Top games since 2010...

Courtesy of Massive Chalice... also another game I greatly enjoyed!

While I don't normally do "favourite games" lists, but I had planned to do one for the end of last year and then was thinking about this draf for this year... So I decided to soldier on and finish it. :) I don't think this requires much introduction; I played a lot of games over the last ten years and here are my favourites, in no particular order, along with why I chose them. As always, "top games" lists can be contentious but ultimately the point is to share what you personally liked...

Oh yeah - There WILL be spoilers!!

Just hanging out at the end of the world...

SOMA

I originally watched SOMA over on the Spoiler Warning show and really loved their play through of the game. I left it a few years and then played through it myself and really enjoyed it. I think that the team over at Frictional Games did an amazing job in crafting the world, personalities and the story with just enough hope and reason to actually want to reach the end.

While I think that Simon was slightly too stupid in his lack of understanding of how the copy process worked, the ideas that were played around with were quite interesting and the setting itself was really something I hadn't experienced before - sort of taking me back to The Abyss and Dead Space in terms of atmosphere.

The monsters mostly worked and I liked that they were not the focus of the gameplay but where there to provide some sort of antagonist within the alien environments in which you found yourself.

Apparently, this is Britain...

Ether One

Ether One is one of those games that had me thinking about it between game play sessions and long after I finished playing it (though I know I didn't manage to complete it). White Paper Games were able to create a really dream-like and emotionally touching experience returning to past memories of a patient with Dementia. The puzzles were creative and interesting and the setting of Pinwheel and the events surrounding the closure of the mine and modernisation of the town were really quite engaging.

Unfortunately, even though I played this years after release on the PS4, the game was still quite buggy which made completing some of the puzzles quite difficult as in-game triggers would fail to register, or worse, would register but not be crossed-off in the in-game check list that let the player know they'd achieved a task.

I'd like to go back to this game one day on PC and see if it's in better shape there.

I love this aesthetic...

The Occupation

White Paper Games did an amazing job of refining their world-building and object interaction and manipulation mechanics from Ether One. Whilst the story that was told was ultimately incredibly timely with respect to the events surrounding Brexit and various xenophobic trends that were observed over the last five years, the combination of chunky 80s computer tech with a fully simulated world to provide one of the two best immersive sims that have been released over the last decade*.

While the central conceit of the game mechanics is that you are playing against the clock doesn't really work in terms of a logical story (what sort of investigative reporter would only find their information to present to their interviewees whilst waiting for the interview!?) it does provide the perfect low-key stress to push the player.

*At least in my opinion!

Of course, not everyone would enjoy that sort of stress and I'm the first to admit that the game's rather lengthy episodic-style sections are a difficult sell in this day and age. If I had any sort of time demands in my life when I played this game (e.g. children) then I would have not enjoyed this title at all as the time mechanic really doesn't respect the player's own time. Though, that does sound very harsh and you really couldn't design the game in a different way without completely changing it. So, I do respect the developers' decision in the end...

Industrial art deco in space? Sign me up!

Prey

Arkane Studios' Prey was, for me, the Crowning achievement for immersive sims this last decade. Ironically, much was made about the Dishonored series but I didn't feel that those games were really firmly within the immersive sim arena - instead I classify them more as action adventure with some light simulation elements - much in the same way that I do the Thief and Bioshock series.

Prey had everything I loved about System Shock 2 and Bioshock and put it all in an amazing sci-fi setting. The options open to the player were really quite vast - something that was attempted to a lesser degree in Dishonored 2 and the open nature of the traversal within the space station was really refreshing. Aside from the aesthetics, the logical way all the different elements fitted together within the story to make a cohesive whole was really amazing*.

*Managing to weave together the Looking Glass tech, the Mimic tech and Mimic invasion for all the different story beats really took a lot of skill!

Multiple endings rounded out the open-ended nature of the game but, if that wasn't enough, the expansion, Mooncrash, really pushed the game mechanics to another level and were clearly a proving ground for the upcoming Deathloop.**

Unfortunately, the game did not do well in terms of sales, which I think is criminal... so, we're unlikely to see another game of this type for a while. Deathloop looks really good but is, once again, more similar looking to Dishonored in terms of world-building - it's less weird.

Seriously, if you didn't play Prey, go out and buy it now!

**Can you tell I wrote this a year ago?

I played so many hours of this... found it brutally hard when I first picked it up, somehow it became easier with time!

XCOM 2

I loved the rebooted XCOM and played it to death, along with the Enemy Within expansion across PS3, PC and PS Vita. However, XCOM 2 really nailed the genre the first game created, focussing and enhancing everything into a the crystallised "perfect" version. 

