Unthinkably, I
have returned to this blog! It has been… a while, eh? Anyway, I feel like
talking about nerdy stuff. So for the past few months I’ve been thinking about
video games. Well, okay, let’s face it: I’m always thinking about video games.
I do like to play them a lot, even if I don’t play a lot of them! And because
lists are always so enjoyable to make (at least for me, who is obsessed with
ordering things), I figured I’d make a list of my Top 10 favorite games of the
last decade, the 2010s! Why? Because I wanted to, so why not!
Now, some ground
rules. First of all, the games listed here will be those that came out between
the years 2011 to 2020. Why? Because that’s the actual 2010s of course! Decades
go from 1 to 10, not 0 to 9 (there wasn’t a year 0, after all), just as
centuries go from 1 to 100. I know that might seem counterintuitive, but that’s
math for ya! Another point: I’m only putting one game per series/franchise on
this list, for the sake of variety which I think makes it more enjoyable to go
through anyway. And finally, because this is The Internet and this bears
saying: this is purely my opinion and based mostly on my enjoyment of these games. My experience with them might have been different to yours,
and that’s okay! It’s perfectly fine if you don’t like some or all of these
games for one reason or another, but in the same vein it’s perfectly fine for
me to like them for my own personal reasons.
Right, now that
that’s out of the way, I’d like to begin by mentioning several games that I
haven’t gotten around to playing yet, but probably could have made the
list (based on what I know of them or my past experiences with their developers).
These include:
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
(2017)
- Hades (2020)
- God of War (2018)
-
Any of FromSoftware’s games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne,
Sekiro)
-
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)
- Cuphead (2017)
And of course, a
few honorable mentions for games I have played and did enjoy, but
for one reason or another didn’t quite crack my Top 10 (they probably could
make a Top 20, though):
Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018): I really
liked this game and its DLCs, and Spider-Man is my favorite superhero ever, and
Insomniac makes very good games (this one included). I just felt like there was
a certain something that was missing, something to give it that oomph. I
don’t know what that is exactly, though. The voice acting was top-notch though,
especially for Doc Ock, and Black Cat’s design is absolute perfection, and the
ending was executed excellently. The combat and traversal were also done well,
if nothing special as I had hoped it would be. I do sincerely wish the sequel manages
to capture whatever it was that I felt was missing from the original game (at
the time of writing this, I have not played the Miles Morales game).
Horizon Zero Dawn (2017): Ah, this game.
A good friend of mine loved this game and really wanted me to play it
and so I did. And you know what? It was wonderful, with a very unique take on
old tropes managing to make familiar plot points feel fresh. The gameplay was
satisfying too, feeling (in my opinion) like a simplified version of Monster
Hunter. And it also helped me reconnect with a good friend from university
as we used to play it at around the same times! It’s not without its flaws
though; some of the character writing rubbed me the wrong way and it just
didn’t quite give me that feeling which would’ve pushed it to my Top 10.
It does however make me super excited to explore the world more! A phenomenal
new IP with sky-high potential.
-
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory
(2017/2018): I’m a humongous fan of the Digimon mega-franchise, and
that includes its video games. The Cyber Sleuth games gave me some of
the best feelings playing a Digimon game I have ever felt, especially
the second game, Hacker's Memory. The writing is hilarious, the use of the meta-lore was
satisfying to a longtime fan, and the character designs are wonderful (even if
the fanservice is overused). It was missing one huge part for me though, and
that’s an actual trip to the actual Digital World itself! Most of the game is
spent in either the Real World or a manmade virtual space that acts as an
in-between dimension between the Real World and the Digital World and as I’ve
always enjoyed exploring the different games’ takes on the Digital World, this
was a sorely disappointing fact. Still, great games for Digimon fans
though!
-
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age
(2017/2019): Okay, so I played the Switch version, which came out in 2019
(which is why I listed the 2019 year) but turns out it came out in Japan all
the way back in 2017?! On the 3DS?! Wild. Anyway, the only reason why
this is an honorable mention is that at the time of writing, I haven’t yet
finished the game. But I am having so much fun with it, already loving it to
all its bits (and mine!), and whenever I get around to finishing the game it will almost definitely earn a
spot somewhere on the list. But as of right now, I can’t in good faith put it
on my Top 10.
