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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yeah it was supposed to be #77, thanks, I fixed it now

I got a little sloppy there on a couple things lol, I edit most of these posts after I reread them

speedrunning in brothers makes a lot of sense actually given the urgency of your quest! always galled me a bit how the game directs you towards sitting on a bench to take in the environment when your father's on his deathbed.

gone home's a lifetime movie on a plot-level but elevated so so much by the sense of place and being able piece it together yourself. i love it, but at least some of that initial excitement was for the games it would inspire.

good to see oneshot - absolutely lovely stuff.

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PumpkinCoach posted...

gone home's a lifetime movie on a plot-level but elevated so so much by the sense of place and being able piece it together yourself. i love it, but at least some of that initial excitement was for the games it would inspire.

Yeah, I think that sums it up pretty well. The plot is nothing special but the game executes it so well by the way it tells the story through a bunch of found objects left in a house. Really unique, especially for its time.

That's a good point about Brothers, haha. The overall tone of the game has kind of a "stop and smell the roses" feel to it but you really are supposed to be hurrying.

I have to admit, there's a lot of cool narrative-driven games released this decade that I just didn't get around to. Your top 10 games of 2019 list made me realize, ah fuck, there's so many really intriguing games that I just haven't played yet, my list feels super normie by comparison, haha.

#76




Years of release: 2014-2017 (PC early access), 2017 (PC/PS4/XB1/Switch final release)
Beaten?: Yes, spent a fair bit of time in it

20XX is a Mega Man X-inspired rogulike, where you blast your way through semi-randomly generated levels and get random equipment pieces, and if you die you have to start the run all over. This game is a crazy hot mess, at least the last time I played it, which I think was in 2017 at some point. A lot of UI things are kind of messy, some of the visuals don't really 'pop' all that great, the music and sound are average, some of the level design generation is ill-conceived at best, there's bugs, and it overall just sort of lacks a sheen of polish that I'm used to seeing in games; you can really feel how 'indie' this one is, to put it bluntly.

None of that really matters too much. Even if it is all a bit sloppy, it's fun as hell, and I've enjoyed it tons despite its nagging issues. None of it's a dealbreaker because the really important nuts and bolts of this game are put tightly in place - it controls exactly like a MMX game should, and blasting and slashing through enemies feels great. It's smooth, the enemy design is solid, the levels are usually alright although there's some stuff that's really frustrating. Plenty of alternate modes to change the game up. A lot of replayability here. And importantly, there's even online co-op, which doesn't always work great but usually works well enough to hold up.

For a time in 2014 I was speedrunning this a bit and was even putting up some of the top times on the board, but I imagine I've long since been overtaken now - but I do kind of think I would like to go back to this game. I didn't actually play a lot of it past the earlier early access phase of the game, so maybe some of the parts that I remember being unpolished are more polished than I thought. It's definitely one that I'll go back to.

Bloodstained might actually be my favorite Castlevania game ever. I fucking adore it so much. There's a certain ability you get later that is just my favorite thing ever. I think it's totally on par with Symphony of the Night, for what it's worth, but I also only just played that a couple years ago (oh yeah, I did a playthrough topic here)! I do hate how easy even Nightmare mode was on a New Game Plus though after spending so much time in the post-game leveling everything up like a madman.

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#75




Years of release: 2019 (PC/Switch/PS4/XB1)
Beaten?: All the main objectives, some of the secret objectives

HONK

...

I kind of thought about just leaving my writeup there but I guess I can say more about it.

Some of my closest friends already know this but I am fucknuts crazy about birds. Birdwatching is a big hobby of mine and one that I've really spent the last decade cultivating; I now maintain four different bird feeders and a birdbath outside of my house, I spend a lot of time going to nature trails around the city trying to spot birds, the bird exhibits are the ones I want to see first at the zoo, it's like, a whole thing for me. My house sits on a lake, actually, so in addition to the usual backyard birds I also get to see a lot of waterfowl. That includes Canada geese, who migrate through here in the fall and spring and make an incredible ruckus when they do. Their honks are very noisy. I love them. I might be the only person who does.

All that to say that Untitled Goose Game is 100% up my alley. It's MY alley, fuckers, and all you memelords who just like this game because it's the hot new thing are treading on my bird-obsessed home turf here. I kid, of course, but this game does actually feel a little more personal for me than the huge cultural phenomenon it became this past September, because, well, it's a game where you can play as a goose! I've been obsessed with this game ever since there was a tweet about it way back in like 2017, back before it blew up into a whole big thing. I mean, it definitely already achieved a little meme status back then but I'm just like HELL YES A BIRD GAME. Oh my god, shit, I cannot wait for Skatebird you guys. I need that shit in my life immediately. Gonna have to talk about it in 2020 I guess.

Yeah so. The game came out and it's lovely, although I think there's just a hint of missed potential here. It's very short, and left me wanting just a little bit more at the end; even like, one more area maybe, a couple more villagers to harass, a couple of new ways to explore the admittedly fairly shallow mechanics of the game. There's only so much to do here at the end of the day and the way the NPCs react to the things you do I wish had just a bit more nuance to it - not a lot, just a little.

It's such a delight though. This game's ADORABLE. I love running around as this goose, snatching peoples' hats, turning on water faucets, being a general nuisance in this idyllic English village. It really speaks to me, because the prim and proper nature of the village is just sort of demanding to have the forces of nature fuck with it a little bit. To me, the goose is an innocent character in all this - he isn't malevolent, he just wants to play, and humans shouldn't be quite so attached to having a perfectly orderly state of affairs anyway. The best characters in the game are the ones at the bar who are charmed by the goose's presence instead of chasing him off - as the goose, you return their kindness by brightening their day. I got a kick out of that.

Music in this game's great too. Love the little Debussy riffs that play whenever you do something; they're always perfectly fitting and just really add to the classiness of the game.

I haven't completed all of the objectives - some are a little frustrating or tedious to get, and a few I admittedly just can't figure out. There were a few delightful puzzles here - I love getting the woman to accidentally tie a ribbon on the goose for instance, or getting the boy to have to buy his stuff back from the store - I just wish there was more of the really good stuff and less of running around doing the errands of picking stuff up and taking them to a place, although those are admittedly fun when I have everything completely strewn about the garden, just trying to make as much work for the gardener as possible.

I am very excited to see how speedruns of this game are coming along.

#74





Years of release: Oh dear god. Ummm... 2011-2019 (everything)
Beaten?: More or less

I'll level with you, I've never played Minecraft. I think that, had I been younger, or in a different place in my life, I would have absolutely loved the hell out of Minecraft. Maybe I still would if I tried to play it now, and my reasons for avoiding it are probably petty as fuck. It's just become such a huge cultural institution that I'm not a part of that's populated largely by people younger than me that I think it's gotten kind of hard to get into and feel like I can take ownership of it. But hey there's always Terraria.

Terraria seems like it's blown up into a really big deal thing too, but unlike Minecraft I HAVE played this, quite a bit of it actually, and it is sort of like the experience I might imagine myself enjoying with Minecraft, if I played Minecraft. I think it's like Minecraft anyway? It sure seems like it's like Minecraft. The whole world is made up of building blocks that you can take apart and put back together wherever you want, and there ARE objectives you can pursue in order to complete the game but you can also kind of do whatever and fuck around at your leisure. It's just all in 2D instead of 3D.

