Board 8 > Top 42 Games of the Decade

(+) Yeah! (+)

All the cool kids are doing it! It's made up of 42 games because I didn't want to pad out the last with games I don't care about that much to reach a nice round number.

I'll be keeping the writeups brief for the sake of time, but will try to hit all the highlights of why I like the game. Also I group some games together that I don't mentally separate in my head, so it's actually more than 42 games total but my list my rules.

Oh yeah, and obviously there will be SPOILERS FOR EVERY GAME ON THIS LIST.

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Oh, and for reference, here's a list of games I'm pretty sure would make the list but haven't gotten around to playing:

Breath of the Wild
Control
AI: The Somnium Files
Disco Elysium
Devil May Cry 5

So don't expect them to be here. I considered waiting until I'd cleared out the backlog a bit before posting this list, but by then Game of the Decade lists wouldn't be the 'hip' and 'now' thing and I'd get less of those precious topic posts.

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42. 999 / Zero Time Dilemma

Hah, I'm already grouping games together! Look at this cheater over here.

I like Visual Novels. The Zero Escape series helped scratch that itch in a time period when there weren't many to play, and I appreciate that. All the games have strong elements - I group mentally group 999 and Zero Time Dilemma because I like them about the same and think they share similar strengths and weaknesses. Both games have a dark tone, are set in a very hostile 'trapped with no way out' environment that I love to see stories in, and are consistently good experiences...until the endings. I know that 999's ending is popular but I thought it was really silly when I first went through it and it somewhat took away from the harsh tone the game had built up. Zero Time Dilemma goes all-in on its time travel weirdness and plays around with the concept in a much more organic way, and the highs are higher than 999, but the ending is really freaking stupid and hurts not only the game but the series as a whole. Both are good games that fit my interests, but ultimately didn't reach their full potential.

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41. A Plague Tale: Innocence

A Plague Tale has many good qualities to it, but really it's all about those rat physics. The rat swarms that carpet many of the environments in A Plague Tale is horrifying and gives the game an atmosphere that is unlike any game I've ever played. Their presence is so well-done that even despite frequent exposure to them, it takes a while before the creepiness factor starts to lose its edge.

The game also has solidly written characters, good cutscenes, decent puzzle-solving and stealth mechanics that amount to 'pretty fun', but it's the atmosphere that carries the game. I'm not sure how I feel about the last 1/5 of the game, where the atmosphere pivots into something different, but it was probably necessary as by then the players (and characters) had grown more accustomed to the rampant death and misery plaguing the world. It definitely stuck its weirdo ending a lot better than other games have, though, so I give it a pass. Definitely a consistently enjoyable game that I recommend to those that like stealth or survival horror (even if it's light on those survival elements).

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40. Bastion

Bastion is Narrator: The Game. The art style is charming, the combat is pretty fun, the characters are memorable despite limited screentime, and the music is very good, but the narrator is what everyone remembers about it. The voice and the way the lines are delivered is hypnotic, and the way the narrator reacts to how you play the game makes it feel like a very personal experience. The only other game that feels quite like Bastion would be its spiritual successor Transistor, and I'm okay with that. The concept would grow stale if other games copied it, but it being relegated to one or two games makes it a very unique experience.

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39. Until Dawn

Not to simplify a game down to one core concept, but...seriously, Until Dawn is just B Horror Movie: The Game. And it's awesome. It mashes together several horror movie genres, sticks a bunch of overly emotional teens in a 'trapped with no way out' environment, and then hands you the reins. It turns out that characters making bad horror movie decisions feels very different when you're the one making those decisions for them and only have yourself to blame! Until Dawn is hardly a game I would call complex, and I wouldn't at all recommend it to people who don't like horror movies or games that boil down to a bunch of glorified QTEs, but man is it fun to experience. I recommend playing once on your own, then playing with others in the room and having them make all the decisions for you. Watching them panic is hilarious.

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38. Sleeping Dogs

Basically none of the 'GTA clone' style games have resonated with me, including GTA itself. Sleeping Dogs is the exception. The core concept is very interesting - playing an undercover cop caught between twos world is something I don't think a game has ever done before, and it takes the setup and runs with it. The shooting and driving mechanics feel smooth and responsive, the storyline is really well-done, and the game is just long enough to be satisfying while not overstaying its welcome. I 100%d this game and never felt like I was forcing myself to. The biggest black mark against Sleeping Dogs is that the ending is a stupid cop-out, and considering that the story was one of the highlights of the game up until that point, that...hurt. Not enough retroactively ruin all the fun I had or anything, but enough for me to have no desire to replay it.

