1. Alan Wake
Lots of video-game covers have a bold M on their lower left corner, but none have felt as mature as Alan Wake does. Its unsettled titular character carries adult concerns — a stalled career, a troubled marriage — into a psychological thriller set in a town taken over by a shadowy occult force. Alan Wake's biggest triumph lies in turning metaphor into game play. Yes, you fight the possessed townspeople of Bright Falls with the typical pistols and shotguns, but only after shining light on them to burn the darkness off. Its mix of meta-awareness and Hitchcockian suspense make Alan Wake a unique and fun experiment and one of the best games of th
2. Angry Birds
Get your slingshots at the ready: Angry Birds are coming your way. The popular mobile game (whose publisher, Chillingo, was recently bought by video-game conglomerate EA) might seem simple, but it's deceptively difficult. A bunch of greedy green pigs have stolen the birds' eggs. To get back at the enemy, you fling birds of varying sizes and skills with a slingshot in order to topple structures the pigs have made to defend themselves. It's incredibly addictive, and you'll notice your phone battery quickly drain as you spend hours trying to conquer each level. It's all worth it just to know that you bested those pesky pigs who keep stealing what's rightfully yours.
3. Red Dead Redemption
Unlike the film medium, video-game westerns, like Gun and Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, haven't been successful at channeling the poetic feel of the Old West. With Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games gets the balance between game play and tone just right. The big plot of RDR — reformed rogue John Marston hunts down his down-and-dirty ex-colleagues — moves along well enough, but it's the little details that make the game feel akin to the work of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah. Offering a friendly howdy, picking wild herbs or taming a bucking bronco isn't just busywork — those actions make the world of RDR feel real and yet bygone. The nearly perfect proportions of both big gunslingin' action and quieter life-on-the-range moments combined into one interactive work makes RDR one of the year's standout experiences and the best playable western yet.
4. Halo: Reach
Game developer Bungie has called it quits on its blockbuster Xbox franchise. But its last iteration of Halo might be its best. All-new abilities add stealth and flight to the typical first-person-shooter template. Reach also gives us the series' most assured storytelling yet, making players march through the grim reality of a planet in the throes of an unstoppable alien invasion. And in its richly chaotic multiplayer modes, Reach offers gamers a first-class playground where they can tweak settings for hours of endless skirmishing. Bungie won't be making the next Spartan saga in the Halo universe, but the company's made it so that whoever does will have a tough act to follow.
5. Super Mario Galaxy 2
With the series turning 25 this year, one might figure that a game with the words Super Mario would offer nothing new to jaded longtime fans. Yet Super Mario Galaxy 2 does exactly that — and in spades. Nintendo's plumber with aplomb bounces through an interplanetary adventure so brimming with ideas that it makes your head spin. The game's Cosmic Guide makes sure players of all stripes can finish this very challenging adventure. It all happens in bright, inviting worlds that prove that family-friendly doesn't have to mean deadly dull. SMG2 shows that Mario's got plenty of jump left in those little digital legs of his.
6. Limbo
With their well-oiled hype machines, big-budget video games easily dominate the pop-culture-buzz economy. However, titles developed by small teams can deliver risky visions that would set a focus group's teeth on edge. Exhibit A: Limbo. Danish studio PlayDead unleashed this brilliant exercise in minimalism on Xbox Live Arcade this summer. Trial and error is the only tool you have to figure out the malevolent logic of Limbo's deathtrap puzzles. Mistakes result in the game's nameless boy expiring in sad little deaths that generate the game's simultaneously chilling and darkly humorous tone. A small, perfect jewel, Limbo shows that certain aesthetic triumphs can be achieved only in microcosm.
7. Super Meat Boy
If you are looking for weird, Super Meat Boy has it. You control a small bundle of meat, out to save your girlfriend Bandage Girl from the evil Dr. Fetus. Along the way, you have to avoid buzz saws, salt and others things that might normally lead meat to a timely end. SMB uses retro and modern game-design elements with a gleeful gloss of gore and absurdity, producing a game that simultaneously looks backward and forward at the same time. At a time when too many games blandly lead you down their paths, SMB is a running-and-jumping platform adventure that's hard, harking back to the glory days of the 1980s, when home consoles were in their infancy — and, arguably, prime.
8. Super Street Fighter IV
Probably the only people who were disappointed with Super Street Fighter IV were the ones who rushed out to buy the game last year. Not only did 2010's SSF IV update include 10 additional characters, including the Taekwondo fighter Juri and the Turkish oil wrestler Hakan, the controversial Super and Ultra combos made a comeback, forcing players to change up their strategies. The story follows the fighting-game-series canon: each character has his own personal motivations for wanting to fight his way to the top, whether for love, pride or respect. What this means for game play is that you've got more characters with different fighting styles to play around with. In SSF IV, each round is exquisitely rendered in a hybrid 2-D/3-D animation.
9. Starcraft II
Good things come to those who wait, and boy, did we wait for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Twelve years after the original game was released, we finally got to play as Terrans (humans), Zergs (alien slugs) or Protoss (alien psionic bugs) once again. The space saga follows the Terran story line as the Terrans fight off attacks from the extraterrestrials trying to take over. StarCraft II's game play has the right mix of old and new. It's easy to pick up — even if you haven't played the original in a while — and remains interesting and new. More important, this game focused on the multiplayer competition, which is what players loved most about the original. Here's to the real-time strategy game slowing down Internet connections everywhere so we can enjoy our LAN parties.
10. Mass Effect 2
With most movies and games, sequels give first-installment fans cause to shudder and weep. But every so often, a follow-up can outshine the original. Case in point: Mass Effect 2, which came out in January and sold more than 2 million units in its first week of release. Set in a dystopian year 2185 complete with warlords and gangs, Mass Effect 2 is the wild space frontier that gamers love to imagine. You're back playing the role of Commander Shepard, a paramilitary hero trying to repel a massive forthcoming alien invasion only to be unceremoniously killed at the beginning of the game. Not to worry: you're resurrected with cybernetics and nanotechnology so that you can go on a suicide mission to discover why colonies of humans are disappearing. Depending on how you play the game, you can change the outcome, almost guaranteeing a different story line each time.
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