I played Terraria co-op with a friend for a good 70 hours or so. What I love about Terraria is the feeling of completely open-ended adventure. Not only are there no boundaries, but the very concept of having an adventure feels like something you create yourself, in a good way. As I was playing, I allowed myself to sort of invent a game-within-a-game that I imagined I was playing, as if I were playing a procedurally-generated Zelda game; I imagined that each new cave, really just a random hole in the ground that had a lot of the blocks carved out of it already, was really a new, big, scary dungeon that I had to go into; I imagined that as I was carving blocks out of the tunnels and fighting off enemies, that I was sort of carving my own path of adventure through the game's world, and it opened up this true sense of awe-inspiring discovery that I haven't gotten out of a lot of games in quite the same way, even though I was making up a lot of the context of my 'adventure' myself.

At the same time, there is quite a lot of content here - lots of stuff to craft and make, lots of areas to explore, lots of quite real bosses to fight that you actually need to be prepared and well-equipped for. Really nice co-op game, too, since a lot of the time I would feel like just fucking off while my friend did some actual work building stuff or gathering materials or whatever, it's very open-ended and doesn't particularly demand that you be at any one place at any one time or be doing anything in particular. It's just super relaxing. My friend reached out and suggested we play it again now that there's been a bunch of content updates and I might take him up on it.

#73




Years of release: 2013-2016 (PC early access), 2016 (PC release)
Beaten?: No

This is basically space Terraria so I kinda ended up lumping them together.

I haven't actually gotten as far in Starbound as I would have liked, I played it with the same friend I played Terraria with but we haven't exhausted it nearly as much. I really, really liked it though, I think probably more than I liked Terraria? I like that the world has more of a theme instead of being generic, I like the whole idea of going to different planets and having a spaceship, I like the world lore, I LOVE THAT YOU GET TO PLAY AS BIRDS. HELL YES. BIRD GAME. I like that there's more clear sort of mission-based gameplay, too. It's almost exactly the same as Terraria but there's more going on.

I actually think that this game should possibly rank a lot higher than I have it here, and it just ranks a bit lower because I haven't really played it all the way through, but wow this game makes me really warm and happy. Playing this game was super chill, and exploring different planets or just hanging out on my spaceship felt so incredibly cozy - just writing about it now, I already want to go back there with my bird person and chill. The whole atmosphere of this game is crazy relaxing.

Both this one and Terraria I'll really have to come back to. I feel like I rated them just a touch too low, but my list really started to get competitive when I hit the 70's, what can I say.

#72

Rock Band 3 (an image of the Rock Band 3 title screen would then appear here, but it's broken for some reason)





Years of release: 2010 (360/PS3/Wii)
Beaten?: I don't think I ever finished Llama on pro keys but other than that, yeah

If you've known me for a certain amount of time, then you are very well aware that I had a phase in my late teens-early 20's where I was SUPER INTO GUITAR HERO AND ROCK BAND. I mean, I kinda still am into it! But it was a really big deal in my life back from like... 2006-2009 probably. Fuck, I actually can't believe it was that long ago, I'm freaking out here a little. I'm NOT PREPARED for the fact that it's been almost ten years since Rock Band 3 was released. I thought it was going to be '12 or '13. I can't believe that my interest in Rock Band was waning in 2010. No. No I can't do this.

It's actually not quite right to say that it was a phase or that my interest waned. I'm still really into it, I just don't really pick it up as much as I used to. When my CRT TV died I got an HDTV but it had really bad signal delay, bad enough that even the in-game lag calibration really wasn't a proper fix for it (it can only do so much), and being unable to trust the timing of my instrument and always feeling like something was slightly wrong with it made me fall out of the hobby a little bit, unfortunately. That and the fact that I haven't been able to assemble this dumb modded drum kit I bought that's still sitting around, waiting to be built and used. Maybe someday.

It's hard for me to know how to rank a game like Rock Band 3, then, which by all accounts is a souped up Rock Band 2. But RB2 was my jam during the absolute peak of my RB enthusiasm, and RB3 was during the waning period, so RB2 means a lot more to me. That said, I still loved Rock Band 3, and there was still definitely a time where I was really enthused with it. The songlist is great, and I loved keys as an addition, even if it's one that they understandably culled from RB4. Pro keys is the only thing I can do that makes me feel like I'm playing a real instrument, and I was even able to 100% Cold As Ice on expert pro keys after a full night of working at it - not too bad if I say so myself. I do actually SORT OF know how to play piano, a little bit.

I can still play. I mean, I can still PLAY. There are some godly guitarists out there who never stopped playing and are way better than me, but my skills still pay the bills. Just kidding, Rock Band is an utterly worthless way to spend your time pretending to be good at an instrument and I don't recommend it. But hey, I love rhythm games, and I'll always love rhythm games. Tapping buttons in a sequence in time with a song always feels good, and I'm pretty good at it. The knowledge of how to do it is just kind of built-in now, I can just do it on command without having played for five years. Okay, well, as long as it's the standard five-key guitar style. I have absolutely no clue what's going on with pro guitars and I probably never will, people who can do that are fascinating to me.

I still pick it up on occasion when my little brother really wanted to play Whip It. I should play Rock Band with him more. God, he was 2 years old when RB3 came out. I can't believe how long it's been.

#71




Years of release: 2014-2017 (PC early access), 2017 (PC/PS4/XB1/Switch)
Beaten?: I win sometimes

Crawl is a couch multiplayer game for up to 4 people - in it, one person plays a dungeon-crawling adventurer, and the other three players control various monsters that they spawn in the dungeon's rooms, trying to kill the hero. The catch is that if one of the monster players kills the hero, then THEY become the hero instead, and they keep going from where the last player left off, trying to level up enough to enter the boss room, at which point the hero player has to fight a huge boss controlled by all three of the other players at once, and if the hero succeeds, that player wins.

It's an extremely fun little Gauntlet-ish action-RPG multiplayer game that plays fast - a game takes about 20-30 minutes probably - and it's become a staple in one of my friend groups' get-togethers. It's really fun as the monster-controlling players to gang up on the main player, everyone trying to get that kill steal so that they can become the new main player. You level up as you fight monsters as the hero player, and leveling up is the key to winning the game, so there's a lot of incentive to spend as much time as the hero player as possible, but people who fall behind on hero level gain a lot more experience for leveling up their monsters, so there's a nice little rubber band mechanic that makes it easier to swap in if you've been out of it for a while.

It's kind of hard to know what all of the monsters do - you get the options for which ones to upgrade to what, but it doesn't really tell you what they do, so there's quite a bit of experimentation involved. My eyes sort of glaze over when I get to the equipment shops too, I feel like there's just a little bit too much complexity involved in the equipment, items, and special skills in a game that just feels way too simple and fluid for all that stuff, but it's a minor quibble. Overall the concept here is just an absolute winner - it's definitely one of the games I'd want to play if I've got 3-4 people in the same room, although unfortunately the game lacks online play (at least last I checked), which would have been really nice to have.

#70





Years of release: 2011 (3DS), 2013 (DLC first wave), 2015 (DLC second wave), 2016 (DLC third wave)
Beaten?: To varying degrees

Shit, I knew this list was going to make me sad. Pour one out for a game that will truly only ever be a 2010's experience. It might seem frivolous to even include this, but I have a lot of good memories here.

