- Crusader Kings II changed strategy games for me. Turns out conquest is nowhere near as fun as trying to hold it all together.
- Fallout 4 isn’t a great sequel to earlier Fallouts, but world design, settlements, survival, and mods make it my sandbox of choice.
- Rimworld scratches the same itch as CK2.
- Total War: Shogun 2 may not have as many features as more recent entries, but it’s still the best of the bunch.
- Civilization VI beats out V for me. I like districts too much to go back.
- Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Hearts of Iron IV
- Total War: Warhammer Where was this when teenage me was dumping his allowance into miniatures?
- Kerbal Space Program
- Witcher 3
Fellow monster hunters - don’t forget that there’s a colon in the middle or it’ll probably mess up the calc.
Monster Hunter: World
Hah, yeah, EU4 would be my number one. Problem is I need to figure out the rest of my list, there’s been a lot of games in a decade!
I looked through all my 4-star games on Backloggery and said, fuck it, wargaming gateway drug.
Mostly role-playing games.
- Underrail
- Kenshi
- ATOM RPG
- The Age of Decadence
- Euro Truck Simulator 2
- Battletech
- Pillars of Eternity
- Shadowrun: Dragonfall
- Dead State
- ELEX
I changed it to 2 clear ones. I’m not sure I played any other games that I would call “game of the decade”.
- Disco Elysium
- Out of the Park Baseball
- Eador: Masters of the Broken World
- Deity Empires
- Civilization VI
- Ageod’s American Civil War II
- Darkest Dungeon
- Endless Legend
- Field of Glory: Empires
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Aggressors: Ancient Rome
Honorable Mention:
Star Traders: Frontiers
Massive Chalice
Skyrim
Sorcerer King
- Total War: Shogun 2
- Rimworld
- Massive Chalice
- XCOM
- Age of Wonders 3
- Divinity: Original Sin
- Valkyria Chronicles
- Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings
- Aggressors: Ancient Rome
- Offworld Trading Company
My tentative list I need to post before it slips my mind and while I’m in a mood to write. I apologize for the walls of text that follow:
This seemed to be the decade of roguelikes, MOBAs, tactics games, and walking simulators. I thought about restricting the list to, as Scott suggested, games that were ‘of’ the 2010s, but that would be disingenuous. The two games I spent the most time with (excluding Desert Golfing whose playtime is unknown to me) were Civilization V and various installments of Out of the Park Baseball. My decade list would be a lie without them. As a compromise, the top four follow the ‘of’ this decade rule to give those games that were to an extent of the 2010s some bonus points. After creating a shortlist of about 40+ games, I came up with ten categories: five broad genres and five that are more thematic and indicative of trends I noticed in the games I was playing. These are not necessarily meant be an objective rendering of the decade, but rather my subjective experiences with playing games in it. I assigned each group a ‘runner up’ that could have represented it if not for there being a slightly better game. I also provided an ‘alternative’ pick that offers a different experience in some way in that category. Lastly, I ranked them. Here’s the result:
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Desert Golfing (Mobile, 2014) [Trend: Art Games]
Desert Golfing is gaming essentialism. If we read video games in terms of medium specificity, this is the ultimate video game, excelling enough at being a game to make Clement Greenberg proud. But Desert Golfing takes this to such extremes as to make Greenberg uncomfortable, becoming an exercise in minimalism (which is fine because minimalism > abstract expressionism). It starts with the title: Desert Golfing, not Desert Golf. It is about the action of golfing itself, not the sport of golf as such. All you do is direct a ball into a hole, using your finger to set the ball’s trajectory. It keeps track of your strokes and hole number, but that’s it. There are no menus, no high scores, no AI competitors, no club selection, only golfing in its most essential element. The color palette—aside from the tee, the ball, the flag, and the occasional cactus or water feature—is monochrome: a lighter and less saturated background with the darker and more saturated foreground forming the playing surface. It is two dimensional. Games do not need three dimensions, so Desert Golfing doesn’t either. You use Desert Golfing as a prism to view other trends in gaming as well. For example, the narrative turn in video games makes sense through the lens of Desert Golfing: after it, there is nothing more to be gained from pursuing games solely in the medium’s own terms. All other claims to gaming essentialism can now be ignored. This is the apogee of gaming’s high modernist period. This is the apex of video gaming in the 2010s. There is a good chance I’ve spent more time playing this game than any other the past decade. I’ve made it to hole #10,000—wherein you are greeted with a tee on the far-left screen and nothing but water to the right, making it unwinnable as there is no flag or hole—multiple times. Moreover, I find it the most interesting to talk and write about. So, Desert Golfing is my #1 with a bullet. -
