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

(+) Yeah! (+)

yeah i sort of hit a wall with the layton/ace attorney games after layton 3/aa4 so i feel like i missed out on some good stuff. there's just so much stuff and not enough time nowadays :(

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I more highly urge playing the later AA games than I do the Layton games. Oops list spoilers

i bought aa5 but i've been avoiding playing it to irritate wigs because i haven't been in the right mood to delve back into an aa game again

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Tag

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Naye745 posted...

i bought aa5 but i've been avoiding playing it to irritate wigs because i haven't been in the right mood to delve back into an aa game again

Play Dual Destinies

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aa post-aa4 is never quite the same, but it has great cases, and it also never again is as bad as aa4, so there's that!

well except 5-1, which i guess is kind of not great
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Great list so far, Para. I think we have similar tastes in games. I am following along, even if I don't have time to comment much on the games here that I did play.

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#39





Years of release: 2015 (PC/XB1), 2016 (PS4), 2017 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

I have this one friend, Matt, who I met in college - he was in the same music classes as me and he ran the college's board game club for a while, and sometimes we'd meet at his place nearby and play a bunch of couch multiplayer games on Steam, which was convenient because he had a nice setup with a big TV and multiple controllers and I don't. Quite a few of the games on my list are here only as a result of gaming sessions with him. He's lived out of the state for a couple years now and I miss him - I hope he gets back here someday, because there's a lot of games that I don't get the chance to play in a local setting without his help.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is one of my favorite co-op games I played with him while he was here. In this game, each of 2-4 players play as a single occupant in a circular spaceship with multiple different modules that you control one at a time; the piloting, one gun on each of its four sides, a shield that you can move around, and a big cannon that you can fire off occasionally. It feels a little FTL-ish with its management, although this is an action game instead of a strategy game - you have to maneuver your ship through tricky areas while using your guns and shield to defend yourself from attack.

When we played this it was only for 2 players, and I think it expanded to 4 later. I feel like the game might be a little too easy with 4 players, since you could always have one person on piloting and one person on shields while the other two man the relevant guns at the time for wherever the enemies are coming from. For me, the joy of this game comes from managing it with a mere two people. You are always completely undermanned, and that makes the experience a more interesting one, because you can only ever pilot two of the modules at once - you always have to have one of the engines, shields, or guns completely unmanned. As a result, you need to make wise choices about when you want to stop and fight, and where you want to position the ship, or where you want to position the shield when you want to be mobile and fighting, or when you want to abandon guns and just retreat. And if you want to fire two guns, then you need to not be doing anything else. It doesn't take too much time to move between systems, but it takes enough time that there is a cost to doing so. This allows for a really fun co-op space where both players need each other to advance at all times, but can trade off what role they're doing at any time they please, as need demands.

It never gets overly stressful though. The game is challenging without being difficult, at least on the mode I played, and I think the appealing visual style helps a lot too. I saw a quote about how they decided to skip the "default gunmetal look", which I think was an incredibly wise decision, because the Katamari Damacy-like colorful visuals really add a lot. It's just an extremely appealing game to play and I'd recommend it to anyone who's looking for a fun, not-too-longish co-op campaign to play. I definitely want to show this game to other people at some point, and I hope Matt gets his ass back here so I can do more local co-op stuff like this with him.

#38





Years of release: 2016 (PC), 2017 (PS4/XB1), 2018 (Switch)
Beaten?: I've won a few times but I kind of suck

Everyone remembers the Summer of Pokemon Go. But do you remember the Summer of Ultimate Chicken Horse? Me and my friends do.

The scene: Summer Games Done Quick 2016. It was my first, and still only, time attending. Since Spootybiscuit and Mudjoe were running Necrodancer at this marathon, I thought it would be a really good time to show up, and so did about 10-11 of my Necrodancer playing friends; we formed up and made a group sharing two hotel rooms and spent most of the time together at the event. It was a really great time - I was meeting all these people for the first time and they were like old friends to me. We planned to spend a lot of time at the event doing different stuff; hanging out in the stream room, playing games, playing Necrodancer, hanging out in the arcade, checking out the city, whatever.

Probably about a third of our time ended up being spent on Ultimate Chicken Horse.

Sure, we went to the stream room to watch the really important stuff. Super Mario Maker, Pepsiman, etc. Elad and I woke up at something like 6 in the morning once to go see the two best Zelda II runners in the world. But whenever a run didn't interest any of us too much? It was back up to the hotel room. It was time for Ultimate Chicken Horse.

Ultimate Chicken Horse is a multiplayer, Super Meat Boy-like platformer for up to 4 people. The gimmick of the game is that the level starts out really easy and empty, but the players get to add obstacles to the layout. You take many turns running the level over and over, and each time, each player adds one more obstacle to the mix, making the level more and more crazy every time. You get points for beating the level, but only if everyone doesn't beat it - if everyone beats it, it's too easy, and nobody is awarded anything. You also get points for killing other people with your obstacles, so it pays to try to place obstacles that will be as painful for others as possible, while still allowing it to be possible to be completed (which almost always goes out the window eventually in my experiences).

This is just a perfect multiplayer game. It captures both the fun of platforming with the creativity of level-building in a really simple way, and you're almost always either doing something, or cheering someone on (or rooting against them if you're a truly hateful person) as they try to somehow climb over the ridiculous pile of buzzsaws and crossbows you've created. For us, it was pretty much the best social gaming experience we could ask for. We had about 10 people trading off controllers while the rest of us would chill out and either watch the game, or watch the GDQ run and see how it was going. I remember this time really fondly. I do not regret spending a lot of GDQ playing Ultimate Chicken Horse.

#37





Years of release: 2009 (3DS, Japan), 2010 (3DS, NA/EU/AU)
Beaten?: Not really applicable

This might be the only 2009-Japan game that I actually remembered to include on my list. Since it's a 2010 release date here, it's eligible.

I think this is a low-key masterpiece of a game that almost everyone skipped over, somehow. I was really skeptical of the idea of this game when I first heard about it. Create your own WarioWare microgames? That sounds like an incredibly ambitious project. Surely it wouldn't let you do anything you wanted at all. It had to be limited in some way. Maybe you'd be able to determine some of the visuals in some preset games, maybe adjust a few gameplay variables here and there, but create from scratch? That's a big ask.