Your mileage will probably vary on how much use you got out of this. For me, during the peak of streetpassing from 2011-2015 or so, I was getting tags pretty much every day at college - there was a sort of coziness to the ritual of it, opening my 3DS during the day to see who I tagged, seeing a lot of the same people over and over again, people who I never met but I assumed must have noticed they were tagging me a lot as well. At cons, during the height of tagging, you could easily sit down on your 3DS and just constantly go through tags and never actually get through the whole backlog. Unfortunately, they didn't update the game to handle mass taggings more efficiently until 2016, after the craze started to die down. But I was fascinated by going through and seeing other peoples' Miis, trying to fill out as many states and countries as I could. I was never too interested in creating Miis back on the Wii, but with the 3DS's ability to share them, the idea of Miis became 100 times more interesting.

The games here are actually really kind of great though? They're simple, but the whole idea of people you tagged essentially being currency you can use in the games gives them an interesting design space, especially with peoples' shirt colors playing different roles in every game. Mii Force is actually a really legit game, and my favorite of the bunch - a shmup where each Mii you tag is an extra weapon you can add onto your ship. Each of the weapons are super fun, though some are better than others (hello, lime green!), and there's something really satisfying about deciding how exactly you want to orient all your weapons and blow stuff up. It's a concept that I think could actually be used to great effect in a real game, but Mii Force is genuinely fun and challenging and worth someone's time to play, although it'd be a lot harder now without the ability to easily get 10 tagged people.

Find Mii was also a classic - really simple but I still liked the little tactical things that went into it, and how every different Mii had different magic to use in battle, although some battles were annoying because you really needed to get specific shirt colors to advance. I liked the monster mansion game too where everyone gave you puzzle pieces that you had to put together which would create a maze to navigate through - another really clever game concept that was simple here and could be really interest put into more complicated practice I think, but I got a lot of time out of it. Even the flower-growing minigame is kind of fun! I got most of the flowers, but not all of them. I think my mom actually completed her flower library, the madwoman.

Sadly, I think my puzzle library will probably go incomplete, and many of these games unfinished. It's not impossible for me to still get some tags just at home between our 3DSes, or to complete the games with play coins now, but it's not the same. The time for StreetPass Mii Plaza has passed, and I'm really sad the Switch doesn't do anything like this - it may be a portable system in a lot of ways, but in a lot of ways it doesn't quite capture the magical essence that the 3DS had as a portable system. The 3DS really defined this decade for me in a big way and I'm sorry to see it go, and all the awesome little Mii games with it. RIP.

(For some reason, this game was the hardest to find a nice screenshot for yet)

#69





Years of release: 2010 (Wii, Japan), 2011 (Wii, EU/AU), 2012 (Wii, NA), 2015 (3DS)
Beaten?: Yes

It's honestly a bit difficult to explain to myself why I kept coming back to Xenoblade Chronicles, because to be totally honest with you, I don't love the combat system in this game. It's fine, but for the most part I found myself bored dealing with battles. The character customization mechanics in this game are really nice, but most fights in this game for most of the runtime came down to me just kind of waiting to attack things, healing when necessary, and just sort of wearing them down. There were probably better strategies that I COULD have used and better plans that I could have employed, but I had a hard time figuring out how to truly maximize combat.

And yet, I kept coming back. For well over 100 hours in this game's lengthy campaign. That's really saying something - I don't spend a lot of time with these big, prestige JRPGs anymore. To some people, #69 (nice) will probably seem criminally low but this is high, for me, for the type of game it is. Xenoblade really got its hooks in me. Maybe it's the stunning landscapes that never get old to run across. Maybe it's the well above average soundtrack. Maybe it's the story, which gets a little ridiculous but remains engaging throughout and takes place in a really cool world, or the characters, who remain exceptionally likeable throughout. Maybe it's the fact that this game has an absolute shitload of content in it and I felt bizarrely compelled to finish off every sidequest the game had to offer before its copious amount ot points of no return which sort of pissed me off but whatever. Maybe it's the fact that I played it on 3DS, and having a game this expansive and beautiful on a portable system really lends itself well to killing a lot of time. Maybe it's the fact that I can play as AN ADORABLE FURRY EGG. Yes, I played as Riki from the moment I got him in my party to the end of the game. Riki is the best. I love Riki.

Anyway, this game did just about everything perfectly except engage me in its combat system! This has been described many times as a single-player MMORPG, and that sounds about right, because let me tell you something, I hate MMORPGs. A lot. The fact that Xenoblade managed to sell me on it regardless is a true testament to how well-crafted this game is in every facet, and the fact that I never wanted to leave this world is a testament to the magic this game has going for it.

#68





Years of release: 2015 (Windows, mobile)
Beaten?: Yes

I think that people sometimes get the wrong idea about "experimental" or "avant-garde" art. To a lot of people it just looks like pretentious, hipstery wankery without any purpose or meaning, and to be fair, a lot of the time it kind of is, because nothing requires less work or creativity than throwing meaningless, random noise at the wall and hoping that you got lucky and created art by accident. But in most cases, creating something "experimental" is about trying brand new concepts, exploring unused design spaces, seeking to do something that's never been done before, even if it fails. I studied music for four years in college and it really gave me a lot of new perspectives on applications of the art that I would have considered frivolous before. I began to realize that there's nothing new under the sun, and brand new ideas, things that nobody has ever thought to try before, are worth their weight in gold, although an idea is still only a small fraction of the work and the larger part is talent, experience, and effort. Novelty is really worth something - that's not to say that music that sounds the same is all worthless, since there's a place for creating things of the same genre, and fine tuning and trying new *little* ideas within an already-existing framework - but when you've looked at a lot of different works that are all kind of the same or based on previous ideas, stumbling across something that really, truly is something you've never seen or heard before gets you really enthusiastic about the artform itself again. It doesn't happen every day, so every time it happens, it's something worth celebrating and cherishing.

Sorry, that got a little rambly - all of this is to say that I 100% completely understand why Her Story won Polygon's game of the year award for 2015, even if I don't personally agree with the honor (2015 was the most stacked year of the decade). It was an atypical choice, perhaps, but not a strange one. I can only imagine that when you review video games for a living, you end up playing a lot of stuff that is the same, or similar, to stuff you've seen before. Her Story, on the other hand, is probably the most unlike any other game I've played this decade - at least, it's probably the most unique game on this list, especially since most of the games I play are intentionally trying to recreate the 90's.

That's a bit of a funny thing to say about Her Story since it reminds me of FMV games in the 90's, but it doesn't play like them. Her Story is a game where you watch a bunch of video clips of police interviews, using an intentionally shitty search engine to type in keywords to find more clips in the database, until eventually you piece together the story for yourself. That's all there is to it, really, but as far as I can think of it's a brand new way for a game to tell a story, leaving it to you to decide how you want to investigate, what keywords you think would be a good idea to look up, what order you want to watch the clips, deciding for yourself how it all pieces together. There isn't a lot of gameplay to this, although I would say that finding the right keywords to use does take some meaningful strategy and creativity, but ultimately all that happens is that eventually the game tells you you know the story after you've seen a certain number of 'key' clips and that's about it. The game doesn't particularly care if you're paying attention and have taken anything from the story - it's entirely up to you and your own self-investment to get something out of this, and I think that's kind of great actually. It feels more like you're doing actual detective work than any other video game I can think of, including ones where you play as a detective. Your mileage might vary based on how much you felt like buying into the whole idea, but for me, I was completely, fully engrossed in this game for 3 hours. I played it and did not stop playing it until I was done.

