Can’t believe I freaking forgot Kenshi.
@Scotch_Lufkin Too late to edit?
Just an FYI, this game will be free on the Epic store next week.
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Love all the Witcher games, read all the books, enjoyed the Netflix series. This was the only game I played for 18 months of this decade, and loved it all. -
Divinity: Original Sin
The sequel is on my to get list sometime in the next 5 years. This one was another long long time to finish, but loved the humour and the old school RPGing. -
XCOM 2
The mods that let me play as X-Men, Solid Snake and various other characters took this one over the top! -
Don Bradman Cricket 14
Put your FIFA’s and your NHL’s away, give me leather on willow any day. -
Mass Effect 2
This seems like such a long time ago, but the standout in the series for me. -
Batman: Arkham City
I’ve played an enjoyed all the Batman games, even Origins. I enjoyed this one the most though. -
Slay the Spire
My go to when I have an hour to relax. So much gameplay, and being added to all the time. Boy, am I bad at it though. -
Into the Breach
My most recent go to when I only have 15 minutes here and there. A great simple puzzle that has so much variety as well. -
Marvel Heroes
Grim Dawn almost got into my top ten, but I do believe I’d still be playing this instead if it were still around. -
Guild Wars 2
A masterpiece in how to design a single player MMORPG. I will eventually get my Kudzu!
The 'yet to play but probably will get on that list if I did"
Divinty Original Sin 2, DIsco Elysium, Baba is You, Control.
The ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ list:
Minecraft, League of Legends, Anything Souls.
Yep, you can edit your list as many times as you want until we score at the end.
Do Roman numerals matter? GTAV or GTA5? Diablo 3 or Diablo III?
I’ve been adding synonyms to the scoring sheet to match those together when necessary, but there are so many I’ll probably need someone(s) else to take a real hard look at the list of votes as we approach the voting endpoint.
What’s the best way to change your list? Editing the old post? Deleting it and reposting?
- Mass Effect 2
- Bioshock 2
- Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
- Fallout: New Vegas
- Life Is Strange
- Grand Theft Auto V
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Diablo 3
- The Witcher 3
- Tomb Raider (2013)
Let’s see if I got the formatting right.
Edit the original post for sure.
Alright, I’m changing mine to include:
Witcher 3- Not just for being a great RPG on its own, but for hopefully breaking out of the rote rutt that “empty open world” style games have been in following the cookie cutter Ubisoft model.
FTL- In my mind, this is what exploded the Roguelike genre into mainstream popularity. It also has yet to really be matched for that formula (man did Crying Suns end up being a letdown).
Hey when you’re editing your original post can you also fix the formatting? Right now you’re bolding the numbers with the title which messes up my little script.
The right way to do it is number period space bolded title
The way to bold is either to click the B (bold) button in the discourse editor with the game title highlighted or put two asterisks on each side of the title like
1. **Title**
Mentions
Most Influencial:
League of Legends- Not only popularized an entire new genre, but the entire concept of free to play and charging for skins as primary business models exploded onto the industry thanks to this one game, years before Clash of Clans (maaaaybe you credit Farmville for that). In just a few years, the influence grew so much that no game could get away with the previous norm of paid monthly subscriptions, or were at least forced into a F2P option to stay alive (even the juggernaut of WoW).
Farcry 3- For better or for worse, set the model for mass market open world games in a post GTA world.
The Stanley Parable- For better or for worse, established the walking simulator genre
FTL- Firmly established Roguelikes as a mainstream genre.
Dark Souls- Another subgenre pioneer (now if only it would ditch the “obfuscation as a feature” aspect…)
Candy Crush- Opened the floodgates of exploitative freemium business models
Okay, this took some time for me - and if you ask me to do this again in a month, several items may move from the Top 10 to the Honorable Mentions and vice versa. With some of these a decade in my rear view and others fresh on my mind, it’s difficult to really gauge their overall impact on me as a person, but I gave it a college try.
TOP TEN OF THE DECADE
Note - these are in no particular order (well - alphabetical):
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Batman: Arkham City - These kind of quasi rhythm-beat 'em ups showed up this decade, and I discovered I enjoy them a great deal. From the Batman games to Mad Max to Mordor, I played and had fun with a bunch of them. The one that I think I loved most, however, was Arkham City. I just really dug the challenges, the depth of the combat and situations, the density of things to do, and the story. While it didn’t have the transcendence of attacking a convoy in a dust storm that Mad Max had, when you got into combat with like twenty dudes and took them all down in a smoothly flowing string of combos, you felt like fuckin Batman.
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Diablo III - When I first played this on PC, I was kind of meh on it. Then we got the console version. While we’d played co-op on PC, couch co-op transformed this game, and I became convinced that this was the definitive version - the title Blizzard had really meant to create. It felt so much crunchier and immediate. I no longer felt the strange distance I feel from most ARPGs. I was involved, and part of the action. Playing it with my wife just made it even sweeter. We played this one f o r e v e r.