That's what it was, though. You get to create your own WarioWare microgames from scratch. It's a legitimate game design tool.

Well, "Game design tool" is strong phrasing - it feels more like a game design toybox, but that's almost better, because creating a game here feels really intuitive and fun and never like work, to me. But it's still pretty difficult to do - you have to spend several hours in tutorials, learning how to use the game's programming tools, its art and music tools, etc.

It feels like engaging in real game design. The game almost feels like a puzzle game with multiple parts. The first part of the puzzle is even figuring out how to design a good minigame idea in the first place, trying to think of fun gameplay and thematic concepts and put them together. The second part of the puzzle is making it work. I said this before, but real coding feels kind of like a puzzle game to me, figuring out how to make all these different things work, how to carry information from one place to another, etc. It's one hell of a hard puzzle for a non coding genius like me, requiring several hours of sitting down and crunching all of the different elements to get it to work right.

This also feels in some ways like the spiritual successor to Mario Paint that we never got. You get to create all of your own art and music here, and opening up the basic art and music creating apps and just doodling some shitty sprites or making a short little 5 second song loop is just plain fun. The artsy aspects of this are nearly as fun to tinker with as the coding aspects.

Most of the fun in this game is self-directed, but there is a WarioWare game here as well, a set of about 100 or so preset games that are all designed within the game's own game-designing framework. They're all pretty simple since they're a little more limited in their design, but the great thing about these is being able to open each one of them up in the game editor and seeing how they were all created, reverse engineering the little programming tricks that made them work. There's a lot of surprising ways that some of the games function and it felt like I was puzzling out secret techniques for making games by pulling each one apart.

I only have two complaints about this game. One is that there isn't really a way to just create a "variable" - you can do it but you have to do it through weird, roundabout methods, and it would be nice if some of the ways you had to do certain things weren't quite so unintuitive. It would be a nice thing to see fixed in a sequel, but unfortunately, that's my second complaint - that we'll probably never see a sequel to this, since it received so little acclaim when it came out. Unfortunately, this is another game that we have truly lost in 2020, as I believe all the infrastructure that you upload and download other peoples' games have long been lost to time, which is too bad, because some people made some really clever little creations. I don't think you can even download the WiiWare expansion to this either anymore, which included more preset games and allowed for more storage, as well as uploading/downloading games through the Wii. I feel bad, because I feel like I really didn't engage with this game as much as I would have liked at the time, and now I'll never get the chance to - it's in the past now. I only managed to make a few completed games myself, and it's telling how much a relic of the past it is that my most recently created game was one in which you have to guess whether or not a football player caught the football or not, in reference to the infamous Monday Night Football game between the Seahawks and Packers in 2012. Really hits me with a gut punch just how long this decade has been after all. Pour one out for WarioWare D.I.Y., a creation game that was ahead of its time.

ive never played d.i.y. but warioware rules in general so i feel like i missed out. it came out right before i actually got a 3ds so i missed the boat a little there

(also i'm assuming and hoping warioware gold is showing up later here)

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Naye745 posted...

ive never played d.i.y. but warioware rules in general so i feel like i missed out. it came out right before i actually got a 3ds so i missed the boat a little there

(also i'm assuming and hoping warioware gold is showing up later here)

I actually didn't play it unfortunately. I dunno why I missed it, I think I just heard that it was mostly a remake so I skipped over it. WarioWare does rule though, I wish we'd gotten more of it in the 10's.

it sort of is a "remake" but it's fantastic. basically a best hits/remix of sorts of base + touched + twisted. and of course with all the warioware charm

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That's cool, I should get it then. There's a few late-era 3DS games that I want to pick up just to complete my collection of 3DS games I felt like playing - WarioWare Gold, Samus Returns, Extra Epic Yarn, Ever Oasis, etc. I need to pick these up before they're gone

samus returns is definitely on my short list - especially given my love of metroid

i played a little bit of a friend's but was busy and lost my place and etc...it was alright though

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#36





Years of release: 2016 (PC), 2017 and 2019 (expansions)
Beaten?: Yes

I dunno why people are so excited for Diablo 4! I mean, I already played it. It's called Grim Dawn.

As I said before, I love Diablo and Diablolikes. I'm a simple man - I like to click on stuff and watch numbers go up and a bunch of random shit drop on the floor that I'll probably sell so I can make room for more stuff. Grim Dawn is probably the best Diablolike I've ever played, including the Diablo games themselves. It's like Diablo II, but it's just... better! It plays better, it has more content, I think the world's cooler, even. I love the classes in this game - the coolest gimmick to me is that you get to pick two classes and you can take abilities from either one freely, and nearly everything you can do is viable, so there's TONS of different possible builds, and lots of different combinations you can get out of two different classes. The constellation bonuses are really fun to manage too, giving you a lot of dimensions to building your character.

I don't even have that much to say about it. I've played it a lot and I'll continue to play more of it since I haven't beaten all the expansion content yet, but there's just so much here. It's such a robust game. I'm amazed that I haven't seen more people talk about this game or seen it get more press, because if you're a fan of Diablo II I couldn't recommend this game enough. I'll never need another game where you click on stuff until it dies to get items.

I only just noticed the Grim Dawn screenshot I picked has japanese text lol

Warioware D.I.Y was so good. So, so good.
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#35





Years of release: 2012-present (Mobile)
Beaten?: Hahaha, you FOOL

Puzzle & Dragons is not a game. It is a curse. I hate this game. I hate myself. I hate what I have become. Ranking this game on my list at all is a moral failing, a complete negligence of my responsibility to acknowledge this game as an utter monstrosity. On the other hand, not ranking this game on my list would be a lie. Step one is admitting I have a problem. I have a problem, and its name is Puzzle & Dragons. The puzzle is figuring out where the hell I went wrong with my life. The dragons are metaphorical.

If you're not familiar with the game, think of it as Pokemon combined with match-3 puzzle gaming, like Bejeweled. You have a 6x5 board of colored orbs, and you have a limited time to drag one orb around the board, swapping it with other orbs as it moves, trying to align all the orbs on the board to match groups of 3 or more. Each color corresponds to an elemental type for each of your team of monsters/anime girls, who attack based on how many combos you deal. You get monsters/anime girls you defeat and you can put them on your team or use them to power up your other monsters/anime girls.