I still think about this game a lot and how it changed my ideas of how stories could work or how games could work, and I probably spend more time reading someone's analysis of the game's story than I did actually playing through the game's story, haha. This game could have gone wrong if not for two things; an ingeniously clever script, which seems perfectly designed to guide you to new keywords to search and to dole out new information at a perfectly paced rate, and a fantastic acting performance by Viva Seifert, who I never would have guessed was not a professional actress based on how she had to carry the entire game on her shoulders. But it all came together and clicked perfectly, in my opinion. A brand new game idea, fully realized and executed with precision, is something that deserves all the accolades it gets.

I can't comment on these games but I am following along!

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No problem, I figure that there's probably a few people who glance at it from time to time, I write these things more for myself than anyone else

Street Pass games were fun. I'm fortunate enough to live not too far from an annual anime convention so I was able to completely all of the puzzles. While way down from when the 3DS was big, I can still get around 100 passes each year.
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#67





Years of release: 2015 (Windows, iOS), 2016 (Android, PS4, Vita), 2019 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

Hmmmm. What to say about about this one except that it's just an very polished platformer-shmup roguelike? It does its thing and it does it well. I haven't put hours upon hours into it but I have given it more than a passing crack - beaten it a few times, tried to speedrun it, didn't go super well, I suck at this game a little bit more than I'd like. The retro aesthetics here work really nice for me and the music's good.

Concept's great: the idea of a platformer-shmup hybrid is cool, and I like the fact that all the action happens in, well, a downward direction, always falling and never being able to go back up is kind of a unique mode of movement in a platformer. The guns come out with a really satisfying blast, and switching between them to get extra health and ammo never feels frustrating because all of the guns, while different, are equally-good - this roguelike doesn't suffer from the problem some other roguelikes have where you're constantly hoping for the one "good run" where you get the super awesome weapon, there are no "rare weapons" or whatever and I don't have a particular favorite so I just take what the game gives me and roll with it. There's a bit of loss in replayability as a result since every run isn't super different, but it makes up for it in never having to deal with the anguish of losing that perfect run.

This game is quite unforgiving though - getting through areas without taking damage, which is pretty important if you want to keep your max health up, can be really hard as I find myself just narrowly missing jumping on an enemy to keep my combo up and running into them instead. I don't know what it is, since the controls are really responsive, but it feels like hitboxes exist on a razor's edge sometimes. The challenge level of this game did hit a pretty nice sweet spot for me though, and I beat the game feeling neither frustrated nor unchallenged. Not easy to do.

I've been told that this game was designed for mobile devices and I just don't see it. How do you play a game with controls this precise on a phone? Anyway, I've never had a problem with feeling like this game doesn't "feel" right on a PC or whatever. It's been a trusty game in my roguelike library for a while now and it's one I still go back to on occasion when I want something like this.

#66





Years of release: 2014 (Wii U), 2018 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes, but not 100%

Like most children in the 90's with an SNES, I have a history with Donkey Kong Country. I received my SNES as well as the game in 1994, when the DKC craze was in full swing, and it was the most technologically advanced game of its time, so that was pretty exciting. In Christmas of 1995, I absolutely had to have DKC2, and my mom had to look all over the place, in every store, to eventually find it, because it was pretty much the one thing I wanted. She delivered. DKC2 was great. In 1996, in Nintendo Power, at the tender age of 8, I would record my first-ever speedrunning feat: a 100% file time of 5 hours that just barely managed to sneak onto the list. I was very proud of that! A new speedrunner was born that day. Also DKC3 existed.

I didn't really like DKC Returns for the Wii that much. I mean, the game was fine, but the controls were so awkward and frustrating that I could just never really enjoy it to the fullest. I played the 3D version and it was a lot better, and I considered including it on this decade list just because, but I left it out, because Tropical Freeze is the superior game anyway.

Tropical Freeze does a great job of creating something that feels new and fresh, while also knowing itself well and knowing what the franchise does well. Challenging, but not unfair platforming challenges that play smooth whether you play them fast or slow, and plenty of cleverly-hidden secrets to find in every nook and cranny of every level. The level design is great, the world themes are all really cool (I like the entire world that takes place in a fruit-processing factory), the boss fights are fun. Having your pick of Kong partners is a nice little hook to the series that we've never seen before, and it's really nice to see Dixie again after a long absence.

DKC's no longer the incredible technical marvel it once was; now it's just a well-designed platformer that was quite the welcome addition to the Wii U's underrated library that the Switch has now mostly poached. But it's really nice to see the franchise get not just one, but two really solid revivals, and I hope we'll see more of them in the future.

#65





Years of release: 2013 (Wii U)
Beaten?: No...

I have a really awful confession to make to you guys. I know I said I'm a Nintendo shill, but I'm the worst Nintendo shill in the universe; I haven't been keeping up on my Mario games.

Super Mario Odyssey? Well, I already told you guys the tragic story of how that game got lost somewhere in the house and I haven't played it yet. This one's killing me. I need to play this one so bad but I just can't suck it up and buy another copy for some reason.

Super Mario Galaxy 2? That one isn't lost. I just haven't played it. I own it. I've played like, about an hour of it, not enough for me to judge whether or not to put it on the list. No, I didn't forget that it happened this decade, I know it's a 2010 game. I just... haven't gotten around to it. I don't know why. I can't tell you why. There were a few years earlier in the decade where I just didn't get around to playing some of the console games I should have - it's complicated.

New Super Mario Bros. U? Nah, didn't play that one either. I'm sure it's really fun, but, uh, how do I say this? I didn't play New Super Mario Bros Wii either. I mean, I played a little, but not that much. So I didn't get around to U either.

And now this? Super Mario 3D World?

I DON'T EVEN OWN THIS GAME.

I really can't even begin to tell you how much I consider this a black mark on my Nintendo cred. I mean, aside from Odyssey, it's one of the best Mario games in years. I know that, everyone knows that, and yet, I do not own this stupid game.

I don't know what happened. I don't know why I've just been mysteriously, bizarrely avoiding playing every Mario game in the goddamn universe. It's like some kind of weird block, like I'm trying to avoid some past trauma. I still love the Mario series! I didn't grow out of it like I did with Pokemon. I still play Super Mario Bros 3 a lot. But all these new Mario games, at some point, I fell behind, and I didn't catch up with them, and... god. I need to make this a New Year's Resolution, all-caps - catch up on my damn Mario games.

Why is it on the list? Well, I still played enough of it. Bits and pieces, here and there, at the houses of various friends. The rest, I watched the Game Grumps play it. That was enough for me to draw what is probably an obvious conclusion to everyone who HAS played this game - it's really fucking good. It's probably the greatest culmination, in my opinion, of BOTH the "New Super Mario Bros" style of games (even though this lacks the "New" qualifier) and of the multiplayer Super Mario Bros games. I don't know if you could do much better than this.

It was a hard one to rank. I could have left it off, but I'm familiar with it ENOUGH that it wouldn't have felt right. This game is too good to get left off. If I spent a little more quality time with it, it might have ranked a lot higher. I'm sorry, Super Mario 3D World. I have done you wrong.

#64





Years of release: 2018 (PC/XB1/PS4/Switch)
Beaten?: Yes, not 100%

I have just two words for you guys:

Pinball. Metroidvania.

Look, if those two words aren't enough to get you to what to play this game then I'm not sure what else will. You play as a cute little beetle! You have yourself tied to a pinball and you roll it around and launch yourself by hitting flippers! I was immediately in love with the concept as soon as I played it and the game didn't disappoint. Okay, well, it disappointed a little, but it still delivered.

