Top 10 Best Xbox 360 games of 2010

It’s the end of the year and we’ve seen one of the best years in console gaming to date. With great games from both the indie developers and the mainstream publishers, the Xbox 360 contains a wealth of fantastic titles to choose from this year. Here are ten of the best games released in 2010 for the Xbox 360, and none you’ll want to miss if you know what’s good for you.

#10 Super Meat Boy

As many have noted, Super Meat Boy is one of the most difficult games ever created, standing as the number one title in the “frustrating as f***” genre of insane platformers.  

Super Meat Boy takes the best parts of I Want To Be The Guy and countless other nightmarish games and puts it in one colossal bundle of masochistic goodness. You play the role of titular character Super Meat Boy who has to rescue his princess, Bandage Girl, from the clutches of some bad guy who has nothing better to do than to kidnap helpless characters. 

Along the way, you can unlock allies from various other games, including Braid, Castle Crashers and Minecraft (If you’re playing it on the PC) as a substitute for Super Meat Boy. The game has since been parodied by those jerks over at PETA in a poorly made game called Super Tofu Boy. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery, but Super Meat Boy is worth playing only in its original form

#9 Alan Wake

From the makers of Max Payne comes Alan Wake, a novelist who, with his wife Alice, seeks refuge in the sleepy town of Bright Falls to alleviate his two-year long writer’s block. As someone who’s suffered from it from time to time, I can totally relate with Wake’s wanting to get away. 

When Alice goes missing, it sets in motion a  sinister plot that envelopes the town of Bright Fall in a mysterious darkness. Alan realizes that the events reflect the pages of a manuscript written in his handwriting, and knows that he’s the only one who can get to the bottom of it. Armed with only a flashlight and a gun, he sets out into the dark to recover missing pages of the manuscript, intent on solving the mystery and figuring out how the story ends. 

Like Max Payne before it, Alan Wake is an excellently written action thriller that not only plays well, but reads well. 

#8 Bioshock 2

Bioshock 2 is a return to the underwater city of Rapture. Taking place ten years after the events of the first game, a collectivist cult lead by the enigmatic Sophia Lamb consumes the city’s inhabitants, left lost and astray after the death of Andrew Ryan. The Rapture Family, as it’s called, fills a niche in the hearts and minds of many.

You play the role of a sentient Big Daddy whose Little Sister Eleanor (whom you regard as your daughter, really) was taken away from you by Sophia Lamb. Finding yourself awake once more, you wakl through the city of Rapture in its dilapidated state on a mission to rescue Eleanor. Along the way, you discover the identity you lost and recover the humanity that was stripped from you when you were forcibly made into a monstrosity. 

Bioshock 2 is a story of what it means to be a father, and what it means to be human.

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