Gamers had plenty to celebrate in 2010.

The year brought an abundance of standout shooters, role-playing games, platformers, adventures and mysteries to the major game consoles. It also brought new ways to play with motion-control systems for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Despite this cornucopia of digital delights, Stars and Stripes’ international team of reviewers managed to come up with a list of the 10 best titles of the year. Here’s what we liked in alphabetical order:

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood — The master assassin Ezio moves to Renaissance Rome, where he takes on the evil Borgia clan. Interesting missions, a great setting and a few other additions — including multiplayer competition — make the third installment of “Assassin’s Creed” the best yet.

Call of Duty: Black Ops — The Cold War heats up as you step into the shoes of a covert operative in Cuba, Vietnam and the Soviet Union. The storyline is riveting and the game play is top-notch — and you’ve gotta love the return of the special Nazi Zombies co-op adventures.

Fable III — Lionhead Studios refined the game play and focused on adventure to create the best fantasy game of the year.

Fallout: New Vegas — This post-apocalyptic role-playing game allows you to wander a vast landscape filled with interesting characters, creatures and adventures. Competing factions add a new dimension to life in the wasteland.

God of War III — Chopping through mythological creatures has never been so fun, and the Kratos’ story has never been so enthralling.

Halo: Reach — The best shooter of the year. Others were good — or even excellent — but none offered quite the same level of quality or the number of game play options available in “Reach.”

Heavy Rain — Track down a child-killer before time runs out for yet another boy. Twisting plotlines, interesting challenges, a captivating mystery and multiple possible endings made it one of the most intriguing of the year.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn — The Wii saw a few good games — “Super Mario Galaxy 2,” “Epic Mickey” and “Metroid: Other M” — but the pink puffball’s adventures in a world of yard and fabric were truly innovative and interesting.

Red Dead Redemption — The Old West hasn’t been fertile ground for video games until now. The story is deep, the game play is fun, the world is wide open for exploration and the action is addictive.

Sports Champions — The first great game for PlayStation Move succeeds where all Wii titles have failed: one-to-one sword fighting. Sure, the other games in this sports collection are very good, but we’ve been waiting for four years for the chance to swing a controller and see it match up exactly with action on the screen.

Best of the best: “Red Dead Redemption” with a bullet!

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