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DOOM - I thought I was too old to play fast paced FPS games. I’m right - I am. But due to some pretty generous difficulty settings, DOOM made me feel like maybe I wasn’t. The music was amazing, the visuals were spectacular, but most importantly, the action was dead on. Tearing up a room filled with demons was so satisfying. The game made sure you never stopped moving, and encouraged you to teeter on the brink of death in order to reach your highest success. Great combat design.
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - There’s not a lot to say about this that hasn’t been said by others. It’s really easy to get lost in a Bethesda game, and Skyrim was definitely one of those. I’d sit down to do a quest or explore, and find out a couple hours had passed and all I’d done was some enchanting and crafting. Did I have fun? I dunno, but I enjoyed myself, so maybe that’s really what’s important.
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Gone Home - It was really hard to figure out which walking simulator (gah) to put on here, but in the end I’ve got to go with one of the first I played. What a revelation. A lot of other titles have taken inspiration from this one and have put their own spin on it, but Gone Home is still better than all of them. From how recognizable and familiar the setting was to me (lucky, I suppose, due to me being the right age) to how the game approached its narrative reveal, I was completely sucked in. Edith Finch may have better “gameplay” (and art), Ethan Carter may be prettier, but Gone Home is still the most memorable for me.
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Mass Effect 2 - I’m gonna admit something that’s likely not popular here - I kind of disliked Mass Effect 1. It had some good world building, but the construction of the game itself felt incredibly sloppy. It was a bunch of pieces that didn’t really fit together well, like there was a strong vision for the tone and world of the game, but none for the gameplay itself. Due to the heavy lifting of the narrative done by part 1, however, ME2 found it’s gameplay voice and could focus on delivering a really tight game and story on top of the foundation they’d already laid down. I was completely wrapped up in this one.
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Portal 2 - I played a bunch of first person puzzlers this past decade. I really enjoy all of them. But Portal 2 is so much stronger than all of them in all the ways that matter. Strong puzzles, strong visuals, strong narrative, strong “non puzzle” gameplay (exploration - or at least an imitation of it that’s good enough to fool the player if they’re really wrapped up in it). All of these things make Portal 2 the first person puzzler I’m gonna stick on this list. I think I got more obsessed with Talos Principle, and Witness was wonderfully weird and engaging, but Portal 2 had it all.
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Red Dead Redemption II - Egads, what an accomplishment. Like several of the Rockstar games before it, the narrative gets waaaaaaay to bogged down in the middle, but with a world this wonderful I’m fine with it. Anything to keep me in the saddle with this game longer. This wasn’t really an action game, or an open world game, or anything - it was an experience. Odd controls, a meandering pace (in every aspect) that’s quite clearly purposeful - all of it designed to make sure you’re completely committed to the game while you play it. I was so impressed with the craftsmanship of this game, but also with how much I ended up adoring Arthur. It took me a while to warm up to him - but that’s just who he is, and that feels completely natural now.
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Saints Row: The Third - This was the fourth game I worked on, and it taught me more about myself as a game dev than the preceding three. I finally got a sense of the “big picture” when developing a game as opposed to focusing on my single piece of production. I learned so much about the process, and how to define vision, tone, and player experience, and I still use all of that today. What makes this a really easy choice for my list, though, is that I also adored playing this game, even when it was all temp art and shit animations.
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - If I been forced to rank my list, this would be sitting at the top, not the bottom. Fortunately, that’s not required, because while it would have been simple for me to crown this with the number one spot, getting the other nine into some kind of ranking would have made me sweat. I’m not one for replaying games; because I want to play a lot of games, my time is usually better served (in my head) moving on when I’m done with a game, whether it took me 200 hours or 2 hours. I’ve replayed this one, a couple times. And it’s a big one, so that’s even more surprising. I can’t specifically point to any one thing to roped me in, but I think (like RDR2) the attention to details matters to me. The world they built is wonderful, and engaging to explore. The characters seem to have a life that exists outside of the quests. Even more than that - unlike most other RPGs, if you find a character before a quest, they’re doing what that character would do. If you find them after, you stand a good chance of having a conversation, not just getting their generic lines. I dunno. There are too many things I could say about this one, so let’s just say I love it to bits.
RUNNERS-UP (Again, in no particular order)
Alien: Isolation (totally nailed the visuals and tone), Dishonored (my favorite first person stealth of the decade), Fallout 4 (mostly due to context of how I played it), Grand Theft Auto V, The Last Door (just made me feel like I was a kid in the 80s again), Life is Strange, Opus Magnum (my extremely late entrance to Zachtronics, which I now love), Overcooked! (so much fun in couch co-op), Plants vs. Zombies HD, The Room, Tomb Raider, The Walking Dead: Season One.
