I don't like determining eligibility purely by date and not platform. For this reason, I'm only selecting from the PS3/Xbox360/Wii/DS/PSP generation of hardware. You won't find any PS2 or WiiU games on my list. Okay, let's go.
1: Dark Souls - [PS3] I went on and on about my memories of playing DS when I talked about the remaster in
my 2018 top 10 games of the year. So I feel a bit silly talking about the game at length again so soon. What do I do, just cut and paste the entry I wrote there? Or try and approach it from a different perspective? I think I'll just touch on a few things I didn't go in to much then.
I can still remember my initial disappointment with Dark Souls, because I was (understandably) comparing it to Demon's Souls. While Demon's Souls has a dream like beauty and mystique that chills your bones as you walk the ancient stairs of the Nexus, getting dumped at Firelink Shrine at the beginning of Dark Souls is pretty "meh" in comparison. I still remember standing on that cliff, looking at the grey horizon and thinking "this is supposed to be the new Nexus?" The highlights weren't bright enough, the shadows weren't dark enough, nothing stood out, it all looked flat, bland and generally underwhelming. I'm not saying that Dark Souls doesn't have its beautiful areas, like the sunset soaked Anor Londo and the hauntingly creepy ruins of New Londo. But the game is visually uneven, and a step backwards from Demon's Souls.
The characters and story also didn't quite measure up. The noble prince Ostrava ("That was a bold jump!") and despicable Yurt, along with the captive Yuria the Witch and others are part of an intriguing cast of npcs with fascinating stories and dialogue. The lore implications surrounding the Monumental, as he focuses on his meditation in the upper rings of the Nexus, his companions laying dead around him, are awesome. The tale of the maiden Astrea and her devoted protector, Garl, is a moving tragedy set in a swamp of blood and unthinkable abominations. Now, I'm not saying that you can't get some great dialogue from big Hat Logan or Quelana, or that Solaire's story isn't a tragic tale. The npcs and lore in Dark Souls are good too, I enjoy them. But they're not on Demon's Souls's level. Not even close.
So why then am I giving Dark Souls the coveted "Game of the Generation" spot?
Because of the multiplayer, baby!
With the exception of not replicating the Old Monk boss fight, where a player can be another player's boss, Dark Souls improves on the co-op and pvp of Demon's Souls in every way, making for an endlessly replayable multiplayer experience. Healing and castings are handled better. The range of weapons is better. Covenants provide powers, motives and rewards that enrich competitive and co-operative interactions. And helping people take down those big bosses using different builds and playstyles remains fun and rewarding. Quick, cut off the boss tail and revel in the moment of blood soaked lag that ensues! Or feel the satisfaction of defeating a hacker - with infinite health even - by backstabbing him from such an angle that he goes flying off a cliff! That sweet multiplayer action keeps the game alive long after you've finished every npc's questline and explored every brilliantly interconnected location.
Look no further for the greatest game of the generation.
Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of video games.
Literally.
My first, most challenging and proudest platinum. I scrambled for my camera and took a photo as I achieved it.
2. Demon's Souls - [PS3] I kind of premature-elaborated on why Demon's Souls is so good already in the above post. But it bears repeating that what this game lacks in multiplayer refinements compared to Dark Souls, it makes up for by building an incredible dark fantasy world with fascinating characters where choices and mistakes have meaningful ramifications. The environments feel hauntingly beautiful and terrifyingly hostile all at once. The slow, eerie, sorrowful music that plays in the Nexus as you stumble around uncovering its mysteries is
one of the most perfect tracks in the history of video games. And the Tower of Latria is one of the most stunningly dark and evil locations any game has ever had! Praying for a remake with dat giant archstone added.
Umbasa.
