Board 8 > Para's top 100 games of the decade, 2010-2019

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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 5:44:39 AM
#1:


(TL;DR: Felt like making a list; not super important to me if anyone finds it interesting, but I figure some people like reading about games other people like; I'm mostly doing it for my own sake, and you're welcome to come along with me)

At the end of 2009, I was at probably the lowest point in my gaming career. 2008-2009 had been a dark period for me; the current generation of consoles felt like they were leaving me behind, the indie revolution had not gotten fully underway, and I was starting to wonder if I was starting to outgrow gaming a bit, or if they were outgrowing me, somehow. There were still a few things I looked forward to playing but they were growing fewer and further between.

My fears turned out to be for nothing. The 2010's have been an incredible decade for me; they completely revitalized my interest in the current state of games, and have possibly been my favorite decade of games ever. I played hundreds of games, and deeply enjoyed well more than 100 of them. So I am writing a list! It's a list of my 100 favorite games released from 2010-2019 that I played during the years of 2010-2019.

Please understand that I am not creating this list because I think my opinions are terribly interesting or that anyone should put much stock into them. Quite otherwise! I'm burdened with the knowledge that there's like, millions of games released this decade that I might possibly have enjoyed, if only I set time aside for them, or worse, if only I knew about them. This list is not even remotely a definitive attempt to crown the best 100 games of the decade - it isn't even definitive *for myself*, because I know I missed playing some games that definitely would have made this list, and if I write this list a couple years in the future it will look different as I add 10's games to it, or complete ones that are already on it that I haven't finished yet.

This list is two things:

1) A comprehensive list of my favorite 100 gaming experiences, of games released during the 10's, that I played during the 10's. Now that it is January 1, 2020, I have decided to completely cut this list off. It is done; no games I play after this shall be eligible. If I don't set this stipulation, then I'd never finish the list. What's done is done now - if I didn't play the game during the 10's, it ain't on this list, whether or not the reason I didn't play the game is stupid or not. This will do away with the paralysis I have of creating a list when I feel like there's good games I haven't played that I need to play before I can make my list.

2) A cry for help. I am afflicted with list-making disorder, as are many of you here. I have a demon inside of me, and this demon is absolutely obsessed with taking groups of things it has seen and ranking them in an orderly fashion from 1 to whenever it gets tired. I sometimes write these lists only for myself, out of sheer boredom. I am going to share this one so that I'm no longer shouting into the void; while I don't think my list is particularly fascinating, I feel like I have enough friends and acquaintances here who will give it a look over and help share the burden of my list madness by giving me an audience.

Basically, I thought it'd be fun to talk about my favorite games of the last ten years, so here I am. Talk about them with me! I encourage everyone to do this. Making lists and talking about them is a fun activity. I might be fucking crazy and haunted by a list demon.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 5:45:00 AM
#2:


(TL;DR: I'M A FUCKING NINTENDO SHILL AND I HATE STUFF THAT'S NOT AN INDIE GAME AND IS TOO COMPLICATED AND INVOLVED FOR MY STUPID BRAIN)

(WARNING, TOO MANY WORDS INCOMING, SKIP THIS PART, IT WAS A MISTAKE)

Few things before I get rolling on this thing:

About me. I am the epitome of what you would get if you plucked someone straight out of 1995, dumped them into 2020, and told them to figure out their gaming tastes in a world that left them behind 25 years ago. I largely gravitate to Nintendo, the gaming company of my childhood, and weird indie shit that I can buy for 5 dollars on Steam.

I do not own a PS3, PS4, or Xbox One. Whoops! I realize that this means there's a lot of really, really good games that I simply have not played, and I regret that greatly. I just don't really have the money to put into getting a PS4 right now, and even if I did, I'd also have to have the money to buy games for it, and based on what I know my gaming habits to be, it doesn't seem like a great investment. Maybe next decade I will be more on top of things, but for now, representation from these consoles will be low.

This does mean, as a general rule, I don't really "do" your typical AAA titles. Aside from the fact that they tend to cost 60 dollars, I don't really know why this is. I think that the huge, epic adventures and dark, realistically modeled worlds just don't really interest me much - I don't manage to maintain the attention span for them, and they don't really absorb me into their worlds. I have exceptions, but they're few and far between.

Two examples of major releases this decade that I just didn't vibe with, and didn't show up on my list - Dark Souls and Skyrim. I really wanted to like Dark Souls, and I really admire so many things about the game's design; I like the way the world is designed, I like how challenging it is, I like the blend of combat and RPG elements. Were I writing an article for the internet about the best games of the 10's, Dark Souls is on it. But I just didn't really like it on a personal level - the cold atmosphere and muted colors of the world were a turnoff, and the character-action style of gameplay just wasn't really my thing, I couldn't beat one of the bosses early on and I gave up. Same for Skyrim - I really tried to like it, I loved the idea of having this open world adventure where I could go all sorts of places, but I just couldn't really get hooked on it, and I couldn't tell you why. This should give you a kind of idea of the games I tend to avoid - the Fallouts, Assassin's Creeds, and Grand Theft Autos of the world do not appear on this list. Again, there are exceptions.

Anyway, that's just basically a bunch of words to excuse why I didn't play a lot of the most popular games this decade and instead played some weird indie shit. Like, just so we're clear, here's the distribution of games based on the console I most played them on:

PC: 60
3DS: 17
Switch: 6
Wii U: 5
DS: 3
Wii: 2
Xbox 360: 2
Vita: 2
Android: 1
PS3: 1
PS4: 1

lol

(I really wish I could have added 'Arcade' to this list, but the two arcade games I liked enough to add to this list, Jubeat and The Bishi*Bashi (look it up), both came out in Japan in 2009. Damnit.)

Stuff that's well-represented on this list:

- Games that are cute and colorful. I really like cute shit. The more fun and optimistic the game's tone, and the more colorful and stylized its visuals, the more likely I am to be drawn into it. The vast majority of games on my list are vibrant and pleasant - I like to come out of a game feeling warm inside instead of feeling like I need a shower.

- Puzzle/strategy games. Good lord, I played a lot of puzzle games I really loved in the 2010's! I had no idea I liked puzzle games that much, but there were a hell of a lot of really good ones.

- Story games. Although visual novels and highly narrative adventure games have been around for a long time, I feel like the 10's have broken a lot of new ground in ways to tell interesting stories. I don't care if a game has minimal gameplay - as long as it uses its medium in a interesting way to show me something cool, whatever it is, I'm here for it.

- Platformers. I love a good platformer. I have since the 80's. My love of platformers will never die.

- Roguelites. If I am known for anything, this is probably the thing I'm known for I guess? I like games that have a good challenge, and I love games that change every time you play them for a good dose of replayability. This genre has basically come into existence in this decade, and I find that losing your entire run if you die really ups the stakes, which encourages good play.

- RPGs, sort of? Weird ones though. I don't really play the big 'prestige' JRPGs like your FF's and KH's. I played a bit of DQXI but didn't get far enough into it to make a judgment. There's a couple of Tales games I should have played but didn't get around to. There's still some RPGish things on this list though.

- Nintendo. I mean, it's not by accident. I've loved Nintendo's franchises since I was a kid, and they're the one prestige game publisher that still frequently produces the kind of stuff that I like.

- Couch co-op/multiplayer. Love playing stuff with friends, especially when it's the same room. This tends to lend itself to a lot of memorable gaming experiences.

- Retro shit. Take me back to 1995. I want to live there.

- Games with soundtracks that absolutely rip. I will keep coming back to a game for music alone.

Stuff that's not well-represented on this list:

- Games that are dark and bleak. There's a few on the list, but for the most part I don't really go for this - it doesn't really keep me in the mood to keep playing.

- Games with realistic, non-stylized visuals. Just not super interested. Again, I'm a 1995 kid here, I have sort of a set idea in my head of what a game "looks" like, fair or not, and the more realistic a game gets, the less I tend to get absorbed it.

- Prestige AAA franchises, unless it's Nintendo. Like I stated above, I just don't really do 'em. Even if they're on PC, my PC is kind of garbage so I can't run them anyway. I really wanted to play The Witcher 3 since it's on sale for cheap right now, but I don't have enough RAM.

- Character-action, fighting, racing, real-time strategy. Just some genres that usually fall out of my purview. It's cool if they're your bag!

- FPSes. I actually like FPSes, but I haven't played that many this year that made the cut.

