Best Games of 2010
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
Red Dead RedemptionThe western the genre had been waiting a century for, with an ending games still chase.Read the review
Fallout: New VegasEighteen months, a borrowed engine, and still the best-written RPG of its generation.
Super Mario Galaxy 2Every idea the first Galaxy had room for and about forty it did not, with the padding surgically removed.
Mass Effect 2The suicide mission turns every side quest you skipped into a name on a casualty list, and nothing has matched it since.
Assassin's Creed BrotherhoodOne city done deeply beats three done broadly, and the recruits made Ezio a movement.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace WalkerA handheld entry that is really the blueprint for everything the series did next, mission structure and all.
Alan WakeA Pacific Northwest ghost story with a torch for a weapon and a writer who cannot stop narrating his own collapse.
God of War IIISpectacle engineering at a scale nobody had attempted, attached to a protagonist the series had run out of things to say about.
Call of Duty: Black OpsThe numbers, Mason. A Cold War paranoia thriller that gave the series its best-told campaign twist.
StarCraft II: Wings of LibertyA campaign that rethinks what a strategy mission can be, bolted to the most rigorously balanced competitive game of its decade.