VVVVVV (PC, 2010) [Trend: Nostalgia]
Perhaps nostalgia is a sign of a decadent, declining culture lacking new ideas. But perhaps rather than merely reminiscing on a world that never truly existed as a bulwark against a changing present and an unknowable future, nostalgia can instead be utilized to a different, more positive end. For one, perhaps we can look at the ways the past erred and correct these mistakes. Thus, we have VVVVVV, the best 2D platformer ever made, inspired by some ‘80s games I never played released on some home computer formats I never owned. It can be difficult, but it handles it well. There are frequent checkpoints, so you rarely lose more than 10 seconds or so at the most. It also sports a great soundtrack and surprisingly effective characters. VVVVVV provided me with some of the most purely joyful video gaming moments of my life. -
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch, 2017) [Genre: Action/Adventure]
My favorite thing in gaming is exploration. Most of the games on my top ten have this to a degree, but perhaps none give me such a feeling of wonderment as walking around in Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule. It is, as far as I know, as close as video games have come to the sublime. I walk across ruined roads from a fallen empire, stumble upon humble fishing villages lying along an unfathomable sea, find mysterious ponds hidden atop a mountain, unexpectedly spy a dragon slinking across the sky which freezes me in my tracks in awe and fear (the feeling of the sublime, in other words). The moment you step off the barren, largely lifeless plateau and into the greater world, a world you could see from the plateau, is an amazing experience. There’s this sense of liberation that other, all far lesser, Zelda games seemed terrified to give the player that’s suddenly offered to you. How a game studio with limited experience with open-world games made the best open-world game mystifies me. Some people complain that its world feels empty. Those people lack imaginations. If anything, the world is too busy. I’d love to flaneur about its vast and diverse lands without being hassled by goblins and the like. Still, as it is, it is an absolutely breathtaking experience. -
The Witcher 3 (PC, 2015) [Genre: RPG]
This is probably the best RPG ever made. The combat is clunky, its world map too dotted with things that would be better left unnoted, its, uh, well now I’ve run out of complaints. This game is almost too perfect for me to write about. It is a better game than the runner up, so I list it here, but there are more compelling and interesting RPGs to talk about (see my runner up in this category, for one). -
Out of the Park Baseball (perennial) [Genre: Sports/Simulations]
This game nearly ruins all other games for me, especially other sports management sims. Its unmatched level of customization is now what I expect from games in the genre. For instance, of late I’ve been playing a file set in an alternate earth where the British Empire adopted knickerbocker-style baseball instead of cricket. Next time, I plan on starting a universe in the not-too-distant future where three-true-outcomes are literally the only outcomes of an at-bat by playing around with league modifies. This follows local town/neighborhood leagues and one where I desegregated MLB from its origin to see what the like of prime Satchel Paige could do (quite a lot, it turns out). These things just are not feasible in, say, Football Manager (plus FM’s sim engine sucks). I’ve playing the series since about 2005, and it is now firmly established in my top-three games of all time. And I have not even got involved with Perfect Team yet. -
Civilization V (PC, 2010) [Genre: Strategy/Puzzle]
A controversial choice around these parts to be sure. Yeah, the AI struggles with its systems, though there are mods that help with that. Otherwise, it has numerous quality-of-life and interface improvements, some interesting new systems (I like how many of the systems feel like a card game, slotting in different bonuses and such), plus its roster of civilizations, while could use some work, is the most diverse and interesting the series has ever seen, which makes VI’s hard retreat back to Euro-centrism all the more depressing. Is it better than IV? Maybe, but even if it isn’t, I’ve spent far too much enjoyable time with it to not list it here. -
XCOM 2 (PC, 2016) [Trend: Tactics]
Tactics games had quite the renaissance this decade, in large part kicked off by this game’s predecessor. I’m willing to consider both for this spot, but while XCOM retread the same ground as the original X-Com, XCOM 2 brings something new: leading a resistance against alien invaders rather than repelling an invasion by them. it also improved slightly on the gameplay (there was only slight improvements that could be made) and introduced new aliens. I might have spent more time playing the first revival, but this one is a tad more refined. -
Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 2017) [Genre: Platformer]
I am torn between this and Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze as my platformer entry. Ultimately, since as I already have a 2D platformer, I opt for the 3D world of Odyssey. And what a word it is! Travel to not-quite Mexico, not-quite the French Mediterranean, the moon, a lunch kingdom, and the superb New Donk City. Plus, Cappy is the best idea Mario has had in years, allowing you to play as everything from a T-Rex to a humble goomba. It’s a bit easy, yes, though collecting some of the stars can be tricky. But Mario has never really been about challenging gameplay, at least not since Mario 64. Rather, it is about the joy of gaming. -
Darkest Dungeon (PC, 2016) [Trend: Roguelike]
I sort of hate roguelikes, or at least the way they’ve infected so many cool ideas. It bums me out to see an interesting new game tagged with ‘roguelike.’ Difficulty itself can be rewarding but is no substitute for satisfying game design. Failing to succeed can be great too, but perhaps not after spending hours on a run to lose everything. So, why Darkest Dungeon? The setting and art direction help, speaking as one who is not normally a fan of ‘dark’ and ‘gritty.’ The plethora of unique classes helps too, finding synergies among them and experimenting with different abilities. The push-your-luck dungeon exploration is another bonus, deciding if its best to let your flame burn brighter for more safety or to risk the darkness for greater rewards, choosing if the boss is worth it or if it’s better to turn back, wondering if you have enough supplies to reach one final room. Then there’s the combat itself, all about positioning and finding a mix of workable abilities for each slot you and your enemy are in. I wish more games would steal it wholesale. This is probably my favorite RPG battle system. There are faults to be sure—there is no need for multiple levels of bosses, for one and it’s too long, for another—but the game itself is so satisfying that I can ignore its shortcomings. -
Night in the Woods (PC, 2017) [Trend: Narrative Games]
The ‘walking sim’ category. Night in the Woods is the best I played the last decade, concerning a college-dropout’s return home to find the recession has hit the mining-town hard and that her parents have mortgaged their house to fund the education she just abandoned. Her friends are also growing up and moving out of town. To make matters worse, limbs are being discovered across town suggesting a killer is on the loose. It does a stellar job of capturing the feeling of hopelessness and despair of small-town America, and of delicately handling one slowly succumbing to mental health issues. The town itself is well realized too, feeling real in a way most game towns don’t. There’s also a dark secret to discover, making it a nice Halloween-time game, beyond the fact that pretty much everyone in this town ended up voting for Trump, save for Gregg (who rulz ok) and Angus, presumably.
Runners up and alternative choices:
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Trend: Art Games
RUP: My categories approach means that some games that would rank on a straight ten-favorites list get shafted and shunted to the also-recommended section. Space Funeral is the most notable casualty. This is a game where the traditional gameplay (the JRPG battles) is largely tedious but does everything else at a high level. There is nothing else quite like it. It is both a critique and celebration of cliché ‘90s JRPGs and the unimaginative games that followed. It has a soundtrack featuring cult Japanese noise rockers and spoken-word renditions of Baudelaire. It has references to the Jam and Marc Bolan, as well as Batman comics. It feels like its creator (thecatamites) put into it lots of stuff he considered cool and constructed an engaging, but suitably barren, world around it. I 100% consider it the best JRPG ever made, and, like Space Funeral itself, that’s only meant as a minor insult to the genre.
ALT: Doki Doki Literature Club shares an essentialist framework with Desert Golfing (doing things that only gaming as a medium can do) and embraces Space Funeral’s intentionally tedious gameplay as a form of commentary on its genre (dating sims I guess) and its fans (a lot of it feels like a commentary on the entitlement of gamers, particularly of heterosexual males). Though, the less said about Doki Doki Literature Club the better. It is a game I never would have bothered with if not for Tom’s review, which is probably one of his best. -
Trend: Nostalgia
RUP: Like VVVVVV, Pillars of Eternity 2 revisits a genre from another time and place and improves on it in nearly every conceivable way. A more interesting setting and story than the first, with better companions to boot, makes it maybe the best isometric RPG there ever was, unless Disco Elysium is better.
