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botslayer · 4 years

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Top Ten games of the 2010′s

This trend seems to be doing the rounds at the moment and seeing as I’ve been gaming for about as long as I can remember, It just feels right. So, let’s get into it. But first, worth saying: These aren't really in any specific order, it's just the games I've personally had the most fun with overall, but it's pretty hard to decide what the hard numbers on things you enjoy for different reasons are if that makes any sense. 10. The 2010's weren't exactly the best time for anyone, I think. For me they were a slog of finding myself and learning things I wish I didn't. Amid all those things I wanted some levity. The world needs something and stupid. We got a lot of it ion 2013 but I feel like we could have used it scattered around a bit more. In that spirit, allow me to show you one hell of a pick me up:

Saints Row 4

Saints Row 4 does not give a fuck. It is aggressively demonstrating that the entire time you play. It doesn't care in the slightest what you think or why, It just wants to show you cool, if juvenile, and interesting, if weird shit. It's the finer points of Ratchet and Clank's arsenal, SR3's humor, And superpowers that genuinely put Prototype and Infamous in a blender and tell you to go ape shit with them. The soundtrack isn't top shelf, it's the roof of the building the shelf is in. Saints Row Two had a better story overall but SR Four's was just plain fun and a solid enough story to still be invested.

The DLC was just as irreverent and madcap, Featuring everything from an evil Santa Clause to evil Gimps on Game of thrones chairs made of dildos Or Tropey-ass costumes and weapon reskins that I'd be genuinely surprised the game dev didn't get sued over. It has earned its place in my top 10 and I will die by that decision.

2016 saw the advent of a new genre. They blended TF2 and MOBAs, and we got hero shooters in their first AAA forms, Overwatch and Battleborn. But neither of these games is on this list, much as I liked them. Partly because the whole time, I kept thinking of one simple question: "Why do I keep thinking of...?"

Anarchy Reigns

Anarchy Reigns is my favorite Platinum game. Full Stop. The Story mode is interesting and has genuinely good character moments, the characters themselves are completely mental, ranging from a mercenary with a bionic cat leg that secretly has a gun built into it to a giant cyborg bull-man with a jet-powered hammer. The soundtrack is mostly angry hip-hop, making every song a banger and fittingly speedy for things like random bombing runs from jet fighters that come from absolutely nowhere.

There are giant monsters, cars with mounted flame throwers, giant robots, and the online is still pretty sweet because even when abandoned, loading it up with bots still rules. I regularly have more fun with this than I ever did with Overwatch, and I don't care how insane that sounds.

Some games want to make you feel something and fail. Some games make you feel some things accidentally, for example, a desperate need to laugh. This game made me feel like a human blender. Like a Chthonic god of mangled flesh and raw destructive power. Nyarlathotep ain't got nothing on me. I speak, of course, of...

[Prototype] 2

There's no end to the absolute destruction you feel like you're causing in this game. It feels more fluid than the first, the main character is a pinch more relatable, and all the body horror, superpowers, zombie hordes, and big old monsters make for some of the most memorable and fun moments and fights in gaming. The DLC is also pretty solid, adding new fun side challenges, and new powers and weapons that elevate you from "Flesh god" to "Screw physics, I made them" Omnipotent. Best god/monster simulation of all time.

Sometimes some games are at an honest tie in your mind. Be it that you like them for essentially the same reasons, or for completely different reasons, but the overall total joy or entertainment they bring is roughly equivalent. Here, we have a case of the former:

Furi/Cuphead

Both games have a tight focus on giving players a unique, boss-centric challenge, both have interesting, somewhat minimal narratives, and both are absolute eye candy.

Furi has a more "Samurai Jack" Quality to me. A complete badass on a relatively simple quest with a somewhat minimalistic art style learning some things as he goes.

Cuphead on the other hand, nails that rubber hose animation style, and the fun levity of such animations while still making the player's ability to interact with the world damn impactful and fun.

They share a spot in my soul, games I love everything about but will never be able to finish. Hats off to both dev teams.

Now here we have another tie. Mostly because the games are so close together, they need to be evaluated more or less as one product IMO, not enough changed for me to consider them separate games, fortunately, that is the furthest thing from an insult it can be in this situation. I present to you, my next pick(s).

Costume Quest 1/2

Now, This might seem pretty random considering my other picks, but honestly, I love Halloween, I love creative madness, I love subversion, I love good characters, and I love cool action, these games have all these things by the bucketload.

The first game is a wild ride through Halloween in multiple very lively locations and the second, slightly confusing as it is, is pretty awesome for the things it introduces, including time travel. Other elements, like the battle stamps, the truly epic forms of everything in the fights, The ability to customize your costumes, etc. they blur together in a pretty big way, but again, there's not a thing wrong with that when both games rock like crystal candy.

Now, if you hadn't noticed, all of the games on this list have had some hard action at their core, and while I don't HATE calmer games, a lot of the time, so many are kinda dull to me in that with the exception of easter eggs of some sort, most farming sims, for example, just have you doing normal farm stuff with very few twists, may as well start a real farm in that case. My most chill entry is a game that tosses that to one side, asks you to grab a suck cannon, and start harvesting gelatinous monster poop.

