It’s the last day of the year! Before we ring in the next decade, which will surely be very good and full of lots of great news, let’s reflect on what we enjoyed over these last 10 years. The following are, in my opinion, the 10 best games of the decade (with some honorable mentions).
10. Life is Strange (2015) — PC, PS4, Xbox One, iOS
Do you remember your freshman year of college? The sweet elation of freedom that came as you lay down in your dorm bed for the first time, probably wasted as hell, and realized you were responsible for your own fate? This game is that moment.
Life is of course a collection of moments, but Life is Strange is a collection of very distinct moments. When you realized you had total control over what you could eat for the first time. The slow learning that friendships were way more important than they were in high school. Coming to terms with your sexual wants and needs and pursuing them. Staying up drunk with your friends till sunrise talking about nothing. Getting stoned at a friend’s house off campus and being discovered on the floor of a stranger’s home the next morning. Spewing bullshit philosophical theories and believing you and your friends were at the height of your intellect. Spending a full 18 hours studying for a test without eating or sleeping in between. These are the moments, the feelings, that are captured in Life is Strange. If those moments are foreign to you, I can understand if this game doesn’t hit as hard. This game is for those who want to live in that moment again, if just for this one video game.
9. Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) — PS4
Horizon Zero Dawn could have been the biggest disappointment of all time. It was hyped up beyond belief. We were skeptical. Another open world game? Robot dinosaurs? RPG elements? Sounds like every other dumb early access game on Steam. Instead, we received an open world experience to rival the best of the best. In a post-apocalyptic wasteland where nature has reclaimed the land and mechanical dinosaurs walk the earth, one outcast carries the weight of humanity on her shoulders. No two fights are the same because of the frankly insane amount of variety in landscapes, elevation, climate, and elemental powers. Aloy is an instant classic video game character you’ll fall in love with over and over again, and with every arrow she fires you’ll feel just a little bit cooler.
8. Dishonored 2 (2016) — PC, PS4, Xbox One
Dishonored 2 takes every aspect of the original game and improves it, expands it, or completely revamps it to keep things fresh while still familiar. Enter the land of Serkonos, a Mediterranean steampunk island where everyone is out to get you and the number of people you can trust shrinks every day. Take control of Emily, Empress of Karnaca, and sneak, assassinate, blast, explode, and magic your way to saving your father and defeating the usurper, your own aunt. Dishonored 2 is home to the most finely crafted and tuned 3D levels in video game history, with standouts such as the Conservatory and the Clockwork Mansion making other stealth games look like a joke. If you’re not sold yet: Ever wanted to assassinate someone 50 years in the past with a time knife? Yeah, you’re in.
7. Journey (2011) — PC, PS4
Journey is a 2 hour indie game with no spoken or written words, no instructions, and no defined goals. The aptly named masterpiece is talked about all the time, sure, but it’s hard to put into words what made it so special. There’s not much I can do to sell you on it without spoiling you, except to say this — no one, and I mean no one, on earth is ever alone. If you fall behind, people will not leave you. If you get lost, someone will find you. If you have nowhere to go, there’s always upwards and onwards. Prepare to be a little sad at the end — you’ll have a new best friend who you can never meet, never know, never speak to. But you’ll know someone out there took the same journey as you, and didn’t leave you behind. And you sure as hell went back for them.
6. The Last of Us (2013) — PS3, PS4
The Last of Us needs no introduction. After all, it won Game of the Year from every possible publication for the year 2013. This cinematic action-adventure game has Joel escort his stand-in daughter through a zombie infested wasteland, all the way across America, in search of a cure. Zombies? Yawn. So done with them, right? These zombies are ravenous, mutated mushroom monsters. These abominations, known as Clickers, are covered in the most terrifying fungal blooms, mushroom caps, and mycelium growths you could imagine. Becoming a Clicker is truly a fate worse than death, and you’ll get all the encouragement you need to keep running to get Ellie to the doctors that might be able to save all of humanity. With an ending that made grown adults across the world cry, the Last of Us is a testament to the lengths we will go to for family. Plus, I named my cat Ellie after the character, so bonus points for that.
5. Celeste (2018) — PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One
Celeste is a story of a girl named Madeline trying to climb a mountain. As the story goes on, you’ll find yourself loving the characters (especially Theo) and cheering for Madeline to reach the top, to prove to herself that she can. She is shadowed on her journey by the dark part of herself, representing her anger, her depression, her fears, her failure. I won’t say more on the story so as not to spoil it, but the ending is not what you imagine, and the penultimate level was maybe the most moving thing I’ve ever experienced in a game.
Celeste taught me an invaluable lesson about never stopping the fight. No matter how far you fall, you can get back up and climb twice as high. No one is stopping you but yourself. Not to mention the gameplay is challenging while also very forgiving. This a must play, no matter what platform you’re on, though I recommend the Switch version. Celeste is the best indie game I’ve ever played, and my personal Game of the Year for 2018. This game helped me push through some rough events in my life, and I remember every day to keep climbing the mountain. It’s not about getting to the top, it’s about continuing to climb. But I will get to the top one day, and maybe when I do, we’ll all sit down and reminisce about the journey over a hot slice of strawberry pie.