ALT: Murder Dog IV: Trial of the Murder Dog is an absurdist take on the then long-dead, or at least long-irrelevant, point-and-click adventure genre mixed with vague criticisms of capitalism and the criminal justice system. You play as the Murder Dog—once the terror of the Bourgeois state, now put on trial by the same for doing his job (killing in the name of order) a little too well—tasked with mounting a defense for the charges of, er, “more than 1,500 instances of brutal homicide and assaults on human dignity.” There are multiple ways to ‘solve’ the puzzles leading to multiple endings: murder the jury, destroy the evidence, intimidate witnesses, go on one final rampage before getting nuked from orbit. It also has the all-time best video game trailer (the misspelling of Fredric Jameson accompanying the misquote from him must be intentional). The second of two games by thecatamites on this list. -
Genre: Action/Adventure
RUP: The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a throwback to classic beat ‘em up titles and while the actual fighting is solid, it excels in a different area entirely. Its writing is first-rate, crafting an enthralling world of Japanese high school delinquents as they slowly drift apart over their final year of school, ultimately united only by bloody gang-based brawls and a sense of obligation to one’s friends. It is more moving and beautiful than it has any right to be.
ALT: Jamestown is a hard, bullet-hell shmup taking place on colonial Mars, as you fly your ship in support of British redcoats to thwart Spanish would-be invaders as well as various hostile forms of alien life. It is gloriously weird in the best possible way. -
Genre: RPG
RUP: While the Witcher 3 is almost perfect, Alpha Protocol has a novella-length list of flaws. Its controls and combat are far wonkier than the Witcher’s, it has mini-games that are infuriating for both controller and mouse-and-keyboard making switching between the two the optimal way to play, it feels a bit rushed in places, some bosses are difficult and require you to exploit the games easily exploitable system, I could go on. Yet, it is in some ways more brilliant than even the Witcher 3. It offers you legitimate choices that have legitimate consequences, radically altering not just some tacked-on ending, but the way entire levels and set pieces play out. Make friends, make enemies, break hearts, get people killed, there’s a weight to it that no other RPG ever really comes close to.
ALT: Dragon Quest XI offers a very traditional take on the long maligned (at least by me) JRPG genre. So why does it succeed where so many of its ilk fail? The animations are a start. Everything looks so charming. The story is fine and has a pretty decent twist. But what really makes it connect for me is that it feels like playing a storybook. Many of the little vignettes you encounter in each town and area you visit play out like a fairytale. The iconic Tim Rogers video recommends playing it after a bath and before bed, which really drives home its storybook nature. -
Genre: Sports/Simulators
RUP: Tennis Elbow is an indie sports title from one developer that is the most realistic and satisfying tennis sim on the market. It is highly customizable and features a complete approximation of ATP and WTA tours down to the lowest rung. The upcoming sequel is even including juniors. It’s amazing assuming you like tennis and want to roleplay the career of a tennis player.
ALT: If you want traditional narrative structure in your sports gaming, there’s Golf Story, a delightful Switch game that recalls the old Mario Golf titles. Unlike Desert Golfing, this game is a more traditional take on the sport. Why, it even has putting! But it’s far from a sim, it has too much humor for that, leading to a variety of courses and different ways of playing the grand ol’ game of golf. -
Genre: Strategy/Puzzle
RUP: Mini Metro is a chill yet-hectic-puzzle game where you link different stops along a limited number of subway routes before your stations become too full of waiting passengers. It is also a masterclass in art, sound, and UI design.
ALT: For the King speaks to the growing trend I refer to as the ‘boardgameification’ of video games. Explore a procedural generated, hex-based world with a party of three, single (which is good) or multiplayer (which is better), before it falls to corruption. It is safer to travel in groups, but you can get more done individually. It is great fun, especially for a game that uses a roll-and-move mechanic. -
Trend: Tactics
RUP: Fire Emblem: Three Houses took some lessons from Persona and added more robust (and customizable) class and training systems to its already deeply satisfying grid-based gameplay. The result was a new high for the venerable series. Oh, and it has three (technically four) paths that diverge significantly in their second halves giving you potentially hundreds of hours of gameplay.
