10 Games That Defined My Decade
Ending the 2010s with a list of 10!
Introduction
The 2010s have been one hell of a ride. Whilst a lot of it hasn’t been particularly enjoyable, I like to think that a lot of it has been fantastic. The same can be said about videogames, which now earns more money than film, radio, music and television COMBINED. That is a lot of money!
Videogames are taken a lot more seriously now as well. The boundaries between game and film/TV Drama narratives are becoming increasingly blurred. Music and audio implementation is becoming far more sophisticated and clever, and games are just looking and performing with far more realism with practically every game you pick up. These are brilliant steps in engaging with people of all ages, shapes and sizes. Games aren’t just for one demographic anymore, and I love that.
Much of this progression has happened within the last ten years, and I wish to celebrate some of those games. Ten of them in fact, that shaped me as a person during my years at secondary school, enhancing my state of mind during my time as a teenager, and maturing it as a young adult. They won’t be in any particular order, and they will be games that were released during the 2010s.
The Blog Proper
1. Journey (2012)
‘Journey’ is a game that will forever be very close to my heart, for it is a game that speaks a thousand different meanings, each one both vague and insightful, granting lots of interpretation of its deep and hidden meanings and what it means to live, rather than approaching such a concept with the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’.
The game says all of this without uttering a single word. All that you are left to hear is the beautifully designed sound effects when you interact with the environment around you, and the fantastic score by Austin Wintory, who was nominated a GRAMMY for the score, the first for a videogame soundtrack to receive such a nomination (and I believe he is still the only composer to have this accolade, at this moment in typing).
I spoke more about how ‘Journey’ communicates with its player in a much older blog of mine, one of the first I wrote a year, which I will leave in the link below, should you wish to investigate further. It is a truly beautiful game that will leave speechless after it’s an hour and a half runtime, which may not sound terribly long for some, but it is not about how long experience is, it is about the journey, how we got from A to B.
2. Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010)
I would argue that there isn’t a single gamer that hasn’t heard of this game. I bet a lot of them have been curious as to what the whole hoo-ha is about. Why do people claim that it is the scariest game of all time? A small portion of them try it for themselves and discover the paints-shitting terror that is ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’.
The game is very important for a variety of different reasons. Of course, there is the influence it takes from Lovecraftian horror, introducing a whole new audience of a unique way of storytelling and use of suspense to gradually frighten the audience/players without the need with excessive gore and jump scares, something that modern horror films refuse to adopt themselves.
Secondly, perhaps even more important to the innovative game design is how it played a part in catapulting the concept as a ‘YouTuber’ as a viable career, all thanks to a Swedish guy by the alias of PewDiePie who did a Let’s Play of the game, back during a time where it seemed incredibly weird to film yourself to play video games and upload it online, in the hope that people would watch you play and react to whatever it was your playing. Both PewDiePie and ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’ would change the way that people would use and view the platform, which in turn would have a huge effect on how we would all use social media.
For more on my thoughts on the horror game, I wrote a blog review about that game, in addition to its disturbing DLC ‘Amnesia: Justine’.
3. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2017)
A growing trend in videogames over the last decade is to explore, educate and (to an extent) romanticise mental health conditions and negative emotions we all share but never feel truly comfortable sharing. ‘Celeste’ explores anxiety and overcoming mentally taxing challenges, and ‘GRIS’ explores depression, sadness and suicide.
One of such games was the multi-award-winning ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’, a game has been eerily absent from my blogs, especially as I believe it is a strong contender for game of the generation.
It is a dark fantasy action-adventure game developed and published by the British video game development studio Ninja Theory that has you play as Senua, a Pict warrior with psychosis on a journey to rescue the soul of her lover. As an interesting and unique selling point for a game, it was not that sold the game for me, but how that would be incorporated with the game. Sound, internal arguments and music would fly around you, aiding and hindering you in combat and puzzles, meaning that if you don’t play this game with headphones, you are missing out on a good 90% of the experience.
In addition to a billion different awards, it received much praise and support to how respectfully it portrayed those with the condition, be it in a highly fantasised setting.
4. Catherine (2011)
You play as Vincent Brookes, a man in his thirties who begins the game having lunch with his girlfriend Katherine McBride, who begins to pressure him by wanting marriage. Vincent is not so keen, but cannot summon the courage to tell her. He deals this by drinking the night away at his local bar, ‘The Stray Sheep’, until a young attractive blonde by the name of Catherine sits next to him in this mostly vacant bar. Utterly trousered, Vincent invites her round to his apartment and wakes up to her next to him, naked. He cannot remember inviting her, which starts the game properly as you are thrust into a love triangle as you spend the next 8 (in-game) days sorting out the mess you have gotten into…or at least that is what you are supposed to think.