Alright, with
the could-haves and the honorable mentions out of the way, let’s get cracking
with my actual List of My 10 Favorite Video Games Released Between the Years of 2011
and 2020! (boy, that sure doesn’t roll off the tongue very well, does it?)
10) Monster
Hunter: World (2018)
Right, you
remember how I said earlier that I enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn’s gameplay
because it felt reminiscent of Monster Hunter to me? Yeah, well, I am a
fan of this Capcom franchise and World was, at first, an odd
re-adjusting experience because it felt so new and, in some ways, unfamiliar to
me. But as I got more used to it, the more I found it to be incredibly
enjoyable and ultimately I really appreciated all the quality of life upgrades
they’ve implemented to the game. I loved the new biomes we got to see (my
favorite being the Coral Highlands), I am a big fan of the implementation of having
to track and research monsters and presenting them as active agents in their
respective environments (even if sometimes they can come across as
surface-level), and some of my favorite new monster designs come from this game
(the Anjanath and Legiana in particular stand out). Overall it was probably the
most fun I’ve had playing a Monster Hunter game (before this I had only
played the first game on the PS2 and Freedom Unite on the PSP). I did
have a terrible experience with the game at one point (damn desire censor!),
but I acknowledge it wasn’t really the game’s fault. Still, I was mad at it for
a few months and stopped playing during that time… which made the comeback more
exciting!
Speaking of
coming back, I play this game on and off and on and off, and it really works!
It’s such a nice and easy game to pick up and drop now and again, and if you
just wanted to play it for a short bit, you absolutely can! I realize that’s
true for basically all Monster Hunter games, but it’s still a plus for World!
As well, I found that this game is the perfect game to play while listening to
podcasts or even watching a non-demanding YouTube video, both of which are
activities I do more often than I care to have you realize. Since the game is
(perhaps oddly, for such an action-heavy game) not very demanding, I find it on
some level relaxing to just go in and bash some oversized monsters while
catching up on my favorite podcasts.
As a (really
big) bonus, this was the game that me and my two BFFs from university came to
play together. We had constantly agreed to play this game or that game
together, but we never did; for some reason Monster Hunter: World was
what we ended up playing together and we still do to this day! As someone who
generally plays offline single-player games, it’s an absolute blast of an
experience and I have this game to thank. So I had to put it on the list!
9) Gravity
Rush 2 (2017)
One word
describes how I feel about the Gravity Rush series: adore. As in, I
adore them so much. They’ve got so much charm and character to them that I
couldn’t help but adore them! Now they’re not perfect games, and it takes a
certain level of willing suspension of disbelief to just… accept the weirdness
of the world of Gravity Rush, but if you can do it like I was able to, I
think you’re in for a wild ride! Let’s talk about that most unique point
though: the gravity control system, which allows the player to traverse the
world in such a different (and dizzying!) way than one is probably used to from
other games! The way it works is basically it allows you to float mid-air and then control where you fall (at varying velocities), which I feel was a fantastic presentation of how going
zero-gravity can be disorienting for us regular folk, and I enjoyed every
second of it. The system controlled very smoothly for my tastes; I
never got frustrated at what had the potential to be very frustrating, and the
power upgrades you get in the second game made sense and only improved what was
already great in my opinion.
I’ve already
mentioned the world, which is bizarre and whimsical and definitely not for
people who like every fantastical aspect of the world explained to them. It’s
weird and it never really explains why it’s weird; you just gotta roll with it.
Then there are the characters, and really two merit special mention here:
Kat the protagonist (i.e. who you play as) and Raven, her best frenemy
rival figure. I tell ya, Kat is such a lovable airhead (she’s the ‘dumb blonde’
played charmingly straight) that I couldn’t help but… well, adore her. She’s an
airy character with a good soul and the kind of person I would shake my head at
for how innocent and naïve she can be at times, while also making me smile for
how moral she is. If she were a big beefy dude she would definitely be a himbo.
And Raven… boy, there are parts of the game where playing as a badass gravity
queen really woman-empowered me, and I’m a man! Those parts are especially
amplified with Raven, the cool and silent type to contrast Kat’s cheery
talkativeness, with moments between the two that just make me go, “Yass
girlfriend, slay queen slay!”
…I regret
nothing.