ALT: Massive Chalice has an good-but-not-great tactical layer, but has an engrossing (if you overlook the yucky eugenics aspect of it all) strategic layer where you attempt to pair soldiers and families in an effort to get the most powerful future combatants as possible. This is tricky because each character has traits, some good (she has great eyesight leading to an accuracy bonus. . .), some bad (. . . but she’s a drunk. . .), and some horrific (. . . who has a penalty in the attribute her class derives damage from). Another game Tom’s review sold me on. -
Genre: Platformer
RUP: In many ways, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is a better game than Odyssey. Its level-design is brilliant, the way Donkey Kong controls feels superb, and it is a proper challenging platformer. It is also 2D, my preferred number of dimensions for platformers, with great visuals and soundtrack. Also, I find Donkey Kong to be a more likeable character than Mario, who is probably a colonizer.
ALT: Speaking of challenging platformers, L’Abbaye des Morts gets excruciatingly hard, in part because of your limited number of lives. However, you can beat it in about 30 minutes once you know where everything is. It was made by one guy, rather than the massive studios that produced the other titles in this category and is nearly as good. -
Trend: Roguelikes
RUP: The Curious Expedition brings us back to the theme of exploration that I love so much. Here, you are outfitting expeditions in hopes of surviving when you arrive to whichever unexplored land you choose. Like most roguelikes, it has a push-your-luck mechanic where you are rewarded for taking risks, but are punished harshly should you fail them. Its dice-based combat is quick and engaging and does not detract too much from the real pleasure of the game: uncovering new tiles as you move about.
ALT: Unlike the previous entries, The Binding of Isaac is a real-time, action roguelike, with some elements borrowed from shmups and others borrowed from the dungeons in old Zelda games. its setting is grotesque and frequently disgusting, but its subject matter justifies it. -
Trend: Narrative
RUP: Oxenfree takes the horror undercurrent of Night in the Woods and makes it more explicit, concerning ghosts and strange radio broadcasts. I remember thinking that the dialogue was especially good.
ALT: Life is Strange is like playing through a CW teen drama—MOR indie rock soundtrack included— except more compelling. Plus, it has time travel.
L’Abbaye des Morts got a recent C64 release, done by Antonio Savona and Saul Cross, a couple of incredible guys who have released last year a few fantastic remakes of Activision games of the Atari 2600 days alongside with graphist Steven Day (amongst which my all-time favourite Frostbite).
This one is payware, if you feel inclined to try it.
OMG, I totally forgot about Saint’s Row! (Though I prefer 3 to 4. I felt like 4 was–though awesome–just a rehash of 3 with superpowers.) Now to ponder whether I should make some changes…
- Tearaway
- Spiral Knights
- Slime Rancher
- Astro Bot rescue mission
- Pinball fx2
- Saint’s row IV
- Dynasty warriors 7 xtreme legends
- Titanfall
- Portal 2
- Forza horizon
- Cities: Skylines
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Two Point Hospital
- Pinball FX3
- Dragon Age: Inquisition
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Europa Universalis IV
- Mini Metro
- Rock Band Blitz
Runners-Up:
American Truck Simulator, Bayonetta, Democracy 3, Dragon Age II (I know, I know–but I loved it and played it twice in a row), Forza Horizon 3, Gems of War, NCAA Football 13, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Regency Solitaire, Sky Force Reloaded, SSX, The Wolf Among Us
Is there a mode where you can drive through your city? SimCity 2000 had such a mode I think.
You can follow a sim (er “cim”) or vehicle through the city, but there’s not a real first person mode. There might be a mod though.
Did I miss a topic, no board games. I’m not seeing them in the lists.
Board games are still allowed 100%.
I have two!
Oh you do! .
I guess I was just expecting them to be more prevalent than they are. Hmmm…
- The Witcher 3
- Kingdom Come Deliverance
- Kerbal Space Program
- Subnautica
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- Endless Space 2
- Total War Warhammer 2
- Age of Wonders 3
- Rimworld
- Battle Brothers
- The Forest