It's a really strong concept. I'm a fan of both puzzle AND dragons (but not the steady creep of anime girls into my Pokemon clone) and, looking for something to tinker with during downtime on my phone, this was the poison I chose to pour straight down my unsuspecting gullet. I nearly put it down after about an hour, because it started out with a 'babby's first puzzle game' sort of vibe - the game gives you a powerful monster right off the bat and my first few weeks with this game were almost insultingly easy, effectively impossible to lose. Several months were needed before I could even advance this game to the point where I needed to start grinding or really putting any thought into what I was doing, thanks to this being a mobile gacha game with a stamina bar.

I stuck with it. I don't know why. Something about the lure of this game was too strong and kept pulling me back into its orbit. I picked up this game in early 2015, and I have played it nearly every day since, for nearly five years straight. Once I started playing long enough, something weird started happening: the game got interesting. Oh, it took months, both for me to reach the game's endgame, and for the game itself to develop challenging content. But eventually, by about the time I got to 2016, PAD really started to bear its fangs. Monsters started throwing around defensive abilities, debuffs, and a bunch of shit that messes with the board, forcing me to actually use thought and skill to put together strong combos, and to plan out my teams to deal with each threat. Team building started out basic but got increasingly more complex as the game started throwing out harder shit. Having rare and powerful monsters wasn't enough anymore; now I needed the right ones, with the right active and passive skills. Now that I have a few hundred different viable monsters/anime girls (mostly anime girls, this was not my doing) in my box, picking and planning the right ones is now something that actually requires engagement from my brain.

I still can't quite get over the fact that it's a gacha. The stamina issue is no longer really a problem anymore (I have nearly 400 of it when I started out with like 20 or whatever), but it remains a fact that this game is designed to attract whales to sink thousands of dollars into it, and that always makes me feel a bit gross playing it. Pulling machines to get random monsters (usually anime girls actually) is always a bit unseemly, knowing some people are sinking all their money into pulling it over and over. The game seems designed to keep you playing every day, offering increasingly impressive bonuses for logging in, and the power creep is really something else, making all the stuff I had in 2016 seem like a joke compared to stuff I can get easily in 2019. The good news is that I've never really had to spend money on the game. If you play a little bit every day, the game is extremely generous about showering you in freebies, and despite never paying I have a really extensive roster of monsters/anime girls (and it is mostly anime girls, let's not pretend this game has ANYTHING to do with dragons anymore), some of which are among the best in the game.

The other big problem with this game is that it has no defined end. It's an endless, sisyphean loop of new challenges being added every day, just constantly watching the numbers of all my monsters and my own rank go up with no finish line in sight. There's really high-end challenges that take years to build up to and conquer, but it's not like the game has some kind of story, the only reward is getting to do more stuff, forever. It's enough to make me question the purpose of even playing video games at all, but then I get a stupid dopamine hit because the game gave me 5 free magic stones just for logging in that week, and the cycle continues. My lizard brain is happy. When my lizard brain is happy, all of the worries of my higher conscious seem to be put aside.

But there has been a lot of quality time spent in this game, crunching strategy and overcoming some of the really difficult challenges the game has to offer. For a mobile phone game that I originally thought was genuinely for babies, I'm shocked at how much complexity and nuance it has had to offer me over the years. That's why I'm still playing it in 2020, and I don't think I'm stopping any time soon. Even after 5 years, I'm still surprised sometimes, when a new quest is added that actually forces me to sit down for a good hour, looking through my monster box and plotting out which anime girls I need to win. It'd be hard for me to find another game native to phones that will help me kill time when I'm sitting aroud on the bus or whatever. Hopefully phones will be able to give me something with a little more depth, a little more meaning someday, but until then PAD stands alone as the only phone game I've played that has really engaged me on the same level as my other favorite strategy games and RPGs. I hate it, but PAD deserves credit where credit is due for five years of keeping me not bored when I need it most.

If all that's not enough, then know that this is a game where, if you want, you could compose a team of Sephiroth, Terry Bogard, Zangief, Hello Kitty, Santa Claus, and Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers. Among others. This game has more crossovers than Smash. It's kind of incredible.

Why did this turn into the longest writeup, sometimes it's Grim Dawn and I have like one short paragraph and nothing to say bu

By the way, I put PAD at #100 on my most recent top 100 games list, so this is roughly the point at which we start getting into serious favorite-games-of-all-time territory, though that line is fuzzy (I could see some of the games before PAD making it depending on how I feel on any given day).

Puzzle & Dragons is not a game. It is a curse. I hate this game. I hate myself. I hate what I have become. Ranking this game on my list at all is a moral failing, a complete negligence of my responsibility to acknowledge this game as an utter monstrosity. On the other hand, not ranking this game on my list would be a lie. Step one is admitting I have a problem. I have a problem, and its name is Puzzle & Dragons. The puzzle is figuring out where the hell I went wrong with my life. The dragons are metaphorical.

Oh hey, it's me back when I was playing Fire Emblem Heroes

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I tried Fire Emblem Heroes, by the way - I had that same early phase where the game just felt too boring to be interesting, and I thought, maybe this game gets more interesting if I stay with it, but I really have time for only one gacha in my life, and I've decided to make it PAD. I really don't need another one.

after loving overcooked 2, was thinking of getting lovers in a dangerous spacetime, but the gf was unconvinced by the trailer
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I'd heartily recommend Lovers, obviously, to someone looking for a co-op experience like Overcooked, though I can't account for whether or not someone wants to play a game about piloting a giant gumball spaceship. But it's really good imo (obviously or I wouldn't have ranked it)

for some reason i really got into pokemon picross and played it, literally every day (to get the daily currency units), for about 9-12 months and beat it 100% (with 0% of my money spent on it)

i guess what i'm saying is we all have our vices

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Paratroopa1 posted...

I tried Fire Emblem Heroes, by the way - I had that same early phase where the game just felt too boring to be interesting, and I thought, maybe this game gets more interesting if I stay with it

Haha, nope!