Like every damn indie game on the market nowadays I swear, this game is absolutely gorgeous. It's got this charming sort of like pop-up book quality to it, and as I said previously in my writeup of Pokemon Sun and Moon, tropical, Polynesian islands are pretty much my favorite place you could possibly set a game. My god, I just want to live in this world forever. I want to be a cute little dung beetle and flip myself around somehow naturally-occurring pinball tables for all eternity. Did I mention you're a mail carrier? A mail carrying beetle. And you have to deliver mail to all of the equally cute citizens of the island. Fuck, it's so wholesome my heart hurts.

There's a mix of realized and missed potential in this whole game. The areas that exist are really well-designed and some of the secrets are very cleverly hidden. But I do wish this game was a little bit longer, and some of the secrets are a bit TOO cleverly hidden - a couple of times I really had trouble figuring out where to go and it was just because I missed a very little thing. There was some really annoying backtracking in the beginning, too, because I was trying to figure out where to go, and there's a few parts where you have to hit some very, very precise pinball shots just to advance even if you're only walking back to where you've already been. I forgive it, though. It always feels like so much fun to move around that it never felt like a burden to me to walk around the island a little bit more.

I do think the game didn't quite explore the possible design space as much as it could have - I was expecting some more weird tricks and gimmicks to the pinball mechanics but it was more straightforward than I was expecting the whole way through. The boss fights were pretty cool, but there weren't that many and they weren't especially threatening. Damage in this game seems to be only a suggestion, it seems like the only thing that happens is after you take a certain number of hits you get a completely unexplained cutscene in which a number in a room somewhere else in the game ticks up, but after beating the game I still have no idea what it meant. I've been meaning to go back and 100% this game just because I kind of want to figure out what's going on with some of the weird secrets - I kind of got the sense after beating the game that I actually haven't gotten the full story here and that there might be a little bit more to this game that I left unexplored. I definitely want to go back and do it though, even if some of those secrets are going to be a pain in the ass to find, which is a testament to how much I love the concept of PINBALL METROIDVANIA.

I just can't get over how wholesome this damn game is. At one point, a cute rabbit offers you a wallet upgrade for some fruit (this game's currency), and if you say yes but you don't have enough, they give you the wallet upgrade anyway, and just tell you to pay them back later, because they know money can be tight sometimes. If you go and pay them back later, they thank you, and there is no further reward for having been an honest person. Being thanked is the reward. I adore this game.

Finally, I just want to say that this game has the single most strange plot twist I have ever encountered in a video game, ever. Not the best, not the most interesting, just... the weirdest.

I think I want a sequel of this game more than any other game on this list. It's great, but there are a few flaws here and a lot of unexplored potential that could be smoothed out with another attempt at it.

Starting to realize there is a bit of a correlation between how recently I played the game and how much I have to say about it

#63





Years of release: 2018 (PC/PS4/XB1/Switch/3DS/Vita)
Beaten?: Yes, but not the extra modes

Oh you thought I was done talking about Bloodstained? Not yet! There's still Curse of the Moon to talk about!

If I had to call myself a bigger fan of the classic Castlevanias or the so-called Metroidvanias, that's a tough call. I've never actually been a hardcore fan of either. The Classicvanias are fun, challenging, and iconic, but have never been one of the staples of my repretoire; I've played all the Metroidvanias but I can't say I've ever liked them as much as, say, the Metroids, but they're still really nice to play. My style as a gamer probably generally falls more with the classic style, but it's kinda hard to say.

Maybe if I'd played a bit more of Ritual of the Night it might be higher than this, I don't know. But I did play all the way through Curse of the Moon and it was totally my jam. It was a short, but great, experience. The Castlevania 3 style graphics and Castlevania 3 style gameplay both feel completely authentic, while at the same time, feeling fresh. This feels like an NES game they might have made in like, 1995, if they were still making NES games then. The boss fights in this game are absolutely WICKED - some of the most fun and memorable bosses I can remember in a game in a while. The soundtrack completely rips 100% of the time. Ippo Yamada has built himself quite the resume of retro VG soundtracks that just straight-up smash.

It's a little short-lived, as the Classicvanias tend to be, I suppose. I didn't play the later modes, which I suppose I should have, since I think there's a little bit more to them, and this is the type of game that I think I could really get into speedrunning. I've never been a Castlevania speedrunner, but, well, first time for everything I guess? This game feels great to play and I think I could do a little bit more of it.

#62





Years of release: 2012 (3DS, Japan), 2013 (3DS, NA/EU/AU)
Beaten?: Yes

Even since this game came out, and maybe even a bit before that, I've spited Fire Emblem. You see, I'm a huge Advance Wars fan, have been since 2001 when the first one for GBA came out. For me, but not for most people (especially not in Japan, good gracious), Fire Emblem has been the second fiddle to Advance Wars. I played the first Fire Emblem - sorry, the seventh Fire Emblem, whatever, and I found it to be pretty fun, but I found the tactics less engaging - always felt like I could just send in a super powered up unit to mow things down, and the game was always balanced around not losing any units - and I found the increased focus on luck frustrating. The ability for units to come out of nowhere and just instantly ruin your day because you didn't know there was a dragon-killing weapon-wielding unit in the fog and making you have to restart is irritating, too. Playing Fire Emblem games have always felt more like a negotiation with frustrating game design. than an exercise in strategy or tactics. I don't know. There are things I liked about it, so if Fire Emblem is your jam, I totally get it.

I remember this was back when Fire Emblem was a niche series though. It received enough support in the west to get released here, but didn't really fully catch on. That is, of course, until Fire Emblem: Awakening, at which point the series has basically become second only to Mario, Pokemon, and Zelda in the ranks of Nintendo's prestige franchises. Thanks, FE:A. But, despite the fact that I have some disdain for the series, I'll give it a pass, because this game is great and actually made me like the series.

I think what this game gave me was a focus on grinding and building a team. I always found it frustrating in Fire Emblem 7 that there was no way to grind, each mission was on a completely linear path and that was all you got. That really put a huge emphasis on planning your experience routing super precisely, even in a casual run, which is another aspect of the game that just felt like a frustrating negotiation to me. Even in victory I can fuck up by giving all my experience to Marcus! Instead of being able to flex my might all the time, I have to slowplay and try to get all my weak units level up, and for what? By the time I've got a kickass army, there's only like 4 chapters left anyway and it somehow feels like it was all a waste. Well, no more of that! Awakening has a more robust campaign with sidequests and repeatable fights and all that jazz, so I no longer have to be persistently paranoid that I'm setting myself up for failure in the future. No longer do I have to stick to only using Iron Swords, knowing that I might really need those super-powerful Killing Edges one day (and then never using them anyway). It lifts such a burden off of my shoulders. (By the way, Sacred Stones was always my favorite Fire Emblem before this because of the ability to do repeatable fights. I really liked Sacred Stones.)

The whole waifu simulator thing added even more to the game though. As shameful as it is, I have to admit that it is really kind of fun playing matchmaker and pairing off all of your units. The characters in this game are really fun and their interactions have surprisingly well-written dialog, and all of that makes up for an otherwise lackluster plot. I feel happy for these people when they all get married off to each other and have kids! And then, of course, there's the whole element of breeding these people like they're Pokemon to get the most maximized possible children, which is also really fun to figure out. I like the skills in this game as well - feels like something that's always been missing from the series, which makes each character feel a little bit more unique than simply being a unit of whatever class they are, and the skills add a much-needed way to tinker, to customize and try out different builds, which is something I always need in an RPG to keep me engaged. Another thing the series had lacked.

