Part two of my best of the decade roundup - this time, it's my favourite games for 2010-2019. Read on to find out if there are any surprises (spoiler: there aren't, it's pretty standard). 5 Coming in at number five is the brilliantly inventive, severely underrated Bulletstorm, from People Can Fly. When Bulletstorm was announced, I remember peerless and much missed gaming magazine gamesTM touting it, along with a number of other shooters, as a possible contender for Call of Duty’s crown. I could be wrong, but I think those other hopefuls were Bodycount, Brink (yes, seriously) and Rage. Ultimately, I would end up playing all of them, but only sticking with Bulletstorm. The reasons why should be obvious to anyone who knows me. Bulletstorm is a fast-paced, action-packed, on rails first-person shooter, chock full of hyper-violence, gore, creatively foul language and compelling characters. The weapons in the game hark back to a simpler time in gaming, when it seemed like developers were mainly concerned about letting the player dispatch as many goons as possible in the most creative, bloody ways. There is a gun that fires drills. There is a gun that fires remote controlled cannonballs. There is a gun that fires guided sniper rifle bullets. But just as creative as the weapon design is the environmental violence that is the other, crucial part of Bulletstorm’s “Kill with Skill” gameplay. Carnivorous plants abound, as do rotor blades, electrically charged signs and more besides. Using your arsenal creatively is only half the battle in Bulletstorm - knocking an enemy into another and then sending them both tumbling into a pile of explosive barrels is so much more satisfying than just blasting them into chunks. To ensure the maximum amount of carnage, main character Grayson Hunt has both an energy leash and a kick, allowing him to latch onto enemies, pull them closer towards him Scorpion-style, then boot them, all whilst they tumble helplessly in a kind of bullet time slow motion (usually before being messily impaled on something). Creativity and a certain amount of problem solving are required to obtain every “skillshot” in the game; these skillshots are unique to weapons, environments and even enemies, with each one successfully performed getting you closer to upgrades for your weapons. Skillshots are really the main thing that help Bulletstorm stand out from a very crowded market, and allow for plenty of replayability. Think of them as tricks in a Tony Hawk title - if Tony used his skateboard to decapitate someone then bowled their head at a crowd of enemies like they were skittles. Bulletstorm is big, bloody fun, and a sequel is long overdue. 4 Taking the number four spot is - you guessed it - another extremely violent first-person shooter. It’s none other than 2016’s Doom, which (aside from rereleases) is the only title on my list to have come from this console generation. That shouldn’t be taken as an indictment of the current generation, there are plenty of great games out there. I just haven’t played that many of them, because they’re expensive. Doom, however, I just knew I had to have, and it has not disappointed. Well, I say that, I haven’t actually been able to finish Doom owing to it being too intensive for my creaking PS4 to be able to handle. I became stuck on level 11 of 13, then whenever I started doing well, the fans in the console would make it sound like it was about to take off, the game would freeze and I’d be booted to the dashboard. To me, this is no reflection on the game itself - it’s hardly the fault of id Software that Sony can’t make a console that doesn’t hoover up all the dust in the room. It is a gripe, but not one that means I haven’t absolutely loved every single power-armoured step through Doom up to this point. Combat in Doom is satisfying in the extreme, with every weapon feeling like it has real heft to it. Familiar favourites such as the BFG and chainsaw make their return, ready to send the minions of hell back where they came from (and in considerably more pieces than when they left too). Glory kills, prompted by an enemy glowing when sufficiently weakened, reward the player with extra ammo, health and armour, making chaining kills together not just a joy but an essential part of the core gameplay. Doom, like Bulletstorm, recalls a simpler time in games - even the Doom Marine himself seems representative of this mindset, with no finesse to his actions or interactions. You can almost feel him tapping his foot in moments of exposition, and there are several occasions where he straight up ignores advice and does his own destructive thing. Despite having no choice about how an objective is approached, this kind of storytelling cunningly makes the player feel like they have more agency than they actually do, as it allies them more with the Doom Marine than those he’s interacting with, thus making them feel like it’s a decision they’re a part of rather than one that’s been made for them and will always be the same, every time. On top of all this, Doom looks absolutely incredible. I genuinely couldn’t believe how good it looked when I started it up, truly feeling for the first time that here, finally, was what this generation of consoles had been promising. A truly stunning reboot of one of the oldest franchises in videogames. 