[Khellendros]

Some awesome games you guys have come up with that I completely forgot about. I think of those special mention for me has to go to GONE HOME. I played through it in the small hours of the night in one sitting, never having come across a game like it before, and it totally convinced me that that kind of short, narrative-heavy, gameplay-light game could be incredible.


Another game that just came to me that I think goes very much under-appreciated is Alien: Isolation. The setting, atmosphere, visuals and sound of that game is more spot-on than the actual film! I have never before or after been so tense playing that game, an addictively awful and awfully addictive feeling.


Honourable mention also has to go to Until Dawn. Another game that did something different, had quite a few faults, but for entertainment value it was first-class. I played it with a group of friends, again in one sitting, passing the controller around every time the character was switched, and we were just completely gripped by this B-movie narrative. We made it all the way to the final action scene having had only two characters die...and then I proceeded to lose my nerve, tried to escape too soon, and ended up killing almost every character through a single decision lol.

[Zetubal]

That's a really, really difficult question. I am quite uncertain as to which games could possibly stand the test of time and go down as 'the classics' of this decade. I don't know if it's my warped perception/nostalgia, but I get the distinct feeling that, ten years ago, I could've confidently named quite a couple games in that vein for 2000-2009 (Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Silent Hill 2, Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, Baldur's Gate 2: Shadow of Amn, Gothic 2 etc.).


As for the 2010s, I feel that on the one hand the market has been flooded with far too many games for anyone to keep track of, and on the other hand, most of the real game changers (no pun intended) are more related to the industry than to individual games. Games like Minecraft or Fortnite I feel won't necessarily be remembered as some of the greatest stuff in and of themselves, but as hugely impactful symptoms of changes in the way we think about video games. Or how video games are marketed, played etc. The same could arguably be said for the rise of trends like "games as live-services", microtransactions, Kickstarter, Twitch/Streaming (and possibly now Stadia), increasing politicization. What I'm getting at is that this decade was probably one which we'll remember as a time of great changes in the way we think about games and maybe not one as closely tied to individual iconic games that we think of.

That being said, there are handful of titles which I enjoyed immensely during that period.

Witcher 3 satisfied a craving for good, mature, well written roleplaying games which I've carried within me ever since my first experiences with gaming. It looks great, has a mesmerizing soundtrack, fantastic side stories, memorable characters - if one game in that decade actually redefined a quality standard within its genre, it's Witcher 3.

Divnity Original Sin 2 is a love letter to everything I cherish about isometric RPGs. Aside from being one of the greatest positive examples of Kickstarter games, it's just an all-around well designed game. Like Witcher 3 it looks gorgeous, sounds great, has an intriguing story, and fun characters. In addition, it's funny, quirky, made me laugh on several occasions. It's ridiculous how often I've read reviews of people who absolutely adore this game and start their review with "usually I don't play this kind of game". That I think sums it up perfectly.

Dark Souls was an experience unlike any that had come before it. It kicked off a wave of copy cats that continues to this day and for good reason. It made difficult games sexy and it did that by emphasizing what difficulty should ideally be about - rewarding skillful play and attentiveness. Lore geeks will tell you how they love the indirect, cryptic story telling, explorers will talk about the interconnected world design - the list goes on. This one, like Witcher 3, stands a very good chance of actually going down in history.

There are also several games that I feel might be unjustly forgotten a decade from now. Or rather, won't be cherished enough. NieR: Automata, What Remains of Edith Finch, Disco Elysium, the Blackwell series, Wasteland 2, Pathologic, Senua's Sacrifice, The Banner Saga, Undertale, To The Moon, Finding Paradise, and Rimworld come to mind - just to give a few examples.
I would wholeheartedly recommend each of these to any of you - especially since I fear that in the future some of them might go unnoticed, which makes now a good time to recommend them.



Lastly, there are like three bajillion really solid games, that would be great in any decade but didn't do anything outstanding to warrant lasting fame. Mario Galaxy, Persona 4 + 5, Yakuza 0, Total Warhammer, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Doom, Metro Exodus, some Assassin's Creed, Darkest Dungeon, Hollow Knight, Cities: Skylines, Arkham City, Cuphead ...


Also, I don't own any consoles. Sorry.

This post has been edited by Zetubal: 17 December 2019 - 10:24 AM

[Mentalist]

Witcher 3- it took everything I loved about The Witcher (which is my most-replayed game of all time, and would have been one of the games of the LAST decade), and put it in an open-ish world to rule them all.

Arkham City-the BEST mix main+ side content ever, and spectacular boss fights+ big chunk of Gotham to grapple across. There's everything to love about it, another one I've played to death.