Slime Rancher

While you don't spend a lot of time actually interacting with other characters, they just talk at you, the story of the game is pretty effective, the player character of Beatrix has left Earth for a simpler life of Slime Ranching, which entails the raising of alien crops, delightfully derpy and colorful chickens, and going all around in an attempt to farm new breeds of slime for their genetic material to sell off or trade-in for the creation of gadgets while being surrounded by a cast of interesting characters. It's all very wholesome family fun.

The game looks great, has great ideas, and is genuinely the best farming game I have ever played. @ me all you want.

The 80's are almost fetishized nowadays. Given all the property reboots, games that go for the vibe and aesthetic of the time, etc. It almost seems as though the eighties vibe train ain't gonna stop rolling any time soon. But we owe it to ourselves to remember the first big swipe of madcap neon-colored actiony B-movie bullshit and how mind-meltingly epic it was. Ladies, Gents, and whatever else, I present:

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Blood Dragon's story is relatively simple, you play Sargent Rex "Power" Colt (A name said in full so many times I thought his last name was "Powercolt" for the longest time), a former "Omega force" cyborg. Rex and his friend "Spider" were sent into a secret island base to investigate the supposed defection and treachery of their old commander, Ike Sloan. It turns out he has gone rogue and taken an army of "Mark 5" Omegaforce cyber-soldiers with him. What follows is a long story of betrayal, science fiction of the highest nonsensical level, comedy, and brilliantly cathartic action.

The collectibles range from data on animals, to research notes from a scientist, to literal VHS cassette tapes that have full descriptions of movies that I would legitimately watch if I could. "You may now kill the brides" is not a real film and I am angry for every day that that is true. Anyway, play Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, I dunno if it's on PS4 but it's one game I'd buy a new/old console for.

A lot of superhero games NEED to railroad you. Your goals MUST be to save the lives of the people and help the weak and all that. But one dev asked the simple question: "What if it didn't?" "What if the player chose how to use their power? What if the player could be as evil or as good as they damn well pleased?" One game gave you the powers of thunder and lightning and asked what you'd do with it. It's sequel asked you the same, but against more... interesting forces.

InFamous 2

InFamous 2 is a game about making choices, just like the first one, also just like the first one, it can have an effect on gameplay. That effect went from "What does this particular power do in this allignment?" To "Which new set of NEW powers would you like?" The forces of the last game went from “Three flavors of gun-toting whackos” To “Possibly an allegory for the Klan, Swamp monsters, and Ice-powered super soldiers.”

This was, and still is, the best game in the whole series, The powers felt distinct from anything else and still do, the story is solid as a rock, and the enemy types were still varied enough to be interesting, I miss the Reapers from the first game, but that's about it. Everything else was a massive step up. If you have something that can run it, play it.

Action is something I think we can all appreciate on some level. We can understand when it does or does not work, we can understand when we do or do not like how it feels when we are the ones partaking in it. EX: Any schlep can tell you when the weapons in your game lack impact, or when your character moves too slow for the game to be fun. The following game is something I can't say anything of the sort about. And it's kind of like Wolfenstein, when you have enemies this bad, who the hell cares how many you kill?

Doom 2016

Y'all are lying if you say you didn't expect this one. It's DOOM 2016. This game is made of hate and fuck. AND I LOVE IT. You move so fast, you may as well be half cheetah and half sports car. You slaughter the dregs of hell by the dozens and even the biggest, baddest things this game throws at you can be beaten with the starting pistol if you have the stones for it. It looks amazing graphically, the demons all look appropriately threatening, and even the Multiplayer is a great deal of fun in my book.

Something worth noting: The story presented by default is pretty barebones, but that's where supplementary material fills in the gaps, the difference between supplementary material in most games and supplementary material here is the material is till IN THE GAME. You're free to ignore most of the plot as it happens around you, and even interesting tidbits of the lore like how certain demons function. Not only are these things missable collectibles, prompting continued play to find them, they are also pretty interesting reads. So yeah, just about everything you could want in a sequel/remake, builds the on lore and gameplay very organically.

And here we are, the last game I'd put in this category. An entire decade, and here, we end on the last game that left such an impact I'd put it in my top ten. But first, let's talk about expectations and delivery: When you say a game is coming out, there are certain expectations you have for gameplay, EX: I say "Ratchet and Clank" and you expect a TPS with platforming elements and crazy guns. I say "Gears of War" and people expect something to do with lumbering about in big armor, dismembering things with a chainsaw gun and otherwise shooting them to paste. We might also expect changes to things, better graphics, innovations in grenade variety, something as that franchise goes on.

After the last game in this series was released, there were tons of people who felt let down and disappointed by it. Then they released the still somewhat disappointing special edition of it. They were both still fun, but neither really felt like the full next step in the series. After a failed reboot, they returned to the original story and the lot of us rejoiced. And when it finally came out? It was a step up in most, if not, all regards, to its predecessors. You know what this last one is. Please, give a warm round of applause to:

Devil May Cry 5

A game that was not only a return to form, but a major escalation in gameplay for one character, and a new style of gameplay all together by way of yet another new character. It didn’t exactly hurt that the story kicked ten kinds of ass and that the game looked spectacular in both the design of everything and the actual graphical fidelity.DMC 5 is, like DOOM, Like InFamous 2, Like [PROTOTYPE] 2, everything you want in a good sequel. It built very well on already solid foundations and it was generally just a fun, slightly goofy, massively stylish, and ultra badass ride. I recommend this, and all these games, to anyone.Good night everyone, have a great 2020. And the rest of the decade, for that matter.

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