- Online games, especially MMOs. To say that I don't have the time for them would be a lie, it's more like I don't have the attention span and the emotional energy for t
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 5:59:45 AM
#3:


(YOU CAN START READING AGAIN)

Criteria for making the list:

- Only games released from 2010-2019. I went by release date in the US if there was one, release date in original country if otherwise, I'm pretty sure. If I fucked up somewhere and a game really came out in 2009, WHOOPS

- Early access and otherwise unfinished games I took on a case by case basis. In most cases, I just counted them as being games of the 10's, because I've already played them pretty exhaustively and they're mostly finished. There are a couple I banked for the 20's though. (Hi, Noita, I look forward to checking you out in 2020)

- I didn't finish most of these, but I played or experienced them enough to be able to talk about them.

- No ports. Full remakes ok. Again, case by case basis.

- Visual novels are games. The only type of game I could think of that I didn't consider appropriate for this list was video games that are reproductions of board games - those would go on a list of board games.

- I REALLY LIKED every game on this list a lot. I feel that's worth mentioning - I didn't have to stretch myself thin to get to 100. I had to cut some games I really enjoyed.

Uhh I think that's it.

PARA'S TOP WHATEVER GAMES THAT HE REALLY WISHED HE PLAYED BUT DIDN'T GET AROUND TO FOR VARIOUS REASONS

Super Mario Odyssey
Return of the Obra Dinn
Pyre
Transistor
What Remains of Edith Finch
The Talos Principle
Ori and the Blind Forest
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom
AI: The Somnium Files
Outer Wilds
Disco Elysium

Fuck. I'm really still upset about not getting around to SMO - see, the thing is, we OWN the game, but at some point, it got lost by a 10 year old in a couch cushion somewhere or something, and it has yet to turn up. SOMEDAY I'll play it. Based on what I've heard it would probably be in the top 20 of my list, if not higher. But it is 2020, and I did not play Super Mario Odyssey in the 10's, and I cannot go back in time and prevent the game from being lost inside a couch cushion.

I just bought Obra Dinn. I'll get to it in 2020. I did not get to it in 2019.

I tried to play Pyre. It has a talking dog with a moustache, so I wanted to. My computer did not want to. So I didn't. That is the story of me trying to play Pyre.

Everything else I did not get to for no particular reason at all, aside from the last three because I don't own them, but I've heard really good things and I think they might be up my alley.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 6:24:22 AM
#4:


FINALLY, TWO GAMES THAT I DECIDED NOT TO INCLUDE ON THIS LIST FOR SPECIFIC REASONS

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)

Link's Awakening is my favorite game of all time, but this isn't a top 100 games of all time. The remake of this game for Switch is new enough to put it on my list if I so chose, but I decided to leave it off because I didn't know how to rank it. Technically, it's still the same Link's Awakening I know and love, which should mean it's my #1 favorite game of the decade, but really, it wasn't actually one of my favorite experiences of the decade. But ranking it lower on the list just felt wrong, so I didn't do it and talked about it here. I love the the way they handled the artstyle, the music, and just about every other aspect of remaking this game. I do wish they added a little bit more for fans like me who've played the game a hundred times already and want some new secrets or easter eggs to find, but I'm still satisfied with this game existing in 2019 and being available for the vast swaths of Zelda fans who never got a chance at this back in 1993. Great game, but I'm leaving it off the list.

Zelda 1 Randomizer, Zelda 2 Randomizer, Pokemon Randomizer, Super Mario Bros 3 Randomizer, etc.

Realistically speaking, Zelda 1 Randomizer might well be my favorite gaming experience of the decade, or at least really close. The 10's have been the decade of the randomizer, starting with Pokemon Randomizer somewhere around 2011 I think? The whole concept of taking these old games and shuffling all of the data in them to generate new levels and to put every enemy and item in a brand new location has completely breathed new life into a ton of games that I have loved for years, turning each game into its own little roguelike of sorts - having to learn each seed as you go, exploring and experimenting, testing your abilities on the fly in brand new situations that never existed in the original game. I'm someone who doesn't really enjoy speedrunning games where it becomes about really rote memorization and super-precise optimization of every little thing, so randomizers have been big for me, as I specialize in general knowledge, on-the-fly planning, and figuring out what to do in new situations. Zelda 1 Randomizer has in particular really been an addiction for me though, as the levels lend themselves so well to being rearranged and feeling like a new experience every game, and I've made a little bit of a name for myself speedrunning it. I think the randomizer communities will only continue to grow as the randomizers themselves get more robust and awesome, and I look forward to playing them into the 2020's. I kept them off the list because, well, they aren't really entirely new games, and there's something depressing about listing Zelda 1 Randomizer as one of my favorite games of the decade when it's a thing that generates romhacks for a game from 1987. I have enough actually new games that I liked.

OKAY THE LIST STARTS NOW
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 6:51:12 AM
#5:


I didn't get the idea to make a list of 100 games from transcience, but I did get the idea to use images from him. They're very eye-catching and nice. I reserve the right to immediately nuke this post if the images didn't format nicely.

#100




Years of release: 2015-present (PC)
Beaten?: Hell no

Hey, do you wanna REALLY confused? Like, have all your ability to comprehend things fucked up beyond comprehension? Caves of Qud is probably the single most confusing, bizarre, and thoroughly impenetrable game I've ever played. The worldbuilding is completely insane, the visuals are old school as heck, and the game mechanics feels like it requires a college course just to begin to understand properly. I am completely fascinated by this game. It is confounding, and it is beautiful.

This one's a roguelike, and it's as roguelikey as it gets - you get dumped into this world of ASCII-like graphics with basically no idea what to do and you go wherever you like, killing stuff and picking stuff up, having no idea what's going on until eventually something kills you. It's weirder than usual though - there's a lot of bizarre shit in the game that doesn't make sense, and isn't really intended to make sense until you just go along with it and understand how the world works, like some kind of weird foreign language. I couldn't even really begin to explain it to you. I still don't really get what doing the water ritual at the beginning does or why it's good to increase my reputation with any one group.

I haven't gotten very far in this, but I'd really, really like to come back to this one and figure it out someday. The world is incredibly engrossing - even with these lo-fi graphics, the presentation here somehow gets across a bizarre, alien sort of beauty, and the music in this game is great - it's all weird, surreal soundscapes that completely envelop you and pull you into the world. I've listened to the music more than I've played the game at this point, it's really well done. That alone is a selling point enough for me, but I also get the sense that there is a lot of content and a lot of challenge to be had here, if I just take the time to really sit down and learn this shit. I'm not kidding when I say this game is hard to understand - if you want to be more confused than you've ever been in your life give this one a shot. It's still in early access, but it's been around for a while and I'm not carrying it over to the 20's.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 7:04:24 AM
#6:


#99




Years of release: 2013 (iOS), 2015 (PC), 2017 (expansion)
Beaten?: Yes

Ah, shit, people are going to get the wrong idea about me here after the first two games on this list. Look, I'm not only into roguelike-games that look like weird minimalist garbage, it's not what it looks like!

868-HACK is a roguelikeish little puzzle game where you're a big smiley face and you zap viruses with lasers, while hacking the grid to obtain points and powers. It's a challenging and slightly unforgiving game - this game is one of those that really demands that you figure out the optimal ways to use what you have, and it punishes you for not being precise and error-free. It's remarkably well balanced and open ended how you want to tackle the problem though - you get a lot of different powers to deal with the waves of viruses coming you way and you have to balance figuring out which ones you want to 'purchase' with your limited data siphons, while your data siphons are also what you use to collect resources needed to use those powers. Most of the powers are not flashy - one of them is literally the ability to not move on your turn, which is actually a pretty big deal - but figuring out how to use them right is key.

At the same time, you have to balance all this with also using your hacks to gain points, since this is a score attack game, and you want to get the highest score possible. It's a really tricky balancing act, because the more points you go for, the more likely you are to die. This does kind of make the game hard to find satisfaction with - beating the game is hard enough, but it isn't enough when you want to go for points, and it's hard to say how many points you should really be satisfied with. All in all though it's a really fun little puzzler with a really cool design space that I still come back on occasion, although last time I played it I completely forgot how it even worked.