Age of Empires II (mostly HD, but I've also sank quite a few hours into DE already)- overall my most played game this decade, by far.

Darksiders series- 2 definitely came out this decade, and I've replayed it multiple times as well, across both Steam and GOG. Darksiders 3 gets the credit for being my gateway to souls-like genre.

Sekiro- recent entry, but this game is just a sublime experience, and I'm pretty stoked both to play the Dark Souls trilo and to see how the formula evolves through Elden Ring.

Honourable mentions to the Resi games, Dishonored and the Deus Ex prequels.

EDIT: DID a list for another forum, and thought about it some more. look below for some ramblings:
GAMES OF THE DECADE
1) Age of Empires 2 (2013)
-I played this for just under 1400 hours. I was never into it back when I was an RTS junkie in early 2000s, because back then teenage me craved flashy, Blizzard-like stories and presentation. But coming back to it in 2015, (I think), this became by go-to comfort food. I'm a history nerd; This game covered an incredibly interesting historic period where the world wasn't yet dominated by Western Europe. The 3 new expansions that got released for HD continued to expand that scope; And then there was the custom content- Both on the Workshop, and older, legacy stuff (nearly 2 decades' worth by now!) on Age of Kings Heaven. I joined the community, I reviewed scenarios and gave feedback to people who went on to be recruited by Forgotten Empires to work on the DE versions of AoE games; I started watching pros play AoK, and watched strategy videos- I had no intention of going online, but I enjoyed watching others play the game I love on such a high level; Also watching the best player in the world struggle through single player campaigns was a barrel of laughs;
I can't imagine this decade without AoK HD. It's as simple as that.

2) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
-Hard to be unbiased, since I read all the books, TW1 is one of my most replayed games EVER, and I'm an unabashed GOG fanboy. Still, Witcher 3 is probably the ultimate complete package of a game. It raised the bar for open-world RPGs in terms of writing and quest design; it created a world that was astonishingly fun to explore; it gave a moving main story, that served as a good enough canvass for the mind-blowingly good and memorable, character-driven side-stories.
I love this game. I never finished "Blood & Wine" because at one point in the story I was faced with a choice that I did not want to make, because I kne that either outcome would be bad for characters I cared about. I walked away, and never booted it up again. It's the only game whose story hit me like that.

3) Batman Arkham City
-I love the entire Arkham series, but City is my most-played, and it is still the perfect blend of world-building, open-world-ish metroidvania, side missions, and the satisfying combat+stealth loop. The story is a convoluted mess spliced by epic boss fights; Batman as a character is flat, one-dimensional and boring; but the game itself is a joy to play. It's the perfct expression of the formula, and one I wi;l probably keep coming back to.

4) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
-A very sudden entry to this list, but since it's my GOTY, I guess it makes sense. It's a sublime game that opened an entire genre to me; It is the best combat-focused game I ever played; I had a ton of fun exploring every nook and cranny, and I am looking forward to more, similar games.

5) StarCraft II
-I bought "Wings of Liberty" on Day 1, in retail. I've loved Blizzard ever since first playing WarCraft II back in 1998 (I think?). I subsequently fell out with them after they pivoted towards always-online with Diablo III; I did not finish "Heart of the Swarm" that I played in 2018, because their storytelling is terrible compared to the heights of StarCraft and WarCraft III; and yet, it's impossible to deny that the mission design in StarCraft II is peak high-budget RTS. (I love Total War games, but I don't consider them RTSs the same way). IWings of Liberty is also probably responsible for getting me to give a damn about achievements in games; so that in itself is a big deal.

6) DeusEx: Human Revolution- Director's Cut
-My evolution from an RTS junkie to a more well-rounded player started with Deus Ex. I wanted a "thinking shooter", and so I found myself playing it. Then Invisible War. Then Bloodlines. And then, in 2006, i realized that this was largely it (except for System Shocks, and other experiments). The "Shooter with powers" genre that offered you multiple approaches to your mission was pretty barren. So when I heard about Deus Ex 3, I was all over that. I joined the Eidos forums; I found RockPaperShotgun through those forums and it became my favourite place on the internet for a while; And I played the game Day 1 on my crappy laptop, after checking out the "leaked demo" to make sure I could run it on an intgrated GPU (I could! my 19-inch Toshiba Satellite was, and still is, a mechanical wonder!)
Objectively, in most ways, Mankind divided is a much better game. But Human Revolution gave me a few memorable moments, both in exploration and in the way I played the immersive sim to find unorthodox solutions- that continue to stick with me to this day.

