Board 8 > Board 8's Top 20 PC (2010s) Games - The Results

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Total Stats: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18sFKVDrf_ePBTV8Y9T8-J7PPUc_yBV4NhgRLPK0JbbE/edit?usp=sharing
All Writeups: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k9N7e0gcJspBy1g1moqlsy0EvQGtF6tCbHMDi2Df3hg/edit?usp=sharing

Much appreciated to everyone who voted and provided write-ups! The structure of the list is a ranking with the same variables as before taking importance in order:

• Total Points
• Total Appearances
• First-Place Points

Tag

#20. Dark Souls (2011)
Total Points: 11
List Appearances: 3
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/22093a63.jpg

Writeup taken from X360 list and provided by tazzyboyishere
Dark Souls is my favorite video game of all time. I dont think any amount of words I write down could express just how critical and informative this video game has been for me. I played it, for the first time, during a very difficult time in my life, and had a rough go with it. The gameplay was punishing, the level design felt confusing, and the amount of systems at play was quite overwhelming, yet something about it stuck enough for me to beat it, albeit with a ton of help online. I dont think it was my favorite game at this point, pretty far from it, actually.

I stepped away from the game to play other things, but for whatever reason, I couldnt stop thinking about Dark Souls. I watched all kinds of YouTube videos, began to read up on the lore and theorycrafting, and eventually found myself returning to the game with a new character. On my second playthrough, it hit.

Dark Souls is, in many ways, a challenging game. Not only in its mechanical requirement of players, but also in its highly oppressive atmosphere and cleverly cryptic level and world structure. Theres an embarrassing wing of the fandom that put a ton of stock into that first challenge, and I feel that can lead to new players having their curiosity stunted when engaging with the other, more fascinating aspects of the game. That isnt to say the games difficulty isnt capable of being fascinating, just that there is far more worth engaging than infamous battles like Should Dark Souls have an easy mode? or Should Dark Souls have a pause?.

For me though, Dark Souls is all about its atmosphere. The setting of Lordran as this once-prosperous land, succumbed to the folly of its most influential leaders and having barely maintained even a semblance of a land worth saving. There are so few areas which feel truly safe in Dark Souls, and even a place like Firelink Shrine has a graveyard of enemies next to your base. Its made even less safe by a mid-game twist, depending on whether or not you pursued one of the NPC quests. Similar to that lack of safety is also the ongoing use of verticality in its theming. The deeper into Lordran you go, the more grotesque and apocalyptic the world and its inhabitants become. Meanwhile, the highest peak of the land is the glorious Anor Londo, home of the very gods who started the Age of Fire. It gives you a good understanding of how Lordran was structured, and also likely why it would eventually corrupt in the way it did.

I could probably talk about this game for hours, and I dont want to bloat this writeup with too many wholly personal anecdotes, but theres a pretty decent throughline to how I saw video games prior to playing Dark Souls, and how I see them now. In many ways, it restored passion into a hobby which, at the time, had sunk almost entirely into blind Nintendo fanaticism and nothing else. It helped that I was reading Berserk around this time as well, and was getting more interested in dark fantasy as a whole. Regardless, Dark Souls is a life changing experience, and so few games can claim to achieve that.

Can't say I think of Dark Souls when it comes to PC gaming, but I apparently did get DS3 as part of a bundle at some point, because it's on my Steam account. Just barely making the bottom of the list seems like a fair compromise.

Ive never played Dark Souls, and for a long time I didnt even have a sense of what kind of game it was.

All I ever heard about was how hard it is (fittingly enough I suppose, given that the writeup reflects that a big debate in the fanbase is whether or not there ought to be an easy mode). Any time I saw it referenced, there was something about how brutally difficult this game is. Never anything about the story or the gameplay itself. I enjoy a challenge in video games, but really hard isnt by itself a selling point for me, so I just never gave it much mind.

Then I started seeing the term Soulslike pop up, and eventually I saw that term used in reference to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, two games I have played.

SoI guess its that kind of gameplay? I would say I enjoyed those games pretty well, but the gameplay itself was kind of the part that I was back and forth on. Its enjoyable at
times and kind of just annoying at others. If Im fighting with a lightsaber, Id like something a bit more free-flowing than having to focus on parrying. The game environments, though, and the sense of exploration, were really cool. Theyre very scenic games.

The new Jedi games arent really soulslikes imo

Tag

Yeah, I played Fallen Order, and I'd say it's Souls-adjacent, but not really the same feel. I didn't really like that game tbh.

Tag

One more befoe I start work. First 3-way tie on the main lists!