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StartTheMachine
01/01/20 7:07:38 AM
#7:


5 Wii U games and an insane amount of text because you can't write out your thoughts without using too many words? This is already my kinda list

---
- Blur -
Welcome to your Divinity.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 7:19:03 AM
#8:


#98





Years of release: 2010 (DS, Japan/Europe)
Beaten?: Yes

Part of me thinks I included Last Window MOSTLY because I think it's really funny that it just barely slipped in to the games of the decade - this one came out January 14, 2010 in Japan! It's about as old as a game can be while still being a game of the 10's, but so it is. The reason I almost didn't include it isn't because I didn't like it, but um, because I don't remember it. It's been a really long time! Probably longer than any other game on this list. But rummaging through screenshots looking for the dumbest one I could find (oh Kyle, you and your Cool Pop), yeah, I remember how much I liked this game.

This sequel to the delightful little adventure-novel Hotel Dusk, most of what I remember about Last Window is that it's a game about Kyle Hyde being depressed and sitting around his apartment, gabbing at the locals while trying to figure out a mystery about his dad or something? What sets Hotel Dusk and this game apart from others is a really neat art style, some very likeable characters, some really good writing, and Kyle Hyde, the lovable(???) everyman who's probably the most relatable protagonist in one of these games, because he's kind of constantly as sick of everyone's shit as I am, yet he can't help himself but see things to the end anyway. I remember it being a pretty funny game, in a sort of dry way, but I kind of appreciate that unlike a lot of other Japanese visual-novelly games, this one's really subdued and avoids being too stupid. Uh, I think. There were probably stupid things.

I remember that some of the puzzle solving isn't super engaging, and the overall mystery plot is intriguing but not fascinating, but that it's overall a game that's worth remembering better than I actually do because I have really positive feelings about it. I'm pretty sure there's like a thousand memes from this game that I just don't remember now. Fuck, I should just replay it. I think that's on my 2020 to-do list now! This writeup is a trainwreck and I'm moving on to a game that hasn't completely disintegrated itself from my memory banks now, thanks.
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ChaosTonyV4
01/01/20 7:20:45 AM
#9:


I read the walls of text and Im so in at #100.

99 doesnt sound like my kind of game though, Im not into puzzles or score attack games.

Also I hope its not too presumptuous to predict necrodancer for Top 3 if not 1.

---
Phantom Dust.
"I'll just wait for time to prove me right again." - Vlado
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 7:32:17 AM
#10:


#97





Years of release: 2013-2016 (PC early access), 2016 (PC), 2017 (XB1, PS4)
Beaten?: I think I won a match once

Not every game on this list is going to be a life-changing, unforgettable experience. Some of the games on this list are SpeedRunners - a good concept, executed extremely well.

I haven't played a whole lot of this but what I've played, I've loved. The best way I can describe this is like Super Meat Boy meets Mario Kart? Fast, floaty platforming with wall jumps galore where the goal is to race far enough ahead in the level that you push your rivals off-screen, KOing them. It's fast, it's intense, playing it for about an hour gives me a headache, and I'm totally here for that. It's definitely one of the couch/online multiplayer games that I'd be most happy to break out on a whim and play - it plays really smoothly and it's hard to imagine not having a good time with it, at least until my eyes have gone permanently wall-eyed because of the stimuli overload.

I don't have much more to say about it! It's good. I want to play more of it.
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ChaosTonyV4
01/01/20 7:35:14 AM
#11:


Speedrunners is so so so fun with people of similar skill, but when you get a person who wins every match it starts to get much less so.

---
Phantom Dust.
"I'll just wait for time to prove me right again." - Vlado
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 7:44:08 AM
#12:


#96





Years of release: 2011
Beaten?: Mostly

Pushmo is a warm blanket of a puzzle game. It was there for me at an exceptionally boring time in my life - back in 2012 I had a quarter of college in which I had an hour layover nearly every single day, so when I didn't have homework to do (or that I didn't feel like doing) I had to pull out my 3DS and kill some time. I had two go-to favorites during this period of my life - one was the GB game Kirby's Pinball Land, which I somehow wrung like a good 30 hours out of and I don't remember if I ever properly beat it but it was really fun? The other game was Pushmo.

It's a game about pushing blocks. Uh, sort of. It's really more about pulling them? Frankly, I don't know why it's called Pushmo, it should be called Pullmo, but that's neither here nor there. You need to push and pull these blocks in and out to climb them to reach the goal, and that's about it. It sounds and looks simple at the start, which is why it gets really startling later on when the puzzles actually start to become a serious workout. I put a good 30 hours into this in my off periods during school, and I'm pretty sure there were times I dedicated almost my entire time to failing to solve a single puzzle. It's really hard, but it never feels too frustrating, since it's so easy to understand. There's only so many ways to proceed, and if you keep trying different things eventually you'll have a breakthrough and figure out the way you need to climb to the exit.

I enjoyed the followup Crashmo as well, never played Pushmo World because portability was kind of a big draw for me here and I didn't really desperately need more Pushmo puzzles. Damn solid puzzle game though that's threatened to be lost in the shuffle of newer 10's games. Seriously, I had to be as thorough as possible when trying to remember games I've played this decade - the activity log feature on the 3DS is an absolute lifesaver. Thanks activity log!
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 7:44:36 AM
#13:


ChaosTonyV4 posted...
Speedrunners is so so so fun with people of similar skill, but when you get a person who wins every match it starts to get much less so.
Yeah, I can imagine. I only played this with people of similar skill, so that probably contributed greatly. Honestly, almost any multiplayer or co-op game is fun if you play it with someone who's about as good as you.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:02:41 AM
#14:


#95





Years of release: 2011 (PC), and then it was ported to every system and there were a million expansions forever
Beaten?: Thoroughly, not the expansions though

Uh. To be completely honest with you, I'm not even sure I like Binding of Isaac all that much. It's mostly as a result of the game's aesthetic. I don't like to say this about peoples' artstyles, but I really don't like Binding of Isaac's artstyle, nor do I vibe with its bleak, nihilistic tone. Playing a small, naked child who wanders through pooped-filled dungeons crying tear-bullets at gross, festering monsters isn't really my idea of a fun time and it kind of seems like a bizarre joke that went a little too far and accidentally became a really good game. I wouldn't say I'm offended by it, but it's really unpleasant; I actually realize looking back on it that playing this game wasn't really doing awesome things to my mental state, like it left me feeling a little empty inside playing it. Basically, it's pessimistic and gross and that's kind of the opposite of my deal.

It's a shame that the novelty of the game's theme wears thin after about an hour, because the game ITSELF does not wear thin until way, way after that. I can't deny that I got a good 60-70 hours out of this one, plumbing dungeon after dungeon, looking for secrets and wondering with awe what the next weird item I was going to find was going to do. It's not a particularly balanced game, but that doesn't really matter to me because this isn't one I bother speedrunning - I just take what I get, try to figure out the most broken items as best I can, and enjoy pulling that Roguelite slot machine hoping for the run that'll take me to the end. There's a lot of content here, every run plays completely differently, and replayability is high on this one. It does eventually get a bit old, but it takes a while. There's just so much shit to unlock here. Sometimes literal shit. Ugh, BoI is gross.

This was one of the earliest of the fledgling "Roguelite" genre and I think the first one that I really dove headfirst into (Spelunky was earlier, but man, I just couldn't get into Spelunky, despite the fact that people swear by it - I think I'm the problem on that one). Its influence on a whole lineage of indie games is undeniable, including a VERY particular shall-not-be-named one that ranks very high on my list - almost all of the community for THAT game came from the BoI speedrunning community, and I'm one of the few that didn't.

If it was a more appealing game it'd probably rank in the 50's somewhere, but I've really been turned off to it lately. I've just never gone back to it because it's just a game world that I don't want to exist in for long. I think I've officially put it aside for now, but it would be malpractice for me to not acknowledge its influence on my gaming habits this decade.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:19:55 AM
#15:


#94





Years released: 2015 (PC)
Beaten?: Unbelievably, I got pretty far

(Oh shit, everyone's leaving.)

WAIT. WAIT COME BACK PLEASE. I SWEAR THIS ISN'T AS BORING AS IT SOUNDS.

This is a game about coding. NO GET BACK HERE.

Okay, so, Zachtronics games are almost universally beyond my ken. I wouldn't be able to figure out SpaceChem if my life depended on it, and taking even one glance at Opus Magnum makes my head spin. But TIS-100 I can actually kinda jive with. It's hard as hell, but I can do it.