PAD is fun. I played it for a while but eventually it just became too much of a grind without enough reward to keep me at it.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

I tried Fire Emblem Heroes, by the way - I had that same early phase where the game just felt too boring to be interesting, and I thought, maybe this game gets more interesting if I stay with it, but I really have time for only one gacha in my life, and I've decided to make it PAD. I really don't need another one.

FEH was pretty fun for a while honestly, but Nintendo was obviously caught off-guard by how popular it got and they never got it to a point where it was consistently producing interesting content. At a certain point I realized I wasn't having fun...then I played for another four months, because being able to recognize the sunk cost fallacy at work doesn't make it easy to avoid it. I never became a whale for that game but even if I wasn't investing money, I was investing time that could be better spent doing other things.

Once I managed to extricate myself from that self-imposed hole, I got a lot better at free time management in general. I avoid Lizard Brain Games (mostly), and don't wait for things to 'get good' anymore, or finish a piece of media just for the sake of finishing it.

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PAD is one of a few mobile games that roped me in for a while. I just escaped from three months of a Dragalia Lost obsession. I try to keep to a rule that if I'm thinking about how to structure my day around finding time to play a game I have to delete it.

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#34





Years of release: 2015 (theaters), 2016 (DVD/Blu-Ray), 2019 (Disney+)
Beaten?: I've seen it three times

After the original trilogy, which was obviously universally beloved by fans, Star Wars went through a bit of a dark period, to say the least. Thanks to questionable directorial choices and ill-conceived plot issues, what followed were a run of three movies that, for me, really did a lot of damage to my interest in the franchise (although the third one was surprisingly good, actually) and left me wondering if they would ever make a really good Star Wars ever again. Fortunately, the seventh installment of the series (and its newly-introduced female protagonist) took a back-to-basics approach in reviving the series, reintroducing a lot of the old cast while also starting fresh, acknowledging the mistakes made in previous installments, and while it may not have been the most original story ever told, hitting many of the same cliche beats, it reinvigorated my faith in the franchise and filled me with hope for what was to come - an interesting, exciting, and wholly original sequel followed, but sadly, only disappointment after that.

Wait, this isn't right. Something's wrong. What was I supposed to be talking about again?

Oh yeah.

#34





Years of release: 2013 (3DS), 2014 (iOS), 2017 (Android)
Beaten?: I've beaten it three times

Right, like I was saying. After the original trilogy, which was obviously universally beloved by fans, Ace Attorney went through a bit of a dark period, to say the least. Thanks to questionable directorial choices and ill-conceived plot issues, what followed were a run of three games that, for me, really did a lot of damage to my interest in the franchise (although the third one was surprisingly good, actually) and left me wondering if they would ever make a really good Ace Attorney ever again. Fortunately, the seventh installment of the series (and its newly-introduced female protagonist) took a back-to-basics approach in reviving the series, reintroducing a lot of the old cast while also starting fresh, acknowledging the mistakes made in previous installments, and while it may not have been the most original story ever told, hitting many of the same cliche beats, it reinvigorated my faith in the franchise and filled me with hope for what was to come - an interesting, exciting, and wholly original sequel followed, but sadly, only disappointment after that.

Okay, maybe casting AAI2 as Revenge of the Sith didn't quite work, and casting Athena as Rey was a bit silly. But otherwise, it's not too much of a stretch, is it? Dual Destinies is absolutely the Force Awakens of the Ace Attorney franchise. It's not perfect and it doesn't hit the highest peaks, but it's a completely serviceable return to form for a franchise that desperately needed it, after my faith had been shattered by the Phantom Menace that was Apollo Justice.

I was ready to have a new protagonist and move on from Phoenix, but I have to admit, his triumphant return to being an attorney in this game made me kind of fist pump a little bit, and it's great to have him back. The plot of this game feels like it's trying to right the ship after the poorly-executed AA4, and I think it succeeds. It doesn't quite stick the landing at the very end for me, for reasons that I won't talk about here, but maybe I'll get to if I do an AA ranking at some point down the road. However, the DLC case more than makes up for it, being possibly one of the most fun and surprising cases in the series, and I love that in canon, Phoenix's first case after coming back to being a lawyer was to defend an orca. It's classic Ace Attorney.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Dual Destinies is absolutely the Force Awakens of the Ace Attorney franchise.

I actually made this comparison when talking about TFA the other day! Yeah, both installments kind of play it safe and hit a lot of familiar story beats, but that's exactly what each franchise needed.

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ha, good comparison!
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KamikazePotato posted...

.... At a certain point I realized I wasn't having fun... even if I wasn't investing money, I was investing time that could be better spent doing other things.

..... don't wait for things to 'get good' anymore, or finish a piece of media just for the sake of finishing it.

Almost 20 years ago, the game that pushed me to this revelation was Legend of Legaia. The story was weak, the characters were completely stupid, and the game just dragged on. It had sropped being fun after the first hour or two, but I forced myself to finish it.

After that, I suddenly realized, " I have plenty of other games.... I don't have to play crappy games!! "

Now, I give a game a couple of hours if it hits a slow spot or has a rough start, but if after a couple of hours I am not enjoying my time with that game, I move on to something else.

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I thought that AGDQ would be a good time to do writeups - it actually turned out to be highly distracting so now that that's over I'm going to go back to trying to churn these out

I did take a lot of time off! Okay, back to work. No more delays from me.

#33





Years of release: 2015 (most consoles)
Beaten?: Yes*

This does raise the question of what "beating" a game means, because I never actually took control of the game once - I 'played' this game via watching Dels play it over screensharing, and giving suggestions for stuff to do and talking about the game's plot and all that. I experienced the whole game and I very much "felt" like I had played it in the end, so I'm counting games like that where I meaningfully experienced it. I love playing story games like this with someone else, anyway; having someone to bounce crazy theories off really enhances of a game designed to make you have crazy theories like Life Is Strange.

Remember how I said I really liked Gone Home, but I felt like other games would come along and do similar things to Gone Home but better? Life Is Strange REALLY gave me Gone Home vibes - or I guess I should say Gone Home gave me LIS vibes because that's the order I played them in. Just with, uh, more narration and characters and gameplay. And instead of a single house, it's a small town in Oregon. Much like Gone Home, I like this story of interpersonal drama that takes place in a world that feels very lived in - I love the design of the homes, the school, all the little posters and fliers on the wall, all the objects sitting in the corner that you can look at.