3. X-COM: Enemy Within - [PC] I love me some turn based strategy. So the first time I played through Enemy Unknown I enjoyed myself a great deal. But I would probably put this game somewhere around 9th or 10th on this list based on that experience. It was only when I played Enemy Within on Classic difficulty, Ironman mode that the game's true magnificence dawned on me. That is to say, hard difficulty with an auto-save feature that prevents you from loading an earlier save file, forcing you to live with the consequences of all your decisions. Played in this way, the game is immensely exciting and the emotional highs and lows of success and defeat are both quite extreme, unlike the numb experience of simply loading a previous save whenever something inconvenient happens. The game is brilliantly designed to work extremely well when played this way. You can have a mission fare terribly, feel the absolute despair of losing your best soldiers, and then, with a series of brilliant decisions and a bit of luck, claw your way ahead again and feel like a total bad-ass after overcoming the odds that were stacked against you.
I've played some X-COM 2, and I like it fine. I'll probably go back and finish it someday. But if I'm choosing between returning to X-COM 2 or restarting Ironman mode on X-COM 1 for like the 50th time, the prospect of that 2nd choice has me salivating and rubbing my hands together with anticipation. A masterpiece of strategy gaming with interesting decisions to make around every corner.
Well, these graphics sure have aged quickly
4. Super Mario Galaxy 2 - [Wii] This game was released in 2010 with SD graphics...
That's insane. You need to understand what an astonishing handicap that is to any game's reception. By the time Mario Galaxy 2 was released, playing a game that wasn't HD felt like playing a gameboy on the other side of the living room while wearing someone else's prescription glasses that have vaseline smeared on them. Yet it is one of the most highly reviewed games of all time! Fanboys and haters and everybody in between gave it 9.9s and 10s because the gameplay was just that phenomenal. Both the quality and variety of ideas in the game are astonishing. Mario Galaxy 2 will routinely introduce a new gameplay mechanic that you could build an entire game around and it will get used like, 2 or 3 times throughout the game, getting tossed aside to make way for the next brilliant mechanic. The post-game worlds are an awesome mix of nostalgia and challenge too. I've avoided going back to both galaxy games all this time because I keep hoping for a HD remake that will eliminate their one weakness.
Make it happen Nintendo!
5. Batman Arkham Asylum - [PS3] This game owes a lot to Metroid Prime. I mean, a lot. Detective vision works just like Samus's different visors, and the meaningful backtracking where you revisit previous areas using new power-ups is extremely
Metroidesque. The influence is clear, but what Arkham Asylum takes from other games doesn't really matter because what it brings to the table all on its own is so brilliant that people will be imitating Rocksteady's masterpiece for years to come. I'm talking, of course, about Batman's combat system. It's so ingenious it works for different types of players...A casual player can muddle through a battle and chain together a decent enough looking fight scene, while an expert player can go for a "flawless freeflow" combo and pull off a battle sequence so spectacular it looks better than a carefully choreographed fight scene from a movie. As you break a dude with a pipe's arm, throw a batterang at the hand of a guy reaching for a gun, then flip over a dude charging at you before banging 2 goon's heads together, you feel so cool you start to think to yourself:
"Damn! Maybe I really am Batman!"
Every aspect of Arkham Asylum is lovingly crafted, with an immense amount of thought going into the secrets and riddles, as well as the well implemented backtracking, and even the game's little graphical details show extra care. I admit Arkham City has its moments, for sure...It's cool being able to fly around Mario World-style, and getting to play as Catwoman and all that, but the game falls into the usual open world trap of quantity over quality. For example, in Arkham Asylum, whenever you solve one of the riddler's riddles, you actually have to do just that, you're putting together some kind of puzzle. But in Arkham City, a lot of the riddles would be more accurately described as "collecting green shit." Arkham Asylum keeps everything about its design tight throughout, and that's why it's one of the greatest games of the generation.
"Born in a world of strife!...Against the odds...we choose... TO FIGHT!!!"
6. Xenoblade Chronicles - [Wii] Yay! I get to praise my beloved Xenoblade Chronicles! Happy day! To be honest, I didn't get far in the Wii version of this game. I dabbled, thought it seemed pretty cool, and then went and played Dark Souls for like, 2 years straight. But years later I spent hundreds of hours playing the 3DS version inside and out and now I completely adore Xenoblade. How else can I describe it except as one of the greatest jrpgs of all time? A likable party of heroes journey across a vast, beautiful world as they partake in a grand adventure. The music is superb, the battle system is awesome, there's towns and quests and treasure galore, and the story has many twists and turns along the way before it escalates to a cosmic scale in the grand finale.