I haven't played this one in a while so I kind of forget the premise a little bit, but basically this game presents you with a made-up and inefficient programming language, and you need to utilize it to figure out how to solve a bunch of basic programming challenges in as few steps as possible.

I've always kind of liked coding, even though I'm not good at it - figuring out how to make something work, how to take a variable and carry it through multiple processing steps and have it spit out the number you want at the end, how to store it somewhere while a bunch of other processes all run and call that variable, it's always felt like a puzzle game to me. A puzzle game that I suck at. TIS-100 really captures that essence for me without cursing me with the proposition of actually having to something productive. Video games are awesome.

I've done enough coding in my life to know that this really is like coding. It's probably the closest I'll ever get in my life to like, actually trying to write something in assembly language. I think if you've never coded before, this game would be a pretty good primer to the sorts of thought processes you need to have to code something efficiently - or at least it's the closest approximation that exists, but really, you should probably just learn C++ instead of picking up TIS-100, learning C++ is easier. This shit is hell, and it is probably the driest video game I've ever played or even ever heard of, like Desert Bus levels of dry, but wow it's really satisfying to play it and actually figure out how to put together something that works.

It's been a while since I've played it and I have no idea if I could go back. Somehow, at one point, I knew how to play this game, and I've ejected all memory of how to play it straight out of my brain. Attempting to play it again feels like such a herculean task that I might as well just learn how to actual-code. I can't believe me from 5 years ago was this smart. I feel like putting this game on this list will make me seem a lot more interesting and cool than I actually am. Wow look at this hipster who plays a fucking game about programming a shitty computer. The games on this list are going to get a lot more normie from here on out sorry.
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Leonhart4
01/01/20 8:22:02 AM
#16:


Last Window is great. I need to replay it sometime too. I'm just glad I got a copy before they became ridiculously expensive.

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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:34:49 AM
#17:


#93





Years of release: 2016 (PC/PS4/XB1), 2017 (Switch)
Beaten?: Nah

Have I mentioned that I really, really love couch co-op games? That's not a rhetorical question. I can't actually remember if I mentioned that I love couch co-op. Uh, I do though.

Co-op and team games have a really cool design space I think - when you're playing a game by yourself, you can always sharpen all of the little tasks that go into getting better at the game and perfect your skill, but when you add a second person into the mix and suddenly cooperation and communication become key elements of play, a lot of inefficiencies get introduced to the system, and two people maximizing their skill together is exponentially more difficult than a single person maximizing theirs. This is especially true when it's a game where one person CAN'T do everything alone - some games like Contra just sort of slam a second player character in there in a game intended for one player, but some games really demand that both players do their job in order to advance. Communication in a game is a skill that has a lot of complexity to it, and there's a lot of potential different ways to solve the problem, and truly mastering it requires a ton of work, which really opens up the number of different ways any given co-op game can play out; co-op play always tends to be very emergent in the number of unexpected ways that something can go wrong. So they're great! Plus, playing anything with a friend is just sort of automatically fun.

None of this is to say that Overcooked is a truly transcendent game, I just felt like waxing on about co-op games for a bit because I don't have anything else to say. It's a good game with a cool concept - you get food orders that require you to do a bunch of different tasks, and you and up to three friends have to figure out how to most effectively divvy up those tasks to get them done as quickly as possible. There's a lot going on, and just the ability alone to pick up objects and put them down really opens up the number of potential ways you can solve any given problem. Lots of different ways to maximize your workflow. There's something really fun about figuring out with the other person you're playing with and getting into a rhythm. It's simple to play and satisfying to sort-of-master. Sometimes I like simple shit like that.
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transience
01/01/20 8:40:56 AM
#18:


I really want to play with Zachtronics games but I'm frightened that I'll be too stupid for them and it'll bum me out.

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xyzzy
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:45:24 AM
#19:


#92





Years of release: 2012 (PC), 2019 (XB1/PS4/Switch) (huh, really?)
Beaten?: Yes

Oh god, can I find the words to write about this one besides "it's steampunk-fantasy Diablo 2?" That's exactly what it is. You are now completely familiar with Torchlight II.

It's good. I'd probably say it's about as good as Diablo 2, to be honest! I've always liked Diablo 2, though I wouldn't say I've ever been in love with it as some have - I'm kind of a Diablo 1 guy myself, even though that game is old and shitty it was really my jam back in the day and I love it despite that. Diablo 2 was too good and not old and shitty enough for my tastes. Ah, shit, I'm talking about Diablo, not Torchlight. Fuck, para, bring it back. Uhhh. Torchlight.

Yeah. Torchlight 1 was an alright game but Torchlight II (mixing my roman and my arabic numerals here because saying Torchlight I seems really weird) really gave it a nice layer of polish and made it not royally suck in the endgame, so that's good! Sometimes I'm a sucker for a good ol' point-and-click hack-and-slash where you click on an enemy until it dies, rinse and repeat, pick up a bunch of loot, spend a lot of time looking at magical items that aren't better than your current stuff, sell them for like 200 gold, go back and click on a bunch more enemies until they die, yeah I'm here for that shit 100%. It's relaxing as hell and my idiot brain gets a dopamine hit whenever I find a magic item with a color of text that is more unusual than the usual color of text that items have. Look, I don't have to explain this to YOU guys, you all know the exact shit I'm talking about. Torchlight II is basically a drug fix for someone looking for a followup to Diablo... 2? II. That's a roman numeral one too. it's 5:45 am and my writeups are getting really silly so I'm going to keep going because it's funny
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:48:16 AM
#20:


Sometimes the images I grab off of google are too small and it makes me sad
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:58:18 AM
#21:


#91





Years of release: 2013 (PC), 2014 (iOS)... 2017 (Vita)???? what the fuck, this game had a VITA PORT? FOUR YEARS LATER? WHY?
Beaten?: Glory to Arstotzka

Here's an extremely cool game that I have a hard time getting into because it's depressing and kinda bums me out. I said it before but I don't really like games that are kind of bleak and depressing, and this one doesn't put you in the most fun role to play and it gets me thinking about real life people and politics and man, I'm just trying to play video games.

But, putting the bummer aspects of this game aside, given that I already have games like TIS-100 on this list, you know that I am ABSOLUTELY 100% enough of a dullard to enjoy a game about processing documentation. It's really sort of a great concept and whoever thought of it was a genius. Looking at peoples' passports and trying to figure out what's wrong with them - or if nothing is wrong with them at all - has this kind of "spot the difference" sort of appeal but with like way more layers to it, all while you're under an intentionally-vague time crunch and dealing with an intentionally-frustrating lack of desk space, making managing your information challenging and vital.

All the while, the game is sneakily sliding in little story and worldbuilding elements when you're not expecting it - all of the little choices that this game throws at you in the middle of looking at passports add a ton of tension, and it's both fun and nervewracking as hell. This game really makes you feel like you're actually in the position of this poor border official, and the ensuing moral dilemmas are some of the crunchiest gaming has to offer. A little too much, actually - this game left me feeling a little bit ragged after playing it, thanks to the aforementioned bummerness. I dunno if I'm super eager to replay it, but it deserves every single accolade it received.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:58:57 AM
#22:


Sometimes the images I grab off of google are too big and it makes me sad
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TheArkOfTurus
01/01/20 9:08:45 AM
#23:


tag

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Our eyes were removed
For our own safety
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 9:29:07 AM
#24:


#90





Years of release: 2016 (PC/XB1/PS4), 2018 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

Would you believe me if I said that I've always kind of dreamed of being a fire lookout? I've always just sort of wanted to get the fuck out of the city and go into the middle of nowhere for a while. I think I have the sort of quiet, melancholic personality that someone would need to be a fire lookout - I'd be able to sit there for a while, alone with my thoughts, looking for fires. I could go outside and do some birdwatching. I fucking love birdwatching. I also love the internet, and I don't think they have the internet out there, so I think I'd make a shitty fire lookout because I wouldn't be able to deal with that. Plus I'm probably not rugged enough to live in the wilderness for months.

I just really love the outdoors. We go on vacation in central Oregon every summer and god I just love it out there - the sun, the mountains, the rivers, the towering pines, the high deserts. This game takes place in Wyoming but it still really reminds me of the long nature walks I take out there - it really feels like home to me. This game is absolutely gorgeous, and any game that can really properly capture the sheer joy of being outdoors, in the wilderness, on a hot summer day, is a game that I want to exist in basically forever, especially when it's freezing cold and dark outside and seasonal depression is kicking me right in the ass.

