I’ve played a lot of games over the last 10 years, but which ones came out on top? These are my personal picks for the top 10 games of the decade! Happy new year!
10. ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK began development in 2015 and pioneered Studio Wildcard’s reputation of slightly rough early access launches. It was heavily criticised for its bad optimisation, toxic community, and the $60 price-tag. I think it’s pretty easy to look past these and discover one of the best games released over the past 10 years. Once you’re immersed in one of ARK’s several worlds, the optimisation will be the least of your worries. Punch some dilos, make a house, then work your way up the food chain.
I know a lot of frustration for people comes from PVP servers, as it does become a full-time job just tending to your base, tribe and dinos. But – and I’m gonna say it – you really don’t have to adjust yourself to this playstyle. Just grab a few friends and play on a PVE server to avoid the base raids and ‘toxic players’, and wait until those glorious Steam sales roll around to convince everyone else you know to play this addictive game.
To me, the studio’s commitment to adding high-quality new creatures with different uses and abilities was baffling. It’s rare for so much content to be put out for free nowadays (all creatures are available even if you don’t pay for the extra DLC – I don’t think many acknowledge this!), and they even gave overhauls to several of the lower-quality creatures. And the creatures themselves aren’t even the half of it, there’s also an amazing modding community, incredibly thorough building system, and great potential for combat. Their foray into competitive play may have missed the mark, but spending just a short amount of time in multiplayer really opens your eyes to a living world of players.
Summarised? Tame dinosaurs, give them armour, die a lot.
9. Pokémon GO
The summer of ’16 was that of pure bliss. Everyone was on their phones playing Pokémon GO, everyone was happy. Nothing was wrong at all. That’s right, absolutely nothing. I can’t think of one bad thing that happened because of this game.
With all jokes aside, Pokémon GO cemented itself as a fantastically bonkers cultural phenomenon. Walking around my (usually zombified) small town was like walking around the bustling streets of New York City. Everyone was out. You could go out at 1am to catch a Dratini and instead of getting kidnapped, drugged, or murdered, you’d find a group of trainers trying to catch one too. It became appropriate to go up to a total stranger and ask ‘What team are you on?’ without looking like you’re questioning someone’s sexuality. ‘Hey, mum, I’m going out to catch a Pokémon!’ was an ordinary thing to say. My headmaster even brought it up in an assembly just to praise Team Mystic.
Although many people have forgotten how great this game is, the community is still alive and with new events, battles, trading, and so many more features, Niantic’s labour of love continues to be an absolute blast. Yes, that’s my way of saying that I’m still very much addicted and you should be too! Screw the summer of ’69, it’s all about the summer of ’16.
Summarised? The closest we’ve been to world peace.
8. Overwatch
I bought Overwatch on launch, simply because I saw the amount of hype and wanted to check it out. I knew next to nothing, I played with a trackpad, only played vs. AI, and one-tricked my way through the game as Reaper. Only two of those things have changed, take a guess as to which.
Overwatch was a great introduction into team-based shooters and was creative with how it did so. The tutorial gave you the low-down on the basic Soldier: 76, then allowed you to discover your favourite characters and how to play them. Being able to decide your own playstyle and preference of hero allowed room for so much choice and decision, changing the game up every time, an element which Overwatch 2 will build upon. If you couldn’t aim, there’d be a ton of heroes you could still play. If you liked to stay back rather than dive in, there’d still be a ton of options. If you exclusively played Japanese dragon brothers, there are two options for you and I implore you to PLEASE EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS.
But despite the freedom of choice and more heroes being added, it completely lost its charm. Overwatch became focused around picking certain heroes to instantly win, or not being able to pick certain heroes because they were deemed bad. Yes, I’m salty about Symmetra’s changes, can you tell? I played this game almost every night for 3 years but fell out of love with it because it became a game of adhering to the current meta and playing the same heroes, rather than exploiting the full roster in play. I still love the memes, though.
Summarised? From hero to zero to hero to zero to hero to zero.
7. World of Warcraft: Legion
It’s generally agreed upon that Warlords of Draenor was an infuriatingly disappointing drop in quality after Mists of Pandaria, but boy, did they learn from their mistakes in Legion. It became my lifeblood. It just did a lot of things so well. Classes felt refreshing and powerful to play, the story was captivating, raids and dungeons were challenging and rewarding, the environment was beautiful.
I started playing World of Warcraft in 2012, so I’ve played through the latter half of the game’s life so far. Despite that, I’m still a terrible filthy casual. There were a plethora of classes I played during this expansion, and all of them just felt so powerful. I was a god. Unstoppable. Catch me taking selfies with bosses, all for the ‘gram.
But the biggest factor that kept me subscribed was the sense of community, which is arguably one of the most important features in an MMORPG. I met people who are now close friends, just by running quests and dungeons, or socialising with guilds (shoutout to my pals at Fisherman Friends). The people are what make this game, and they were so many wacky and wonderful players about.
Summarised? I felt like a God. A God with friends.
6. Rimworld
I was convinced to play Rimworld by someone in my aforementioned WoW guild, but I wasn’t warned that the community was… unique. One that cowers in the face of the Red Cross. This is a game where you can steal prisoner’s organs, harvest their flesh, then make hats out of it– maybe I should note that this isn’t what made it one of my games of the decade.
