PSP

Well, it has reached the time of year when we harvest the crop of retrospectives, the best-of and worst-of lists that one can accuse of gratuitous iconoclasm, corporate servitude, or trolling as suits your fancy. I continue my habit of not naming a "Game of the Year", nor even a "Game (that I played) of the Year" because it's a hollow designation, and (rightfully) nobody cares. That said, since it is customary to roll out some kind of year-end wrap-up, here is one.

Another year, another breakdown of the year's best games—according to me. Looking back, 2010 was an odd twelve months. Catching many players and critics by surprise, a large number of the most hotly-anticipated titles ended up being unexpectedly disappointing, leaving the top honors wide open for a number of lesser-known, smaller-budget projects. Unfortunately, while many of these smaller games displayed promise and creativity, most of them were flawed or uneven enough to give pause. The result? A year where (in my view, anyway) there really was no single runway pick for the year's best.

Needs an Upgrade

HIGH Breakneck parkour and neon everywhere.

LOW Battles with too many enemies are a jittery, frustrating mess.

WTF was the story about?

Since NPD stopped sharing its domestic sales figures with the press (and therefore the general public), it's very difficult to pinpoint numbers and interpret larger trends. Over at NeoGAF, fellow armchair analysts have taken the time to sift through press releases and have posted what available information that's been released regarding November's sales numbers. I'm going to borrow from that data to forge a bit of analysis.

An Old Classic Gets a New Look

HIGH Finally beating a difficult boss.

LOW The game is short. I wanted more!

WTF Why is it so damn hard to kill flying enemies?

I haven't had a whole lot of time to devote to straight-up gameplaying. What little time I have had has been going to A World of Keflings on XBLA, and it's been time well spent. I'm working on a review for it at the moment, but I haven't rolled credits yet.

As we talk about almost every year at this time, the 2010 Video Game Awards are in the books… and I didn't watch it. After having watched the show for the last two years, and with my karaoke job coinciding with the event, I was fine trying to follow the event via Twitter. I didn't miss much.

I scored a copy of Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom for cheap during Black Friday, and I've been putting time into it since then, albeit haphazardly. While it's true that my work schedule has been kind of erratic and disruptive to my game schedule (which clearly, is far more important) the truth of the matter in this case is that I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to push forward. The game is cute and I'm always interested in how developers implement team/partner mechanics in singleplayer titles, but Majin just isn't doing much for me.

Have you ever had a game that you just knew was going to take serious effort to complete, but you dug in for the long haul and stayed with it until the end? I'm not talking about the average (and tedious) 60-hour Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) or anything that's a simple matter of hours devoted. No, I'm talking about something that's really difficult, or something that presents some sort of extraordinary obstacle to overcome. Something like the video game equivalent of a brick wall.