The Qt3 Top 10 Games of the Decade Voting Thread

Games
425

But it was relaunched after 15 years, last year.
Edit: or so I thought, but just looking up a little tells me it’s really a story of conspiracy and mysteries and HYDRA is involved.

426

Oh, I only put in 9! I’ll edit my post and add in another one.

427

I think almost 100 people taking the time to cull and put together a top 10 of the decade list is pretty impressive, and I want to thank everyone that has participated (past and present). It’s been tons of fun following this thread (and getting some ideas for new games - apparently I should be looking into Kentucky Route Zero, for example, a game I had previously assumed was some sort of racing game).

428

That is the reason I wrote it came back from the dead.

429

I kind of wondered about Titan Quest, released in the previous decade, but re-released with expansions in the past decade. I still love that game to death, but I think I’ll let it rest in favour of Grim Dawn.

430

To narrow down my list, I tried to focus on the games that I spent the most time thinking about, rather than played or enjoyed the most. These are the games that I found myself comparing against other games most often.

  • Rock Band 3
  • Dragon’s Dogma
  • The Crew
  • Yakuza 5
  • Overwatch
  • Life is Strange
  • Dark Souls II
  • Destiny
  • Jackbox Party Pack
  • Fallout: New Vegas
431

Thanks, Scott! I was trying to encourage those who haven’t voted yet to do it, but totally forgot to thank those who have.

Thanks everyone for participating. About one more day to adjust your vote or recruit your friends to post here. ;)

432

If Dark Souls doesn’t win, I quit this thread!

433

Man, 5th time I’ve changed my list around. It’s just too hard to only pick 10. Now Witcher 3 and Walking Dead and Grim Dawn and Ori and Doom are outside my top 10. Argh! The injustice!

I’ll probably look at it again and change it again tomorrow. I’m glad tomorrow night’s the deadline, so I’ll finally stop changing it.

434

“Ohhhh… dear god” that’s a great game.

I’ll always think of this as the game where the guy died making the trailer. I fully intend to play it someday.

435

  1. Android: Netrunner - Surprised I didn’t see this mentioned on any list prior to mine. In my mind the most elegant composite of theme, aesthetics, and gameplay/mechanics as I experienced this decade. Spent more time reading about and thinking about A:NR than playing many of the other games on my list.

  2. Slay the Spire - Not a surprise that members of the Netrunner community developed a video game I loved. Can’t wait for StS on my iPhone.

  3. Grim Dawn - Perfect solo ARPG

  4. Kerbal Space Program - radically educational and enjoyable at the same time

  5. Factorio - Building factories are fun

  6. Offworld Trading Company – the game I want to be good at (but still am not)

  7. FTL

  8. XCOM

  9. EU IV

  10. Gems of War - hurts to put it on my list but this free to play, crossplatform match 3-like continues to get me to log in on a near daily basis for 5 years now.

436

Including Hohokum on the list was a bit of a sentimental move. My nephew, who is on the spectrum, loves the game and asked me to play it every time he came over from the ages of like 2-6. It’s really wonderful, though, so it totally earns the spot.

437

  1. Life is Strange - (2015) This was a game that was made for me; how others took it is perhaps another story. Set in the year 2013 but really in the 1990s, this worldweary game took the time-reversing much beloved minigame of Remember Me and made a whole game out of it. Maybe this is the best of the episodic games released mid-decade. Maybe it’s just a trashy teen angst game. Maybe it’s a game about relationships and dialog that doesn’t require combat or quick time events. Maybe it’s the most emotionally difficult game about regret and loss that’s been made. Unintentionally retro that is now itself retro, a game that seemed to me to have appeal to female gamers and promise a future for video gaming that has yet to come to pass. Also, such a great acoustic soundtrack. Available not only for PC and Mac but all consoles and even an iOS version that’s constantly hyped by Apple in lists of games about diversity and female protagonists. Before the Storm is the excellent prequel released by another company that, while in many ways is actually a better game, has a less edifying ending and is more deliberately contemporary and less accidentally 90s. <<Notable mentions: Life is Strange 2, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, Edith Finch, Gone Home, Firewatch, Tales from the Borderlands>>

  2. Skyrim - (2011) I spent the better part of a year or two playing it. I tried to return to it recently but found I just don’t have it in me anymore (see above). Again, most people know about it already, but I especially loved the haunting ambient score. At the time, on a PS3 and a Panny Plasma, watching the stars pass by while an aurora came into view were the moments I loved Skyrim the most. <<Notable mentions: The Witcher 2, The Witcher 3, Deus Ex, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey>>

  3. Uncharted 3 - (2011) Uncharted defined a whole generation of console gaming. Sure, plenty of issues, sort of dated, too much combat, but it was such a fantastic combination of setting, narrative (which, at the time, was head and shoulders above most other games), voice acting, and cinematic bravado. Uncharted 3 was basically chapter 2 and not really a different game. It kicked off a whole generation (imo) of action-narrative games like the reboot Tomb Raiders, Horizon Zero Dawn, ect. In a sense, this is a vote for Uncharted 2 and 3 at the same time; i’m sneaking in Uncharted 2 here, as it was released in the fall of 2009. <<Notable mentions: Remember Me, The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider (reboot)>>

  4. Total War: Attila - (2015) It’s easy to make a strategy game where the player starts with a loss and has to somehow find a way to win; it’s hard to start the player winning and have the game’s system still push him to losing. From the walls of Constantinople to the temples of Rome, Attila is an accomplishment of campaign design, with the most difficult and interesting single player campaign of any Total War before or since, in a setting and with systems that does not only conjecture but conflidently sets into motion a whole host of issues, problems and drawback. Rome didn’t fall because of the Huns, the game says; It fell because the Huns… and the Goths, and the Persians, and the Celts, and corruption, and climate change, and religious disunity, and cultural stagnation, and military innovation, and incompetent leadership, and migration, and immigration, and … <<Notable mentions: Rome 2, Shogun 2, Warhammer 1 and 2, Act of Aggression>>

