AndrewNMI

@MatthewBlackwell Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a sequel to a game that already basked in the game-of-the-year limelight. Black Ops is also an improvement on the already fantastic, game-of-the-year winning Call of Duty games, and we wouldn't expect it to be game of the year.

There were too many innovative and memorable games this year for SMG2 to take top honors--it's a wonderfully creative title and it deserves all the success it has gotten, but many of the year's other games were more memorable and moved the entire forward, while SMG2 did little more than move SMG forward.

Your impression of racing games is completely wrong. Split/Second isn't a realistic driving simulator, it's objectively an arcade racer. Read Joystiq's summary of the game, the things they praise were all the video-gamey, unrealistic parts.

Your pretension about what a good video game has to be blinds you from appreciating games that do other things well and push boundaries, like creating a realistic driving experience or intuitive shooting game. How can you criticize Alan Wake for trying to things that you think video games simply shouldn't do?

I'm really glad to see all the Alan Wake love up in here.

This weekend I'm finishing up my third play-through since I got the game on Christmas. It's one of the best games I've ever played ever.

I also got Mass Effect 2 but I can't pull myself away from Alan Wake to play it. I'm waiting until I can devote my full attention to the game. I've been having fun playing Vanquish too, but it's not a game I can sit and play for hours on end like Alan Wake.

My top games for 2010:

Alan Wake
F1 2010
Dance Central
Halo Reach
Vanquish

Kind of an odd list but that's mostly because I've been catching up on old games that didn't come out this year.

@(Unverified) What are you complaining about? I don't get it. Seems like most of the other games on the market you just point a reticule at an opponent and pull the trigger, and you're decked out with more ammunition and guns than a human being could reasonably carry.

@Shadowbender I'm with you there.

@GuardianLegend Not only is your description of the game completely wrong but... popularity? What popularity... us fans have been worried that we'll never see a sequel given that the game didn't sell for crap and it had a 6 year development cycle.

Alan Wake is my game of the year. It has been a while since I cared about a new game this much.

The only shame is that it can't be fresh after you've played it through the first time.

@DecepticonCobra That isn't how it works. The number of bugs in a game engine is in no way proportional to the size of the game world. Art assets aside, the actual level geometry and data make up a very small part of the game code in comparison to something as complicated and massive as a game engine.

The source engine has been continuously improved since it launched and has become an extremely stable and reliable code base. It was far more reliable when it launched than New Vegas is.

I clicked on this article only because of the graphic.

@Sepirioth I think you're confusing profit and revenue. Adobe made a few more billions in revenue. Activision did not profit $1 billion from Black Ops. The entire CoD series has brought in $3 billion in revenue, but it's very unlikely that Activision has even seen $1 billion in profit from the entire series.

@copa Of course Treyarch is loyal to Activision. They know who cuts their checks.

I feel like people are being extremely unfair to Treyarch throughout this debacle. In my eyes, they've completely proven that they can handle the series (if not with WaW, then Black Ops).

People are just grilling them because they're not Infinity Ward and because they're an in-house Activision studio. Don't let that obscure the fact that they're a competent and talented studio which has made major strides with every core CoD game they've produced.