Anyway, I love these games, and the second game was one of those sequels that (to me)
felt like it took everything from the first game and made them bigger and, more
importantly, better. Like I said, the gameplay mechanics are tweaked and
improved upon in Gravity Rush 2, and the world itself is like three
times larger or something! I see it as: more to explore in a gravity-controlling game = an absolute win! How could it not crack my Top 10? Both of these
games are on the PS4, so if you have access to one you should totally give
them a go!
8) Crash
Team Racing: Nitro-fueled (2019)
Another
franchise I’ve been a long-time fan of is the Crash Bandicoot series,
specifically the first four games (i.e. the games made by the original
developer, Naughty Dog). When the first three games were remade for the
current-gen as the N. Sane Trilogy, I was very happy as I had missed those games so much; Crash
Bandicoot: Warped especially was a large part of my childhood gaming
experience. So was the kart racing spinoff Crash Team Racing, as I used
to play that a lot with my brother and late father and even my cousins. So you can guess at my excitement when
a remake was announced; it was through the roof because I had played and
absolutely loved the N. Sane Trilogy, and when Nitro-fueled
came out? Bro. How surprised I was that NF not only remade the original CTR
but also added all the tracks from the second racing game in the
franchise, Crash Nitro Kart! I never played that game as the only
non-Naughty Dog Crash game I had played was Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex on
the PS2, so this was like getting to re-experience one of my childhood
favorites alongside a brand-new game, all in one beautiful package!
And the finished
product was no slouch either! It controlled and sounded very, very well and
made me fall in love with CTR more than the original game did, because
now as an adult I actually understood how to be, yanno… good at the
game! Well, maybe not good, but at least decent. And seriously, I have this
game to thank for pushing me because not only were the developers for this
remake (Beenox, praise them!) very active in the community, but they put
challenges in the game that really made me push my own skills in order to meet
them. The biggest of these challenges were the ever-feared Dev Times, where you
have to attempt to beat the devs literally at their own game: the developers
put in their best times in the game and you can actually attempt to race them
to see if you can do better. And hoo boy, these are hard y’all. As a
frame of reference: most of them are only a few seconds off from the world
records. I actually haven’t beaten any of the dev times so far, but you need to
beat lesser challenges in order to unlock them first anyway and opening the prospect
of challenging the devs alone was an exhilarating experience that really stoked
the fires of healthy competition in me. I love it when games do that.
I would also be
remiss if I didn’t point out that for about a year or so, Beenox kept putting
out monthly new content, for free. Each month would come with a
brand-spankin’ new track (Beenox originals, you could say), some fun decorations,
and perhaps most importantly to long-time fans of the franchise: the addition
of new playable characters from all across the Crash franchise (and even
a few from its sister series, Spyro the Dragon)! That means that
whatever part of the franchise you were a fan of, there’s something in here to
please you, and I will always love it for that. Not to mention the absolute joy in the constant wave of speculation as to which character would be making their way in the next update, not unlike what the Super Smash Bros. fandom goes through on the regular. So yeah, Crash Team Racing:
Nitro-fueled is certainly my new gold standard for video game remakes, so I
knew it had to make this list.
7) Celeste
(2018)
If you’ve played
a lot of games, I’m sure you must’ve come across one or two that had a
noticeable positive impact on your mental health. For me, that game is Celeste.
Going into it I didn’t really know what I was getting into; all I knew about it
at the time was that it was a 2D platformer and one of the most beloved games
of its year. I got it on my Switch at one point and decided, hey, it’s been a
while since I played a 2D platformer; why not give this a go? It’ll be fun,
right?
Ow.
Celeste
lived up to its reputation of being a brutally difficult platformer, alright.
But with its brutality also came something I didn’t expect: a welcoming invite
to the challenge. See, the game is centered around the protagonist Madeline as she
tries to climb the imposing Mt. Celeste on a quest of proving a point to
herself and facing her own inner doubts and insecurities; the platforming comes
in through the act of climbing the mountain, which is such a wonderfully intuitive
way to incorporate gameplay into the story and its themes. Of course, you play
as Madeline trying to conquer this mad mountain, but in the process of all the
platforming, you – yes, you, the player – are being equally challenged.