4. Nier: Automata (2017) — PC, PS4, Xbox One
Nier: Automata is a third-person action JRPG that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where nature has overtaken the land and robots rule the earth… wait, did we do this one already? In all seriousness, you’ve probably heard people recommending this game to you but are kind of unclear on why you should play it. It’s hard to sell without spoiling it, but there are essentially 5 “endings.” Endings A and B are 10–15 hours each depending on how many side quests you want to do (do them all), Endings C and D are about 3 hours each, and ending E is about 30 minutes long. Don’t let that dissuade you — you’ll get the same story from totally new angles and find out a ton of new information, each piece of data more sobering than the last.
Take control of androids 2B (aka 2Booty4Me) and 9S (aka my real, sweet, human son) and try to keep the last dregs of humanity from going extinct against an endlessly growing sentient AI. Hundreds of years after the AI rose up, humans fled to space, forsaking their home back on earth as robots infested it. This game will slowly suck the life out of you, driving you into one existential crisis after another, questioning what was ever real and if anything ever mattered — and then put you back together at the end with the promise that you are not alone. You are never alone. There is always someone out there willing to help. I hate to do this, but for the sake of my mental health I need you to play this game. Below is a link to a video of one of the first scenes in the game which I believe will intrigue just about anybody.
You can hear some of the music in there too, which is IMPERATIVE to experiencing this game. I do not say this lightly. Nier: Automata has the best soundtrack in video game history. If you don't believe me, I dare you to play it and then say that to my face. I’ll wait.
3. Fallout: New Vegas (2010) — PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Fallout: New Vegas is an open world RPG in the form of a First-Person Shooter. You are the Courier, a mail carrier who’s just trying to deliver a package across the post apocalyptic Mojave desert when Chandler from Friends shoots you in the head. You lose your memories and your delivery and wake up in the house of a kind doctor in the town of Goodsprings with no idea who you are. Well, this is an RPG, after all. Let’s build us a character completely from scratch! One of the best things about this game is that your character has no pre-defined personality or traits. It’s entirely up to you. FNV’s greatest weakness is the gun play, but it’s outweighed so strongly by the writing, story, dialogue, and characters you won’t even notice.
Look, FNV was a big list of firsts for me. It was the first game I played on PC (on my shitty laptop), the first open world game I played, the first FPS I played, and the first real RPG I played. This was essentially my gateway into AAA games. And what a gateway it was. Multiple factions each with distinct attitudes towards each of the others, thousands of dialogue choices that actually influence the story, skill checks so that your character can excel at what they’re good at and fail at what they’re bad at. I can’t sing enough praise for the writing in this game. If you can get by how bleh it looks with its mushy greys and browns, it’s one of the best RPGs ever created. And when you start to get bored, there’s about 10,000 mods you can start to mess around with.
2. Persona 5 (2017) — PS3, PS4
You are a 16 year old Japanese schoolboy and get into an incident with a very powerful person, who lies about you attacking him and gets you arrested. It is a great injustice, and for a kid of 16 it would be most sobering and disgusting thing you could experience. Being a hero leads to only injustice. There is no compensation for being a hero, which is a recurring theme in the story. You are sent to Tokyo to live with a family friend and start attending a new school. The very first day, you and a classmate wander into an alternate world overlaid on our own called the Metaverse, and find yourselves in a medieval castle full of demons and ruled by a particularly shitty teacher at the school. I’ll leave it at that for the plot, I don’t want to ruin it.
This game is the only one ever that lets you truly live out the fantasy of being a super hero that you had when you were a kid. By day, you go to school, do homework, hang out with friends, do the laundry, work a part time job, clean the house, etc. By night, you and your friends don the masks of the Phantom Thieves, a superhero team that dives into the metaverse to steal hearts and bring justice back to the world. No one at school knows who you are, and no one in the world knows the identity of the Phantom Thieves. This is what I always wanted. There is no Spider-man game where it’s sometimes more fun to be Peter Parker. It’s unprecedented and is what made me fall in love with it just hours in.
The gameplay never felt repetitive to me, except perhaps the last dungeon. I don’t normally love turn based battles, but the way the combat system is set up is so quick, flashy, and colorful that it feels just as exciting as live combat. The aesthetics and colors of the game are so fucking over the top, and they never slow down. Every single motion you make as the phantom thieves screams flamboyant and flashy, and it makes you feel like a ridiculous badass super hero. The music is another top 5. A little bit of jazz, a little funk, a little rock. It is unbelievably catchy.
There are so many deep layers to the RPG aspects too. Equipment, accessories, armor, weapons, guns etc all need to be configured along with items and potions and persona attacks to optimize your character. you can care about it a lot or a little, the game lets you do both pretty successfully. Managing your time during the day to optimize your stat levels is great, because it almost feels real. Almost a way that your own life is an RPG.
The characters… oh the characters. I legitimately fell in love with each and every one of the Phantom Thieves. Over 100 hours with them sounded daunting at first, but I wish there was more. I have only had this sad feeling once before, with Breath of the Wild, when I realized I would never get to play this game for the first time again. I can’t, but some of you can!
