Updated 23 May, 2012, 6:39 pm IST

GOTY 2010 - First Person Shooter

27 Dec, 2010, 3:30 pm IST | by Avinash Bali

And the most kick-ass shooter of 2010 is...

2010 wasn’t really that hot for shooters. This one time popular genre has been put on the back burner in recent times, relegated to sequels rather than brave new IPs. But then again expecting a Half-Life or a F.E.A.R. every year is kind of unrealistic, so let’s move on from the reminiscing to take a look at some of the first person shooters that impressed us this year.

And the nominees are…

Call of Duty: Black Ops (Xbox360/PS3/PC)

Inception what now?

Black Ops was a technical nightmare on nearly every platform, the worst being the PC version. Even then, there’s no denying the fact that this game brought a serious amount of content to the table in the form of an engaging single player campaign, addictive multiplayer modes and an intense co-operative mode that had players taking on undead Nazi soldiers.

Halo Reach (Xbox360)

Army of Four

Perceived by many as the best Halo game ever, Reach was everything you’d expect from the Halo universe sans Master Chief. Serving as a prequel to all Halo games, Reach put players in the boots of a new Spartan squad recruit tasked with protecting the planet Reach against the nefarious Covenant. It was a fairly linear affair that never deviated from the successful Halo formula - providing players with a solid campaign backed by some addictive multiplayer.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Xbox360/PS3/PC)

Man VS. uhh Tank?

Like the Call of Duty series, the Battlefield series has always presented players with an enjoyable, over-the-top war experience with a focus on frantic action and an insane amount of destruction. While Bad Company 2’s campaign wasn’t really the best thing since sliced bread, its multiplayer presented players with some of the best squad-based action till date. Combine that with chaotic environmental destruction and you have a war game that delivers intensity like no other. �

BioShock 2 (Xbox360/PS3/PC)

One eyed monster

BioShock 2 may have lacked the novelty associated with BioShock, but it was definitely a trip worth making. As the first Big Daddy, players were introduced to a new game mechanic where they could dual-wield weapons and plasmids, making them a highly deadly force to reckon with. Even though the game took place in Rapture again, it never felt stale or repetitive as players were constantly introduced to newer areas of this submerged utopia. Our only regret was that 2K tacked on a rather lackluster multiplayer component instead of further strengthening the single player campaign.

And the Winner is…

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Where's muh trophy?

Ever since the phenomenal success of the Modern Warfare games, developer Treyarch have constantly been under a serious amount of pressure to deliver a AAA product. And they did so with flying colors. It’s not a perfect product as it suffers from both technical as well as gameplay issues but I think this paragraph from my review pretty much sums up why we went with Black ops -
__STARTQUOTE__Call of Duty: Black Ops and I got off to a very rocky start. It all started with a minor issue like a delayed release time and then snowballed into something a lot worse like an unplayable game. An official patch and a few third party tweaks later, things are a bit better but we’re still struggling to make things work. It’s a love-hate relationship no doubt, but all technical issues aside, Black Ops brings such a stupendous amount of content to the table, it’s really very tough to hate her.__ENDQUOTE__