I also love walking simulators so this is a game that speaks directly to me.

This game is a story about a fire lookout named Henry, his companion on the radio Delilah, and a bunch of weird shit that happens to them one summer that doesn't properly resolve in the game's third act. Ah, fuck. Real shame about that because the first 75% is awfully good and has so much going for it! All of the dialog between Henry and Delilah is well acted and really charming, carrying the whole game by itself - I wanted to keep playing just to get to the next part where the two of them would chat. You get a lot of different dialog options here, and the branches are pretty impressive, or at least I think they are, I only played the game once. You can get deep into Henry's issues with his wife back home, if you want to, or you can just... completely not bring up that huge plot point ever, if you want to, and whichever choice you make, it comes back up in conversations later when you don't expect it. It's really well done. All the while, I wouldn't say this game has like, puzzles per se, but there's something really relaxing about hiking through the forests, looking for your next objective, periodically checking your old-fashioned map to see where you're going. Again, this game is gorgeous, and just taking in the scenery alone is worth the price of admission.

So yeah sort of a damn shame that the whole game falls apart at the end because it introduces a bunch of really cool intrigue that it just doesn't follow up on and leaves like half the plot threads hanging in a kind of downer ending. Whoops oh well. Maybe I just didn't 'get' the ending but it seemed like kind of a letdown. Still, I kind of want to replay this game again soon anyway, just so I can return to Shoshone National Forest.

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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 9:41:58 AM
#25:


#89





Years of release: 2018 (PC/PS4 early access), 2019 (PC/PS4)
Beaten?: I did some expert songs

"Oh, I get it now." That's one of the first things I remember thinking when playing Beat Saber.

See, VR and I have had sort of a checkered past. I have a couple of friends who have VR stuff, and they've gotten me to check it out, and like, VR is a very cool technology and it's really interesting to experience, but I have a hard time really grasping it, both its function, and how it could be used to make good games. I'm not sure what it is. I always have a hard time looking through the VR goggles and focusing on objects properly - everything always kind of feels slightly out of focus and hard to look at in a way that I don't really know how to communicate, and I tend to find myself a little bit disoriented playing it. I've played some pretty neat little things on VR but most of them kind of amount to like, I dunno, glorified tech demos. I'm sure there's some really good shit on VR that I haven't gotten around to, it's just not what I played.

Then I played Beat Saber. "Oh, I get it now."

I totally forgot to put rhythm games under 'stuff that's on this list.' There's a few of 'em. You have two lightsabers and you swing them at blocks coming at you in time with the music. That's Beat Saber. It plays great. This is a game that really utilizes that three-dimensional space that VR offers really well - suddenly, the fact that you have to move your body around, swinging your sabers through blocks, juking this way and that to avoid incoming walls, it just suddenly made sense to me how VR could provide a really engaging gaming experience. It didn't even give me that much of a headache to look at - I was able to follow the action really easily, and I feel like I was able to take on some decently hard songs after a couple hours of practice, though I couldn't play for too long because damn, this game gives you a workout. I need it. I'm fat and out of shape as hell.

The soundtrack is kind of... not my thing, and as of my playing it I wasn't too clear on how to get more songs or make my own which was a little disappointing though I know custom songs are possible. Still, if I had a VR headset, I'd probably be really into playing a little bit of this every day. It just feels good to play. The visuals of swinging your sabers through blocks and the sound effect it makes when you do it just has such a great kinetic feel to it, and it's a great example of what VR can do, even though it's a really simple one. I'm on board with the whole idea now.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 9:57:42 AM
#26:


#88





Years of release: 2013 (PC), 2017 (XB1/PS4)
Beaten?: Yes

I think it's exceptionally funny that this game is almost right next to Firewatch on my list, yet Firewatch and Hammerwatch are thoroughly unrelated games that have absolutely nothing to do with each other and nothing in common. Weird.

I'm just trying to think of ways to fill this space because I don't have an exceptional amount to say about Hammerwatch (something that's going to cease being true the further I get down the list). Hammerwatch is a little Gauntlet-like hack-and-slash, it's nothing special, but I found it greatly appealing all the same - it scratched that itch of just wanting to go on a dungeon-exploring adventure with a friend, killing some monsters, finding some treasure, getting some cool powerups, nothing too heavy or fascinating here, I just had a great fucking time with it and that's pretty much the most I have to say on that matter! I'd say bring a friend or don't bother with it at all, playing it single player would probably be a little dull, but as a co-op game, it gets the job done.

I haven't played the sequel, Heroes of Hammerwatch, but I'm sure it's probably fun.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 10:08:52 AM
#27:


#87





Years of release: 2016 (PC/PS4), 2017 (XB1), 2018 (Switch)
Beaten?: I was pretty good at it

I've played this game exactly once in my entire life, and about ten of you know exactly when that was - it was one year ago, at Shad's house, for Extra Life. Despite having limited experience with this game overall, I'm... kind of a little obsessed with it? I still think about it from time to time and I want to play it again, just picked it up on sale on Steam so I'll be able to.

It's a stacking tetronimos game, but unlike Tetris, it has physics, and you have to keep your tower from toppling over as you build it as high as you can - there's other game modes but that was the main one I remember playing. The physics and the necessity of building your tower high without it falling over gives this game a really great combination of long-term planning, short-term tactics, and precise execution that makes mastering it a multi-faceted task, and it means you can win either by playing smart or by playing well. Do you play aggressively and try to stack your tower high super fast, hoping to outpace everyone else? Do you play conservatively and build a steadier tower, expecting the others to falter by going too fast? The correct answer is probably somewhere in the middle, but it's a tricky balancing act trying to figure out just how fast you should push it.

The mode where you have to set down as many blocks as you can in a limited area is really cool too, love the puzzle solving aspects of it. Yeah, this one's a real heavyweight in the falling-blocks-puzzle genre imo, and I'm really looking forward to getting the opportunity to play it with other people again someday. Even though I only had maybe an hour with it - less than I spent playing any other game on this list - it left a big enough impression on me to include it on this list.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 10:10:21 AM
#28:


Oh boy. The next two games on my list are real doozies to talk about, so I think I'll tackle that tomorrow since it got really late here. I'm sort of past the point on this list where I run out of things to say about the games (though I do reiterate that I REALLY LIKED every game I put on this list), so I'll probably be talking a little more at length about them from now on. But I'll continue it tomorrow.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 10:13:30 AM
#29:


(By the way, Tricky Towers was the lone "PS4" game on this list lol. The only PS3 game on this list is actually a real PS3 game)
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ChaosTonyV4
01/01/20 1:42:14 PM
#30:


Tricky Towers was PS+ or something wasnt it? I know I played it somehow

---
Phantom Dust.
"I'll just wait for time to prove me right again." - Vlado
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PumpkinCoach
01/01/20 2:28:58 PM
#31:


def. need to play last window one of these days.

if only that series got shiny pc ports like the phoenix wright games.

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https://imgur.com/CQr5Xab
this is a world... where Advokaiser eats gurus
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GameBopAdv
01/01/20 3:03:55 PM
#32:


Oh hey nice, Cute colorful stylized Indie Puzzle games are some of my favorite stuff, so I have a feeling I'm really gonna like a lot of this list!

In a way I'm pretty happy to see 868-Hack on this list as I know it because the guy who made it also made one of my personal favorite games that I maybe like more than I should, Corrypt. Michael Brough has done some pretty cool weird stuff

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luigi says: "and"
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 7:59:54 PM
#33:


#86





Years of release: 2016 (3DS, Vita, PC), 2017 (PS4)

My feelings about Zero Time Dilemma are very complex.

ZTD was probably one of my most hotly anticipated games of the decade - for a couple years there I thought we'd never see the final game in the Zero Escape trilogy, but then news came that it was gonna happen, and I pre-ordered it and got the watch and everything. We were going to get the conclusion to Zero Escape! The previous game hyped this one up a lot, so it was exciting to see how it played out!

And it was... well, uh, it was definitely a hell of a thing? It's sort of hard to talk about it without spoilers, but it basically comes down to the fact that a lot of the plot points were stupid and not satisfying conclusions, and a lot of the most dramatic plot points just weren't as interesting as previous games. But on the other hand, this game did have some real high points, and the game's best moments stand out for me in a big way. It's a real weird as hell mixed bag of realized greatness and harsh disappointment. It's a hell of a ride, I can say that much.