One of the things that most sticks with me about Xenoblade is the great camaraderie and banter between the characters. It might seem like a small touch, but they support or joke with each other during and after battles in such a charming and convincing way. Other games do this well too, like Persona,
but Xenoblade might be the best I've ever seen. Maybe it's just great writing and directing. Or maybe it's the refreshingly different British voices. But there's a special, jubilant feeling in air when you're in a big battle, rocking out to
"You Will Know Our Names" with Riki babbling as he gets all hyped up. You unleash a huge chain attack, and just as you land a massive blow with one of your arts, those sick guitar licks start shredding hard in the background. "Reyn! Let's see what you're made of!" Shulk yells as you alley-oop the next turn to him, because
it's Reyn time baby... Which means time to bring that monster crashing down! I've yet to play Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but I wish so badly that it was a direct sequel, so that I could enjoy the company of my Xenoblade Chronicles posse once again.
7. Valkyria Chronicles - [PS3] Back in the day, after major disappointments from Resident Evil 5 And Metal Gear Solid 4, whose immediate prequels I had dearly loved, I was beginning to feel like a dumbass for even buying a PS3. Valkyria Chronicles was the first game I got that felt like it validated the purchase of that insanely priced George Foreman grill looking monster, so this title has a special place in my heart. A Wonderful turn based strategy game set in a fantastical alternate WW1 Europe, Valkyria Chronicles has a beautiful art style that simulates shaded pencil sketches. The lovable cast is led by Welkin, a weird, unlikely hero who doesn't have a war-like bone in his body, but does have the strength of character and certainty of his beliefs to rise up and become a great general now that he has been called to do so.
8. Yakuza 4 - [PS3] This was my first Yakuza game. It's almost impossible to explain how much I love it. The game has its faults, and can feel boring for long stretches when you're looking for shiny objects in a car park or fighting a typical battle for the 50th time.
But ultimately Yakuza 4 completely wins you over because it has something few games do: heart. It's got inspiring characters, fun mini-games, and so much flavour and personality as you enjoy the Japan night life that you can't help but fall in love. I was very reluctant to play Yakuza 3 after playing this, because it only had 1 playable character. One of the things that helped keep Yakuza 4 from becoming too stale was that you alternate between 4 protagonists with different personalities and fighting styles, so the prospect of playing a similar Yakuza game that only had 1 protagonist was concerning. But guess what? Yakuza 3 was awesome too! Again, it's all about heart. Looking forward to playing every other game in the series when I can get around to it.
9. Mass Effect 2 - [PS3] The Combat, the level design, and even the mainline story of this game strike me more as "adequate," rather than excellent. All my praise is reserved for the amazing supporting cast and their fascinating personal stories. Excellently designed characters like Jack, Thane, Garrus, Mordin and Legion are a constant source of juicy dialogue, refreshing perspectives, and humour as you interact with them on the Normandy or accompany them on missions. This aspect of the game is absolutely top tier, and the "getting the band back together" feeling of cruising around the galaxy and recruiting these stand-out characters is unparalleled in all of video games.
