So this was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. Around a dozen games came to mind when I first started thinking about this, and that list didn’t change much. In many cases, they’re games I’ve dumped hundreds of hours into, and several of them I’m still playing. Others are just the first things that come to mind when I think about games I’ve enjoyed.
But here we are. My top games of the 2010s…
10 – Control (2019)
That. Was. Awesome!
I loved this game. The setting, the characters, the mysteries, the powers. OK, maybe not the actual combat so much (I’m at the age where “Easy” is my favorite setting), but I powered through it because I wanted to see where the story went.
It’s the best SCP Foundation game ever made. And I still smile when I think about the Ashtray Maze.
The only reason I didn’t rank this one higher is that I don’t know if I would still feel the same about it if I hadn’t played it in the past six months. But, right now, it has to be on the list.
9 – Destiny 2 (2017)
Eyes up, Guardian
I’m not a big shooter person. Especially not a big on-line shooter person. Again, I’m at the age where my reflexes just aren’t up to being competitive on-line.
But Destiny 2 is sooo good.
Maybe I’ll never be on the top of the leaderboard, but I can join in a community event, blast away at aliens, collect my loot, and have fun doing it. The shooting feels good, the powers are fun, and the lore of the game is pure batshit insanity (and I love every bit of it).
I’ll never have the best gear, but I can still hop over to Mars and spend an hour running around playing Escalation Protocol, or spend some time in Gambit and not feel completely worthless. Or just hang around the church in the EDZ and pop Red Legion as they land. It’s *fun*, and maybe that’s all it needs to be.
8 – Crusader Kings II (2012)
The peasants are revolting. Again.
Paradox likes to call this a Grand Strategy game. I call it Medieval Crisis Simulator.
Nominally you are the leader of a dynasty in medieval Europe trying to expand your family’s influence. You are reacting to events that are coming at you. There is a revolt, so you put it down. But now your council is upset, so you have to pay some of them off. Then your son comes of age and needs a wife, so you find a nearby kingdom with a princess that has a claim to a title and marry him to her, so you’ll be able to claim their territory later. Then you marry your daughter off to another kingdom to get a peace treaty with them.
And while you’re doing that you’re plotting to assassinate a rival by having someone shoot him with an arrow from the grassy knoll near the scroll depository, arranging for a grand tournament to boost your prestige (and to maybe provide a chance to hook up with the wife of the local duke), trying to decide if you should shut the gates against the plague, and now an associate just asked if you might be interested in joining a satanic cult.
There is so much going on all the time that, oddly, for most of the time your best option is to do nothing.
Yes, it has the learning curve of a cliff (you need at least 20-30 hours in the game even to begin to start understanding what is going on), the random number generator is sometimes too random, some events are just frustrating (I have to play a chess game with Death itself?), and your best long-term plans can be destroyed in an instant when the Pope randomly calls a Crusade.
Still, when it’s done, you have a history of your “family” going through the centuries that would put most fantasy novels to shame. And that’s the “just one more year” fun of the game.
Now, if you will excuse me, my advisors tell me that the white stag has been spotted in the north, and I must prepare for the hunt as soon as I dispatch this Viking raiding party from my harbor.
7 – Alpha Protocol (2010)
I would tell you what I’m doing, but then I’d have to kill you.
A mostly-forgotten RPG from 2010 developed by Obsidian and written by Chris Avellone has some of the best characters and writing in an RPG. A spy gets burned by his agency and sets off in revenge, using their own assets against them.
As I said, the writing is top-notch, the characters are great fun, and the reactivity of the game to your actions is still about the best I have seen even ten years later. There are multiple paths through each of the game’s locations, and a variety of endings depending on your actions during the game.
It received criticism when released because it looked like a shooter but was really an RPG; you could have perfect aim with your controller but would still miss due to your low combat skill. Plus, if you took on a few of the bosses without doing other actions first, the resulting fights could be ridiculously difficult. But, it showed that games could handle choice and branching narrative in a way that I don’t think any other game has done as well since.
6 – Kerbal Space Program (2011)
Actually… this *is* rocket science.
Another game with a steep learning curve, but one that is rewarding once you grasp the mechanics. Successfully getting your rocket into orbit for the first time, the first time you land on the Mun (and return!), when you finally manage to dock two ships together, these are incredibly rewarding. And you do it not by ranking up a tech tree; you do it by coming to understand the physics and principles involved.
The game has continued to be developed for most of the decade, and a new version will be releasing this year, but I prefer the old sandbox game from before they added things like experiments and funding. There’s something to be said for the pure enjoyment of strapping a few boosters together, adding some more struts, and launching a happy Kerbal into orbit.
Maybe I should get around to rescuing those guys from Duna someday.
5 – Dishonored (2012) – (Dishonored 2, Death of the Outsider)
Most Stealth games: “I got caught. Sucks to be me.”
Dishonored: “I got caught. Sucks to be you.”
That simple change makes all the difference.
Corvo (or Emily, or Daud, or Billie Lurk) can pass through the levels like a ghost in the night, or they can lay waste to everyone and everything around them. Or switch between the two at will. With special powers and equipment to facilitate both, the game stands out from both stealth and shooter games.
The characters and setting are exciting and fun, and the art style is unique. Overall, an entertaining series of games.
(Dishonored, being first, gets the nod, but Dishonored 2, Death of the Outsider, and the Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches DLC all deserve mention.)