Of course, I'm also just a sucker for time travel stories. I don't care too much if the time travel logic has issues - I enjoy exploring the different worlds that going back and making different choices has to offer, seeing how things would play out differently, changing the future by altering events in the past and all that. It's an interesting space to explore, and Life Is Strange uses it really well, offering the chance to rewind time and see how different actions play out before deciding which choice you want to commit to. Even if most of the game's decisions don't matter in the grand scheme of things, there's still a very "journey, not the destination" feeling to all of it, and the choices you make do come up later in little ways that I found pleasing. And best of all, I like that these choices create talking points - it's really fun to see the statistics of which choices people chose, and I wish more games featured something like this.

I like the cast in this game a lot. As much as I like the Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, etc series, there is something nice about this game's down to earth characters, and Max and Chloe are really easy to like and follow along the story with. All of the side characters are great too - this game was clever, and even the most unsympathetic-seeming characters have surprising nuance to them. This story plays in a lot of gray areas - characters who aren't simple, problems that aren't easy to fix - and it does it without feeling too melancholy, despite some of the more tragic outcomes of the game's story.

I played this game as an episodic thing, and it was pretty fun to do it that way, since that built up anticipation for each episode. Episode 2 was definitely a highlight for me, as the climax of that one featured some really cool use of the game's mechanics as well as being an emotional peak as well, though some of the twists and turns near the ends of episodes 3 and 4 were very welcome as well. A lot of people didn't like the ending because it kind of ends exactly where it looks like it's going to without your choices influencing it, but - I mean that's partly the point? And I don't mind that the story winds up arriving at the place it says it's going to. Not everything needs to be a twist ending! I don't want to get into it here, just to say that I didn't feel too much discontent with the plot overall. I had a few issues here and there, and some intrigue didn't build up to anything as interesting as I had hoped, but it was overall good.

I think that's most of what I have to say about it - it's been a few years so maybe if I had played it more recently I'd have more stuff on the brain. While not my singular favorite story game, it set a very high bar for what a game like this could be. I'll play Before the Storm and LIS2 at some point eventually, but I did not get around to those this decade.

Random aside - this was the game I had the most trouble getting screenshots for. Most things came up with BTS or LIS2 and I just didn't find any pics that I found particularly satisfying for this one. It's strange that this of all games would be the one.

#32





Years of release: 2018 (PC/XB1/PS4/Switch), 2019 (DLC)
Beaten?: Only the A's

Do you guys remember Jumper? I know you guys remember Jumper! At least a few of you, anyway. That was definitely a thing back in the late 00's, back when indie games were mostly something someone made in Game Maker or Flash or something else that was suitably low brow. And yet, I'd say that Jumper sparked the birth of a genre - something I like to call the Infinideath platformer. A linear series of rooms filled with spikes and other death traps, where you have to navigate the room with very careful precision at every turn, but death doesn't matter too much - you just go back to the start of the room and try again, over and over, until you beat it and move onto the next room.

These sorts of games were very in vogue and still are today, and while I did enjoy Jumper and its sequel for a while, I sort of came to dislike the genre; I just didn't find myself all that satisfied by trying the same obstacles over and over and over ad nauseum until my muscle memory had perfectly solved the problem. I prefer platformers in which you have room to make mistakes and you need not be so precise at every obstacle, but which demand that you overcome a longer series of challenges with minimal mistakes before you can proceed. It's just kinda what I'm used to, I guess, and while it would be wrong to say I found Jumper at the like to be not challenging, the challenge felt strangely hollow when all I had to do was eventually fluke into clearing a room once and then never have to see it again. Of course, I could play more to see how few deaths I can beat the game with, but... I don't know, the whole precision-platforming thing doesn't really appeal to me. Never got into IWBTG or its many clones; even Super Meat Boy wasn't really much to my taste (though I did think it was a fine game).

Now, the creator of Jumper has made his magnum opus, Celeste. And it is incredible. It's a testament to how flawless this game is that it's a type of game that I don't even really like, and I'd still easily rank it among my top 100 games of all time.

It's really awesome to remember the humble origins of Jumper and to see how far it's come. Celeste is stunningly well-crafted. It's visuals and music are gorgeous, its ambiance and tone cozy and charming. It even has a story that I think is well executed for what it is, managing to touch on topics of anxiety and self-fulfillment directly without feeling too hamfisted. But most of all, for me, the gameplay of this genre has finally found itself a sweet spot in which it's tricky, but not too mindlessly or annoyingly difficult to turn me off entirely. Madeline's jumps and wall climbing feel absolutely perfect, and the level design always feels like it has exactly the right number of obstacles to make the level exactly as challenging as it ought to be, no more, no less. Everything feels perfectly fair. I never found myself frustrated even once. I was always delighted by how new stage elements would be taught to me, then cleverly re-used and combined to create new challenges. Each new world brings with it new gimmicks that add to the game.

It's really only not higher because it still remains a genre of a game I feel at arm's length with. I really couldn't get into playing the B-sides, and let's not even speak of the C-sides, thank you - I'm aware of them, and I could probably beat them with enough time, but I just don't really have it in me. I don't mind, though, that there's optional content in this game that I don't feel like playing - I absolutely love watching Celeste speedruns, and I felt like I got a complete experience out of playing this to its basic conclusion. I haven't played the DLC yet - I'll probably return to this game at some point and finish it off, maybe even give the B-sides another go, who knows? Celeste may not be my first love, but it's undoubtedly deserving of my time.

By the way, update on Super Mario Odyssey: we found it today, of course, very shortly into 2020, after I missed my window to include it on this list. Well, I invoked murphy's law, and the game was returned to me. Ultimately what matters is that I can play it now and realize how wrong my list is without it, so hey, that's good.

Paratroopa1 posted...

I haven't played the DLC yet - I'll probably return to this game at some point and finish it off, maybe even give the B-sides another go, who knows?

You have to beat all the b-sides to advance in the dlc. It's ludicrously difficult.

