Skip to main content

Mbp's games of the decade

Inspired by a video from Bombchu on Youtube I decided to review the games I have enjoyed from the last decade and pick my favourite game from every year. Nerd that I am this involved a lot of data crunching and heavy use of Excel but here are the main ground rules:

1. My sources of games are Wikipedia's "20xx in video games" pages . These pages give an unbiased and fairly comprehensive list for every year in a fairly standard format. I did spot a few omissions but none that would change my ranking. Example page for 2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_in_video_games

2. Windows games only and games are listed in the year that they were released. I believe Wikipedia uses the US release date. 

3. I only consider games that I have played myself for a substantial time, long enough for me to form my own opinion. 

4. I consider DLC and expansions to be the part of the original game.  I take them into account when ranking the main game. 

4. Please note that I am a fairly patient gamer so I played many of these games several years after their initial release. Nevertheless I count them by year of release. This also means that more recent years are under represented with 2018 and 2019 games being particularly sparse. I expect to play many more games from these recent years in the future so my ranking for these recent years is very likely to  change. 

5. This list is of course entirely subjective. It represents my experience and my evaluation of the of the games in question. Ranking is based on much I enjoyed the game and the lasting impression it made on me. 

And now the rankings: 

2010: 21 games under consideration. 
3rd Place: World of Tanks
2nd Place: Napoleon Total War
1st Place: Mass Effect 2

I didn't play Mass Effect 2 until after ME 3 was released and then I marathoned all three games in the series with  the DLC. Mass Effect is one of the greatest gaming series I have ever played and ME 2 is probably the best episode. It had to take the crown here. Napoleon is one of my favourite Total War games. It is the one where they got guns and canons right. I only played World of Tanks for a few weeks so I never got any good at it but I still loved the game. To this day I still enjoy video replays of experts playing.
Honourable Mentions: Civ V, Darksiders, Just Cause 2

2011: A whopping 40 games under consideration. This was obviously a busy year for me. 
3rd Place: Magicka
2nd Place: Portal 2
1st Place: The Witcher 2

I had previously tried Witcher 1 without a lot of success but Witcher 2 got me hooked on the series and deserves top spot. I enjoyed Portal 2 as a solo game but when I discovered I could play split screen co-op with my daughter the game took on a whole new lease of life. Magicka was just mayhem, a game in which the control scheme was deliberately designed to create mistakes.  
Honourable Mentions: Minecraft, Skyrim, Mount and Blade, Deus Ex, Human Revolution. 

2012: 29 games considered
3rd Place: Mass Effect 3
2nd Place: FTL: Faster than Light
1st Place: Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition

There are very few games I have played as intensely as I played Dark Souls. The game utterly consumed me for about a month to the point where I had to stop playing. I have since tried some of the other games in the series but none has gotten its hooks into me like Dark Souls 1 and I am not sure I want them to.  FTL is the best spaceship simulator I have every played. Despite its simplistic appearance it is a game that tells a million stories. Most of them involve crew members dying in a fire but after every ignominious defeat you are tempted to hit replay and jump right back in.  I really enjoyed Mass Effect 3 despite the controversial ending and as mentioned above the Mass Effect Trilogy is superb. 
Honourable Mentions: XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Far Cry 3, Warlock Master of the Arcane, Borderlands 2, Dishonored. 

2013: 26 games considered
3rd place: Tomb Raider
2nd Place: Total War Rome 2
1st Place: Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock infinite is a some what controversial game but it worked for me. Taken together with its Burial at Sea Expansions it is a fitting end to the superb Bioshock Saga. The game world is stunningly beautiful and dripping in imagination, and the ending left me speechless. Total War Rome 2 was a buggy mess on release but Creative Assembly stood by the game and several major patches later it became one of my all time favourite Total War games. Tomb Raider reboot in 2013 looked good and played great. 
Honorable Mentions: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Metro Last Light, The Bureau, XCom Declassified, Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons. 

2014: 18 games considered
3rd Place: Alien Isolation
2nd Place: Divinity Original Sin
1st Place: Dragon Age Inquisition

There were some cracking games this year and any of the top 3 could easily have been my game of the year.  Inquisition just pips the other two for its enormous scope and terrific story telling. Divinity Original Sin is a fantastic take on turn based combat and Alien Isolation is one of the most tense games I have ever played. 
Honourable Mentions: Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor, Warlock 2, Wolfenstein: The New Order

2015: 19 games considered
3rd place: Just Cause 3
2nd Place: Homeworld Remastered Collection
1st Place: Witcher 3

Witcher 3 is a gaming phenomenon and taken with its expansions a worthy contender for greatest video game every made. It had to take top spot this year. I am cheating a bit with Homeworld remastered because the game was originally released in 1999 but it is still one of my all time favourite games and the remastered package gives it tarted up graphics and includes the sequel. Just Cause 3 is just about the most destructive fun you can have in any video game. It made me a big hit with my nephews when then drove around blowing stuff up and generally causing mayhem. 
Honourable Mentions: Broforce, Wolfenstein Old Blood. 

