Rectangles of the year 2010: Other things

Continuing my round-up of my favourite media that I consumed this year (little of which came out this year)...

Books

Looking back, I didn't read much this year and bought very few books. However, I did read two sets of superb books, kindly lent by a friend. These were the Takeshi Kovacs books by Richard Morgan and the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercombie. If you like your characters hard and extremely nasty, I cannot recommend these highly enough. Best Served Cold, which is a standalone revenge story set in the same universe at the First Law books (and featuring some cameos) is also excellent.

Music

I'd say that my "thing of the year" was Spotify, which has completely altered how I listen to music and got me listening to new (to me at least!) music again. I completely love it.

The album that I've found myself listening to again and again this year is The '59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem.

Movies

I enjoyed Scott Pilgrim and Inception but I was really blown away by watching The Prestige on DVD. It's a clever and gripping film and certainly made think better of Christian Bale. David Bowie does a great little cameo as Nikolai Tesla too!

Rectangles of the year 2010: Games

Taking my cue from Ricky's excellent piece of terminology, here is a quick run-down of my favourite games of 2010.

Over the last month, I've spent well over a hundred hours playing Dragon Quest IX. It's the first DQ I've played but it seems to included got all the good things from JRPGs while eliminating nearly all the bad (ie it makes backtracking instant and you can avoid battles). Some of the side quests are based on random drops and can turn into grinds but that's a small complaint. It has vast additional content with random dungeons, new daily items via wi-fi, new quests weekly and co-op play. I get the feeling that I will end up playing it as much as I did Disgaea on PS2 (200+ hours).

Back at the beginning of the year, I posted about VVVVVV and I still consider it one of the best games I've played all year. It gave me one glorious night of platforming par excellence (and I usually hate platformers) and a soundtrack that I've listened to regularly since January.

Red Dead Redemption makes the list for letting me to feel like Clint in a classic western. Lots of great moments but even just riding round doing nothing is a pleasure. I haven't bought the DLC yet but everyone in my office who did buy it has loved it.

An honourable mention goes to Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light as I had a great time playing local co-op with a mate and then went back and 100%-ed it too. It alas also gets a nomination for "Most Botched Launch of the year" imho.

Likewise, an honourable mention to Bayonetta. Thanks to the easy mode, I was finally able to enjoy a game of this sort having never been able to get anywhere due to poor skills before. I got to play right through and kick a god into the sun for chrissakes! That's got to be worth something.

In the middle of the year I went through a phase of playing Mount & Blade: Warband obsessively. It ran like a dog on my old home PC but I was still playing for half a day at a time and taking save games back and forth to my work PC with a USB key. It's too structurally flawed for it to be one of my games of the year - I ended up giving up playing it in frustration at the confusing and broken strategic game. (If anyone out there knows how to successfully keep hold of a castle, I'd love to hear from you!)

However it's definite honourable mention. Leading a cavalry charge in M&B is a feeling that you don't get in any other game... you lure the enemy into a position where the terrain is in your favour, give the order, then build speed, drop your lance and break their infantry in front of you... then swap to a sabre or mace and start laying about you. It feels amazing and the very real risk of over-extending yourself, being cut off from your troops and having your horse hacked from under you in the mêlée gives every battle a tense edge. Taleworlds deserve a lot of credit for the game and for putting the nascent Turkish development scene on the map.

And finally, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes gets an honourable mention for being nearly a perfect DS title and definitely the overlooked game of 2010 (2009 release in NA, 2010 in EU). Bursting with charm, a smooth difficulty curve, great mechanics, lovely art, it gets -1 Caspar point for having a missable sidequest (that I duly missed). However, I'm going to buy the XBLA version when it comes out so I can thrash people in online multiplayer.

(Sitting on the shelf expectantly: Mass Effect 2 (I dabbled a bit but need to get stuck in) and Nier (really interested in this due to what I've heard online).