#17 TIE. Terraria (2011)
Total Points: 11
List Appearances: 4
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/55a967d5.jpg

Writeup provided by MetalmindStats
You find yourself in an airy, sunlit woodland early in the morning. Birds serenade you and fly by as you gain your bearings and process your surroundings. You realize you possess a few copper tools and decide to try out your axe on the trunk of a nearby tree. The tree eventually topples over, tumbling to the ground and crumbling into wood pieces and a few acorns. As you collect the remnants, a green, slimy mass you'd spotted out of the corner of your eye suddenly leaps in front of you. You strike it with your shortsword, getting hurt a bit by the now hostile slime, which you eventually defeat. The slime dissolves and leaves behind gel, which you gather as you wonder what that was about. As the noon sun beats down on you, you turn around and spot a nondescript man in the medium distance. You run and jump towards this hopefully friendly face, approaching and talking to him. He greets you, introducing himself as the Guide, and says he can help you. You, still confused, ask him for just that

Eventually, night falls. You've heeded the Guide's advice, mining stone with your pickaxe, doing a little light spelunking, and constructing a shelter with your bare hands. As the two of you wait together, you spot a zombie approaching the front door. The zombie starts hitting the door, and you, feeling confident, open the door and commence slashing at it. The Guide helps by shooting at it with his bow, and the zombie goes down easily enough. This emboldens you, and you venture out into the brisk air to hunt down more zombies. While stalking, you spot something unsettling - a disembodied, bloodshot eye with tentacles, flying about in unnatural patterns. The eye swoops on you right as a few zombies approach, and suddenly you're overwhelmed, getting hunted down and dispatched by your foes. Then you come to and find yourself out in the open, your pockets lighter on coin. Having learned your lesson, you dash back into your shelter, there to stay and hide until dawn.

These are common but by no means universal experiences of the first day in a new Terraria world, a procedurally-generated 2D sandbox environment to explore and craft in and shape as you please. That makes it sound like simply a 2D take on Minecraft, a box most critics already crammed it into on the release of its 1.0 version 14 years ago - half a year before Minecraft's own 1.0 version. It's hard to say exactly how long it took me to realize Terraria was a different beast, something all its own and, dare I say, deeper than its overused reference point. Maybe it was when I scrolled over a tool and saw its array of stats, or perhaps it occurred in the course of the many instances of combat I soon engaged in, or mayhap it was in the course of discovering loot of all sorts and upgrading my arsenal.

Whatever the case, Terraria's remarkably fleshed-out combat mechanics and progression systems combine with the customization of your character's many possible builds and the granularity of their components to exude the DNA of an action RPG that's set in a world where you can eventually mine every single block out of existence if you so choose. That means you can build elaborate structures too, but this ability never appealed to me. The game's action-RPG aspects are its comfort food for me, contributing immeasurably to its already enjoyable spelunking, but what really feels distinct about its gameplay is its traversal. There's a certain focus on mobility, on finding the tools to enhance various aspects of your ability to explore and fight and then frequently (but far from always) returning to existing areas with new upgrades to progress further, faster that strikes me in its recursion as the typical core loop of Metroidvania progression. It makes traversal an absolute treat, the core game feel of it, of Terraria's combat, and of the simple process of mining consistently hooking me. In the process, I've grown deeply fond of sounds, of music, of graphics and an artstyle that didn't immediately absorb or even necessarily appeal to me.

On top of all that, Terraria's concept is ripe for flexible, enjoyable multiplayer, and two or three players in a world together have tended to double or triple my fun! In my case, I spent most of my 800 hours in it playing with my brothers, mostly early in the game's lifecycle, all typically having a great time together, at times making fond memories to boot. Nothing we played after Terraria ever hooked us to the same extent, and in time, our tastes in games grew totally distinct, and we splintered into separate online communities and eventually stopped playing together. My newfound lack of anyone to Terraria with led to me trying out other games instead when I had the energy to play, and so it isn't a mark against the game that I've never even touched 1.4.

Speaking of 1.4 and the game's lifecycle and doubling or tripling things, acknowledging that official post-release support and substantive updates became a trend of 2010s PC gaming, has *any* well-known game gained as much content and polish from fully free updates as Terraria since its release? All of Hardmode, now the entire second half of its progression, was added after the release of what was already a lengthy and robust game, and that barely scratches the surface of all the items and systems and features and customization Terraria gained in its first post-launch decade, somehow without overdoing things. It's pointedly not that Terraria nowadays would be unrecognizable to someone who hasn't played it in the last decade or more; rather, the sheer amount and depth of added content in that time would likely astound them. Flushed with the sweep of the game's success, Re-Logic reacted by putting up a clinic in how to support a game of this ilk, even eventually bringing tModLoader's team on board to make it officially-supported DLC, available for free to all Terraria owners.

And speaking of tModLoader, Terraria *also* has a thriving modding scene, for those who want even more than the vanilla game has to offer or simply wish to explore and try things out. My own breadth and depth of experiences with modded Terraria isn't really there, partly since I find the likes of Calamity and Thorium to be so thoroughly, unnecessarily *much* - though Calamity's soundtrack is absolutely epic. However, Terraria's structure and modding utilities allow for more adventurous mods than Calamityesque gobs of extra content, which I've found neat if unpolished in my limited experience.