7)
Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition
-If AoK HD was my comfort food RTS, Darksiders was my action-adventure blanket. I miss Legacy of Kain; I miss it so much it hurts sometimes; I've been playing all kinds of AA hack'n'slash and eurojank RPGs to try to recapture that magic, that feeling of an amazing story and a mishmash of concepts transcending clunky gameplay. Darksiders isn't it, but it's the closes I've come. A no frills action-adventure with some light character-building progression, a suitably Gothic tone and a convoluted backstory. The game is fun to play, it's huge, there's that whiff of Metroidvania in coming back to old places with new gadgets; and Death looks and moves a lot like Raziel; Darksiders III was one of my top games of 2018, and Genesis was a pleasant, albeit not ultra-memorable 2020 game. This game stands for all those like it I've tried and had some fun times with.

8) Shadowrun: Dragonfall- Director's Cut
-Shadowrun Returns was the first game I kickstarted. Dragonfall was the promised "second city" stretch goal that evolved into a brand new game- one I got for free as a backer. I loved the books as a kid, and I've always been fascinated by settings where magic and technology co-exist. Dragonfall is the best expression of that formula, but more than that, it symbolizes (to me) the promise of crowd-funding and the renessaince of genres we have seen because of it. Being my first crow-funding experience-and being so incredibly positive- meant I became really involved in Kickstarter, participating in a whole bunch of projects (and still occasionally contribute- see Chernobylite, for example). Kickstarter was a huge part of the decade, and Dragonfall, aside from being an excellent x-com-lite RPG, is my symbol of that.

9) Alpha Protocol
-I bought this in a Steam Sumer sale; I played it through like 6 times straight. THIS game is what made me an Obsidian fan. THIS is why I kickstarted Project Eternity; THIS is peak, Obsidian, best choice & consequence model in any RPG. In the words of Richard Cobbett " Would somebody please steal this design already? " I NEED more games like this. It was janky; it was low-budget; it was broken in some sections (Taipei especially). But it was also BRILLIANT. Sega, sell the IP to Microsoft, PLEAAASE.


10) E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy
Before Eidos Montreal released Human Revolution in August of 2011, there was July 2011. There was E.Y.E.
E.Y.E. is a mess. It looks and plays like a Source mod.
E.Y.E. is amazing. Its guns feel punchy, its ragdolls fly everywhere, the physics engine allows you to conjure up pillars of fire, stack up cars, and jump as high as flying gunships to smash them out of the sky with your Hammer of Doom.
E.Y.E. is obtuse. Its character creation is incomprehensible; it bombards you with mechanical aug upgrades, psy powers, X-com-like research system a whole armory for you to pick from, and background Lore and dialogue that was hardly coherent in its native french and makes basically no sense in translation (fans had to make a mod to make the text make sense).
E.Y.E. is brilliant. It is a game that lets you min-max to do WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT in its loop of "shoot-stab-magic-hack-crush with cybernetics", provided you put in the time and spend your points wisely.
E.Y.E. is ugly. Some levels are drab and embody the worst of grey and brown of the last 2 genereations.
E.Y.E. is stunning. Other levels, like The Electric Sheep are examples of brilliant art direction (and there's a residential building with a winding staircase straight from the Matrix- and you can do some amazing stunts on it)
E.Y.E. is broken. The story makes no sense, you need to watch in-game tutorial videos (15 of them, I think) to understand ANYTHING.
E.Y.E. is genius. The gameplay is the purest expression of being a badass EVER.

You can dual wield a power katana and a pistol, deflectign bullets with the sword as you advance and shoot at the same time. You need to "research" a medkit before you can heal yourself. The hacking is a minigame, and losing means whatever you've been hacking - be it an enemy soldier, or an ATM- HACKS YOU BACK- and you end up with either a UI overlay saying "Hacked" or dead. The game bombards you with terminology like "Secretora Secretum" and "The Metastreumonic Force" and plays it straight. some enemies are literal behemoths that can one-shot you if they see you- but you can stil beat them. There's psy-powers to toss fireballs, spawn clones, spawn clones FROM INSIDE ENEMIES, like an alien chest-burster; not to mention tossing cars around with telekinesis. Put enough points into your cyber-legs and you can jump ON TOP of flying gunships where they can't hit you- or jump down and reduce an enemy to red pulp.

I love this game. It is the boldest take on Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Diablo, and Warhammer 40k rolled into one, dipped in some outlandish French sensibilities; It is one of the finest examples of the batshit brilliant things PC is capable of. And it is the best 20 bucks I've ever spent on a Day 1 indie game.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 18 January 2020 - 09:05 PM