10. Fallout 3 - [PS3] This is a tough one, I almost didn't wanna put it on the list, so strong are the mixed emotions of love and hate I experienced playing this game. But the way people feel about Bethesda right now, after the absurd debacle that was Fallout 76, is the way I've been feeling about them since Fallout 3 and Skyrim. See, I played those games on the PS3, and the PS3 versions are so broken I really feel it shouldn't have been legally possible to release them in that state. I'll explain. What happened was that the game ran fine in the beginning, but over time, as you interacted with the environment and characters, every small alteration you make to the game's world was saved, and as they added up it made the game perform worse and worse. So by the time I completed Fallout 3 (Yes I completed it like this) it was running terribly, constantly chugging along with severe lag and frame rate issues. It's like being gaslighted, as things subtly go from fine to unbearable. So that's awful, but I don't really wanna give Bethesda a pass even putting that aside. The broken quest lines and weird glitches, the idiotic combat where you just run backwards while frantically attacking (once you run out of VATS AP,) the shallow copy-pasted npcs, all these things left a bad taste in my mouth even then. I guess there was a time when people thought these things were the price you had to pay to experience a game with the scope, ambition, and freedom of a massive Bethesda style world. But with Breath of the Wild, Nintendo has proven once and for all that you can have an enormous world where you can go anywhere and do anything,
and it can be polished to a fine sheen, with great combat and the types of charming characters and attention to detail you would hope for in a smaller, more focused triple A title.
Well that's a detailed indictment of Fallout 3, but now how can I justify letting this game hang with the top 10 of the generation? It all boils down to one crystalized moment of pure gaming bliss. It was early on in the game. I had left the vault and found Megaton, but that was about it. I was still trying to figure out how to play and wasn't well equipped at all. I can't remember if it was for a quest or I just went out exploring, but I stumbled on a decrepit old convenience store and was snooping around inside. It was pretty clear that I was way out of my depth as I crept through its dusty aisles - all I had was a BB gun and another old gun with no ammo, so I was really struggling to get past the enemies. I was drinking irradiated toilet water to stay alive...things were looking grim. Grim to the point where I was expecting to die and planning to load an old save game from before entering the convenience store when I did so, so I could go in a different direction because I clearly didn't seem ready for this right now. Anyway, lucky me, I found a treasure stash with a freakin' LASER PISTOL.
Just as I'm crouched down behind a bench, clutching my prize, a group of Mad Max-looking bad guys file in, chatting about their nefarious deeds. Looking back, the timing of their arrival was too perfect. These raiders are probably scripted to enter shortly after you find this treasure cache, or something like that. Whatever the reason, the tension rose as they appeared and I realized I would have to slink past them to escape the convenience store...or go through them. Turns out my little laser pistol was more than up to the task, and I was giddy with joy as I not only took down these creeps but saw them disintegrate -
in slow motion - into piles of red dust! What a thrilling turn around. Just minutes before, any one of them could have probably handled me...Hell, I had been reduced to drinking radioactive toilet water! But suddenly I was a pew pewing death machine and these nasty punks were getting epic slow-mo lasered to death. I had lot of fun moments in Fallout 3, like bopping to
"Bongo, bongo, bongo I don't wanna leave the Congo" and getting plasma rifle headshots on Super Mutants in Vats. But nothing will stick with me like that personal moment, where my convenience store haul turned my situation from desperate survival to sudden empowerment. Just the memory of how I felt blasting my out of that corner brings a smile to my face. And on the strength of that memory alone, I'm listing it as one of the top 10 games of the generation, despite the game's many flaws.
Well that's my list. Unfortunately, Yakuza 4 was not among the options, so I added Super Mario Galaxy 1 to my votes to make up 10. Now for some insanely good honourable mentions. Man, I could go on and on at length praising some of the games below as well...
Must have been one hell of generation.
x. Super Mario Galaxy [Wii]
x. Mortal Kombat [PS3]
x. Uncharted 2 [PS3]
x. Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch [PS3]
x. Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together [PSP]
x. Yakuza 3 [PS3]
x. Kirby: Canvas Curse [DS]
x. Elite Beat Agents [DS]
x. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn [Wii]
x. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess [Wii]
x. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia [DS]
x. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable [PSP]
x. Rhythm Heaven [DS]
x. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance [PS3]
x. Bayonetta [PS3]
x. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney [DS]
x. Ouendan [DS]
x. Contra 4 [DS]
x. The Last of Us [PS3]
x. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption [Wii]
x. The Walking Dead [PS3]
If you liked reading, we actually did a similar thread for the previous generation in 2015. Here is my post from that thread:
My Neogaf GotG DC/PS2/GBA/GC/XBOX Voting Thread Post