At least I felt like it, and so in some way I felt like I was really in Madeline’s
shoes. Her failures were all mine. Her falls were all mine. Her struggles were
all mine. And at some point through the game, her uncertainties became mine.
Her fears became mine. Her doubts became mine.
And when we
reached Mt. Celeste’s peak together, shone upon by a rising sun, her victories
were all mine.
And that,
friends, is how this charming little game managed to positively impact my
mental health: it helped give me the strength to power through my own inner
demons. If Madeline can do it, why couldn’t I? After all, Madeline was me; it was me
who failed through all that platforming hell and at the end of it all, it was
me who succeeded. I never gave up no matter how difficult it got at times, and
it got maddeningly difficult. And I haven’t even played the epilogue yet! I’m
not that good, but hey, I want to. Much like Crash Team Racing:
Nitro-fueled, Celeste pushed me in all the right ways. And let’s not
tone down the cast of characters here either, for Madeline is a very lovable
little lass and I will not a hear a single slanderous word against my boy Theo
either. The music was energetic and at times frenetic, perhaps fitting in with
what is going on in the levels (or even in your head) at any given moment, and
I’m a sucker for those retro chirpy sounds the characters make when talking to
one another.
All in all, I never expected to have this little indie platformer
as my favorite game of 2018, especially when games like Monster Hunter, Digimon,
and Spider-Man were released in the same year. But… here we are. Thanks
a bunch, Celeste! (Screw your strawberries, though.)
6) Hollow
Knight (2017)
Speaking of indie
games, let’s get into one of my most beloved indie games of all time now!
Apparently I’m a glutton for difficult platformers, because if Celeste was
brutal, Hollow Knight was positive death. For real: there are so
many deaths in this game it literally throws you into a dark and depressing pit
of despair at one point. If you don’t know, Hollow Knight is a
classic-style Metroidvania in the miniscule world of insects, with some dark
fantasy elements and storytelling techniques not at all out of place in
something like Dark Souls, I'd imagine. Its visuals are downright
artistic and its music is simply soothing. Like, I listen to a lot of good music in
video games but there's just something special about HK’s soundtrack that
speaks to my soul, much in the same way Yoko Shimomura’s compositions do. The theme tune that plays over the main menu? You might as well just make me cry in
lonely silence.
Unlike Celeste,
I knew I wanted to get into Hollow Knight. I had heard a lot
about it, seen still images, and knew I would love it. But I didn’t quite so
much fall in love as I was teleported instantly down, because this game and I?
We hit it off right away. To showcase how much I loved it: I got the Voidheart edition of the game for
free on my PS4 courtesy of the PS Plus program (thanks, Sony!), and before I had even
finished my first playthrough I felt immense guilt for not having paid any
money towards having this game. So now I plan on buying a digital copy for my
Switch (oh, also I bought the soundtrack on Steam. I never buy video game soundtracks!) just to repent for my sin because HOLY KNIGHT does this game deserve all of that,
and more. Speaking of my first playthrough, the first few hours gave me that
special feeling great games give you plenty of: I don’t want to sleep, I want
to play more of this game. Seriously, HK did my already-broken sleep
schedule no favors because it really put me in that mindset of ‘just one more
level’. Well, the game didn’t really have levels, but the world was just so
positively immense and there were so many damn secrets everywhere that I
couldn’t put it down. I find that as you grow up, fewer and fewer games make
you feel like that, so I am extremely thankful to HK for keeping my
faith in video games alive.
Also, the story
and just the general writing for this game is so wonderfully intriguing. And
sad. Well, maybe ‘bittersweet’ is a more apt description because you could find
happiness here and there, but there is a pervasive sense of loss and melancholy
everywhere that you can’t help but feel sad for these little bug-eyed buggies.
Literal buggies, some cuter than others and some creepier. Way creepier. At the
same time, the game knows when to throw some humor at you (and not just dark
humor!) so that it never falls too far into that pit. And the combat gets so
incredibly tough and tiring at times that I have raged so much at this game when
I’m playing it normally, the same level of rage that I normally reserve for
when I’m doing stupidly hard challenges in other games. Yyyyyeah. But don’t let
that deter you from one of the best games of the decade; if nothing else, give
it a go for the story, visuals, and music!