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I do want to say that this is the exact place on my list where I REALLY start feeling my pain points hit. Every game before this is a game that I really really liked - every game AFTER this point is a game that I loved to bits. Ranking every game before this was relatively painless, but every game here on out was super hard. This is the real creme of the crop stuff for me.

#31





Years of release: 2019 (PC)
Beaten?: Sort of, but only after 2020

Seeing this game on this list makes me regret that I don't have more obscure, oddball picks on my list. My tastes in indie games are pretty 'normie', all things considered, and I think even if you tried to guess the top 30 games on my list, you could probably guess about two-thirds of them right just through inference alone even if you didn't know me that well. I think that until 2015 or so I didn't really start picking up on more unusual, overlooked game picks, but I have friends and I'm deeper into communities that help me find these sorts of things now. Still, I can't help but feel a little bit self-conscious about the fact that I only have a few weird picks on this list that are unique to me. Anyway, here's Elsinore. I JUST played this one, so this will probably be a longer review than games that I played 8-9 years ago.

Elsinore is Shakespeare's Hamlet meets Majora's Mask. I really feel like I could just stop the writeup here, because I think that concept alone sells itself, but I suppose I'll continue. Elsinore is a retelling of Hamlet from the perspective of Ophelia, Hamlet's one-time lover who, spoilers, dies in act 4. The events of the story play out much in the same way as before, albeit with some liberties (characters are added, expanded upon greatly, have their genders changed, etc), but after Ophelia dies, she wakes up a couple days before, remembering all of the events that transpire, and realizes she's stuck in a Groundhog Day style time loop. Shenanigans ensue as Ophelia attempts to stop the coming tragedy.

I like stories about time travel, but I REALLY like stories about time loops. Groundhog Day is one of my favorite films for its deep exploration of the idea, imagining how someone stuck in a time loop could use their foreknowledge to change the course of events and their repeated attempts at the same sequence of events could open up new opportunities - and how all this would affect their state of mind in the end. And I enjoyed Majora's Mask's take on it, too, although it's more about world-building and game mechanics than it is character-driven. The idea of this world where all the characters are going about their lives even when you're not looking, where you can watch their comings and goings, learn from them, and try to engineer a perfect loop is very appealing.

Majora's Mask doesn't quite scratch the itch fully, though, I think because the Anju/Kafei quest is really the only one which requires extensive knowledge of different events happening. So now Elsinore tries its own take on it, and I like how it expands on the idea. As Ophelia, your only real weapon is that you can walk around, see what people do, learn information, and then you can, in later loops, reveal that information to people to change their actions in the future. This gives a sort of open-endedness to the idea that a game like MM lacks; the ability to dictate the course of actions through foreknowledge, and to see the many different ways the events can play out.

Elsinore's world is small and very character-driven, but the characters are quite deep, nuanced, and well-written, as they absolutely must be in a game that is ONLY about talking to people and nothing else. I was not familiar with the story of Hamlet prior to this, although I did read up on it after - my unfamiliarity did not matter too much, as the basic story beats of Hamlet are very well-explained in the game's dialog, and I never felt overwhelmed at all learning who all the different characters were. I was worried that being based on a Shakespeare work would make this game very dry, but that didn't end up being the case, as the dialog is all very sharply written, and the twists and turns of the story were quite surprising - needless to say, even without my familiarity with the work, I could tell that this story takes quite some large liberties, and finding out what those liberties were was a lot of fun, since this game goes in some really surprising directions. Despite the fact that it does some pretty crazy stuff with the characters, it all seems pretty well justified, and the dev's love of the original work shines through in all of the different ways they chose to play around with the cast of Hamlet.

I love how many ways you can get certain events to happen in this game - my only complaint is that, while this game does have quite a few possible ending paths, most of them seem to be gotten rather easily, and don't require you to set up any machinations that are too overly complex, and a lot of possible information you can use or events you can see end up being largely red herrings, which isn't too big a deal, but there were some interesting events I managed to set in motion that didn't end up leading anywhere which is a bit disappointing. The game is occasionally just a bit limiting in how it allows you to direct the characters; you can inform them of things but never tell them what to do, which I suppose would make the game a bit too easy, but it does make things confusing when you need to find very roundabout ways to keep characters from murdering each other.

Still, this game was one hell of an interesting experience, and delivered almost perfectly on its premise, helping me scratch my itch of playing a game about a really interesting time loop. I think the ideas presented in this game aren't done being refined, and someone could look at this and create something even more masterful. That said, I've spent a LOT of time over the last month thinking about Elsinore, and it's easily one of the most interesting story experiences I've had this decade. I'd strongly recommend it to anyone for whom the concept of the game appeals, even if you're not familiar with Hamlet - I have a feeling that I'll see the play and just be disappointed by the portrayal of all the characters now, especially Ophelia, who's now become one of my favorite leads.

(This is the first time I've had to take a screenshot of my own, by the way - I wasn't satisfied with how anything I googled displayed the game.)

not having played this game, you're doing yourself a big disservice by assuming shakespeare's plays are dry - especially the most famous ones. their dialogue can be impenetrable but the plot and characters are iconic for a reason.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

not having played this game, you're doing yourself a big disservice by assuming shakespeare's plays are dry - especially the most famous ones. their dialogue can be impenetrable but the plot and characters are iconic for a reason.

Yeah, actually, I did want to clarify that I didn't mean that I believe Shakespeare is dry, but it was a talking point that slipped through my fingers as I talked about other stuff. I definitely have some degree of intellectual curiosity about his works even though I've never experienced any of them personally, because I know well that there's a reason these stories are probably the most important works of the English language's canon. But I DO know that they are challenging works to read or watch at the very least, which makes the effort of experiencing them thoughtfully seem like an undertaking, and in video game format I was worried that it was going to be a lot to take in; but the game made it painless to understand the story of Hamlet. The writing here is almost entirely contemporary aside from a few direct Hamlet quotes, I should add, which helps its legibility a lot especially considering you really need to carefully consider every word of the game's script.

#30





Years of release: 2017 (PC/XB1), 2019 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

Typically, I am about a year or two behind on games at all times, except for the real must plays. I don't have a lot of money, so when I buy games I prefer to wait for them to go on sale when I can. I always feel like I'm a bit behind on game of the year discussions and I never fully end up catching up until a year or two afterwards, but I'm never lacking for new games to play, so it isn't really too much of a big deal. But when I saw videos of Cuphead, I knew that I had to stop watching immediately and play the game myself. It couldn't wait. I HAD to play this game and experience it for myself.