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37. Tomb Raider (2013) / Rise of the Tomb Raider / Shadow of the Tomb Raider

There's no point in separating these games. They're all the same mechanics and characters set in different environments. Shadow has less combat than the other two, I guess, but that's about it.

I really like the gameplay of these games. Stealth is fun, climbing is fun, combat is fun, and stealing - er, researching priceless artifacts belonging to other cultures is fun. The Tomb Raider games strike a great balance between forward plot progression and the ability to explore around and find stuff. The setpieces are great too! I have a lot of good things to say about this series.

Unfortunately, the games are also lesser than the sum of their parts. Despite the cutscenes being well-directed and the characters being well-acted, the overarching plot of the series is dumb as hell and entirely fails at being compelling. It's a bunch of weird and/or dumb things happening in consecutive scenes that barely tie together, and there's a secret organization but the motivation behind it is moronic and underexplained, and there's some twists but they all suck? It's really a shame. I do like how Lara is written though - I don't think I would call it GOOD writing but it's entertaining. She's a total lunatic who convinces people she's not because she's an attractive woman with a posh British accent who is entirely aggreable up until the point where shit goes down, and I'm glad that Shadow leaned in hard on that idea.

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KamikazePotato posted...

playing an undercover cop caught between twos world is something I don't think a game has ever done before

Which is weird because it's such a trope in other mediums.

Anyways, I'm following along, though I haven't played any of the games you've listed so far.

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I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesnt think 999 is THAT great relative to the rest of the series.

I def prefer VLR (which I assume will be higher on your list) and ZTD by a bit.

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tag

VLR ~= ZTD >> 999

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Tag

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I didn't play Sleeping Dogs, but I watched a friend play through it -- pretty underrated game.

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aww shit I forgot about sleepy dogs and now I need to nominate it
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NowItsAngeTime posted...

I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesnt think 999 is THAT great relative to the rest of the series.

I def prefer VLR (which I assume will be higher on your list) and ZTD by a bit.

I know you enjoy having hipster opinions but I'm pretty sure VLR is the most popular one, at least on B8

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VLR > 999 > ZTD is the general community consensus I've seen just about everywhere.

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my only experience with Sleeping Dogs is the Two Best Friends Play video about it and it's one of my favorite videos they ever did

(R.I.P. Best Friends)

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Happy to see Until Dawn here. I really liked it.

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LeonhartFour posted...

(R.I.P. Best Friends)

Man, no kidding.

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KamikazePotato posted...

VLR > 999 > ZTD is the general community consensus I've seen just about everywhere.

I see more 999 is the best fans personally

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I played tomb raider and really enjoyed it, but by the time the sequels came out i felt as though I'd had enough of everything the games had to offer. Maybe one day if i need to scratch that itch again I'll pick them up on a steam sale.

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I played a little bit of Tomb Raider, died on a segment, realized that I apparently lost a crapton of progress because the auto-save sucks, and never played it again.

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36. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

I'd love to see a transcript of the pitch meeting for this game.

Executive #1: "Okay, Star Wars needs a win after Battlefront crapped the bed. How do we ensure that we make a game people will like?"
Executive #2: ".....copy a bunch of other good games?"

Take Dark Souls combat, Metroid exploration and powerups, Uncharted platforming, Prince of Persia wallrunning, add a dash of Star Wars, and you get this game. It's the biggest proof I can think of that execution is the most important thing when making a piece of media. The game is derivative as all hell, but it does does everything well and is fun to play, so hey, whatever works.

The game actually has a good story, too! I'm not a huge Star Wars fan but I enjoyed how it played out and am looking forward to the sequel. Cal is the best SW character since the original trilogy, not that that's saying much.

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35. Batman: Arkham City

I don't think I ever need to play another Batman game after having played this. This has the Batman Experience (tm) all together as a complete package. There's a decent story in this game, and cool setpieces and yadda yadda. It has a budget and they used it. The real joy of this game is in the simple action of soaring around Gotham as The Goddamn Batman, looking for vile crooks before spotting them and swooping down on them like an avenging angel of darkness. They nailed that so perfectly that it's all I really wanted to do for most of the game. The stealth sections are still really fun as well, and the Mr. Freeze fight is awesome, but when I think of Arkham City I always remember looking out over Gotham City from a rooftop and realizing that I'd been waiting for this potential since I was 12.

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34. Doki Doki Literature Club

I'm not going to write much about this one, because DDLC is a game that relies very much on surprise factor and I don't want to take that away from people. I'll just say that, while it could have been done better and fleshed out more in certain areas, it's certainly an experience that you're not going to forget anytime soon!

