surviving, and horror back to being scary, it was a wild success in both areas.

2. Epic Mickey

This was a game unlike any other.  With the power to erase or rebuild the world as you see fit, Mickey Mouse leaps into an adventure involving Disney’s history and a league of forgotten characters and distant memories.  This game crosses over several familiar genres to make a game unlike anything we have ever seen in the gaming world, and with a character most had forgotten could be an adventuring hero.

1. Halo Reach

Bungie built Halo, they gave it life and nursed it to health.  They gave us Halo 1 through 3, ODST and in their final game they gave us what many deem to be perfection.  They gave us Halo Reach.  Looking at this game some could say Bungie had one goal in mind: To go out with such a bang that whomever decided to take up the reins next would have the greatest peak to scale just to break even.  With a revamped multiplayer, an epic but ultimately tragic story, and a battle system that has been given numerous much needed upgrades, Bungie is leaving Halo, and the fate of Master Chief, in the hands of the brave.