4 – The Secret World (2012)
We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
An amazing game trapped in an MMO. I enjoyed it in spite of its MMO grind trappings.
I’ve been a fan of secret societies and paranormal investigations for some time (which is why you can blame me personally for the existence of the Men in Black franchise) and The Secret World fits right into my interests.
The game is fully voice acted, the characters are great fun, and the story is equal parts insane and fascinating. I loved the world it created.
The free-to-play re-release Secret World Legends reduced the depth of the original character system and overloads the base grind with FTP mechanics on top of the existing MMO ones, so I’m glad I played the original. I love the game and hope to see more set in the same universe.
3 – Mass Effect 2 (2011) – (Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect: Andromeda)
The (Space) Opera isn’t over until the Salarian sings
Quite possibly the greatest space opera video game series ever created.
I’m not sure what else to say here. A galaxy-spanning adventure with the fate of civilizations in the balance, balanced out by the personal stories of your companions and your relationship with them? This is as close to classic as you get — fantastic writing, amazing characters, and an epic plot worthy of your blockbuster of choice.
Mass Effect 2 gets the nod for GotD, but all of the others get a mention too. (Well, not the original Mass Effect because it’s in the wrong decade.) I thought Mass Effect 3 had a few problems (I never played the ME2 DLC that explained why my Shepherd was in prison, nor did I replay it after they “fixed” the ending), and Andromeda suffers for leaving plot threads dangling that were dropped when they abandoned the series. But, even with all of that, it is still the standard for Space Opera cRPGs that every other game will have to try to match. (Sorry Outer Worlds, you were good but not even in the same league.)
2 – Fallout: New Vegas (2010) – (Fallout 4, Skyrim)
Welcome to a world of infinite imagination.
What can I say? With New Vegas, or any of the runners-up I listed, you know what you are getting into as soon as you clear the opening cutscene and character creation. An entire world (well, a highly detailed part of one) that you can explore as much as you want.
Yes, I know Bethesda games have their share of “jank.” Yes, I know I’m going to hit a few bugs. And, yes, I know Bethesda had used up a good chunk of their goodwill with Fallout 76 (which you might note I don’t list as a runner-up), but there is something so amazing about their approach to world-building that I will put up with the jank just to get to the world they are presenting me.
If you look at my Steam profile (currently I’m “spawn.die.repeat”), you will see all three of the games listed here in my top five by playtime. There’s a reason. These games are a masterclass in environmental storytelling. I can walk into almost any building in any of them and find something carefully placed to tell me something. From the house I found in the outskirts of Fallout 3 where two skeletons lie in an embrace in a bed, to the empty crib in Fallout 76 filled with teddy bears surrounding an empty center; every location has a story to tell.
True story. I grew up in the era when we did regular “duck and cover” drills in school. I had a friend in college who always backed into a parking space because he knew, we knew that a nuclear war was inevitable.
It still seems weird to me that we… kinda forgot about it?
Anyway, back to the game. There is a story in all of these games, but the story I am making is mine. Will I support the NCR or Ceaser’s Legion? The Brotherhood of Steel, or the Enclave? At the end of the game, I will be told exactly what came out of my actions.
And I have a total choice. These aren’t games where there is a “correct” path that the game nudges you toward. The game lets you make your own decisions and live with the consequences of those decisions.
Yeah, sometimes things break. Yeah, sometimes there is a disconnect. But I will take a game that gives me the freedom that the games I’ve listed do over a polished experience that forces me along a constrained storyline.
Of the games I’ve listed, I give the slot to Fallout: New Vegas. Obsidian completely nailed the storyline, the characters, and the factions. There is actual weight behind the decisions you make. Fallout 3 falls because the ending (and yes, I know they patched it) was annoying, and Skyrim is on the list because I loved it too, but I only wanted to put one game in my “open-world” list on this list. Both of them are amazing games as well, and you need to play them. But, because I think it handled that “we’re all going to die” feeling that I lived through the best, I have to put New Vegas as my selection.
1 – Elite: Dangerous (2014)
Space, the final frontier…
What can I say?
I grew up during the “Space Race.” I remember the day when my family was on vacation (at Mammoth Caves, Kentucky, for those of you who care) when the Eagle landed on the Lunar surface.
That night my dad and I (my mother and brother were asleep) watched Neil Armstrong step on to the Lunar surface. That memory is burned into my brain.
I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go to other planets. To other stars. Then… well, things didn’t go the way we thought they would.
Elite finally let me explore the galaxy. A complete, 1 to 1 scale replica of our galaxy. And I have a ship of my own.
I’ve been to Beagle Point, the most distant places you can go in the Milky Way from Earth (at the time), twice. I’ve explored the galaxy, discovering dozens of worlds holding life, and dozens of Earthlike planets where we could live.
Yeah, sometimes the gameplay is a bit thin. Yeah, there are a lot of things that the developers could do. But…
I log in, pull on my VR headset, reach for my throttle and joystick, and… for a few hours. I’m exploring the galaxy. This is the life I wish I could have. Just… out in the great black, finding new worlds for humanity. Maybe I’m too early. Or, perhaps we’ll destroy ourselves and it will never happen.
This is the only game I have over a thousand hours in; I have spent weeks living in a world that doesn’t exist. And… I want to live there.
There’s nothing else I can say. This is my game of the decade, of the century, of my life. Elite: Dangerousis my #1 game for this list and, unless something amazing comes along to displace it in the years ahead, one of my favorite games of all time.
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