5) Pokémon
Sun/Pokémon Moon (2016)
Now we’re
getting to some old favorites. If two pop culture franchises define me as a
person, one would be Digimon as I mentioned previously. Pokémon
is the other one. Yes, as it turns out you can be an equally-devoted fan
of both franchises, surprise! Anyway, Pokémon is my number one video
game franchise of all time – the core series is, anyway – so of course one (set) of
them had to make an appearance here somewhere and it was a relative no-brainer
to pick which one: Sun/Moon. If you’re a gamer and somehow aren’t
aware of how Pokémon games work: these are basically the same game. It’s
not two different games in the same spot, even if it is one game for the price
of two…
Where was I?
Right, Pokémon. Lemme tell ya: my favorite Pokémon games of all
time are the Gen III games, Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. In fact
those games are some of my all-time favorite games, period; they would
definitely appear on my Top 10 Games of All Time list. While SM probably
wouldn’t, they did do the unthinkable: come very close to toppling RSE
as my favorite Pokémon games while I was going through my first
playthrough of Pokémon Sun. And that’s no mean feat as RSE has
the added advantage of nostalgia, being a major part of my childhood. The feeling
did eventually dissipate and SM has a major flaw in that infamously slow
first hour or so of the game, but for it to manage to even give me feelings of
going through RSE for the first time again, that alone lands it on
my list. To me, as someone who overthinks Pokémon on a regular basis, SM
stands out as the game where Game Freak (the developer for the core
series Pokémon games) absolutely knew what they wanted to do, and did
it. Whether or not they did it well is for you to decide;
for me, well I think you know the answer to that.
Another thing I
loved about SM was its unique little attempt at breaking away from
formula… while also sticking to the formula? It’s kinda weird; Game Freak does
have a bit of a history of doing that (see: Black/White’s design
principle) but here it worked well; they struck a fun balance between a feeling
of familiarity and of freshness. I also loved the Alola region the games were
set in; I’m from the tropics so is it any surprise my two favorite Pokémon
games are the ones set in tropical island settings? Then there’s also the Pokémon
designs themselves, which in my opinion is an improvement from their immediate
predecessors XY and fit very well with Alola’s general aesthetics
(without being overly-stereotypical). And the designs for the Trainers are
almost iconic (especially the likes of Kukui, Mallow, Guzma, and, oh yeah,
Lusamine); sure, their successors Sword/Shield kinda
outdid Sun/Moon in that area, but SM’s Trainer designs are
still leagues above XY’s in my opinion. Ultimately, Pokémon Sun/Moon
gave me damn near everything I wanted from a new core series Pokémon game, so it’s a
shoe-in for the list.
4) The
Last of Us: Part II (2020)
Now we come to
inarguably the most controversial entry on the list, because how dare I…
put something from 2020 on a list of the best games of the 2010s?! If you are
one of the people who currently think that, I kindly point you the ground rules
we established earlier.
Okay, in all
seriousness: Part II? That dumpster fire of a game? Why, yes actually.
We all know how divisive this game was and I get it, for the most part I get
why it would divide people and the fanbase (heck, even Naughty Dog themselves
expected it to!), and, well, I am on the part that loved it. Absolutely LOVED
it, way more than the first game. I actually really liked The Last of Us,
but I didn’t love it for one reason or another. Part II
absolutely did it for me, exactly because of the aforementioned
controversial narrative decisions (which I won’t spoil here in case you don’t
know what they are and you want to experience them for yourself). I loved that Part
II took risks, went in directions that angered people, and challenged you
the player to consider uncomfortable positions that you might not have
otherwise taken because you’re suuuuuch a good person, right?
Naw, The Last
of Us: Part II was an extremely immersive experience in how
non-black-and-white the world is. Never was, never will be. And discomfort
really was the aim of the game, because if you weren’t feeling some level of discomfort
while playing through the game then you weren’t immersing yourself at all in
the story and the characters. And those two really shone for me here as
having both be significantly better than in the first game. The story here is a
lot less straightforward, even in its presentation; it’s not just “get from
point A to point B to point C to point D” that the first game’s plot
unfortunately boiled down to. And the characters are way
greyer here (for the most part; I'm not a
fan of the generic “doomsday cult” trope in Part II unfortunately) than in The Last of Us. Don't get me wrong, they were always grey but I feel like the first game didn’t do
much to establish that beyond some lip-service here and there with characters
like Tess. Part II made it absolutely clear how grey these people are,
this world is, and I appreciated the hell out of it.