The switch to cutscenes from the more typical visual novel style was a bit of a mixed reaction from me. On one hand, the difference in presentation was interesting and did lead to a few good moments. On the other hand, it made the game go by way faster, and I liked that the previous Zero Escape games were slow-burning dialog-fests. I feel like I didn't have as much time to really, like, take it all in and let it digest, which to me is important to enjoying this sort of game. It was just a quick rollercoaster ride that went through some really crazy shit and then it was over and left me kind of wanting more. This game's kind of divisive for a reason. But hell, I still enjoyed it - I'll remember some of the moments in this game for a long time.

Can I just talk about how awesome that title art is? That art of Sigma locked in the chair with a familiar-looking person holding a gun to his head, the muted colors with the most important objects in the scene highlighted in brighter colors, damn that got me hyped up to play this one. Too bad the game wasn't quite as cool as this image promised but I just really need to give shoutouts to the official art.
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Leonhart4
01/01/20 8:14:37 PM
#34:


ZTD was great, but it didn't quite deliver on what VLR built it up to do.

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Nelson_Mandela
01/01/20 8:17:32 PM
#35:


Tag. These are good.

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"A more mature answer than I expected."~ Jakyl25
"Sephy's point is right."~ Inviso
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:40:02 PM
#36:


#85





Years of release: 2016 (3DS), 2017 (Ultra Sun and Moon, 3DS)
Beaten?: Yes

This is a hard writeup for me to do. There's a lot I'd like to say about the Pokemon series, and I feel like I don't have quite the energy to get to all of it right now, nor is this really the topic I want to do it in. But I'll try.

I think I'm sort of "over" the Pokemon series now, which is kind of a sad thing for me to say. There was a time, between the years of 1998 and... probably around 2004 or so where I just lived and breathed Pokemon, every single hour of every single day. When I got Pokemon Red for the first time I literally just sat down and played the game for 13 hours straight, completely nonstop - didn't even eat. Very few video games have ever done that to me. It was just so new and awesome and exciting.

Ever since then, I've loved Pokemon, but I've gradually become less and less interested in the games themselves. I've grown up, and the Pokemon series hasn't grown with me. That isn't to say that I don't think adults should play Pokemon or something, but rather that I've wanted new experiences out of the games but they tend to be the same thing over and over again, hitting the same notes, offering very few surprises, no new challenges for veterans of the series unless you play competitive, which I just haven't had the time or energy to do. (That's a lie, I've had the time, just not the energy.)

Playing through Pokemon games feels like a chore just to get to the competitive endgame now and it kinda makes me sad, I dunno. They're consistently feeling less like RPG adventures and more like extremely extended tutorials, and the increased focus on having human characters talk at you and having weird plots about legendary Pokemon hasn't really been to my taste.

It's a heavy subject, but I've long wanted the series to just throw everything out and do something completely new. There's a lot of bloat in the games now as they continue to add new moves, new abilities, new forms, etc without ever removing anything, and it's frustrating to me that they refuse to change anything. But now that we've gotten to Pokemon Sw/Sh and they've actually started to do it, I realized that it kind of feels like the end of an era. Pokemon is still here, but we've finally hit the point at which Pokemon are starting to be retired, at which certain Pokemon forms will never be seen again, at which a lot of old knowledge of the games that I've maintained since 1998 has finally stopped being relevant. I'm not SUPER UPSET about Dexit, but it has really helped set in that feeling for me that it's time to move on. Pokemon doesn't belong to me anymore, and that's fine. I still love the Pokemon themselves but now I'm treating it more like it's a merchandising brand like Hello Kitty, haha.

All that said, I still really liked Pokemon Sun/Moon (I had moon) a hell of a lot, and I absolutely had to include it on my list when I realized that gen 7 really was the end of an era, the last Pokemon game in an unbroken lineage since 1998. The last generation of the GB/DS line of systems, the last generation that had every single Pokemon, every single Pokemon form, every single move, etc.

This one actually was my favorite Pokemon game in a long time, it should be said. First of all, gen 7's batch of Pokemon is my favorite, ever, by far - I just love the Pokemon in this game. 5 of my top 10 favorite Pokemon are gen 7! I immediately loved like nearly every new Pokemon design in this game and it made me really hyped to play the game. Plus, I just LOVE the 'polynesian island' theme - it reminds me of being in Hawaii, one of my favorite times in my whole life, and that just makes me want to exist in this world so much. I doubt they could ever have another region themed after a place in the world that I'd rather be in than a sunny tropical island full of flowers and surrounded by ocean - going to like, fantasy Britain doesn't really hold as much appeal, for instance.

And as much as the game didn't really do anything new, I still felt like it sort of tried a little. They replaced HMs with riding on Pokemon, which I think was a good idea, because HMs were getting really stupid and predictable. They did away with gyms and tried a different concept, which I think was fun. The plot was kind of different and interesting - this is the only (mainline) Pokemon game that had kind of an interesting story and characters. Team Skull was fucking hilarious and awesome too - normally I hate the stupid evil teams in these Pokemon games but oh my god, Team Skull is awesome. This game actually has fun human characters, which is a rarity for the series. It's still kind of a standard Pokemon adventure but it really did make a strong attempt at doing something, and I appreciated it and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I haven't played Sw/Sh yet, and I think I probably will at some point - I might do a nuzlocke thing because that's probably the most fun way to play it. But I'm not super excited to? I dunno. Like I said, I just feel like I'm kinda over Pokemon at this point. But S/M gave me one more good time with the series for the road.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 8:54:12 PM
#37:


#84





Years of release: 2010 (PC), 2011 (3DS), 2014 (OUYA LOL, also iOS/Android), 2015 (PS4), 2017 (Switch). this one got around!
Beaten?: 100%!

Oh man, this really takes me back - I actually forgot that this one came out on January 11, 2010. I didn't realize it was so old, released in the dawning hours of the decade, but here we are, and I think I have a lot to thank VVVVVV for. I remember that this was absolutely back in a time where awesome, clever little indie games weren't coming out every single day, and a fun, retroish-style game like this being the talk of the town was a much rarer event. This was right at the start of the "indie revolution" so to speak, around 2008-2010 or so, when a lot of these smaller-scope, lower-budget games were starting to bubble up to the surface and become part of the larger gaming conversation as the tools and the means to create games as well as self-publish to a wider audience became available (although small teams of people have been independently publishing games forever).

VVVVVV deserved the attention. It's a masterfully clever little platformer with a rocking soundtrack. Typically, this style of game doesn't really appeal to me - I don't usually enjoy these types of platformers where you're in a series of hallways full of spikes, and you attempt it over and over again, being sent back to the start of the room until you get it right once and then you never have to see that room again. But VVVVVV transcends that anyway - the game never feels completely unfair or frustrating, and the gimmick of moving around by reversing your gravity is extremely entertaining and used to full effect in this game.

I haven't played it in a while, and it probably only took me like 3-4 hours to beat, but it's still an experience that sticks with me, and I think it's a game that was hugely influential to a lot of games this decade.
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Leonhart4
01/01/20 9:14:51 PM
#38:


VVVVVV is fun. Probably one of the few indie games I've actually completed!

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transience
01/01/20 9:19:15 PM
#39:


what I remember about VVVVVV's release is that everyone was ga-ga over Super Meat Boy that year while I was all the way in on VVVVVV as the year's cool 2d platformer. that was back when we would only get a couple of them a year that could break through the public consciousness.

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xyzzy
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NBIceman
01/01/20 9:28:25 PM
#40:


Paratroopa1 posted...
Playing through Pokemon games feels like a chore just to get to the competitive endgame now and it kinda makes me sad, I dunno. They're consistently feeling less like RPG adventures and more like extremely extended tutorials, and the increased focus on having human characters talk at you and having weird plots about legendary Pokemon hasn't really been to my taste.
This is a really good articulation of my feelings on the series. A lot of people who like Sw/Sh talk about how "it's the Pokemon formula - even when it's not great it's still pretty fun," but newer games really don't feel like the Pokemon formula I remember. X/Y simply does not feel the same way HG/SS did and does. For a while I thought that was just nostalgia and that I'd just sort of outgrown my ability to immerse myself in a Pokemon world again, but in the last few years I've even played some excellent ROM hacks, the kind that are made with genuine effort and love for the series, that do recapture that feeling of wanting to see what was around the next corner and not being able to step away from the game for hours. So I've confirmed that it really is the specific GameFreak products of recent times that don't have what I'm looking for and not Pokemon as a whole.