2016: 24 games under consideration
3rd Place: Titanfall 2
2nd Place: Doom 2016
1st Place: Total War Warhammer

I have to give it to Total Warhammer because it rekindled my love of Total War and brought the franchise in a fantastic new direction. I managed to spend over 300 hours playing the game before I got even more stuck into its sequel. Doom 2016 was a monumental achievement. An old school shooter re imagined for modern times. The controls are slick as hell and the gameplay is impeccably balanced.  I only briefly dabbled in the multi player of Titanfall 2 but the single player campaign was good enough to warrant third place on this list. 
Honourable Mentions: Battlefield 1, Grim Dawn, Steamworld Heist

2017: 14 games under consideration
3rd Place: Divinity Original Sin 2
2nd Place: Prey
1st Place: Total War Warhammer 2

Apologies for putting another Total Warhammer in first place but I have over a thousand hours in the game and I love it to bits. Easily my favourite strategy game ever. Prey is a terrific first person game that is a true spiritual successor to the incredible System Shock games. Divinity Original Sin 2 took everything that made the first game great and doubled it. 
Honourable Mentions: Destiny 2, Mages of Mystralia, Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice

2018: Only 6 games under consideration
3rd Place: Frostpunk
2nd Place: Subnautica
1st Place: Battletech

The low number of games played it partly because I am a patient gamer and partly because I spend so much time playing Total Warhammer 2. Nevertheless Battletech is a worthy contender for my game of the year. It is a great turn based combat game with the big stompy robots of the Battletech universe. Unfortunately the game doesn't do itself any favours with a fairly rough first impression but once you get into it it is terrific. I have to admit I haven't played nearly enough of either Subnautica or Frostpunk but both have really intrigued me from what I have played so far. 
Honourable Mentions: None

2019: 6 games considered
3rd Place: Gears 5
2nd Place: Halo Reach
1st Place: Slay the Spire

I haven't played enough 2019 games yet to give a definitive ranking but I really loved Slay the Spire. It is a collectable card game with all the bells and whistles and best of all it is single player so no money sink multiplayer mode. Halo Reach is cheating I guess because it is a remastered version of the 2010 Xbox game. Nevertheless I love Halo (I actually bought an Xbox 360 just to play Halo) and this PC remaster was one of my favourite games of the year despite having previously played the Xbox version. I did a full play through of the Gears of War series in January and the most recent Gears 5 definitely really brihgs the series up to date.  I still probably prefer Gears 3 but that is only available on Xbox at present so cant get into these lists. 
Honourable Mentions: None so far but I am sure that I will be playing a lot more 2018 and 2019 games in the future so this may well change. 

And the Grand Prize winner for my game of the decade: 
This is a very tough call with some very strong contenders. In fact all of my top contenders are actually game series rather than individual games because I believe that a series done well is far more than the sum of its parts. The Mass Effect trilogy is certainly a contender as is the Bioshock series. Witcher 3 is one of the greatest games ever made and single handedly elevates the series into the highest rank.  However based on sheer hours played and on the fact that the games inspired me to read almost the entire Black Library just to get more of the lore I have to give my game of the decade prize to: 

Total War Warhammer (1 and 2)







Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein...

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p...

Lotro: The Forgotten Treasury

Throg joined a Kinship group for the Forgotten Treasury instance last night. It was an enjoyable change from the solo questing that the now level 55 dwarf champion has been mostly doing so far in Moria. Some members of the group had tried and failed to clear the Treasury before so we knew it would be challenging but we were lucky enough to have a well balanced group with Guardian, Minstrel, Lore Master, Hunter, Burglar and Champion (Throg). Throg (level 55) and the minstrel (53) were both below the 56ish level of the instance but the others were all higher so it more or less balanced out. [SPOILERs ahead] It is a well designed enjoyable instance set in a circular chamber with balcony around. As you enter, a boss absconds to a locked side chamber with his treasure leaving the fellowship to clear trash ringed around the balcony. Once the trash are cleared you have access to a puzzle which must be solved in order to open the locked door. Clearing the (including six mini bosses) also get...