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33. Rune Factory 4

Harvest Moon type games are like crack for me. I find one, play it for like 100 hours, and then never want to touch it again...and then I move on to the next one. Stardew Valley was great because it combined Harvest Moon stuff with light RPG combat, two things that went well surprisingly together. Rune Factory 4 took it a step further, simplified the farming aspects while significantly increasing the importance and nuance of combat. The result is two pretty fun games that combine to form one really fun game. It's kind of like Persona, where each day you have the option of socializing and prepping for the future or just going out and knocking heads. When I've gotten bored of one aspect of the game, I just switch to the other and have a blast. The characters are also pretty charming, which is important in a game like this.

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32. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

I want to wholeheartedly love this game. It's roster is huge, the base mechanics are fantastic, there's so many stages and music and...everything! It's Video Games the Video Game and it's stunning just to load up a select screen and see how much stuff is there.

But here's the problem. I mostly like 1 v 1, and most of my friends group doesn't play Smash. This leaves me to get most of my Ultimate enjoyment via online, and its online is dogshit. Not just the lag (which is bad), but the way online is set up and the ranking system and the way matches are found is all...really bad, potentially the worst online system out of any I've ever played. I'll never be able to enjoy Ultimate as much as I want to until its online gets better, and it won't.

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I don't really understand why SSB's online features are so lacking. Sakurai seems like he should have experience with games that have a proper online system. Yet, he doesn't seem particularly interested in trying to do one for SSB.
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

I don't really understand why SSB's online features are so lacking. Sakurai seems like he should have experience with games that have a proper online system. Yet, he doesn't seem particularly interested in trying to do one for SSB.

Japanese developers in general struggle to create good online environments for their games, but Ultimate is still a low bar I'd say.

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31. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

It's funny that a game about killing your friends after the big high school reunion is the game that healed a fanbase. Fire Emblem was in a sketchy spot after Fates and Warriors and MIrage Sessions, and then Three Houses came along and proved that you could have waifus and the core Fire Emblem experience all in the same game!

There's a lot to like about Three Houses - I think the base gameplay mechanics are the best in the series, the music is overall great, the story is intriguing, and the character/support writing is probably my favorite out of any of the games to this date. The big thing that holds Three Houses back for me is that the Monastery and calendar system as a whole is a bit of a miss. It's fun for a while but ends up padding out the already-long runtime of the game with numerous repetitive actions. This ends up hurting the game's pace by...a lot, actually. Considering that the Monastery is one of the major backbones of the game's design philosophy, that's a problem.

Also, I'll fully admit that the Monastery music that plays during Part 2 of the game significantly affected my enjoyment of the game. It's terrible and you hear it constantly. On an arbitrary Out of 10 rating scale, changing that music track to an actual good song would raise my rating by 0.5 out of 10.

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KamikazePotato posted...

It's funny that a game about killing your friends after the big high school reunion is the game that healed a fanbase.

i mean isn't that what fire emblem was always really about

who didn't love having the Greil Mercenaries stomp the Dawn Brigade into the ground in Radiant Dawn?

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xp1337 posted...

i mean isn't that what fire emblem was always really about

who didn't love having the Greil Mercenaries stomp the Dawn Brigade into the ground in Radiant Dawn?

I honestly wonder what the optimal way to play RD on Maniac mode is. Do you strike some sort of balance between leveling up the Greil Mercenaries or gimping them so that the Dawn Brigade defense chapters get more manageable?

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I only checked for a bit but there doesn't seem to be many people interested in Speedrunning RD Hard mode. So you can't just check what speedrunners do.
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Having never played RD Hard mode, my main experience with it is a friend who did so and chronicled how hard it was. His favorite moment was during one of those defense chapters, where enemy Zihark glitched out and showed up to battle without any equipped weapons, then proceeded to run up to his units and stand there...menacingly.

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Three Houses was fun, but the pacing really suffers in the second half. By the end of the route, I'm mostly ready to be done with it.

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KamikazePotato posted...

then proceeded to run up to his units and stand there...menacingly.

i would buy him as a JoJo character design so it fits

I don't know about speedruns but just guessing I would assume it's better to Play the Greil Mercs normally just let the Dawn Brigade keep Jill/Zihark, etc. I think the only chapter where the defense maps would matter is... 3-12 where the whole Greil Mercs are there but I think you can end it early by beating Ike so as long as you can pull that off...

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LeonhartFour posted...

Three Houses was fun, but the pacing really suffers in the second half. By the end of the route, I'm mostly ready to be done with it.