Now, don’t get
me wrong: Part II isn’t without its faults. I already mentioned the
doomsday cult thing, and there are some other story decisions that I would’ve
changed or even outright cut (such as that long and unnecessary last chapter).
But this isn’t meant to be an in-depth review of The Last of Us: Part II;
I’m not diving in to what I consider to be its strengths and flaws. Instead,
I’m telling you why I loved it so much: Part II basically took
everything The Last of Us did (story-wise and gameplay-wise) and amped
it all the way hell up, its good and bad both, without ever retreading the same
paths as the first game. And that is absolutely what a sequel should do.
3) Batman:
Arkham City (2011)
We go from the
very end of the decade to the very beginning of the decade. Again, read
up on the ground rules if that confuses you. Anyway, where Marvel’s
Spider-Man couldn’t quite make the cut, the Batman: Arkham series
absolutely can, and does. Honestly I could put all three games here (sans Origins
since it wasn’t made by Rocksteady), but I decided to just go with the one that
is downright my favorite of the series, City. Weirdly, I didn’t love Asylum
as much as the fandom seemed to when it first came out; maybe it’s because I
played it way later on the PS4? The remastered versions of both Asylum
and City were what I played, and Asylum kinda fell into the same
boat as Spider-Man where it was good, and I had a great time with it,
but it felt like it was missing a certain something I couldn’t quite put my
finger on. Knight wasn’t, and in some aspects I think Knight was
better than Asylum (while in other aspects I think Asylum was
better than Knight), but in my opinion there’s very little that either
of them did that City did not straight-up do better.
Batman:
Arkham City is pretty much everything I wanted out of a comic book
superhero game. Fantastic combat. Great use of comics lore. Phenomenal voice
talent. Awesome visual presentation. It scratched that itch I felt Asylum
juuuuust missed the mark on, and it scratched it hard and good. It was the
perfect length, and it was perfectly challenging. Loved the greater roster of villains
utilized here (it’s Batman; he’s got the best-known rogues gallery in pop culture!),
including both the A-listers (like The Penguin, Mr. Freeze, and Ra’s al-Ghul) and the lesser-knowns
(like Calendar Man, the Mad Hatter, and, oh yeah, Professor Hugo freakin' Strange!). Speaking
of, I really enjoyed the back-and-forth between the Batman and Catwoman
segments; that was something I felt was sorely missing from Knight. Oh,
and this game had some of the best boss battles in all of gaming for me,
especially with the aforementioned A-listers and the… you know, final boss.
While on the
subject, here’s the real kicker: I was actually spoiled on the big twist. Well,
no, I wasn’t, but I was spoiled on the very ending after said big
twist was over and done with. And if you know me, you know I despise
spoilers with my very being. They truly ruin experiences for me. Yeah, I’m that
guy; beat it! But anyway, despite having the end spoiled for me, I still
loved Arkham City from beginning to end, without stop. That's a statement in and of itself! There was nary a
low point for me, at least any that I could remember, and trying to think of
any is kind of a chore. And I don’t do well with chores. I love this game so
much that in all honesty, it has a fair shot at cracking my Top 10 Games of All
Time. Maybe? Maybe not? I’m not quite sure, but at least it’s in consideration
(it would definitely make the honorable mentions if nothing else), and that’s
gotta be worth something, right?
2) Dragon
Age: Inquisition (2014)
If Batman:
Arkham City either does or does not make the cut of my all-time Top 10, Dragon
Age: Inquisition absolutely does. And spoiler alert: so does the next
game, duh. But setting that aside for now, Dragon Age. I actually got
into the series because one of my best friends from university insisted I play
it, and he even let me play Origins and II on his PS3, which was
awfully kind of him! It was my first Western RPG (yes yes, I had never played The
Elder Scrolls or Diablo or Warcraft or whatever before Dragon
Age) and it was enjoyable! Like, those first two games didn’t blow my mind or
anything, but I had a blast nonetheless (yes, even with the oft-maligned Dragon
Age II) and I was proper excited for the third game. Which had come out by
the time I started playing Dragon Age anyway, but I bought my own copy
as I had my own PS4. I didn’t get around to playing it until later though, much
to the consternation of my pal.
