10. Dead Space 2

Way back at the start of the year, before EA put out the quite good Battlefield 3, a half-arsed Dragon Age & Need for Speed sequel, the respectable Fight Night Champion and the clusterfuck that was Origin, there was Dead Space 2. Is it a game changing evolution of the Dead Space brand? Well...not really, but it’s an incredibly solid and well put together third person shooter.
Where Dead Space 2 works best for me comes in just the way Issac Clarke is represented in the world. You’re always following the back of Issac, right from the start of the game, in the middle of cutscenes, and throughout all the action. The only time where the camera moves away is when Issac is being knocked about and around a room or a large space, and it’s never cutting away to anything - it’s all happening in real time, never cutting away from anything, which helps.

Not to mention just about everything else about the game is pretty damned spectacular. The combat feels great, the lack of game-pausing menus (i.e. All the menus show up in world as holograms), and the sound and visual design is top notch. And hell, even the unmasked, every video game protagonist ever look of Issac isn’t that bad.

Dead Space 2 started off the year in a very violent and very awesome way. And while EA had its ups & downs this year, they can always look back at how to start the year off right.