And with that, I uh don't really know how to wrap this up! ...kind of like Terraria itself, you could argue. I guess my summary is that Terraria's so much more distinct in practice than it might seem on paper, and that the aspects it combines make for a game thats flexible and open-ended without overwhelming and, at least in my experience, is remarkably cohesive and engaging.

tag

tazzyboyishere posted...

That makes it sound like simply a 2D take on Minecraft, a box most critics already crammed it into

This is pretty much all I'd ever seen it as, tbh.

The core difference, and that write up went over it in much more detail but I'd consider building and crafting secondary to the exploration and combat in Terraria. I'd consider combat and exploration secondary to building and crafting in Minecraft. Calling it "2d minecraft" isn't totally wrong but it dumbs down the differences a lot.

I'd be much more likely to enjoy 3d Terraria than 2d Minecraft.

#17 TIE. Overwatch (2016)
Total Points: 11
List Appearances: 4
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/66767681.jpg

Writeup provided by tazzyboyishere
Few games have managed to suck me in the same way that Overwatch did. It was my first time playing an online multiplayer-only game, a format which I didnt believe I would ever like as much as a single player experience. But I got it close to the official launch and played it consistently up until it was absorbed into its worse sequel in 2023. Overwatch has somewhat transcended a video game to me at this point. It represents core moments in my life. Acquaintances I made on the board became close friends. Gaming with the boys back in 2016 was essentially the only thing I looked forward to in a particularly dark place before I went to grad school. It was a backdrop to eventually paying attention to the types of scummy behavior present in the AAA gaming space, particularly due to the scalding hot water Blizzard found themselves in for quite a while. It was my introduction to esports and Twitch streaming, as I had never imagined finding enjoyment in watching others play video games. And possibly most important, the insanely low skill floor and impossibly high skill ceiling let me approach the game on my own terms, work to get better, and discover all kinds of ways to play video games I had never engaged before. Overwatch was special, and of course they killed it to present us a F2P experience which watered down the strategic aspect of the game to be more about skill-shooting. The devaluation of the tank role and the overall power creep of the fanbase made it to where even QP felt highly competitive and stressful. I was never all that great at the game, peaking in diamond prior to role queue, which I never bothered grinding out afterwards. The game pretty much fell off for me when Marvel Rivals released, a game which I love quite a bit, but has kind of been speedrunning the problems with toxicity and tuning me out of it. Lets just say, I think the console versions of Overwatch not having text chat features for a while was probably a good thing. Anyway, I mainly want to use this as a space to talk about all the characters we saw in the game from my least favorite to favorite!

Doomfist
Abomination of a character. Seems like hed be fun to play if you got used to him, but he was never fun to fight if someone was remotely competent. I think I had under an hour of time on him over thousands of hours playing the game because I hated his schtick that much. Hes better in 2.

Sombra
Another abomination of a character. Her whole toolkit is getting rid of cooldowns, which is like, the most fun thing about the game. She didnt take control of a whole game as consistently as Doomfist did, but she was always anti-fun. She was not made any better in 2. This is the last character I think is bad on my list.

Echo
Do not care about this character in the slightest. I forget she exists all the time.

Roadhog
Not a fan of his playstyle and dont really like playing against him. Hook was always annoying, and fortunately it was fixed to where you couldnt be hooked while breaking line of sight. I never played him anyway, but they made him anti-fun to play in 2.

Orisa
She was mostly fine, but there was a period of time where you basically had to play Orisa if the enemy went Orisa, so I ended up playing her way more than I wanted to. I think shes pretty boring, and the amount of time I did play her just soured me on her more.

Genji
Barely played Genji. He was so hard to use. Felt I would get disoriented so easily any time I played him, and could never do consistent damage with him. Hes one of the more annoying heroes to fight against if the enemy knows what theyre doing, but he takes a high amount of skill to make work consistently, so I dont mind when he would tear me and my team up as much.

Widowmaker
I play using controller. She can be fun, but value and enjoyment is severely hampered for me.

Pharah
Like Widowmaker, shes rough on controller, but she has way more room for error. Never really learned how to play her since fuel management is a bit too hard for me to do in this game, but shes good fun. Very annoying when paired with a Mercy pocket, but everyone is annoying with a Mercy pocket.

Brigitte
She apparently ruined high level play for a good while, but I dont think she was ever that oppressive in lower ranks. They retooled her eventually and I never really could get her to work myself. She was fun to play though.

Tracer
I never did play her much due to how disorienting I found her playstyle to be, similar to Genji I suppose. Shes a lot of fun though, and its really satisfying when everything does click.