If I was unsure before playing, I truly believe now that there is no justice in the world unless you make it. We are all responsible for creating justice wherever we go. These themes permeate throughout every aspect of the game and are never forgotten or thrown to the wayside. There is a spirit of rebellion in all of us, and working a 9 to 5 office job every day, I think I had forgotten that. This game helped me remember the fire of justice I felt inside as a child when I saw wrongs being done I couldn’t stop. It’s still inside me. It’s still inside all of us.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) — Nintendo Switch
Breath of the Wild. Just the name alone, the picture of the logo, sends a shiver down my spine. It almost moves me tears as I flash back through the 200 hours I spent in Hyrule. I can still hear it. The eerie still that came on top of a mountain as darkness fell over the distant horizon. The soft cry of the bunnelbees as I discovered their secret garden. The bleating of a mountain goat rushing to protect its child. The satisfying crack of a tree as I felled it for wood to build my house. The zip and sizzle of a bomb arrow flying towards a Stone Talus. The roar of the great dragons as they circled overhead, surveying their domain. These sounds mean more to me than I can put into words.
Breath of the Wild is a third-person action-adventure game where you traverse a post apocalyptic open world where nature has retaken the land and robots rule the earth… fine, I admit it. I have a type. Sue me. Everything that made Zelda what it was is thrown out the window for something better, something stronger, something freer. The physics engine of this game allows for a near infinite number of unpredictable results from interacting with the environment, and your imagination is the limit. Equipped with just 5 simple spells you are tossed off the Great Plateau with one quest in your log: Defeat Ganon. Wow, right to it. You can attempt to go defeat Ganon whenever you’d like, actually. But without the weapons, armor, stamina, health, and food you obtain while playing the game… well, I wish you good luck.
There’s not a lot else I can say about this game, being that it’s the one of the most circle-jerked games in the world, but the fact is everything you hear is true. This game is both a technical and artistic masterpiece. The Ghibli-style artwork, the solo piano score, the wonderful creature and architecture designs — it all comes together so effortlessly to create something you couldn’t have dreamed up yourself. It is as near perfection as a video game has so far been. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. Nature is calling. Answer it.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the best game of the decade, and has a decent shot at the title for greatest of all time. For now, let’s look forward to the sequel. Nintendo has a huge responsibility on their hands following this one up.
Honorable Mentions
Bioshock Infinite — this game made me feel something real when it ended. Elizabeth felt real, like a real daughter I might someday have. The crazy tonics and colorful artwork coupled with the over the top story is a recipe for an easy thumbs up from me.
Prey 2017 — Prey manages to take pieces of almost every action game ever and do them all better, fitting them together with unbelievable seamlessness. Stealth, shooting, magic combat, platforming, death lasers, completely destructible environments, crafting, resource management, skill trees… the game absolutely shouldn’t work as well as it does. And yet the core gameplay loop is 100% effective. Collect resources, save lives, build new items, and fight the alien invasion… or join it. The monsters are terrifying, the music from the impeccable Mick Gordon is an A+, the open world is gorgeous, and your resourcefulness will be tested to its absolute limit. The theme of holding onto your humanity is prevalent during the entire game and never gets lost. Would you sacrifice your own humanity to save all of humankind?
Fallout 4 — yeah, it had a lot of problems. A lot. I get it. But this game has become my happy place. My safe space. I have around 800 hours on it so far, and I go back to it every few weeks to work on my settlements just a bit more. With the use of mods, what I can build is limited only by my imagination.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice — I haven’t finished it yet, but I can already tell you this game is a masterpiece. It handily deserves all the Game of the Year recognition its getting. Coming from someone who really didn’t like Dark Souls/Bloodborne, this was a pleasant surprise. Turns out using vivid colors, setting it in a mythological version of Feudal Japan, allowing you to jump and grapple, and factoring mobility into combat is a recipe for success.
Super Mario Odyssey — It’s Mario. What more needs to be said? I loved Super Mario Sunshine and 64, but Odyssey knocks them out the park. There has never been a 3D platformer that felt this good to play. It’s fun, over the top, stylish, funny, and warmhearted. Mario continues to dominate the video games industry in terms of pure, uncut Colombian fun.
What Remains of Edith Finch — Even if a walking simulator sounds boring to you, this game needs to be experienced. There has never in gaming history been a house so lovingly constructed. Every inch of it is real. It’s been lived in. It’s so hard to describe, but I was sure that it was an exact replica of a real house and its contents. And the message at the end is something that will stay with you forever. “I don’t want you to be sad that I’m gone. I want you to smile because we were ever here at all.”
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim — Do I really need to sell you on Skyrim?
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — For all its shortcomings in gameplay, the Witcher 3 manages to be an artistic masterpiece. The monster designs are imaginative and mostly unmatched, both across video games and film/TV. The vivid colors that are used to create the varied landscapes are gorgeous, and there is always someone or something to see when you arrive somewhere new. I would not describe this game as “fun” to play, but I would describe it as a great game altogether. It ain’t the second coming of Jesus, but if you like open world, fantasy, or great stories (or all of the above), you owe it to yourself to walk in Geralt’s shoes.