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League of Legends - I realistically have to put this here because if I don’t, I’m not sure how I justify the massive amount of time I’ve spent playing it in the last decade (probably a major multiple of any other game). It’s funny, because this game has major problems with both its online community and simply the structure of the game (which allows any one player on a five player team to essentially ruin the game for the rest of the team). Yet it’s still addictive to me to this day.
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Monster Hunter: World - I had never played a Monster Hunter game before this. It combines the best aspects of an MMORPG for me (the instance fighting of a “boss” type monster and loot chase) without all of the utter grinding garbage and social crap you have to deal with in an MMORPG. And it’s even better, because it’s an actual combat game, not just a button pressing exercise.
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Dark Souls - One of the few games I have completed in the last decade (I’ve played a lot, but few finished long games). I think this was the incredible atmosphere, combined with the challenge that actually made me beat my head against the wall until it was over.
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XCOM 2 - Sanded the rougher edges off of XCOM, and was everything I would want a sequel to be.
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Factorio - Yeah, don’t know the Early Access rules, don’t care – I’ve been able to play this like a complete game for years now. It is engrossing, even for someone as logistically, engineeringly, and logistically challenged as I am. I sometimes weep and the thought of what I could do if I actually had the brain to understand the circuits, gates, and other automation functions that are available. As it is, I just have a blast building my little factory.
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Terraria - By far the best value I have ever gotten out of gaming (on a price basis). I love this game - it’s like what I imagine Minecraft is, but with actual goals, bosses, and win conditions. I love the discovery, the building, the sense of progress, the ongoing updates over the years, everything about this.
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Batman: Arkham City - Combined the open world of a Grand Theft Auto with much more fluid fighting mechanics. Best of both worlds, and a great theme (not hard with Batman, but still, they didn’t screw it up somehow).
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Stardew Valley - Normally I don’t like games without clearly defined win conditions. But this one managed to have just enough in-game goals (so it’s not utterly a sandbox, which I don’t like), that it sucked me in and allowed me to enjoy the peaceful farming life. This game is made with love, and it shows.
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Rimworld - Again, one of the few games I “finished” (recognizing it is the type of game that is meant to be played nearly forever, with mods, etc.). I’m putting this on here because it shows it is possible to make something like a Dwarf Fortress, but have it actually be playable and fun without a monstrously hindering UI. Maybe this is my grudge pick against a different game that I really want to play, but refuse to until it comes out with a functional UI.
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Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - I have not won this. I have probably restarted it five times. I have played a fair amount of it, however, and I think it is almost necessary to acknowledge its professionalism and affect on the gaming world. It even has its own “arrow to the knee” meme to this day.
Reminder Dark Souls itself is derivative of Demon’s Souls
I keep telling myself this HAS to be the reason that the Battle Royale genre exploded: people were just sick of relying on random teammates, because BR is the first genre that made me feel like an old man not getting the appeal at all.
What’s really a shame is that this ruined what I otherwise considered THE best MOBA: Heroes of the Storm. No last hitting. Reduced lane time. Constant organic team fights. No more item fussing (what’s the point if every hero’s loadout is 90% the same every game?) while still retaining build choice. Varied maps. All heroes remain viable the entire match. The whole team levels together so no one lags behind.
What did it in though was that, by focusing it on constant team fights instead of farming or carries, it only amplified the problem of one bad teammate ruining the game. You had a chance to get around this in other MOBAs because a good enough player could steamroll and carry his bad teammate(s). Not in HotS. Everyone is the same level with no item farming, so if any player was missing at any of the mandatory teamfights, you were down to 80% strength and the other team probably wiped you. So many people kept playing it like other MOBAs, thinking that lane farming all game would pay off. I never, ever saw that pay off and the team that did it always lost. Hell, I think 75% of my losses were when I had a Gaz, Abathur, or Murky on my team who decided to split push all game.
RIP HotS
Just happy to narrow my list finally down to 10 games. :)
No specific order, just ones that I most enjoyed.
- Dishonored 2
- Batman: Arhkam City
- Red Dead Redemption II
- The Walking Dead
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Anno 2070
- Mad Max
- Portal 2
- Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
- Dark Souls
Honorable Mentions, I probably missed a few dozen, but here is what comes to mind:
Summary
Journey
Bioshock 2
Horizon Zero Dawn
Antihero
Fallout: New Vegas
The Long Dark
Assassin’s Creed Origins
Hitman 1/2
Saints Row 3
Minecraft
Elder Scrolls V
Far Cry Primal
Subnautica
Xcom
Unity of Command
The Last of Us
Rocket League
Just Cause 2
Cities: Skylines
Spintires
Northgard
A Plague Tale
Frostpunk
Dying Light
Mark of the Ninja
Prey
Grim Dawn
Diablo 3
Void Bastards
Tomb Raider
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Borderlands 2
Titanfall 2
Anno 1800
I almost included this game. I play with like 120 mods though, so I love the idea but the execution is iffy. I mean it’s a plus and a bonus to have it so mod friendly. I’ve sunk a lot of hours into it though.
Which is, in turn, derivative of the King’s Field games!