I'm sure everyone's probably familiar with Cuphead at this point, but if you aren't, you should make yourself familiar, because it's one of the most interesting works of art created within the gaming medium to date. The idea to create video game bosses out of hand-drawn, 1930's-style animation was a genius one, and it is flawlessly executed here. Every character is fluidly animated and wonderful to look at in every frame, and the artists filled every character with an infectious sense of personality. The soundtrack is a real gift, too; actual big-band music written and recorded live, and it's easily one of the most impressively written soundtracks of the decade. I could really go on about the visuals and music in this game all day. There's just nothing like it in gaming and it really got all the press it did for good reason.

It isn't just a loving tribute to old-time animation, either, but also old-time games; this is a run-and-gun boss rush with plenty of little nods to classic games; Mega Man 2, Battletoads, Super Mario World to name a few off the top of my head. This game gets a reputation for being difficult like those games too, and while I don't find this game to be more challenging than the Contras of the day that this game is styled after, that reputation is still well-earned. I never found it too unfair, though. For as well designed as the game's aesthetics are, the boss designs are also well-tuned; I love how the bizarre personalities of each character lend themselves well to unique attack patterns, and they never seem too ridiculous to dodge, at least with a little bit of practice. The game does reward practice and strong play, though, which I appreciate, although I found the shmup stages maybe a little too hard overall.

The only reason I couldn't rank it higher is that every game higher on my list has a more interesting gameplay conceit or a more interesting story to tell. As beautiful as this game is, and as fun to play as it is, it's still kind of just a Contra boss rush, albeit a very well polished and creative one. Its novelty does wear thin soon enough after it's beaten once, at least for me, and I spent less time with this one than every other game on the list I ranked above it except for one. But it was a game that was well worth my efforts to play it in the actual year it was released, and I do still think about this game quite a bit. I really can't state enough how hard it is to only rank this game #30.

Paratroopa1 posted...

but it does make things confusing when you need to find very roundabout ways to keep characters from murdering each other.

definitely had earlier runs where i wanted to work a few angles until it blew up in my face with one unexpectedly cutting another short through murder, but it was a good laugh mostly. that was the more fun part of the game for me - when I was trying to do too much without a clear goal other than seeing stuff, but cool game overall still.

also if you're looking for a screen hamlet to watch i recommend the 1980 BBC production starring derek jacobi, though you're right that ophelia doesn't get a great deal to work with in the play. there was the recent movie ophelia, but according to icon it's not very good, daisy ridley aside.

for a good screen ophelia - this is cheating, but watch slings and arrows.

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#29





Years of release: 2014 (PC), 2015 (Wii U), 2017 (PS4), 2018 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

Look, I may be a furry, but I'm a furry with standards, alright? One thing that falls below my level of standards is the Sonic fandom. Never really been into the series very much (aside from Sonic 06, which is a masterpiece) and I share little in common with the fandom, aside from those who just like classic Genesis games. It's a bit embarrassing to be as deep into the Sonic fandom as some people are; the worst of it are Sonic OCs. Sonic OCs are the very bottom of the barrel in the eyes of this snobbish furry. So if you think I played Freedom Planet because it's a furry game, well, you are still correct. But I'm not PROUD of it.

Okay, all joking aside, Freedom Planet is definitely a game that falls into the "guilty pleasure" category. I really have to cast aside my inhibitions to get fully into this game, because the plot and writing would otherwise be barely worthy of a failed saturday morning cartoon pilot and with a cringeworthiness that makes Sonic look pretty good by comparison. But, you know what? Fuck it! Life is too short for me to not throw my notions of what's worth taking seriously and fully immerse myself in this ridiculously cutesy and mildly embarrassing world. The characters are cute, the world is fun, and the game kicks some ass, so why the hell not!

In my opinion, though I haven't played Sonic Mania yet, Freedom Planet might be the best Sonic game ever. The game is a combination of the fast-running and ridiculously large levels of 2D Sonic games with a slightly greater focus on combat and over-the-top boss battles that you might see in a Treasure game, plus the ability to airdash like a motherfucker. These elements are all super polished and work really well together. This game seems to know how to use its ridiculous speed better than the Sonic series ever did; the levels seem to actually contour well to you speedrunning them, and there are stops, but the level design flows from slow to fast rather naturally. Lilac, the main character, is an absolute joy to control. She's fast, her jumps are floaty, she has a midair attack that feels really satisfying, and her ability to stop in midair and do a huge midair-dash in any direction turns this game into a dream speedgame. Speedruns of Freedom Planet are some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen; precise execution can ensure that Lilac nearly never stops moving, and everything blurs by. Sonic would be jealous.

The art in this game is a joy, as well. All of the game's different worlds here feel like they're born out of an entirely new idea to some degree; I've seen fire worlds and ice worlds, but I've never seen "festive Chinese-inspired shopping mall" or "police chase in a giant bamboo forest." The ideas here are creative and lovingly rendered; the backgrounds, foregrounds, and characters are colorful and awesome to look at. So many stage elements here are also bursting with creativity, whether it be giant dandelion fluffs you can hang onto, ziplines you can fly off of, bows-and-arrows that you can shoot yourself from for some reason, or classic Sonic loop-de-loops that wind themselves cleverly around the stage, every little thing you can interact with feels like a gift from the devs to the players. The stages are just fun to run and fly around in.

The boss fights are really good too; there's a fair bit of challenge here, unlike the 2D Sonic games of old that are mostly jumping on Robotnik's head a few times as he floats lazily across the screen and does something ineffectual. The bosses in this game are big and not fucking around. I just love how much flair this entire game has - everything just pops off the screen. This game has presentation down to a fine art. There's only one flaw, which is that the sound mixing is quite bad; sound effects are way too loud and drown out the music, and there's no way to change the sound options. Which is a shame, because the music in this game gets my official seal of approval, even if it is occasionally about as overdramatic as one would expect about a game about Sonic OCs.

Otherwise, I consider it to be one of the best retro pastiches of the decade. Just like the Sonic series before it, it takes all of its best ideas and its most questionable ideas and goes full ham on them without a single shred of shame, and I can respect that.