  5. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - (2012) I’m not a shooter guy - i’ve only played Call of Duty 1; you know the one where you land on Normandy Beach and have to go through Sniperworld later in the game. Bad Company 2 had a Dirty Dozen vibe and small unit tactics in mind; in practice it was the definitive small arms tactical shooter of the decade, in my mind. Battlefield 3 was just too large, too messy. Bad Company 2 was perfect. And unlike future iterations it felt so much more… dynamic. From destructible buildings to straightfoward and sensible classes, everyone seems to think BC2 was a little known highpoint of the series. <<Notable mentions: Battlefield 3, Ghost Recond: Wildlands, Space Marine (2011)>>

  6. Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery - (2011) In many ways the defining indie game of the decade for me, announcing that “millennial gamers” had arrived. Sure there’s pixel art, indie score, guy in a smoking chair, musical interludes and evil Platonic solids, but what it was for me was an experience, and it seemed to announce and herald a whole decade of indie games about experiences rather than mere gameplay. It made me feel like the first time you’re caught in a rainstorm driving a car after setting out for college from your childhood home. <<Notable mentions: Dungeon of the Endless, Bastion, Invisible Inc., Stardew Valley, ect ect., the indie list is endless…>>

  7. Europa Universalis IV - (2013) 2013 was a banner year for video gaming. Total War Rome II, Grand Theft Auto V, NCAA Football 2014 - the last of the series - The Last of Us, Limbo, Monaco, Papers Please, Gone Home, and the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One. All of those games were great - but EU IV was the game that, imo, really pushed Paradox to the next level of OCD catass never-ending expansion gaming, the game where you can play literally anyone and everyone in the world. In 2016 they went public - that tells you all you need to know about EU IV. Also, again, great soundtrack (notice a theme?). <<Notable mentions: Crusader Kings 2, Stellaris, Surviving Mars, Cities: Skylines, Endless Space 2, Endless Legend>>

  8. World of Tanks: Blitz - (2013-2016) In the world of Free to Play and Pay to Win, there really isn’t a better game than the World of Tanks series. And there isn’t for my money a better experience than World of Tanks: Blitz. Featuring effortless cross-play between iOS, Mac, and Windows, and requiring virtually no graphical power, the silly game of pick a tank and play is nearly the best in class. <<Notable mentions: Clash of Clans, League of Legends, DOTA 2, Hearthstone>>

  9. Alien Isolation (2014) The musical and narrative notes that Creative Assembly hits so well is in full view here. Easily the best movie tie in game i’ve ever played, it’s good enough to effectively be the 3rd film in the Alien trilogy. After 2, the rest can get shot into space. with this as an alternative. Filled with retro future tech and the classic haunting score, the only weakpoint are impatient, out of character players that just run around a video game thinking it’s just a video game; for those, this game might wear thin after the 20th alien death. But for me, hiding for 10 minutes at a time, sneaking and sneaking, watching alien legs walk past from beneath a desk or through a locker… what a heart thumping game! <<Notable mentions: Remember Me, Vampyr, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls>>

  10. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (late 2019) Really the culmination of a nearly a decade of development, Definitive Edition caps off the resurrection of a beloved game that began in 2013. After the bloodbath of MOBAs wiping the RTS genre nearly out of existence, and Starcraft 2 landing with less of an impact as was hoped, Microsoft took up almost on a whim the desires of fans to rerelease Age of Empires II. Basically a semi-official fan patch turned into an official release, Age of Empires 2 was reborn as the “HD” (2013) edition, the tireless work of Hidden Path entertainment, and new civs, new campaigns, and new expansions were released over the years. Microsoft combined them all, updated the graphics, and released even more content as the Definitive Edition. For $20 it’s the best deal in RTS gaming. And it proves that Age of Empires 2, not Starcraft or Warcraft 3, really is the best RTS game of all time. Remember this game is more than 20 years old, and no other RTS game comes close. << Notable mentions: your favorite remastered game >>

438

Dragon’s Dogma almost made my list - but they removed the b’z title music! Can’t win GOTD without it!

439

Hohokum is awesome; i think though i’d put Sound Shapes just above it, though that’s just preference. Thomas was Alone, Flower, the scarf one, lots of neat games like that.

440

Oh man, I forgot all about Bad Company 2 coming out this decade. Great call Enidigm. Definitely one of the best of the decade. In fact, thinking back, if I had to pick my favorite multiplayer shooter of the decade, Bad Company 2 is it, not Destiny, which I had high on my honorable mentions.

441

Hmm.

  1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  2. State of Decay
  3. Mass Effect 3
  4. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
  5. Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
  6. XCOM: Enemy Unknown
  7. Portal 2
  8. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  9. The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
  10. Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Honourable mentions:

Dungeon Raid (2010) (iOS)
Dead of Winter (tabletop)
Torchlight
The Last of Us
Stardew Valley
Borderlands 2
Dragon Age 2
Fallout: New Vegas
Battlefield 4
Forza Horizon 3

442
  • Vermintide 2
  • Diablo 3
  • Skyrim
  • Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
  • Shadowrun Returns
  • Grim Dawn
  • Stasis
  • Mount and Blade: Warband
  • The Secret World
  • Doom (2016)
443

Seeing a few mentions of the Shadowrun games… which I own and have been backlogged for years.

I think I need to… you know… delve in.

444

Well you can’t play the Shadowrun Boston one as even single player was reliant on now offline servers. I bought and didn’t even play.