If I'm honest, I took a while to get into the game after the (in retrospect) rather boring and sedate XCOM mission structure but once I learned the new systems and classes, I came to love this game more than the original. XCOM 2 has more of everything that the first game had and huge variation in terms of mechanics when bringing in the expansions as well. Facing off against The Chosen as well as the augmented Alien Rulers really challenged the player and added to the replayability. In some ways, it's quite amazing what was accomplished in the four years between the two games' releases.

I'm interested in what Firaxis might bring to this series but the company have been very quiet since 2016 which makes me wonder what they're working on...

Looking at this screenshot, I'm just now realising that there's no shadows on any of the crowd - making it seem like every model is foating... 

Cyberpunk 2077

Much was made of CD Projeckt Red's follow-up to The Witcher 3. Both over-hyped to an under-served market and over-ambitious in the scope and number of platforms targeted, Cyberpunk was delayed multiple times and released in a very poor state (on last gen consoles, at least).

However, on PC and next gen consoles, multiple patches in the two weeks after release rendered the game essentially as 'bad' as any other AAA release from a big studio. I played through half the game on version 1.05 and the other half on 1.06 and I encountered zero issues. 

Quite frankly, despite some people saying there were large cuts in content and that the AI was uninteresting, I found the game to live up to everything I expected from the it.

Although initially overwhelming, the hostile environment of Night City grew on me and the characters ingratiated themselves to me throughout my personal story.

Both sad and touching, my story of struggling to live in a society where people and humanity really are disposable, where my dreams of success ended up literally destroying my body, ended in an acceptance of the frailty and finality of death and, in so doing, took control for the first time. 

Though the player is presented with many choices and situations throughout, it is only in the final section of the game where your decisions have the gravity to really effect change in the player character's life. 

[Deep, gravelly voice]... In a world where technology is not your friend, one woman attempts to break tech out of prison...

Control

I didn't play Control anywhere near release - at the time I only had a 10 year old PC and a base PS4 to play on and I read the reviews and watched the performance analyses and I decided that I wanted to wait and that I wouldn't be missing much in terms of the overall social conversation regarding the game.

While I really liked the writing and world design in Alan Wake, the combat (while functional) wasn't very interesting and distracted from the rest of the mystery. In some ways, I think Alan Wake would have benefitted from being a game more akin to a Resident Evil title in terms of mechanics. With Control, Remedy Entertainment have not only expanded upon and improved the world presented in Alan Wake, they have refined a combat experience that feels interesting and empowering.

At first glance, Control is very similar to its predecessor - a strong artstyle and story hook but once the player begins to get more powers and weapons, the gameplay opens up and I found that, towards the end of the game I really felt empowered by my progress in a way that doesn't often happen in games. Not only was I learning to master the mechanics but the options given to me to manage enemy encounters felt fun and varied enough to keep me interested... plus, I could feel the advancement of my character's power in tandem with how it was presented in the story.

The last thing to mention about this aesthetically pleasing game is the sound design - it is top notch. The woosh of psychokinetic powers and everything else in the game is incredibly pleasing to my ears. The sounds were something I looked forward to hearing each and every time I clicked a button and performed an in-game action. I've seen many people say how amazing the design of the world is, write essays about the brutalist style of The Oldest House and wax lyrical about the ray tracing presentation of the game and how much it adds to the experience (I think it really does!) but, for me, the sound design is the real winner for this game. 

It is amazing.

Playing dress-up with Kratos was not how I saw myself spending a good portion of 2018...

God of War

I may have played God of War on the PS2, though I am not sure since it was such a long time ago and my discs lie in a dusty attic in another country. However, I have definitely played at least one of the original trilogy to completion and I can safely say that those games and that style of gameplay doesn't really hold up well in this day and age. 

Thankfully, Santa Monica Studio updated the mechanics, story and character of Kratos for the modern era, creating one of the most interesting "reboots" to a series to date.

Not only is this game a visual feast, its melding of Norse and revised Greek mythology are very interesting and the twists in the story are actually impactful for those who are not embedded in the mythology.

Combat, story, graphics (and who can doubt the graphics of the game!), grounded characters... this game delivers everything anyone wants. 

It's the full package.

I apparently didn't take any screenshots of RE7, so here's one from RE8...

Resident Evil 7

Here's another "reboot" of a storied franchise which completely upended both expectations and perspectives*. RE7 was exactly what was needed to rejuvenate the franchise and allow both old and new fans alike to look forward to new entries. Resident Evil had become almost a cartoonish joke of a franchise across the period post RE4 with nonsensical characters, plot and arcadey gameplay.