Bastion
Never really got him the way some did, particularly one of my friends who was really good with him. Hes so much fun if you arent getting appropriate pressure due to his insane damage output, but any time I played him, I would get killed so quickly. Was also made way less fun in 2 what a shock.

Cassidy
Name was changed from McCree after the scandal (A good decision). Hes fine. His ultimate sucks ass, but it's hilarious when it works. Im bad at him.

Ana
Conceptually one of the neatest characters in the game, though Im quite bad with her. Shes one of the more stressful heroes to play as.

Mei
I miss when she was the most annoying character in the game. Regardless, her playstyle is very trolly and frustrating, so I get the backlash she gets, but most people didnt even use her to her full potential. A good Mei is super oppressive, and the few times Ive managed to be that Mei have been quite exciting. However, I never have played her too much.

Moira
Shes pretty fun. How her healing and damage work together is a really cool concept that I think works out exceptionally. She can be pretty annoying if she plays dive and your tanks dont peel, but thats less of a character issue.

Hanzo
Pretty fun character, no other real comments. His headshot potential in the early days was really fucking broken, but once that got patched up, he pretty consistently remained a solid hero to play with and against.

Lucio
Very fun guy. Wall riding is great. He got a number of tweaks to make him more comfortable to play over the years and settled in quite well in the latter half of the game. Speed-boosting the team is a lot of fun.

Symmetra
Its hard to place her given how much she was changed over the years. I liked her quite a bit after the rework where she got a shield generator, but she got reworked after that as well. Another slower-paced character that got a lot less fun as the rest of the game shifted and her personality was lost to accommodate. My friends make fun of me because I think she is hot.

Soldier: 76
Probably the most generic character in the game, but still pretty fun. We have an inside joke about Soldier being a support character because, when I was first starting, I would just stand on the payload and put a healing field down every time it came off cooldown. This was successful like, 80% of the time, so I figured I had found a busted strategy. It wasnt.

D.Va
Almost always preferred Winston if I was gonna dive. D.Va felt a bit more complicated to play, and I usually got burst down playing her similarly. I think shes fun, but I definitely never played her properly.

Mercy
Very chill character to play most of the time, unless the enemy is good at hunting you down. Her mobility is fun to play around with though, and damage-boosting powerful attacks is super satisfying.

Wrecking Ball
Potentially the most fun character in the game, though I struggle making him work. He came a bit too late in the game, weirdly enough, as I had started to settle in to a smaller number of tanks who I was most comfortable with. Should try to play him a bit more with 6v6 coming back in 2.

Ashe
Probably the most fun I have with the long-range hitscan heroes. Dynamite is fun to play around with. I wish coach gun offered a little more mobility, and I wish her ult wasnt so boring (even though I love BOB as a character).

Zenyatta
Has the best skins in the game by far. A really fun passive healer and quasi-DPS. Landing a full volley with his alt fire is so much fun. Got way less fun when Sombra and Doomfist came around.

Zarya
Love me some Zarya gaming. I had no clue her shields made her gun more powerful for way too long. Im more into her when I have her as a teammate as opposed to playing as her, so I can get a bubble and go in with Rein or Winston. Another character I dont really like playing anymore, though maybe I should try her in 6v6 more.

Reaper
One of the first characters I really took a shine to. Super easy to use with one of the most fun cooldown ult combos (teleporting above or behind the team, then ulting). I uploaded multiple Reaper plays of mine over the years because they made me feel so cool and smart. Excellent hero.

Baptiste
Ended up becoming my favorite healer. His jump boost is a lot of fun, and nailing an immortality field at the right moment is one of the more satisfying defensive plays. I never really connected with the support role the same way as other roles, so I was glad to finally find a character who worked for me. 2 actually introduced my favorite healer, so I guess thats one thing its got going for it.

Sigma
I guess I lied about Ball earlier. Couldve sworn he came after Sigma. Anyway, Sigma is a lot of fun. Of the three tanks I almost exclusively played toward the end, he was my least favorite, though may have actually been my best. His weapon concept is fucking awesome, and I love the way it ricochets. One of the more fun poke characters, though I think higher levels use him for flanking.

Torbjorn
My main for a good while. Setting up turrets, getting huge value from basic positioning strategies. Running in while overloaded and bursting down a passive tank. All really fun shit. I memed with him so much back in the day and actually got really good at using him (his rework basically just made him easier to play in the ways I was already playing him, which got me to diamond). Hes definitely a slower-paced character who got shifted around to accommodate the faster pace of the game over the years, and hes not all that fun in 2.

Reinhardt
One of my favorite characters with some really cool abilities. The charge is high-risk/high-reward, and I got pretty good at using it at choke points where the enemy would funnel in right as I used it. Nailing fire strikes is a blast too. One of the few heroes where the way you play him can change so much between games. They reworked his abilities in 2 and I think its probably the only instance of me enjoying a character more in the sequel, but they definitely took out a lot of the strategic aspects of the character, even if charge cancelling is really fun.