#28





Years of release: 2018 (Switch), 2019-present (DLC)
Beaten?: Not the single-player campaign, no

Of course it's on the list. How could it not be on the list?

Smash is sort of like Mario Kart where it used to be one of my go-to's, but I don't play it that much anymore, as I lack the people to play it with and I don't feel like grinding against AIs so much anymore. It's funny to think at one time I wasn't interested in Smash though; the first previews of this new fighting game coming to the N64 starring Nintendo characters just didn't excite me all that much, since I wasn't really into fighting games as a kid. I played it for the first time at a minor-league baseball game of all places, where they had this booth that had demos of Super Smash Bros and Pokemon Snap to play. I played it and I was hooked.

And now here we are. It's funny to imagine that once upon a time, the idea of Mario, Link, Kirby, Pikachu, etc all together in one game was pretty mindblowing, but now we're arguing over, like, Nintendo C-listers and 10th FE and Pokemon characters and random third-party chars like Travis Touchdown. How the hell did we get here? I could never have imagined that Smash would become as expansive as it has. It's a pretty awe-inspiring work of pure fanservice. Just about every Nintendo game past and almost-present is represented and celebrated here, and for someone who grew up pretty much entirely on a diet of Nintendo games, it's a really beautiful thing to see. I'm almost here less for the gameplay now and more here just for the sheer spectacle of it. Seeing all the new and returning characters and stages and assist trophies and music and what have you.

I do still really like the game, to be clear, and I feel bad about ranking it as low as I did, but it's been a really good decade, what can I say. I just haven't had that many friends to play it with, and I don't feel like going online to play it. I did play it with my buds a few months ago when I saw them, but that was about it. So I just haven't really sat down and spent as much time with this one as I'd like, but I'm sure it'll be a staple of friend get-togethers in the future. Wouldn't be accurate to say I've moved on, but it's definitely not the biggest thing in my life anymore.

I wonder if this is where the Smash series ends? I kind of thought that last time with Smash 4, and I was proven wrong, but now it's really starting to feel like there's nowhere left to go. Maybe I'm wrong! The series is still profitable, so maybe we'll continue to see Smash games in perpetuity, but "Ultimate" really does imply that this series is starting to near something of a breaking point. I imagine it'll never really go away entirely, though.

Honorable Mention: Super Smash Bros. For Wii U/3DS. This probably would have ranked in the 60's somewhere, but I excised it from the list and appended it here, because I really felt like there was nothing extra to say about this game, and it got outclassed by Ultimate. Well, okay, there are a couple of things to say. First of all, this was the game that introduced Mega Man, and I might never have experienced as much pure joy as the time that release trailer hit. I don't know how many times I watched it, but Mega Man is my favorite video game character, and I thought there was no chance he'd ever get into Smash, and just... the reveal absolutely blew my mind. Also, I do really like having this game on 3DS. Since I mostly just play against the AI anyway, it's a really nice game to have on a portable system to just kind of pick up and play a little bit of it for fun anywhere. It obviously wasn't as polished as the Wii U version and had some problems but it was the game I played the most of. The Smash Run thing could have been cool, it's a shame that it wasn't a little more polished and interesting. Anyway, these games are sort of dead now, but they deserved some kind of nod.

#27





Years of release: 2012 (3DS, Japan), 2013 (3DS, worldwide), 2016 (Amiibo update)
Beaten?: LOL, what does that mean

I was a fool for thinking I would ever be able to resist being caught up in Animal Crossing's magnetic pull. I remember when the first one came out for the Gamecube and I thought, like an idiot, that this game was going to be boring, that it wasn't for me. I mean, it's a game without any gameplay! You don't do anything except own a house and walk around town helping the villagers! And yet, here we are, now, with New Leaf, with 300 hours played, and the title of #1 most-played game on my 3DS. It is not particularly close. (A few Steam games do eclipse this mark, though.)

Animal Crossing is pure escapism. Once I'm in this cute little town with cute little animals leading cute little lives, I pretty much never want to leave. I want to live in this world. I will do anything to lengthen my stay in this world for as long as I can. Fishing? I'll catch all the fish. Collecting shells on the beach? The beach is going to be pristine. Rearranging all the furniture in my house over and over again? Listen, I'll do anything, just as long as I don't have to shut off the game right now. Just let me stay a little bit longer.

My teenager's notion of the idea of no gameplay was, of course, completely misguided. There's a lot to do here, as long as you like collecting things and doing a lot of chores. Turns out, I do. There's an addictive quality to turning on this game every day, sweeping through the village, finding new fossils, seeing how your fruit trees are doing, helping villagers with tasks, seeing what's new in the shops, etc etc. Filling out the list of every fish, every bug, every fossil. Waiting for real time to pass so you can find new things that appear each season.

There isn't really a lot to do, yet I'm always kept busy, and I never really entirely feel bored. I don't know how to explain it. It's just a sort of magic this game has. Or it's a curse. I'm not sure which. Whatever it is, the spell did eventually lift on me after about a year, and I haven't been back to this game in a very long time. Typing about it though made me realize how much I miss it. I want to go back to Animal Crossing. I guess there's a new one coming out, right on cue, as I think wistfully back on my time with New Leaf. I could go back to New Leaf, but I feel sad thinking about how completely unloved my town will be after a good 6 years of neglect. Weeds everywhere! Everyone's moved away! There is a sort of frustration to the way this game makes you feel like you HAVE to play every day, like you've done something wrong. Ugh, maybe that's why I eventually had to put this game down. Will I pick up the new one? I guess it depends on if it has Isabelle. If it has Isabelle then they've got me by the balls. She is the best girl and I will do anything for her. If Isabelle is not in the new Animal Crossing I will start a riot.

You would not believe how hard it is to find images or screenshots of this game.

Ive played the original and the DS Animal Crossing and had fun with them. Im tempted to get the upcoming AC for Switch.

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i'm tempted to get a switch for the upcoming animal crossing.

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God, Im so ready for new Animal Crossing

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I was obsessed with the GCN Animal Crossing for a long while, but I think it was a one time thing. Wild World didn't grab me and I haven't bought another one since.

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