I gave Awakening well over 100 hours - I believe it's my third-most played 3DS game ever, which is saying something. (StreetPass Mii Plaza was #2. #1 is later on this list.) Even though some of my previous frustrations with Fire Emblem still exist - I too often feel like units coming out of nowhere can just fuck me up without warning and force me to restart msisions, and when I'm doing WELL in a mission it can sometimes just feel like a boring grindfest as my overpowered fighters murder the hapless opposing army. It's still one of the best longform RPG experiences I've had in a while though. Sometimes I love having an RPG where I just get to look at a lot of numbers and watch the numbers go up and kick the ass of those other numbers, and give my brain lots of stupid dopamine hits, even if it isn't quite the tactically engaging experience I'd hope for.

I did play Fates, by the way, and I think I got kind of burnt out on it. I'm not sure why it was worse than Awakening - I'm not even sure if it WAS worse than Awakening, I think I just got tired of it at some point and didn't finish it. Maybe I'll go back when I'm having a hankering for Fire Emblem again but I do genuinely feel kind of burnt out on the series - Awakening was really the only dose I needed. I do have to give a shoutout to Fates for still being pretty fun though - as well as a shoutout to Fates for letting me marry a cute fox boy, which is something that Awakening is sorely lacking. A 1000-year-old dragon loli is not a suitable replacement! If Three Houses has a handsome fox boy I can get married to I might play it but otherwise I'll probably pass so let me know.

I lied, there's no correlation whatsoever to how much I have to say about a game and how long ago I played it.

I dumped a ton of time into Streetpass Mii Plaza a few years ago after not having tried it for like five years! Very luckily for me, the campus wifi routers all functioned as hotspots that would hold the last several people to pass by, so I was able to consistently fill up my street passes each day until they shut that down (or even get dozens if I wanted to spend an hour or two walking around campus and continuously clearing them out...). I was able to finish the puzzles, Find Mii, and most of the fishing one whose name Im blanking on. Unfortunately its probably too late to try the others at this point now that Im getting like one Streetpass a month if Im lucky! (I still carry my 3DS with me daily).

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I am also following along but can't comment too much

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I never really used Streetpass. I hardly ever carried my 3DS with me. Seems like it was a neat experience though.

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I remember fire watch, such a calm and relaxing experience (for the most part). I enjoy those types of games every once in a while.
Reminded me of Endless Ocean for the Wii.

Paratroopa1 posted...

You see, I'm a huge Advance Wars fan, have been since 2001 when the first one for GBA came out. For me, but not for most people (especially not in Japan, good gracious), Fire Emblem has been the second fiddle to Advance Wars.

You and me both. In fact, the Advance Wars 2 board is where I remember you from way before I even came to Board 8.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

Sometimes I love having an RPG where I just get to look at a lot of numbers and watch the numbers go up and kick the ass of those other numbers, and give my brain lots of stupid dopamine hits, even if it isn't quite the tactically engaging experience I'd hope for.

I'm in a similar boat and felt really called out by this
https://www.pointandclickbait.com/2018/11/thats-the-good-stuff/

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Arti posted...

You and me both. In fact, the Advance Wars 2 board is where I remember you from way before I even came to Board 8.

Haha oh man, that's wild. I don't even remember! I would've been 16 years old when I was posting on the AW2 board. So long ago.

Fun list to read through. It's more or less the opposite of what mine would look like - speaking in general terms, your list makeup seems like it'll be 15% 3D games and 85% 2D games, while mine would be 85% 3D and 15% 2D. So far the only overlap we would have had on a Top 100 would be Xenoblade, Bloodstained, and maybe ZTD. That's what makes it interesting to read through though, and I'm taking notes on a few things I missed. Think I'll get Oneshot next time it's on sale.

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Also, I miss Advance Wars but I would say the failure of Days of Ruin had more to do with the series' disappearance than FE starting to succeed. Which is a shame, because I loved Days of Ruin.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Also, I miss Advance Wars but I would say the failure of Days of Ruin had more to do with the series' disappearance than FE starting to succeed. Which is a shame, because I loved Days of Ruin.

Agreed, love Days of Ruin, would've been on this list but it fell just short of being a 2010's title.

#61





Years of release: 2017 (PC)
Beaten?: Haven't quite beaten the "true" final boss yet, but I'm very close!

Curiously enough, and this is a source of great frustration for me, this is the first game on the list so far that hasn't had a Wikipedia page, and that I've been struggling to find information on. Whenever I try to google "Monolith video game" I just get hits on Monolith Soft mostly. This is a damn shame, because this is one of the roguelite genre's overlooked gems and it really deserves more attention than it gets.

Monolith is a top-down twin-stick shmup roguelike. Uh, not like Nuclear Throne though. No not Enter the Gungeon either. You play as a little ship! You fly around and shoot stuff with very classic shmuppy weapons. I'm trying to think of what the comparison would be here. Uh, shit, it reminds me a little bit of The Guardian Legend if you were always a ship but also always in the dungeon-like areas? This is a really flimsy comparison, but I think it's the most apt one I've got.

I especially love the retro aesthetics in this one even more than most games. There's something about old NES games where you pilot a cute little ship with guns that spew bullets across half the screen that has a 'look' that I like, and Monolith really captures that essence perfectly. There's something very Gradius-like about some of the 'heroic sci-fi' flourishes in the music too, it all feels very authentically NES from a particular era and genre of games.

It's a roguelike and it's quite difficult - it dives right into full on bullet hell territory in the boss fights, and I imagine if you're used to that sort of thing you can handle Monolith, but it's quite the challenge for me. I do like the roguelike elements here though, you get a really wide variety of weaponry, each weapon having a basic type but then a bunch of different modifiers on it that change how the bullets themselves work, and there can be some pretty surprising combinations and getting a gun that works really well for you is satisfying. This game is extremely similar to Downwell, both in its retro aesthetics but also in the gameplay - it has some similar features, like trading in weapons to get extra bonuses, and using health increases past the max to gradually build up more max health. Unlike Downwell, I can be very protective of getting the right weapon in this game, but this game has ammo to worry about and eventually you do usually have to give up your gun unless you're willing to shell out a lot of money for ammo. Getting to use a lot of different weapons in a run is pretty fun though and they're all pretty powerful.

I haven't been able to beat the final-final boss yet though. I beat the Overlord a few times now, and I've generally gotten good enough at the game that I can expect to do it every time, but after that, I'm sort of stuck. I'm okay with that - this game is hard and it's demanding of me and I can live with that. It does stop me from making this a blanket recommendation - I think the game is easy to pick up but very difficult to master which might turn some people off, but if a top-down shooter roguelike seems like your thing is probably is. It's pretty cheap, so it's a big recommend from me, since I think it's slipped under the radar. I like it a little more than Downwell overall.

Tag.

Untitled Goose Game has zero amounts of innocent geese. It only has one Weapon of Mass Destrhonktion.

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Days of Ruin was excellent

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#60





Years of release: 2014 (Wii U), 2017 (Switch)
Beaten?: Sure?