The game is split into two types. Each night, you can wander around the bar and talk to the patrons (or ‘punters’, as we say in the once Great Britain) and become Agony Aunt to their complaints, becoming a slice-of-life simulator (if that is a legitimate thing). Some of these patrons end up in the game’s other genre, which is a puzzle game, where Vincent and the punters (who are now sheep in these sections) most climb towers that are slowly losing their base. If you fall, you die. If you die in the Nightmare Sections, you die in real life.
‘Catherine’ explores lots of adult and mature themes, some more maturely than others, as the portrayal of the characters can be very anime (especially Vincent). Most of these themes and social cultures that it takes interest have not been explored in many other games, and it would be terribly difficult to sum up in this blog. Regular readers of my blogs will know how much I adore this incredibly weird game. I have written about it many times, so I will leave a link for a critique I wrote for the game a year ago (at the time of typing) that explores every reason why you should play this game.
5. CHAOS;CHILD (2014)
It is highly unlikely that you have never heard of this game, for it is a visual novel made by a Japanese indie dev company called 5pb. You may have heard one of their games though. A very popular and beloved visual novel called ‘STEINS;GATE’, which many people claim is the best visual novel of all time which spawned an equally successful anime. As much as I adore the brilliant writing and cast of ‘STEINS;GATE’, I think ‘CHAOS;CHILD’, the fourth entry in the Science Adventure series surpasses it tenfold.
‘CHAOS;CHILD’ was released in Japan in 2014 for Xbox One, and later for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Windows, iOS, and Android. The PS4 and PS Vita versions were released by PQube in Europe and North America in 2017, and the Windows version by Spike Chunsoft in 2019. It sees the world through (mostly) Takuru Miyashiro, president of the Hekiho Academy newspaper club, who investigates the ‘Return of the New Generation Madness’ serial murder case, which is a series of weirdly horrific murders.
I began playing it late 2017, stopped partway into 2018 because of impending university deadlines and other distracting matters (mostly games) and picked it up again late 2019, finishing about September the same year, so it was quite the journey for me, and I do not regret taking as long as I did with it, because it was a fantastic game with characters, music and narrative that still haunts me, both in a good and bad way. It is extremely difficult to recommend this to people, partly because it is clearly anime/manga in its design, it’s a very brutal horror story and it is also a visual novel with next to no traditional gameplay.
If you are a fan of any of those design choices, I would highly recommend this game for you. If you have experienced ‘CHAOS;CHILD’ and would like to know more about my thoughts, I will leave a link to my thoughts about it below.
6. Skyrim (2011)
Any gamer who hasn’t heard of ‘Skyrim’ is not really a gamer. It took the whole gaming world by storm when it was first released back in 2011, almost 10 years ago when this blog was first created. It is still as fresh and exciting as it was then, partly thanks to the modding community as well as the overall really supportive fanbase.
The main quest has you play as the legendary ‘Dragonborn’, whose destiny is to defeat the evil dragon Alduin. If you stop playing the game at the end of that quest, you are quite frankly a fool. This game has hundreds of quests for you to conquer and has many interesting and unique characters for you to talk, fight and even marry. It is one of the finest open-world RPGs I have ever played and I still go back for more every so often to explore such a wonderful world and it’s many dark and dank dungeons for the 1000th time. I feel incredibly confident I could name every quest and scenario as if I had played it yesterday.
And if you feel you that completed all the base, vanilla quests (which is technically impossible) there are the game’s DLCs to try. They are ‘Dawnguard’, which has you face or join a vampire cult or vampire hunters, ‘Dragonborn’ which has you face off a Dragonborn of old, called Miraak in the distant isle of Solstheim to find new characters, new enemies and a new home to settle down with a spouse of your choosing and ‘Hearthfire’, which gives you the ability to build some huge houses in three different areas in the game.
And thanks to all its glorious milking, there are so many ways for you to enjoy this game…well, unless you try playing it in VR or on the Switch, as sources tell me both of those ports are disasters. That said, ‘Skyrim’, like many of Bethesda’s games, is incredibly buggy and gloriously glitchy.
7. Bloodborne (2015)
My opinion on the Soulsborne games has changed incredibly over the years, partly due to the many ‘knock-off’ Souls-like games, both in and out of FromSoftware studios. Whilst I have liked the other ‘Dark Souls’ games less over the years, my love and passion for ‘Bloodborne’ has only strengthened.
‘Bloodborne’ is a very bloody, murderous game that is incredibly difficult for newcomers, but anyone who has played any of the ‘Dark Souls’ games and love that style of world-building and enemy design should get on alright with this game as ‘Bloodborne’ was made by the same people. That being said, some of ‘Dark Souls’ key elements are removed which may through fans of the Soulsborne games. There is no real punishment when you die for example. You are also not spoon-fed a shield either. Instead, you are given a gun that is mostly used for your parrying needs. The combat is quicker and far more aggressive than any of the Soulsborne series before (and after) it. On the surface, it is a dark and gory game with fantastic boss encounters and a brilliant gothic world. If you are prepared to dig deeper and explore all the game has to offer, you will discover several twisted Lovecraftian narratives originally conjured and spat out into the form known as ‘Bloodborne’.