However, the move back to first person and sensical and suspenseful plot, at least for the first two-thirds of the game, really gave a reason for fans of the series to latch back onto it. Personally, I found the boss encounters at odds with the rest of the survival and exploration design and when they popped up I generally found them unsatisfactory and a bit claustrophobic - in a bad way. 

However, the other parts of the game felt great and, along with the twist and presentation of the story, left a lasting mark in my memory and made me re-enter the series afresh.

*See what I did there?

I loved the screenshot feature in this game...

Dragon's Dogma (and Dark Arisen)

I think the game itself is extremely polarising with the style of wonky medieval Europe viewed through the eyes of Asian culture, the very dated interface and quest system (even at release). This is one of those games that you will either dive into or bounce right off.

If you do put the time in, you will find a unique game and gameplay systems that you just won't find anywhere else. It's addictive without requiring micro transactions - which, if the game launched today would be replete with and is one of the reasons why I no longer wish for a sequel. Luckily, they released the game on three platforms/hardware generations so it's able to be enjoyed by a large swathe of players without issue.

When I think of the variety and uniqueness of the various character classes, the pawn system, the number and strangeness of the enemy types.... the artistic differences of the various locations. This game is an amazing story of an AA game being good. The scale of adventure and the sense of fighting against monsters that are way above and beyond your ability and then conquering those over time is just really hard to find elsewhere. I've heard that many people liken this to Monster Hunter - which I've never played.

You okay there, buddy...?

Hyper Light Drifter

Hyper Light Drifter has been a bit of a love affair for me. First off, I backed the game on Kickstarter. Played it through on PS4 multiple times, including the hard mode, and then again once the 60 fps mode was released. I then began to think about the lore and symbolism in this title, resulting in a multi-part series exploring just that... You could say I was a bit obsessed.

HLD was initially thought to be super hard but it's actually not that bad of a game (says the person who's played it a lot), the player just needs to learn the systems. Plus, reloading is pretty quick and you have your progress saved each "screen" of an area so death really isn't that punishing, IMO. 

The game's striking visual style and ambi-synth soundtrack present something that I'd never experienced before, lacking in any "obvious" written lore or guidance, it's a game that invites and then encourages the player to explore and master it for the experience, ultimately pushing some sort of self-reflected meaning from the player themselves into the events that occur.

Described as a Zelda-like, it's not really anything like Zelda except in the fact that it has a sort of isometric view. There just aren't many games like this - surprisingly, Dark Souls is probably the most similar in design philosophy, despite not inhabiting the same genre or interactive style - and I think that fans love this game for the same reasons fans love Dark Souls: it trusts the player.

I gave up counting after a few hundred, I guess I'll have to trust the developer on this one...

They Are Billions

This game is sort of a hot mess. The single player campaign is terribly balanced and paced, with little guidance or introduction to various mechanics or concepts for the player to lean slowly into. Its one saving grace is the survival mode which is... addictive. I have played hundreds of hours in that mode, slowly scraping my way through to unlocking a lot of environments to play in (and I've not reached the end of the list, either!).

Throughout a single game, the player has various paths in the tech tree available to them and I've found that I still haven't been able to optimise my survival games due to the variability inherent in each new game.

For fans of wave-based defence games, this is up there in the top tier, for me and the randomly generated maps provide endless replayability - no matter if you win or fail.

The sheer verticality of the game world is really impressive...

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Fun fact: I've never completed a From Software game. Another fun fact: I played Bloodborne and Sekiro before I played Dark Souls*.

Sekiro is my preferred game design from the three styles of game - the heavy parrying and stealth/reaction gameplay feels great - as does the mobility and ability of the player to escape many encounters.

Yes, the game is seriously difficult and I actually find it more difficult than either Bloodborne or Dark Souls but I think that is mitigated by the fact that you can resurrect in place without immediately going back to the last bonfire.

Despite the differences, at its heart, Sekiro retained the From Software DNA: sharp gameplay mechanics with a focus on observation and patience, with various weapons and equipables allowing different tactics to be utilised in combat, convoluted and obfuscated item descriptions and explanations, along with cryptic words issued forth from the mouths of dubious characters with uncertain motivations. 

On top of all this, the game is a visual feast and I can fully recommend it - though it's not for the easily frustrated.

*I played the remastered version of the game first.

And that's it for my favourite games since 2010. Let me know what you thought of these games in the comments - or even what your list looks like!