Mario Kart is another one of those franchises that I used to absolutely love. I spent so much time as a kid playing Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash with my mom, and every new entry in the series would have me hooked for a minimum of 50 hours or so. At some point though I've sort of started getting bored of it. Don't really play it as much as I used to, it just isn't as exciting as it used to be. To say I "outgrew" Mario Kart wouldn't be quite right, but maybe I kinda did?

Mario Kart 8 is a masterpiece and I still love it anyway though. I think we've pretty much hit the apex of the franchise here - I'm sure we'll get more Mario Karts in the future, but it's hard for me to see how they can improve on what they've done very much. It's about as polished as it could reasonably be. It's fast and butter-smooth, the tracks are great fun, and it remains a staple of couch multiplayer play. Even the online's getting reasonably decent by now!

I still play it reasonably often with my family - it's just always a good option for multiplayer. Nobody ever feels like *not* playing Mario Kart 8. We play Deluxe now on the Switch and it's even better because it's easier to find the controllers for it mostly. And it has all the DLC so I can play as ISABELLE. This is extremely important. I can't believe I can play as Isabelle in a Mario Kart game but here we are. This moves the game up a couple more places on the list at minimum.

I hope we get more Mario Karts in the future despite the fact that this is pretty much as good as they can get - Mario Kart Tour feels like an insult to me, I mean in theory a Mario Kart game on phones would be nice, but I've heard it's kinda rough so far, and the idea of turning something sacred like Mario Kart into a gacha really offends me and I hate it.

Honorable Mention: Mario Kart 7

I really liked MK7 too, probably enjoyed it for a good 30 hours or so, might have included it on this list in the 80's or somewhere around there, but I didn't have a lot to say about it so I culled it from the list and added it as a footnote here. Aside from being on the 3DS, Mario Kart 8 pretty much eclipses Mario Kart 7. It's weird to think that 8 was released only three years after 7 but we haven't gotten an entirely new entry since.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Mario Kart is another one of those franchises that I used to absolutely love. I spent so much time as a kid playing Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash with my mom, and every new entry in the series would have me hooked for a minimum of 50 hours or so. At some point though I've sort of started getting bored of it. Don't really play it as much as I used to, it just isn't as exciting as it used to be. To say I "outgrew" Mario Kart wouldn't be quite right, but maybe I kinda did?

yeah this is me too, not just with Mario Kart but with Smash too

I think part of it is that I'm not huge into online play and I don't really have anyone to play locally with, so it's hard for me to stay hooked on it for long.

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#59





Years released: 2018 (Switch)
Beaten?: No

I guess I'm just getting all the Mario games out of the way so I can talk about more interesting stuff later. (There's actually only one Mario game on the entire list after this! Gasp!)

But holy shit you guys, they finally did it - they made a good Mario Tennis game! It's been a really long while. I actually didn't hate Mario Power Tennis by any stretch, but Mario Tennis Open wasn't very good, the character roster was disappointing and the ability to use simplified controls made the game kind of stupid, especially in online play. And the series had been kind of dormant otherwise. Mario Tennis for the N64, still my favorite in the series and the game that gives my GameFAQs account its namesake, stood as the only really great Mario Tennis.

And they finally did it! They made a Mario Tennis game that really feels like it lives up to the speed of play and the sheer excitement of the N64 original. To be honest, I actually kind of suck at this game, I really don't understand how to do zone shots and stuff, I don't get the whole racket-breaking mechanic, all that stuff. I've seen Mario Tennis Aces described as being like a fighting game before and that seems kind of accurate with some of the timing stuff and the way you want to decide to use special moves at particular times. I kinda just like to stick to the classic mode here because it's what I know.

I haven't beaten the single player stuff yet, it seems... fine, but not super compelling. I just like online play (which I can only sometimes get to work) and local play or just playing exhibitions against AIs. I haven't played this game nearly as much to death as I did Mario Tennis 64 but I wish I could. Have they added Paratroopa to this game yet? I thought they were gonna add Paratroopa at some point but I actually haven't played the game since then. I need to pick it back up and play a few rounds.

Alright, now where's the next Mario Golf game for the Switch? I'm waiting.

Oh, Aces is actually good? I feel like that one came and went. I'm with you. I loved Mario Tennis on the N64. I put a lot of hours into Power Tennis, but it wasn't as good. Haven't touched a Mario Tennis game since.

I'd honestly be down for another Mario baseball game. Golf works, too! Just bring back mini-golf!

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Koopa Paratroopa
"Participation bonus for November 2018 online tournament, otherwise available from December 1, 2018"

Sounds like he's playable now.
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Oh lol, I only played the game during summer/fall of 2018 and I didn't go back to it after december

#58



Years of release: 2011 (PC, original), 2013 (PC, remake)
Beaten?: Seen all the endings

I have a name for this particular genre of game, or at least, the sort of thing that this game does. I call it an Easter Egg Hunt. On TVTropes, I think the term they would use is "The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything" or something like that. I love games in which a conversation between the player and the developers happen in which the player tries to think of different ways they can get the game to have a response to something they did, and in turn, the developers have already anticipated that response, and have something funny happen when you try to do it. Or, just in general, any game where there are a lot of interesting little secrets that you can find in weird nooks and crannies of the game and in the margins of things you wouldn't normally try to do. Super Mario RPG was one of my favorite games in this genre back in the 90's, and the Paper Marios after that. There's another good example of this I'll get to later in the list. The Stanley Parable is kind of like this, except the game is ONLY doing this, and it's having a big laugh out of it.

I think people mostly know about The Stanley Parable at this point? If you don't, though, it's basically a walking simulator that was originally built as a Half-Life mod, in which you take the role of a titular Stanley, walking around an office, while an omniscient narrator explains what Stanley does, and shenanigans ensue. It's really just a cute little story game with a lot of funny metacommentary, really good for a few laughs. Lots of great gags in this game. And most of all, I love that this game really expects you to try to explore and look for ways to get new story paths out of the game - even though there's almost nothing you can do in this game except walk around, there's something about that that still really gets the creative part of my brain going, trying to figure out places I haven't tried to go or things I haven't tried to do to get the narrator to give me some funny quip about my actions. I won't say too much more about that, since for one I think it's best experienced for yourself if it interests you at all, and secondly because it's been about 7 years and I don't remember the game that well, I only remember how much playing it made me smile.

I couldn't help but notice something funny when I was looking this game up on Wikipedia for the release data and such; under the reception part of the article, there's a lot of quotes about people who seem to be taking this game very seriously. Talking about themes of choice and control in narrative and how it's a pioneering game in gaming's transition into a legitimate art form. I do think that this is a brilliantly clever little game with great writing and a wonderful voice acting performance from Kevan Brighting, and there are certainly themes you can explore here, but the core of the game is all just a big joke on the player, and that's what I love about it so much. It pokes fun at artsy games a bit, and it pokes fun at itself a bit, and it's just really having a good time doing it - I doubt there's any greater meaning here, just an interesting little examination of the nature of making choices in video games.

I want to play this one again. It's been a while, and I think I've forgotten most of the gags in this game, and I think I could have another really good laugh at it and have fun trying to find all of the secrets again. Apparently in 2020 there's a new edition of the game coming out with even more new content, so I guess I'll be waiting for that!

Mario Tennis Aces is the best Mario sports game ever made, from a gameplay standpoint. But man, there were just no options whatsoever to change anything up. You better fucking like 1 or 3 set matches of 2 games apiece cuz you're not getting anything else!

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MrSmartGuy posted...