I'm assuming you've played the GameCube Pokemon games? Flawed as they may be, I've always appreciated how they do things so different from other Pokemon adventures, and the good things about them are really good.

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https://imgur.com/UYamul2
Spurs - Yankees - Eagles - Golden Knights
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 9:32:46 PM
#41:


#83





Years of release: 2015 (PC), then ports to every VR thing every year since
Beaten?: It's complicated

Can you play a game without ever picking up the controller or even seeing the screen? This is a fascinating question that Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes sets out to answer. For a while, this was the most interesting game that I'd ever played but never actually played.

This is a game where one person actually plays the game, looking at a bomb with a bunch of different indicators on it, but lacking the instructions on which wires to cut and buttons to press to defuse it; they have to call out what they see to either one person or a team of people who are not looking at the game screen, but have a pdf of game instructions in front of them, and they must relay the instructions back to the player to tell them what to do.

It's a pretty cool and kind of experimental concept. I played several hours of this one day with a couple of friends over Discord chat - I knew what the game was, but I never saw the game's screen or had any idea what the player was even doing. I was just sitting in front of a computer with a pdf open and that's it, listening to someone else ask me what's in the pdf and I try to relay it back as quickly as possible. It's funny how, even though I never actually had the game open or was even looking at it, I was 100% participating in the act of playing Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. Despite having no idea what the game looked like or how it played.

Arguably, the pdf half of the game is actually the more intense portion - the bomb defuser just has to call out what they see, but the instructions-having people are the ones who have to quickly look it up, decipher the rules, do all the math and tell the bomb defuser what to do. The defuser kind of winds up a spectator, just hoping the people with the rules in front of them can figure out what they're supposed to do. Effective communication is really key though and figuring out how to convey all the important shit you're seeing on the bomb is a hard skill to master. There's a lot going on here and it's one hell of an entertaining team-building exercise.

I did actually finally get to play this game in the role of the defuser, and I played it on a VR headset - this game is great for VR, since having the goggles on is a really effective way to ensure the other people can't see what's going on, and being able to hold and rotate the bomb in your own hands is really nice. After two years of having no idea what the game even looked like, I finally found out, and it was kind of revelatory and exciting. Oh, so this is why the game is so confusing for the bomb defuser, I thought! It would have been fun to have this game on the list having never actually "played" it though.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 9:33:47 PM
#42:


NBIceman posted...
This is a really good articulation of my feelings on the series. A lot of people who like Sw/Sh talk about how "it's the Pokemon formula - even when it's not great it's still pretty fun," but newer games really don't feel like the Pokemon formula I remember. X/Y simply does not feel the same way HG/SS did and does. For a while I thought that was just nostalgia and that I'd just sort of outgrown my ability to immerse myself in a Pokemon world again, but in the last few years I've even played some excellent ROM hacks, the kind that are made with genuine effort and love for the series, that do recapture that feeling of wanting to see what was around the next corner and not being able to step away from the game for hours. So I've confirmed that it really is the specific GameFreak products of recent times that don't have what I'm looking for and not Pokemon as a whole.

I'm assuming you've played the GameCube Pokemon games? Flawed as they may be, I've always appreciated how they do things so different from other Pokemon adventures, and the good things about them are really good.
I played Colosseum but not XD. Colosseum was alright, I didn't feel one way or another about it in particular, though I do kind of appreciate how it cut things down to their barest essentials.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 9:56:33 PM
#43:


#82





Years of release: 2019 (PC/XB1/PS4/Switch)
Beaten?: Currently playing

Okay this is getting into the trickiest games on my list which are "the ones I'm currently playing and haven't finished yet, but should definitely be on the list". I only started this one like a month ago and I'm only a few hours in. It's hard for me to say where a game will rank before I've finished it, it could go up or down in stock depending - I think I kind of "get" this game enough already to know where it's gonna land though. It's an Igavania through and through, and this isn't my first rodeo.

It is really nice to see one of these in 2019 though. Igavanias have never been my favorites but they've always been fun to play and never a bad time (even Harmony of Dissoance is pretty good!), and there's something that's... I don't know, almost reassuring, about the fact that Iga is still able to do his thing in 2019, even without Konami and the Castlevania brand behind him. This game feels just about the same as any of his old stuff ever did, and most of the time I play this I completely forget that I'm not playing a Castlevania game - the transition to these new ideas and characters was pretty seamless.

I'm surprised at how hard this game is, the few boss fights I've gotten to have really made me sweat it out and have gone on for a few hits longer than I expected them to, and even traveling from one save point to the next can be a nerve-wracking experience. I completely forgot that games used to not auto-save everything you did! Bloodstained is decidedly old school in this way, and I can't decide if that's annoying or refreshing. It's nice that being able to survive encounters matters - it makes playing well, as well as fighting items and upgrades, feel like something that actually matters, rather than just a checklist of stuff you have to eventually do. Bloodstained makes me feel something, and I definitely applaud it for that.

It's nice that one of these 'it's like the old series you liked, by the original guy who made it, but it's different now' games turned out well. I have... regrets about Mighty No 9, and they made me a little skeptical about this game as a result, but it turns out that Iga is a game director and he knows what he's doing, and Keiji Inafune is a fucking hack who has no idea how to direct a game. This is an important lesson I'll remember in the future!

I'm gonna keep playing this one, though I've been doing it a little piecemeal as I've been playing other games at the same time - I haven't been immediately drawn back to this one obsessively, which is why it doesn't rank super high, but whenever I'm playing it I feel good about my decision to have started playing it. Igavanias are a nice comfort food.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 10:14:02 PM
#44:


#81





Years of release: 2013 (Wii U)
Beaten?: Not really!

Okay I'm going to level with you guys - I don't think I've actually PLAYED every game in Game & Wario. It's a collection of minigames, some single player and some multiplayer, and I've mostly only played the multiplayer ones. It doesn't matter.

Fruit is the reason it is here. Fruit is a masterpiece.

The premise behind Fruit is that one player has the controller and is secretly controlling one of the characters on the screen, while every other character is controlled by the AI and wanders aimlessly. The player with the controller has to hide amongst the AI characters and pretend to be one, but they must collect pieces of fruit that are lying in plain sight on the screen. Everyone else playing has to watch, and look carefully for the moment the piece of fruit is taken, trying to figure out which character it could be that took all the fruit before time runs out.

It's a brilliantly fun little party game - it's simple, but there's a lot of fun tricks you can use on the three different maps to get away with it and make it harder for the other people to guess who you are. It's a simple little psychological game and I could play it for hours. I'm really sad that this one is stuck on the Wii U and we probably won't see a port of Game & Wario any time soon because it's reliant on the Wii U gamepad (although Fruit isn't).

There's other stuff in Game & Wario to like, though, so it's not here ONLY for Fruit. Gamer is probably the most well-known feature of this game and it's a brilliant concept - having to play a WarioWare game, concentrating on that while also having to watch out for your mom, who's stalking around your room trying to catch you playing games past your bedtime. The other multiplayer offerings here are nice too - I actually really like that dumb game where you have to draw lines and shapes of the right lengths and sizes, it's dry but there's something appealing about it. The fronk-launching game is fun even though it's completely unfair and chaotic, and the little pictionary clone here is a really nice time too. I don't really remember most of the other single player games in this one but that's enough to make this game a worthy little addition to a party game library. I just love Fruit so much.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 10:42:11 PM
#45:


#80





Years of release: 2013 (PC/360/PS3), 2015 (PS4/XB1/Mobile), 2019 (Switch). It's funny that the Switch keeps getting ports of several years old indie games, although it's great for people who haven't played them yet
Beaten?: Yes

If you care about "tiers" at all, then this is probably where a new tier starts. The first 20 games on this list were like "oh yeah, that game is really cute!" but now we're getting into like "oh yeah this is the real shit."

Shameless namedrop time! I played this game because it's Kevin Regamey of Powerup Audio's favorite game, and I was chatting with him at SGDQ and he absolutely insisted I play it and then watch his speedrun of it after. So I did! It was a really good recommendation. For whatever reason, I don't think it made me feel quite the same way as it made him. It was like the most magical experience ever for him, and for me I was like, that was really cute and neat and I can see why some people so dearly love this game.