‘Bloodborne’ has some of the finest music in the Soulsborne franchise that features six of the best composers in the business including Michael Wandmacher, Cris Velasco and Yuka Kitamura. As with previous games in the Soulsborne franchise, most of the music accompanies boss fights and they, on the whole, are bloody brilliant (pardon the pun). There is also a DLC called ‘The Old Hunters’ if you fancy a REAL challenge.
8. NieR: Automata (2017)
The basic plot summary for this game is rather straight forward in its premise. ‘NieR: Automata’ tells the story of androids 2B, 9S and A2 and their battle to reclaim the machine-driven dystopia overrun by powerful machines. It is far more convoluted than that I assure you, for the game will on many occasion make you cry with joy and despair and force you into many an existential crisis.
I would further expand how a game on anime Robot-Wars could possibly do that, but we would be entering spoiler territory, so I strongly advise you to go and look into this game, for it is one of those games that you look back and think ‘I wish I could forget I played this so I could experience all of those emotions all over again’.
9. The Last Guardian (2016)
Similar to ‘Journey’, this was a game that blew my tiny little mind when I played it, as it told very little of what was going on through spoken word, but used the environment and your large companion, Trico, to try and find out where you are and how to get back home.
It is my game of the eighth generation of consoles. That won’t be everyone’s favourite answer, as it was not as successful/popular as the other PlayStation exclusive. It was far more powerful than most of them, in my humble opinion. Trico, this cat/bird/dog…thing, is a wild animal and by its very nature and design, will not listen to your commands all of the time. I have had pets for most of my life who quite regularly ignore me, and they are all trained!
This game would be very successful as a film. It has the beautiful bond between you and Trico that blossoms over the course of the game, and the truly outstanding 90-piece orchestra, all recorded live at AIR Lyndhurst Studios, which is one the most sought-after venue to have your cinematic orchestras recorded. Most of the more recent PlayStation exclusives have had their scores recorded there. Coincidence? I think not!
If you haven’t already, I urge you to give this game a chance and treat it not like most games that have you herd an animal who can somehow do everything you want it to do the first time, but a new pet that you are trying to toilet train.
10. Persona 5 (2016)
You never saw this coming, did you?
Dated memes aside, ‘Persona 5’ really surprised me when I picked it up in 2017 when I should have been focusing on my university assessments. I was not wholly convinced I would like a JRPG that would have me battle monsters one moment in the turn-based combat style that I love so much, to going back to school with my friends and revise for exams. Regardless, I was intrigued all the same with this playable anime and decided to take a huge gamble with this, and I am sooooooooo glad that I decided to take the chance.
As a playable anime, it takes the usual shonen plot of a group of kids with magical powers that have to save the world from the nasty grown-ups as the main plot, whilst you have the aforementioned school life on the side. In reality, it is actually the main course.
The timing of ‘Persona 5’ entering my life was pretty important, as I was in my second term at uni, commuting from home each day, missing out on huge chunks of ‘uni life’. It was my decision, as I knew drunken partying and late-night bullshit was not the life for me. Despite my best efforts, I would feel pretty lonely during breaks wandering around the city centre shopping. Then I heard of ‘Persona 5’ and did my research. Revising for exams, balancing 3 in-game different jobs and organising playdates shouldn’t be fun things in videogames. Heck, they aren’t really fun in real life for me, an introvert, but these things were incredibly addictive, as was the combat and the insane soundtrack. By the end of my 80-hour playthrough, I felt I knew my party members inside out as they sought me to be the bearer of their problems, whether I wanted to or not. As daft as it sounds, I found comfort in those party members, as if they were actual friends.
I have since written blogs about Persona 3–5, in addition to the dancing games, their soundtracks and the PSP remake of the original Persona game. I will leave the blog to the first game review I did in the link below. If you want the others, you are going to have to look for them on my profile…
Coda
Part of me thought this was going to be an incredibly easy list to make. I had half of the games down in my head and was thinking about the other five, realising through one way or another, that most of the games I have played in recent years skit around the 2010s. This made me really knuckle down and think of the ‘creme de la creme’ of my games, the ones I would take on a desert island with me and play to my heart's content.
A lot of these games are also PlayStation exclusives, which may annoy some, but PlayStation has been my go-to console for years. And with the exciting changes coming to the PS5 in about a years time, I have no reason to change. Whether what console you play, I think we can all agree that 2020 is going to be a rad year for gaming and I am incredibly excited what the 20s are going to deliver for the medium.
HAPPY NEW YEAR READERS!