Junkrat
Was by far my most-played hero for a good while. Might still technically have the hour count. The trap is such an underrated ability, and throwing it behind the enemy team during a fight was always great. Skill shots with your grenades is one of the most satisfying things, and it happens by accident half the time, so you feel like youre better than you actually are. Fueled my toxicity when that was at its peak. Great hero.

Winston
Ended up becoming my main over the years. His movement is crazy fun for such a bulky character. His weapon is uber-satisfying, relying more on a slow burn rather than burst, and when your team dives with you, its so fun to see everyone fall over like dominoes. Learned some of the more advanced tech like animation cancelling his melee upon landing and barrier dancing with high-damage DPS protecting backlines. Dont do that with many characters tbh. Winston is probably the biggest reason I kept playing as long as I did. Hes got one of the most fun kits in any shooter Ive played, competitive or otherwise.

Overwatch was so fun from like late 2017 to the introduction of Role Queue. Was one of the only games I owned for a little while and I played the crap out of it. Shame it's run by Blizzard and that the community is despicably toxic.

Total mayhem still slaps though

Overwatch can still be a good time with friends. Its wild they never fixed some bugs since the start though. Im looking at you Reinhardt Charge

Overwatch can't be played any more, unless something changed that I missed...

Oh yeah Overwatch """""""""""""""2"""""""""""""""

azuarc posted...

Overwatch can't be played any more, unless something changed that I missed...

Overwatch 2 is the same game, in case you didn't know.

I was of the understanding there were substantial differences, monetization practices aside.

Yes, and there were substantial differences between Overwatch 1 at many points in its lifespan.

A big criticism of OW2 is that it didn't change enough to actually be a sequel.

#17 TIE. Baba Is You (2019)
Total Points: 11
List Appearances: 4
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/ef5bd074.jpg

Writeup provided by ctesjbuvf
I bought this game when it came out without even knowing what it was. You see, Baba is a nickname to a nickname of mine. My real name is Tobias, but since I was 9 or 10 years old Ive been called Bibi by family, friends, work, almost every place I go, to the point where I can be a little bit slow to react to my actual first name. A bunch of people I know are likely not aware of my real name or at least wouldnt be if not for social media. It has lead to some funny instances. Baba is then what feels like an actual nickname to me. Since I am Baba, it has been my profile picture on Steam since.

Anyway, the game is super charming with its very simple graphics. Baba itself is a white cat-like creature, which you control for most part. Each level is a puzzle where you have to get to the goal. The game is pushable words, nouns, verbs and later links that make up the rules of the level. In its core, Baba is You is a rule that allows you to control Baba and Flag is Goal is what youre introduced to for simplicity. With those two rules in place, you have to get Baba to the Flag to beat the level. Since the words are pushable, this is quickly challenged. Goal can be other things, You can be other things. Links like and and not are introduced, meaning multiple things can be under the same rule. Baba is not You would mean everything but Baba would be controlled simultaneously. Objects like Wall are introduced which are also under said rules and a bunch of more nouns get introduced to make the puzzles more complex.

It starts out quite simple by introducing the core concepts but as the game progresses, levels get very challenging. This is quite possibly one of the most difficult games I have played. The map is neat enough that you will quickly have multiple levels to select from, so you can be stuck on one puzzle and come back later without leaving the game. Occasionally I was stuck on every level I could try.

The way of constructing puzzles through rules that you can change is a way I have not experienced anywhere else and it creates countless ways that puzzles can be designed. It means the levels keep feeling fresh, while also being very satisfying to beat. It was an extremely pleasant surprise to pick this game up and Im happy it was allowed into the latest contest here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsXpLx4soQY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH0NR1kmMUo

Wow, Baba really is you.

tazzyboyishere posted...

Flushed with the sweep of the game's success, Re-Logic reacted by putting up a clinic in how to support a game of this ilk

Oops, reworded from this (and a few other minor spots) in my write-up after submitting it. I don't actually think Terraria's a fair bar for how to support even a highly successful game post-release - rather, I feel Re-Logic repeatedly went way above and beyond in their post-launch support.

#16. Spelunky (2012)
Total Points: 13
List Appearances: 5
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/39f1105c.jpg

Writeup provided by sergiocornaga
I have several hundred hours and thousands of deaths across the original freeware Spelunky "Classic", Spelunky 2, and Spelunky "HD", the last of which is the specific iteration I'm talking about here. It's my favourite of the Spelunky "trilogy", and one of my most respected games of all time.