It's a short and sweet adventure game about... well, two brothers, each of whom are controlled simultaneously with one analog stick and one shoulder button each, who go on an adventure to find medicine for their sick dad and solve a bunch of puzzles and meet some people along the way. Each of the brothers can do things the other can't - the younger brother can sneak into small places but he can't swim or reach high places for instance, and most puzzles revolve around combining their abilities to get past obstacles. The puzzle-solving in this game is snappy and satisfying without ever being too difficult, but that's not really what this game is about. This game is an atmosphere-and-mood kind of game.

The world here perfectly captures the essence of being in a fairy tale - a warm and inviting fantasy countryside with a dark underbelly. Every moment of this game is beautiful, especially for an indie game from earlier in the decade. The story plays out completely wordlessly (the characters only speak in an invented nonsense language) but it's told so well through the character's gestures and actions that you really get attached to the two protagonists, as well as some of the side characters, throughout. It's a really charming little romp.

The ending is powerful, and the game's final puzzle 'trick', so to speak, is both really satisfying to figure out and also completely knocked the wind out of me. I realized it pretty quickly and then the game was over soon after, but that moment will still stick with me for a while. It isn't the most affected I've ever been by a game, but again, I can definitely see why some people were. I played this game in one sitting in an afternoon and it was an afternoon well spent - I didn't catalog it under 'favorites of all time' but it is surely one of the most charming and clever games of the decade.

The speedrun, by the way, is surprisingly entertaining. I was surprised by how much fun speed tech there was in a game that is absolutely meant to be taken leisurely, stopping to take in all of the beautiful environments and little character moments - blazing through it feels almost sacrilegious somehow, and yet it's really satisfying. Do what Kevin told me to though and play the game first! It's a game that I think everyone should probably play once.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 11:40:45 PM
#46:


#79





Years of release: 2013 (PC), 2016 (PS4/XB1), 2018 (Switch/iOS)
Beaten?: Yes

Ahhhh fuck I have to talk about Gone Home now.

I have this one friend - I absolutely love him like a brother and this would never change that - but man he HATES Gone Home. He's not one of these Gamergate chuds, but he played the game, didn't like it, and I think he kind of hangs out adjacent enough to the Gone Home critics to really develop a particular loathing for the game, and honestly I just decided to just go offline on Steam when I played this because I didn't want to have to deal with hearing it. I wanted to play it and make up my own mind! I think he's not really into this type of game and that's cool, but I am into this type of game sometimes.

At the same time, I do think that the praise dumped on this game by a lot of sites is just a little superlative at times? I've seen it rank really high on game of the decade articles written on sites and just a little bit of it feels like they're naming it because it's a prestige game and they want to have a good take; discussing more what the game means for the industry rather than their actual experiences playing it. I know that I am probably being unfair on this one, but the reaction to this game comes off a little weird sometimes.

My reaction was in the middle of course, although it's obviously closer to being aligned with the reviewers who consider this one of the greats. I loved Gone Home quite a bit, and admittedly playing it in 2019 was maybe not as impactful as if I had played it in 2013 - I've already played other games that have taken some of Gone Home ideas and put them to more extensive, or simply better, use, so nothing this game did was anything I hadn't seen before.

I do have to be fair to my friend here. A short, minimalist game that is about going to a house and rifling through peoples' stuff to find out the story of what's been going on in their lives is not going to be to everyone's tastes, and it takes a certain kind of person to really get sucked into it. At the same time, I do think a lot of this game's detractors are sort of refusing to be open-minded about this game's simple premise and taking for what it is, but maybe that's because this game gets overhyped and - you know what I really don't have time for this and I don't care. I didn't play this game because I care about CONTROVERSY, I played this game because I like games that are about walking around a house and looking at shit.

What I love the most about Gone Home is the care that went into designing the house itself - it feels like a really lived in location, and by the time the game was over I got really used to the house and kind of wanted to live there. So much attention to detail here - I love picking up all the little objects strewn around the house and carefully examining them, seeing all the effort put into fake food brand labels and handwritten messages and such. There's a playfulness about it, a sort of parody of everyday real life, that makes exploring every nook and cranny of the house to find stuff exciting.

The story that the game tells through all of this stuff is alright. It's cute, I like the fact that it's LGBT-related, it's nothing super special but I found myself caring more about it in the 3-4 hours of this game's runtime than I expected to, so that's saying something at least. I didn't expect to get absorbed in the game but I was by the end. Again, there are other games that have done this sort of thing better, or more extensively, but I do have to give props to Gone Home for being one of the most influential games of the 2010's; this is a sort of game that would have seemed stupid on paper ten years ago, and then Gone Home went and proved, at least to me, if not to others, that a game about looking around a house can be really interesting.

Some critics try to elevate this game to a higher form of art than other video games which I think is unnecessary, and some try to say it's not even a video game, which is stupid. It's definitely a game, and it's a really good one, if you go into it with the right mindset and you like games about looking through someone's cabinets. I'm done talking about this now.
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Paratroopa1
01/01/20 11:57:36 PM
#47:


#78





The 2010's have been a really interesting year for the "meta" game. You know the ones I'm talking about; the self-aware ones with the crazy fourth-wall breaking tricks. You KNOW the ones I'm talking about, I don't have to say them.

OneShot is one of these games, and I don't think I could start talking about it without at least acknowledging that. It reveals its hand on this front in literally the first minute of the game, so I don't think it's unreasonable for me to bring this up. After that, the less said about this game, the better. I won't get into it too much, because if this is the sort of game that interests you, you should definitely check it out, and you should know as little as possible. It deserves to not have me spoil the experience.

This game is sort of bleak and depressing, its puzzle solving and exploration can be really annoying at times, and its writing isn't quite up to par with some of its contemporaries. I feel bad for this game, honestly - it gets compared to Undertale a lot, and it's not for no reason, even though this game technically came first (in RPG maker form!) before Undertale stole its thunder. They aren't the same game, but they do share some interesting traits in common. That's the most I can say really.

In spite of this game's flaws and frustrations, it demands to be experienced, again, if you like this sort of short, narrative-driven game. It's a HELL of a ride, and it definitely made me feel some stuff. Some of this game's... 'tricks' are real showstoppers. This game doesn't have a LOT of cards in its hand, but the few things it wants to show you, you should sit down and pay damn good attention to. Also, the main character, Niko, is one of the all-time most precious cinnamon rolls and I love them.

Like Brothers, it's a game that affected some people more than it affected me, but the appeal was not lost on me. It's a deeply endearing and creative game, one that managed to surprise me even in 2019.
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LordoftheMorons
01/02/20 12:00:07 AM
#48:


Tag

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Congrats to Advokaiser for winning the CBX Guru Challenge!
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Paratroopa1
01/02/20 12:22:53 AM
#49:


#77





Years of release: 2011 (3DS)
Beaten?: I think so? I think I did all the secret levels and stuff

Part of me can't believe that this was so long ago. Another part of me feels like this game has probably always existed. I feel like the 2010's have completely ruined my perception of time. Gosh, remember when the 3DS was new? We were all so young. Remember when we were actually like, hey, the 3DS has a 3D feature? It's sad, but this game probably had the best use of 3D of any 3DS game to date. Aw man, now I'm thinking about how the 3DS's lifespan is basically over and I'm sad.

I've never really been a huge fan of the whole New Super Mario Bros style. I remember when Mario games used to be creative, when each game could have a completely new style, completely new enemies, completely new ideas, and there was no one specific style guide for what Mario could be and what it could not be. NSMB has really standardized Mario to something that's bordering on boring, for me, which is a real shame.

That said, Super Mario 3D Land is doing a little bit more to revolutionize itself than its predecessors, even if it's SHAMELESSLY borrowing from SMB3 imagery. I love that this game is kind of a mix between the 2D platforming style with 3D movement - it really makes this Mario game stand out among others. There's a design space here that isn't utilized in other Mario games, with the 3D games not offering a ton of precision platforming challenges (Sunshine's platforming levels excepted) and the 2D games not... offering the ability to move in a three-dimensional space.

There's a ton of content here too. I was really impressed by how many levels there are in this game, and how challenging it is overall. It's just a really solid Mario game and it was an awesome launch title for an awesome console. I think it gets a little lost in the shuffle nowadays because there's a lot of Mario games out there but I think this one is worth remembering and giving props to.
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ZeroSignal620
01/02/20 12:24:29 AM
#50:


Was that actually 77 or did you skip one?

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