3 A change of perspective, if not necessarily pace, for the number three spot, as the caped crusader swoops in with Batman: Arkham City. The sequel to the much loved, frequent game of the year list topper Arkham Asylum, City featured that same, super crunchy combat, with just as many twists and turns to the plot, but somehow did what seemed impossible and translated it into an open world. When Rocksteady said that going open world was their plan, I was sceptical. So much of Asylum relied on the environment and unlocking parts of it through puzzling, which I felt could potentially work in an open world. But the stealth? The gadgets? How could they possibly make it in there unscathed? I needn’t have worried, as it turned out. Opening up the playground actually improved on pretty much everything that had gone before. Taking down a number of enemies in a confined space was still a core part of the game, but it was no longer the only part - Batman was also soaring free around a perfectly sized city - an open world that was big enough to feel you were exploring and discovering, but not so massive that it ever felt like a chore to traverse, which had been one of my major concerns. It also allowed for different kinds of missions, such as tracking down Man Bat, as well as making investigations feel more realistic as they took place over a wider area. As if that wasn’t enough, City somehow manages to maintain the high standard of storytelling that Asylum had featured, with a finale that had me gaping open mouthed at the screen as it played out. It’s amazing really that Rocksteady dropped the ball so badly with Arkham Knight, considering the two games that came before it, but then the same could - indeed, should - be said of the next entry in this list… 2 Mass Effect 2. Of course it’s here, how could it not be? But not in the number one spot. It just barely does itself out of that lofty position thanks to a number of unfulfilled promises from a sequel that left a bad taste in a lot of mouths. Whilst it might seem unfair to judge a game harshly by what followed on from it, it’s impossible not to take it into account with the Mass Effect games. “Every decision matters,” we were told, and indeed it seemed like some of those that I’d made in the first game did actually have a bearing on how certain events played out in Mass Effect 2. But it would eventually emerge that Mass Effect 2 had been treading water on a number of plotlines, plotlines that ultimately had no meaningful payoff at all. It’s for this reason that it can’t be my number one game of the decade - there’d just be too much residual bad feeling if I were to try and play it now. Mass Effect 2 represented a big shift for the series. The first game had more in common with a previous Bioware favourite of mine, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or KOTOR for short. In-depth skill levelling and constantly switching out gear were the order of the day in the original Mass Effect, along with an alignment system and classes that locked off certain skills altogether, meaning there were entire categories of guns your version of Shepard wouldn’t be able to use at all. Mass Effect 2 streamlined a lot of this, as well as making commanding your team simpler. All weapons took thermal clips, meaning it was much easier to keep using the weaponry you wanted to use. Biotics (basically the force) worked considerably more reliably than they had in the first game, and there was no need to dissolve useless items into omni-gel to repair your weird bouncy space car. Gone too were the missions where you were expected to land on a planet and drive around it looking for anomalies, some of which dragged hugely in the original game. A graphical overhaul surprisingly didn’t impact on the horrendous loading times of the original game; on the contrary, in fact, as Mass Effect 2’s loading times were considerably less of a pain. All of these changes combined to make Mass Effect 2 a faster paced, more fluid game than the original. But Bioware didn’t stop there. Always known for their compelling characters and epic stories, they continued the tale of Shepard in epic and unconventional fashion, killing and rebuilding him in one of the best opening sequences to any game ever. From that point, it’s up to Shepard to build a team made up of nuanced newbies and familiar faces ready to take on the game’s