The amount of options and events that can happen in this game is, to me, what makes it amazing. I love the variety and replayability – you get to create your own narrative and story every single time. It’s something that I think very few games achieve well, but Rimworld smashes it out of the park. Whether you want to become a group of travelling nomads or create a spaceship-building fort, maybe just create an ultra-deadly situation to see who toughs it out, there’s something for everyone to find and create a story out of. And obviously, human flesh cowboy hats.
Summarised? Violate the Geneva Conventions without getting in trouble.
5. Stardew Valley
There’s something very pure and comforting about games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. Maybe it’s obvious, but I do love a sense of community and social interaction in games, whether it’s real-life like Pokémon Go, or in-game like WoW – but sometimes, it’s simulated like Stardew Valley. The town is so thoroughly lived in and feels like, if you weren’t there, it would still keep on goin’. I’m sick of playing the protagonist, I want to be a tiny village farmer dammit!! I know I come from the West Country, but I’m as far removed from ‘oo-arr’ life as I could be. Yes, escaped cows have shut down roads, my best friend’s an equestrian, and my grandad is an almond farmer, but I swear I’m not oo-arr.
And if it’s not social interaction that I enjoy, it’s options. Rimworld, Overwatch, ARK, Sword & Shield, they all had some kind of customisation or choice. Stardew lets me choose my crops, my house decorations, my character, who I marry, my pet, whether to treasure community or capitalism. You can’t get tired of it because, no matter how much you play, there’s always something you can choose to do. I’ve gone heavy into the farming and fishing, but then equally into combat, but also trying to befriend everyone. You can always choose what you feel like doing, even if it’s bewitching your children into non-existence.
Summarised? Living the oo-arr life I could’ve been.
4. Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag
I feel no shame in confessing that Black Flag was the first game to make me cry, just call me DUNGEON BAWLR. The ‘Parting Glass’ scene at the end is really what set it off, watching the brief memory of characters you’ve grown so attached to (and equally, the main character has) and then lost was a perfect ending. It was gritty and, besides the fantasy of the observatory and the whole Animus thing (yikes), grounded. Reward and consequence exist in reality, and Black Flag reflects that.
Not only that, but it broke the trend of Assassins that stuck diligently to their creed and, instead, watched a witty privateer bend and break the rules. It was refreshing to see in a series that had often been insulted for its lack of originality. Leaving behind a ‘past life’, so to speak, for both Edward Kenway and the franchise in general really launched this game’s success, changing everything that needed to be changed and staying faithful to what makes an Assassin’s game. I think what I’m really trying to say is that maybe we should go back to being pirates? See you in Nassau.
Summarised? I no longer feel like a God and all my friends are dead.
3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
I have bought Skyrim three separate times, mainly because I am the worst at deciding what platform I want a game on, but also because the game is so good I want to play it on everything. It was one of the first major titles I played of the decade and I know that isn’t exactly an original experience, but for me, it was possibly the first completely open-world game I ever played. It felt like a real adventure – and still does.
This decade did worldbuilding so well, partially due to improvements in technology capabilities. But Skyrim was one of the first to make use of that, with a huge, beautiful open-world.
If I titled it a ‘high fantasy Stardew Valley’, would that make sense? It’s lived in, it carries on without you, you can choose who to marry. Why have I placed Skyrim higher, you ask? Well, you can’t marry the beloved Scouts-Many-Marshes in Stardew.
Summarised? Kill dragons, marry a lizard, find the irony.
2. Minecraft
I’ve easily spent the most hours in Minecraft out of any game I own, I’ll even admit that I’ve played it recently. Minecraft stands the test of time by having such an active modding community and, without it, I’m sure the game would’ve lost popularity. It helps that the developers are far more active nowadays, I was shocked revisiting it after almost 5 years – there’s so much to actually do now. Perhaps it’s also because I was perfectly content with the free online Minecraft Classic when I was 9, which is a hell of a comparison to the latest snapshots.
It hits the appeal of LEGO by offering infinite creation – both unmodded and modded. And you don’t have to be a master at coding or developing to get your ideas out there, there’s so many kids out there getting into creating narratives or new games just because of their love for Minecraft.
Summarised? When they say create anything, they mean it.
1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
I was very late to the game with BotW, only getting it in July ’19. It’s one of my favourite franchises, with Twilight Princess being my favourite game of all time, I was apprehensive that I wouldn’t like it. The devs drilled in the fact that they were straying from Zelda stereotypes, which instilled a great, great fear within me. How would they know what they should change? What they should keep? Well, they did know. Completely. They mastered every element that needed improving, removed every element that wasn’t necessary, and introduced a host of wonderful features.
Again, it catches on this list’s trend of different options and playstyles. If you want to complete all the shrines, Koroks, quests, minigames… you can. There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said in the millions of reviews out there, but if you haven’t played it yet, you’re missing out.
Summarised? Save the princess, but only after completing every side quest and shrine.
There’s still so many games from the decade that I haven’t yet played – but I plan on it! What were your picks for game of the decade? Let me know!