By now this game has virtually no surprises left to me, but I'm amazed by how long it took to reach that point. Spelunky is fundamentally a game about different objects and systems interacting with each other in unpredictable ways. I'll never forget the feeling of discovering many of these interactions for the first time, like how fire burns ropes, because of course it does. The use of procedurally-generated levels essentially renders the game endlessly replayable, and while I've slipped off, my mother is a more hardcore gamer than me and continues to do the daily challenge to this day. The daily challenge, incidentally, was introduced in this version (on Steam, anyway) and did a surprising amount to elevate it above the original XBLA release.

My fondness for this iteration of Spelunky is enhanced by having followed the three main developers over the internet for many years prior. I was addicted to Derek Yu's blisteringly hard metroidvania Eternal Daughter (co-created by Jon Perry) in the early 2000s, and became a regular reader of his art blog. Andy "astrospoon" Hull also hovered around the Klik game development community, teasing great-looking projects like Nun n' Gun (as far as I'm aware it was never released). Eirik "Phlogiston" Suhrke I was already a huge fan of musically, having avidly followed the PAUSE netlabel he co-founded with Disasterpeace (Nectar is an especially good release of his) and loved his soundtracks to games like Super Crate Box and I Was in the War. Seeing Derek Yu become a fan of Eirik's music too in realtime via TIGSource news posts was a treat, but even I didn't expect it would culminate in so many collaborations (the most recent being UFO 50). I personally think Spelunky's approach to music is exceptional and heavily entwined with its gameplay. You get to know these short loops, bracing yourself for the exact moment in the melody things will slow down and the ghost will appear. Eirik's range and tastes as a composer are on full display here, with mixed-meter chiptune, live instruments, and bizarre synthesis all making an appearance.

Years later (just outside the scope of this list) Spelunky 2 would be unleashed upon the world. It's much harder, to the point where I haven't been able to explore its depths to remotely the same degree. But I've played enough to know that there's still a place for the tighter, more focused experience that Spelunky HD provides.

azuarc posted...

Wow, Baba really is you.

You said the Baba is "you", referring to me. That is incorrect. The correct Baba is you.

jcgamer107 posted...

You said the Baba is "you", referring to me. That is incorrect. The correct Baba is you.

Baba is your face.

I wonder how far into the ranking before a game i've played makes it.

Maniac64 posted...

I wonder how far into the ranking before a game i've played makes it.

I'm at 2/5 if you can count my 35 minutes in Terraria.

#15. Slay the Spire (2019)
Total Points: 13
List Appearances: 6
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/54534e56.jpg

Writeup provided by Bitto
This must be the game I put the most hours in and my absolute favorite game to just play. Slay the Spire is THE deckbuilding Rogue-like. Deckbuilding and Rogue-likes are such a perfect match for each other and I've already loved both ideas.

Slay the Spire takes the classic archetypes of Warrior, Rogue, and Mage but puts a fun spin on all of them. The Ironclad and The Watcher feel a bit undertuned and overtuned respectively, but The Silent and The Defect are basically perfect in my eyes. One of the best parts of Slay the Spire is that while there are very clear "paths" for each archetype to get, it's never a sure shot. First, if you see a path, that doesn't necessarily that path will manifest. You still have to get the right cards and you may get a boss that perfectly counters your deck. And even if your deck is tuned well, the cards just might screw you over during the time of the battle.

The difficulty honestly feels so right and every game feels lacking since then. Every fight is a struggle. Bosses need to be noted immediately so that you can build your deck to beat them. Mini-bosses are tough but all have weaknesses to take advantage of; however, you can't guarantee which mini-boss you'll get. Minions aren't too bad, but they also aren't easy. They usually take off a few bits of health or they can really screw you over if you make even one mistake.

Resources also feel absolutely perfectly tuned. You have a ton of health and you recover plenty upon winning, but you can't get too greedy as you can easily lose 30+ health in a single hit. You get a fine amount of Gold to use the shop a few times during the run, but you never feel like you're swimming in Gold. Potions, especially when you're forced to 2 max Potions, always feel like a risk of keeping "a good one" for a hard fight or using it on a lesser fight to avoid a lot of damage. Cards is probably the most clever one. With three random card choices and the skip option, I learned one of my most valuable lessons for deckbuilding: skipping cards is really important. I tend to enjoy large decks and Slay the Spire hits a perfect balance of not wanting too many cards but also wanting enough cards to deal with the many challenges on a run.

Outside of its general mastery of Rogue-like mechanics and deckbuilding mechanics, there's a few other great innovations. The Ascension system is the difficulty modifier and the incentive to continue playing after you beat it once. Winning a run unlocks the next tier of Ascension for the character you won it with. Ascension is a tiny difficulty modifier, but it also adds every previous difficulty modifier before it. It's an excellent way of seeing how difficult the game is, especially with every modifier after 5 feeling like a major change in some way. With Ascension being capped at 20 and with 4 characters, you effectively need to beat the game 80 times to fully complete it. I'm currently at Ascension 17 with Ironclad, Ascension 12 with Silent, and Ascension 6 with Defect and Watcher. Every victory feels like a major win before having to prepare for another summit to hike.

