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Editors' Choices
RPGamer gives out miscellaneous awards at the end of every year. We tally up what game we played the most, which we completed, and we award an outstanding publisher. In addition to those, for 2010 we added the staff's overall favorite game that wasn't an RPG so you can see what we enjoyed the most outside of our preferred genre.
Publisher of the Year
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For the first time in quite some time, we have a new top publisher of the year. Thanks in part to BioWare's games and the DeathSpank duo, EA has taken the top spot this year. Mass Effect 2 started the year off with a bang and the DLC has flooded out since. Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening was next on the list, offering a standalone expansion to one of last year's best. Finally, EA branched out from BioWare and released two games in the DeathSpank series to critical and humorous acclaim. So while lots of publishers put out more titles, but the polish of these games are really what drew people to EA. So with nothing more than the quality of the few games released this year, the quality of support behind these titles with continuous DLC, and the upcoming lineup, EA was able to stand out as the top publisher of the year.
Most Played
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Regardless of whether we ended up liking it or not, a good number of the RPGamer staff members were more than willing to try out Final Fantasy XIII. The amount of hype going into the March release of Final Fantasy XIII was likely a factor. The game had been in development for quite some time and it had been four years since the last installment in the series. And to top it all off, this was going to be the first Final Fantasy for the latest generation of hardware. I'd say a good number of staff had pre-orders down as soon as it was dated for North America. More than any other RPG this year, Final Fantasy XIII is the one RPGamers made sure to try out as it is our Most Played RPG of 2010.
Most Completed
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While Final Fantasy XIII might have been the RPG that most of the RPGamer staff played, more of us stuck with Mass Effect 2 all the way to the end. Whereas only 53% of our staff who started Final Fantasy XIII saw it completely through to completion, 100% of those of us who started Mass Effect 2 saw Shepard's suicide mission through to the end. Be it the storytelling, the characters, or the choices players get to make, there was something special about this title that made it something we couldn't put down once we started. It might not be too farfetched to say that we had staff members that completed this one more than once. After all, players have to see how the renegade and paragon sides differ, right?
Best Non-RPG
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Quantum Dream's self-proclaimed "interactive drama" clearly hit our RPG-loving nerves in the right way, as Heavy Rain drowned out the competition. With gameplay consisting of nothing more than unending quick time events, Heavy Rain had the potential to be a boring flop, but thanks to the excellent direction, storytelling, and creativity in how QTEs are integrated into what is happening on-screen, this stirring title keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Packed with emotional and tense scenes, little effects like the QTE inputs shaking when a character is scared or nervous transfer the tension to the player as he desperately tries to carry the four controlled protagonists to the ending alive. At many points primary and secondary characters can and will die because of your mistakes, and the ending has the potential to be a depressing, emotionally draining trainwreck. This is one of the most personal and poignant video games ever made. Anyone who plays RPGs for the story and has the DualShock buttons well memorized must play this game.
by Michael Cunningham, Glenn Wilson
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