For sure. I was skipping huge amounts of monastery time because it just didn't matter

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30. Mass Effect 2

I don't know if I would like Mass Effect 2 to this degree if I was playing it for the first time today, but it was such a fun zetgeist when it came out. Everyone was going nuts over favorite characters, Renegade vs. Paragon, favorite store on the citadel ect. I was even convinced by the hype to slog through Mass Effect 1 to get to this game, and I wasn't disappointed. The game has fun gameplay, great characters, a fun sci-fi world, excellent pacing, and a gripping ending that is built up to very well. It deserved all those Game of the Year awards.

I honestly don't have bad things to say about it except that collecting planet resources is a dumb time waster. It's a really solidly put-together game that's way above the rest of its series.

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29. Anatomy

Anatomy is this short, hour-long $3 horror game that is extremely well-executed creates a better atmosphere almost anything else I've seen in the genre. Pretty much anything I could say about it would be a spoiler, so I'll just be vague and say that documentary tapes can be really creepy!

Also it's kind of hard to find it via google, and I don't think it's on Steam, so I'll post the link here:

https://kittyhorrorshow.itch.io/anatomy

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28. Virtues Last Reward

The best the Zero Escape series has to offer. Virtue's Last Reward is a trip. The way the game slowly builds up its setting before dropping plot twist after plot twist on you is masterfully done. I don't think this would be as fun on a replay, as a lot of the enjoyment comes from the surprise of each reveal, but that first time around it just keeps going. I also love the concept of the Betray/Ally game - it's such a good way of creating drama between characters that doesn't feel forced, and every vote feels extremely tense.

Two things hold VLR back. The first is tone - the publishers mandated that the game be less harsh and more 'anime' than 999, which is a shame and takes away from the atmosphere sometimes. The second is the ending. Every game in this series struggles to end properly, and VLR is no exception. But while 999 and ZTD have dumb endings, VLR doesn't really have an ending at all. It feels like a big setup game that just sort of stops at a certain point.

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Collecting planet resources is honestly about as easy as it gets! You don't have to mine a planet dry. Just launch a few probes per planet and you'll have more than enough stuff to get everything you need.

But yeah, ME2 is great. They did so many interesting things with it. They knew this game was just a bridge to the finale, so they didn't try to have some sort of elaborate and intricate plot. They focused on making you care about the characters and provided a fulfilling payoff with the final mission.

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I think the biggest problem with VLR's ending is that ZTD really doesn't do anything with it.

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Woah, Anatomy on the list, awesome!

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KamikazePotato posted...

Cal is the best SW character since the original trilogy, not that that's saying much.

Cere is about a million times more interesting but Cal is okay I guess.

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27. Fallout 4

Fallout 4 is a medicore game in many respects. The story is bad, the world lacks cohesion, its cool ideas (the synths) aren't utilized to their full potential, and the way you can characterize your main character is severely limited. As an RPG, it's not very good.

It's also super fun to play. I have more fun running around, exploring, and shooting things in Fallout 4 than in any other game in the series. To me, Fallout 4 is an FPS with an RPG coat of paint. It left way less of a lasting impression on me than something like New Vegas (list spoilers), but if I had to pick a game in the series to just boot up and start playing, it would be Fallout 4. And to be fair, the game does have some slight advantages in the RPG department - I much prefer the level-up system in Fallout 4 to the other games, for example, and the companions are pretty good.

Mods help a lot too. Thank god for being able to get rid of carry weight.

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LeonhartFour posted...

I think the biggest problem with VLR's ending is that ZTD really doesn't do anything with it.

Yeah. I'm not sure if the writer wrote himself into a corner and had to discard some plans, but the two games don't connect as well as they should.

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Snake5555555555 posted...

Woah, Anatomy on the list, awesome!

I wouldn't even know about it if the Two Best Friends hadn't covered it. It's not well-known or easy to discover! Super underrated game.

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26. Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies

I am extremely impressed by Dual Destinies. In story-centric media, it can be very hard to come back from bad writing that wrecks canon, and Apollo Justice wrecked canon reeeeeeally badly. The series was basically dead after AJ came out, limping along with side games that specifically avoided the time period where the events of AJ took place.

Then Dual Destinies came out, restored balance to the force, bringing back what made the series good while not discarding the good elements of Apollo Justice (like Apollo himself). It doesn't quite reach the highs of the original trilogy but it's just a consistently fun experience.

And more than anything else, when you load up the game and start Case 1 and see Phoenix himself back in the driver's seat when his series was all but dead and his characterization had been assassinated...it felt right. The prodigal son had returned.

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heck yeah Dual Destinies

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Oh, and add Spirit of Justice to the list of games I never got around to. I think I might just be burnt out on the concept of Ace Attorney - it's rare that I keep up excitement for a series that repeats its core concept a bunch of times, and while Ace Attorney has lasted a lot longer for me than other series have, the formula is finally starting to grow a bit stale for me.

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