I also like the Heart, which is the true final boss and incredibly difficult. Not only is getting to the Heart difficult with being forced to take some suboptimal options throughout the run, but the Heart's mini-boss also knocks you down hard. It is thankfully not required to beat in order to "win" for an Ascension run. It's sometimes a nice break to lower the Ascension and instead go for a Heart win.

There's a bunch of smaller things more in the gameplay. The enemy intention system is core to the gameplay and helps newbies learn what to do, but also pros in going deeper and remembering the general gameplay patterns of each enemy just through repetition. Learning frame data or game data always felt like a massive gameplay barrier, but I was able to get a sense of what each enemy "checks" you on and how to craft my deck to go against it. I appreciate all the UI help on the relics, especially the ones that are timed on turns or cards. Speaking of UI, all the text in the game is informative and clear. This is...way harder than you would think, especially for a game with as much content as this one. While the story is not a big deal at all, I do like the small things hinted in the story like the Jaw Worm evolving into the Maw or the Cultist evolving into The Awakened. The game is even kinda funny at times.

Man, I could really go on and on about how much I love this game. I didn't even touch any of the paths for each archetype or the events or how the small pool of bosses (just 9 total) is expertly crafted. I love this game so much.

tazzyboyishere posted...

Slay the Spire is THE deckbuilding Rogue-like.

I've only played Balatro in that subgenre. How does Slay the Spire compare to it?

OrangeCrush980 posted...

I've only played Balatro in that subgenre. How does Slay the Spire compare to it?

I've played Balatro a lot more than StS, but I would say Balatro is quite easier to get into (maybe why I found it more addicting to)

#13 TIE. VVVVVV (2010)
Total Points: 13
List Appearances: 7
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7c3b6d3f.jpg

Writeup provided by MetalmindStats
VVVVVV might not be very many voters' favorite platformer -- let alone video game in general -- but it seems to me veridically very difficult to play this game and not like it at least a little bit. Its clever, creative, and consistently intuitive core conceit -- to quote its Steam Store page, "what if you reversed gravity instead of jumping?" -- certainly contributes considerably. And Terry Cavanaugh paired this inspired concept with deliberately devised design, creating a conglomeration of interconnected screens that consistently center around the great game feel of fast gravity-reversing traversal while generally gradually gaining greater and greater gameplay obstacles to flip around and through. VVVVVV's difficulty is very well-thought out too - frequent checkpoints make most deaths feel fair, diminishing the typical punishing trial-and-error frustrations of pixel-perfect platformers in favor of daunting yet doable flow states, and its steepest challenges (such as the infamously intimidating Veni Vidi Vici! sequence) tend to be completely skippable if you so choose. But for all its importance, I firmly feel that even the most finely tuned gameplay would fall short sans accompaniment, and fortunately...

Music more than mildly contributes, too - Magnus Plsson composed a seemingly simple chiptune soundtrack that potently propels players forward, powerfully pairing with the predominantly expressive positivity of protagonist and player character Captain Viridian's pixelated visage to encourage continually pushing to conquer even the most challenging portions of VVVVVV's platforming. Viridian's impetus is to find and save his crewmates, all scattered amidst interstellar space in an expansive and entirely open map that embraces exploration, with admirable results that at their best effectively foster the feeling of actually being stuck in space. Much of that atmosphere -- the spareness, the distance, and the strangeness (Bennett Foddy named the rooms) that steadily seeps into its setting -- seems specifically tied to its status as a *Commodore 64*-style retro platformer, one that's deceptively small and replayable and frequently compulsively fun to flip and rush through. There are certainly platformers I personally prefer, even among the pixelated precision subset, and I wish I'd phrased my words more subjectively, but my writing process reminded me of VVVVVV itself - a motivating struggle that mostly made me appreciate the game more and more as I strived farther and farther for it.

OrangeCrush980 posted...

I've only played Balatro in that subgenre. How does Slay the Spire compare to it?

Balatro is more approachable imo because the idea of working with a standard deck of cards and poker hands is very simple and easy to understand, and you don't really have enemies in the conventional sense that you have to battle against. Balatro, therefore, is less a matter of reacting to what the game throws at you, and more just dealing with the randomness on your end in terms of upgrading your deck and playing your hand.

If we're going to talk about rogue-like deckbuilders, the other game that deserves a mention here is Monster Train, which is Slay the Spire if you were fighting the enemies off as they came to you, a la tower defense.

Surprised to see V6 here. What's next, Super Hexagon?