now legendary suicide mission - a final level which sees you picking certain team members for certain roles. Choose well, and it’s onto the next challenge unscathed. Choose poorly, however, and characters will die. Having proceeded through all of their loyalty missions up to this point and getting to know them, everyone will have their favourites; those team members who you either rely on for their skills or love for their personality, making the stakes seem very, very real for this final mission. My favourite, as soon as I saw him, was Drell assassin Thane Krios, a green skinned, black eyed alien bounty hunter prone to poetic flashbacks and philosophising. I found I was doing everything I could to keep him out of danger, which somewhat ironically meant that I kept him by side where the fighting was thickest. A slight misunderstanding saw me pick the wrong character for a certain part of the mission, and my heart plummeted when I realised. Perhaps they would be able to do it though, I thought. Perhaps we would make it through fine. It wasn’t to be on that first playthrough however, and in a heart wrenching moment one of my team was snatched away by a seeker swarm. I was much more careful on my next playthrough, making it through with everyone surviving, but it really drove home the idea of actions having consequences that Bioware had been so keen to emphasise. 1 So, my number one game of the decade. Essentially, this takes a lot of what I liked about the other entries on this list and combines it - a first-person shooter, with consequences, a sense of humour, unique characters… along with an unhealthy dose of radiation. Yes, my number one game of the decade is Fallout: New Vegas. Lovingly crafted by Obsidian games, a studio that contains many of those who worked on the original Fallout games, New Vegas manages to feel both grander in scale and more personal than the Bethesda developed Fallouts either side of it. Like Mass Effect 2, New Vegas opens with your character being killed. In fact, your character is digging their own grave, shortly before being shot in the head and put in it (by none other than Matthew Perry, bizarrely). Waking up after a miraculous rescue, it’s onto the usual character creation and perk picking, but upon stepping out into the Mojave Wasteland, it soon becomes clear that New Vegas has considerably more to offer than its predecessor Fallout 3. There is crafting, there are gangs that can be allied and fought with, loyalty missions for companions, games that can be played, a branching storyline, and it’s all set against the backdrop of a blasted world about to tip over the edge into war. New Vegas felt, to me at least, like the games that my Fallout loving friend had told me about years earlier, before Fallout 3 was even a twinkle in Bethesda’s eye. He would tell me about the quirky, offbeat humour, the freedom of choice, the amazing world building, the creepy enemies, the deep story… Now I’m not saying that Fallout 3 doesn’t have a lot of these elements too. It definitely does. But New Vegas had all of it in spades. One completely useless trait in the game, for example, is Wild Wasteland, which ensures more bizarre occurrences and encounters. This provides no real benefit to the player most of the time, but ensures that multiple Monty Python references make it into the game to delight and confuse in equal measure. Gangs and casino houses continue the offbeat tone, with the player having the option of joining the Kings - a group of Elvis impersonators - as well as dealing with the creepy goings on of The White Glove Society, a tribe of cannibalistic, mask wearing weirdos. Whilst Fallout: New Vegas is far from perfect - glitches abound, with some design choices actually making the game impossible to finish in certain situations - it is a game so ambitious and so endlessly inventive that it’s impossible to see it as anything other than a triumph, and one of the finest open world games ever made. So, there are my top games of the decade! My top two are actually the oldest on the list, both having come out in 2010, but that shouldn’t really be a surprise - it’s usually the middle to end of a generation that yields the best games, and the Xbox 360 (which I was playing them on) had been out for about five years by this point. Three of the games on this list also had very disappointing sequels - Fallout 4, Arkham Knight and Mass Effect 3. Let’s hope that isn’t the case for Doom Eternal! Next up will be my favourite albums of the decade, before we get onto the final list - books (at last). Currently listening: When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light, Swallow the Sun
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AuthorOllie - BA English and Creative Writing, MA Publishing. Archives
April 2020
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