Mario Tennis Aces is the best Mario sports game ever made, from a gameplay standpoint. But man, there were just no options whatsoever to change anything up. You better fucking like 1 or 3 set matches of 2 games apiece cuz you're not getting anything else!

Oh yeah, I do remember this. A little annoying, but I didn't mind, since I always preferred short matches anyway, but the inability to do standard tennis rules was bizarre.

#57





Years of release: 2015 (PC/PS4), 2016 (XB1), 2018 (Switch/Mobile)
Beaten?: NO, FUCK YOU GUYS, WHY DO I NEVER WIN >:(

I don't think I can properly talk about Armello with acknowledging the elephant in the room, and yes, it would be an elephant; I am a furry. Fully committed, dyed-in-the-wool, as it were, and yes you better believe I have a million more animal puns to describe the situation. Not to turn this into some kind of coming-out post, because nothing could be more pathetic than spilling my guts about self-identity and sexuality in a writeup for my 57th favorite video game of the decade (nor could anything be more quinessentially board 8), but I really can't put up a reasonably convincing facade of pretending that this is one of my favorite games of the decade for the board game mechanics. The thing that keeps me coming back to Armello is the cute animal people. That is THE reason.

I've always gravitated to non-human characters, especially in games. If I'm given an option that is non-human I'll take it. Animal, alien, demon, robot, uh... plant, whatever, if it's more interesting than the human option, I prioritize it. The closer to animal-like it is, the better. I main Yoshi in Mario Kart. I main Paratroopa in Mario Tennis. Latch is my boy in Lethal League. My list of Smash mains is as predictable as you think it is. The list goes on and on. It applies to RPGs, like when I put Riki at the front of my party in Xenoblade as soon as I had the option and never let go, or Mass Effect, where I absolutely refuse to roll out without the resident Krogan and Turian options backing me up. I put Mog in my party as soon as I get him in FF6; Frog never leaves my side in CT if I have any say in it; if I play FF9, it will mostly only be to get to know Freya a little bit better. Pokemon is great, but Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a dream come true. As previously mentioned, I married Kaden in FE: Fates, not just because I'm unironically crushing on him, but also to maximize the number of potential fox-people in my party. (I bit the bullet and did the same to maximize dragons by marrying Nowi in FE:A. No regrets... ...some regrets.) It sure as HELL applies to anything where I can create a character; if I go back to Skyrim it is solely because of the option to play a hot lizardman, and if you want to convince me to play FFXIV, don't even bother talking about the game; just the promise of cute catgirls and catboys will be enough. If you're one of the lucky few to have the privilege of playing a pen-and-paper roleplaying game with me, the reason I can't properly get into character without being fully bedecked in fur, feathers or scales is because I am an unrepentant, incurable furry with a decades-long grudge against persistent, oppressive human supremacy. I will never apologize for this.

So, to me, Armello represents freedom. No longer must I pick the token furry character in the bunch! They're all furries, and they're all cute as fuck. In this crazy world of cute animal people, I can main whoever the hell I want, unshackled from the necessity of either picking the one thing that looks non-human or having to otherwise assume human form. I can pick from one of FOUR different rat people! There's wolves, bears, rabbits, assorted miscellaneous animals. There's lizard people! Lizards are furries too, don't discriminate. Really opens up my options in a big way - I get to pick my characters just based on, you know, how they play, not their species.

Armello is fun besides that - it's a video-game board-game for up to four players, where you move around the board, trying to complete your objectives and become the new king or queen of Armello, all the while fighting your opponents and trying to prevent them from doing the same, depending on how cutthroat you are. It's fun, but flawed - there is a little bit too much reliance on luck, it's easy to screwed by bad rolls or bad cards and some games can kind of snowball out of control, but in most cases you'll have a last-ditch effort to win, and if you don't, the game only takes maybe an hour or so so it's not a big deal. It's a solid multiplayer game and it's pretty cool to see a board game concept like this in video game form - it's able to do things you wouldn't be able to resolve on a real life board game, such as hiding your character or having AI-controlled monsters attack, plus the dice resolve a lot more quickly than they would in real life.

I think, though, if not for the cute animal people, I wouldn't give a flying fuck about Armello after about 10 hours of play or so. That's what keeps me coming back. I don't think this is actually too controversial to say; the artstyle here is a draw for absolutely anyone, with its dark-fairy-tale aesthetic and its cute characters lovingly rendered and animated on all of the card art. Theming really matters! If this were played on a completely plain board with generic game pieces, it wouldn't have much of a shelf life, but the way all of the gorgeously-drawn card art and the animated characters pop off the screen really adds to the whole experience. And, you know, Elyssia. Cute rabbits add to the experience. I would go to college and study to become an architect right now if it gave me a chance with her. It's 2020 and I have no shame about this.

someone gifted me The Stanley Parable on Steam a couple years ago but I've yet to actually play it

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#56





Years of release: 2011 (3DS, Japan), 2012 (3DS, NA/EU/AU)
Beaten?: Yes

The Professor Layton series is a model of consistency. Play one of these games, and you know exactly what you're going to get. Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke, are going to go on a crazy adventure in a mysterious town full of puzzle-loving inhabitants, and along the way you are going to run into some bizarre plot shit while also helping some kindly old grandma solve a block-sliding puzzle.

The characters (especially the protagonists) and world are charming and the plots are amusing enough to keep me going, but I'm MAINLY here for the puzzles. I think it's already clear enough by this point on the list but I fucking love a good puzzle game, and Layton is full of various, bite-sized logic teasers. I feel like this game hits just the right balance - the puzzles are rarely so hard as to provide significant frustration, but rarely so easy that they require no thought at all - just right in that sweet spot in the middle, where you feel just clever enough for figuring it out, but you didn't have to drive yourself crazy figuring it out, and the variety is such that if you have trouble with one puzzle (for instance, if you're like me and suck at visualizing 3D objects), the next one might be more up your alley. Right on that edge between challenging and relaxing, which is ideally where I like my games to be most of the time.

Aside from having some of the more interesting plot shit and some really cool almost Zelda-like segments to break up the action, what sets Miracle Mask apart from the rest of the series for me are the downloadable puzzles. There's a bunch of different 'types' of puzzles here with their own rulesets, with a handful of puzzles each, and they're almost all really great. I especially like the alchemy ones where you have to draw a certain number of lines between beakers, the ones where you have to put down mirrors to reflect laser beams at ghosts, and the ones where you have to draw lines of ducks on a grid so that none of them are facing or too close to each other. I've gotten a good 40 hours probably out of the downloadable puzzles alone, nevermind the main story! They're all really well-designed and challenging, and unfortunately, Miracle Mask's followup, Azran Legacy, wasn't as good in this area.

Honorable Mention: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Oops! To be honest, I didn't even bother to check the DS Laytons to see if any of them came out this decade, but it turns out, the 3rd and 4th ones did. Unwound Future is probably my favorite of the main stories in the games, just because all the time travel stuff is a really good hook, and I think this game had a lot of good puzzles in it, since it was after the 1st game where some of the puzzle designs were still rough around the edges, but before the later games where they started to run out of good ideas for new puzzles. I probably would have ranked this in the 50's or 60's as well, but I don't have too much extra to say about two different Layton games, so just mentioning it here will do. I really did forget that it came out in 2010 though.

Second best Layton

The bonus puzzles are mostly reflavored Nikoli puzzles:
http://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/

Site with tons of playable puzzles (in German):
https://www.janko.at/Raetsel/index.htm

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