Well guess what?
Damn Michael, he was right all along.
Dragon Age:
Inquisition was everything I never knew I wanted from an epic fantasy RPG.
From its gripping story, to its in-depth exploration of the sociopolitics, to
its large cast of wacky and lovable characters, to its constantly-entertaining
sidequests, to its frankly intriguing world and magic usage, and just
everything else and in-between. Oh yeah, and dragons. Looooots of dragons. BioWare’s
famous in-game choices you can (and have to) make are back in full force, both
from previous games as well as moving forward and I’ll be damned if I say I’m
not excited to see the ramifications of my choices in this game. Ugh, is there
anything I can’t gush about when it comes to Inquisition?
Probably not, honestly. Oh yeah, let’s not forget that Thedas is so much nicer
to look at now that there isn’t a world-consuming demonic horde of deathness
viewed through a filter best described as tea having pissed in itself and left
to stew for a fortnight. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Dragon Age: Origins!
If I had to pick my favorite location, hands down it would be The Emerald
Graves simply for how downright luscious it is!
Speaking of
favorites, my favorite video game character actually comes from my number one
favorite game of all time. My second favorite video game character? Comes from
this game, and I’m not gonna tell you who it is or why because it’s a spoiler,
but uh… how about that ending though, huh? And those DLCs? Wonderful, wonderful
DLCs! All three were so different and yet all so worth the money. I
spent like 140 hours or something on Dragon Age: Inquisition and I would
happily, happily spend five times that just replaying it over and over
through different scenarios and different combinations of choices. At the very least I
gotta replay it once to make… the other choice. And take on different lovers,
ofc.
And how about
that ending, huh?
1) Persona
5 (2016/2017)
I’ll just come
right out and say it: this is my number two favorite video game of all time.
(If you’re
wondering why I put two years of release, it’s because the Japanese release was
in 2016 while the worldwide release was in 2017. Also, the Royal version
would almost definitely replace it here based on what I’ve heard, but since I
haven’t actually played Persona 5 Royal I’ll just put the vanilla game
here).
What can I say
about Persona 5 that will adequately explain to you why this game is
near-untouchable in its spot… Well, for one thing, it is the one game, the only
video game ever made that felt like it was tailor-made for me. Obviously it
wasn’t, but between:
- its primary color motif being red (my favorite color),
- its
player character being a tall bespectacled dude with messy black hair (basically me),
- a key protagonist being a black cat (cats being my favorite animals),
- a key location being a café (I am a regular café-goer),
- its
soundtrack being heavy on funk (one of my favorite genres),
- its central use of
the phantom thief trope (a staple favorite of mine),
- its central use of the
trickster archetype (a staple favorite of mine),
- its central use of cognitive
science (did you know I am a cognitive linguist?),
- Makoto Niijima,
- and, oh
yeah, having the only plot twist I managed to figure out before its reveal play
out ON MY BIRTHDATE (as in, the 22nd of August in-game),
Yeah, this game
was made for me.
Much like Monster
Hunter and Crash Bandicoot, I have long been a massive fan of the Persona
series. For a considerable amount of time, Persona 4 actually occupied the position of my
number two favorite game of all time, but… well, it’s been booted off now. Sorry
P4. If I could have multiple games from the same series than P5
would be number two and P4 would be number three, or at least tied for
the number three spot. Relevant for this list however is this: in my honest
opinion, Persona 5 is better than Persona 4, which is better than
Persona 3, which is better than like 95% of JRPGs ever made. You can
disagree, and that’s absolutely fine, but that is my truthful opinion. Persona
5 is that good.
Now, here’s the
weird part: you know how I said I couldn’t really think of criticisms for Batman:
Arkham City and Dragon Age: Inquisition? I actually can for Persona
5. In some aspects I admit that P4 did certain things better than P5,
and P3 also did certain other things better than P5. So in a way,
P5 is to me more criticize-able than the two games underneath it on this
list. So then, why does this game outrank them?
Well that’s the
wrong question. The correct question would be: how high were Persona 5’s
highs that it outshone its more-noticeable lows to such a degree over Arkham
City and Inquisition’s unnoticeable lows?
The answer is:
unthinkably.