#13 TIE. Hypnospace Outlaw (2018)
Total Points: 13
List Appearances: 7
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/ba3215c3.jpg

No writeup provided

#12. Ori and the Blind Forest (2015)
Total Points: 14
List Appearances: 4
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/93710f51.jpg

Writeup provided by MacArrowny
I'd played a number of indie Metroidvanias before Ori, but none of them really hit. They all felt like they were lacking something compared to the official games in both series. When I tried Ori, though, it was a revelation. It gave me everything I wanted from games of this type and more. The biggest difference-maker is that Ori doesn't focus on combat with its abilities. Just about everything is movement-centric. It has auto-aiming attacks, so even during boss fights, the entire focus is on jumping around and evading, rather than direct combat. The sheer joy of movement is fantastic. Every upgrade you get feels meaningful, and the central mechanic of the game, Bash, is incredible. You basically rocket off of enemies or certain parts of the environment - it's a somewhat skill-based maneuver, and pulling it off always feels great, with a real impact to it that not every ability in an MV has. Exploring the world is a lot of fun because the movement is so good, with lots of places to go check out, especially in the definitive edition, and it was a good time backtracking through every area with more abilities to find secrets I'd missed.

And of course, Ori also shines in every other respect. The graphics are beautiful. The soundtrack is fantastic. Even the story is really good, with a stirring intro sequence that made me tear up. If I had to name a flaw, the game's a bit hard, but that difficulty just made it more memorable - all those deaths I had during the various escape sequences only made me love the game more, haha.

Lastly, a funny story - when I bought the game on Steam, it was titled the Definitive Edition, so I just downloaded and started. Little did I know, buying the DE gave me both versions of the game, and I played 80% of the normal version without realizing I was missing out. I immediately started over with the DE version, and had an absolute blast both times. Not many games have captivated me like Ori did.

Poor Hypnospace Outlaw

tazzyboyishere posted...

#13 TIE. Hypnospace Outlaw (2018)
Total Points: 13
List Appearances: 7
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/ba3215c3.jpg

No writeup provided

not only does it not get a writeup, but its sequel just got cancelled. Poor game...

Hbthebattle posted...

but its sequel just got cancelled.

Fuck.

Ya go my Ori

#11. Return of the Obra Dinn (2018)
Total Points: 14
List Appearances: 6
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a297870e.jpg

Writeup provided by Hbthebattle
This is one of the most creative mystery games Ive ever played. While you solve deaths, the structure - filling in characters identities and methods of death - is extremely intriguing. While it starts simple, it opens up extremely fast, and the intended methods of how youre supposed to deduce some identities are extremely intricate. The games low-poly black and white artstyle are shockingly effective at depicting some of the graphic violence that occurs, without compromising on the aesthetic. However, there are a couple downsides. Some of the game relies on expecting the players to make assumptions about characters based on their nationalities, which can and has run some players the wrong way, and guessing-and-checking can let the game be bute forced. Overall though, its a great little game.

Board 8's Top 10 Aracde (2010s-Present) Games:

#8 TIE. WACCA (2019)
Total Points: 3
List Appearances: 1
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/543c5c1f.jpg

#8 TIE. Killer Queen (2013)
Total Points: 3
List Appearances: 1
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/185e5ddd.jpg

#8 TIE. jubeat festo (2018)
Total Points: 3
List Appearances: 1
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/91dcb45d.jpg

#7. Star Wars: Battle Pod (2014)
Total Points: 3
List Appearances: 2
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/c/cbb1bcfb.jpg

#5 TIE. Tekken 7 (2015)
Total Points: 4
List Appearances: 2
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/6d50692e.jpg

#5 TIE. Dance Dance Revolution X2 (2010)
Total Points: 4
List Appearances: 2
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/d459a471.jpg

#4. Jurassic Park Arcade (2015)
Total Points: 5
List Appearances: 3
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/741b3684.jpg

#3. DoDonPachi Saidaioujou (2012)
Total Points: 6
List Appearances: 2
First Place Votes: 2
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/46758e2c.jpg

#2. Mario Kart Arcade GP DX (2013)
Total Points: 6
List Appearances: 4
First Place Votes: 0
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/63c748a4.jpg

#1. Terminator Salvation (2010)
Total Points: 7
List Appearances: 4
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/0db7178b.jpg

Yeah that's a pretty solid Arcade list. Played a lottttt of DDR X2 in the last couple years.

azuarc posted...

Balatro is more approachable imo because the idea of working with a standard deck of cards and poker hands is very simple and easy to understand, and you don't really have enemies in the conventional sense that you have to battle against. Balatro, therefore, is less a matter of reacting to what the game throws at you, and more just dealing with the randomness on your end in terms of upgrading your deck and playing your hand.

This is a good point. I played Balatro but bounced mostly off of it compared to Slay the Spire. To me, raising a high score is just harder to conceptualize than beat the enemies.

Shame about Hyperspace Outlaw. I would have written for it but I haven't finished it yet. All I will say is that it's a must-play if you have any memory of 2000s-era forums at all. Which should be all of us.

I like how me and 2 other people single-handily got our #1 arcade game on the list.