7th March 2010, 4:39 PM
The Best
Half-Life Orange Box - One of the greatest deals in videogame history. $50, if we're talking about the superior PC version, got you a top-tier FPS and two parts of its sequel, one of the great multiplayer FPSs ever made, and an innovator puzzle game.
Mass Effect series - Bioware took a big risk with they decided to make a scifi shooter wrapped in an RPG system. The first was a flawed experience hampered by trying to be a shooter and an RPG, but never really succeeding at either. The sequel upped the ante with a much better shooter system and streamlined RPG system that cut out a lot of the elements that just didn't work. It is one of the great works of scifi in the videogame realm.
Super Mario Galaxy - Mario in space? The idea sounds bizarre, but in execution, it was Mario's greatest adventure since at least Super Mario 64 and set a high water mark for what the Wii was capable of.
Left 4 Dead - A co-op zombie shooter to trump all co-op zombie shooters. It's a slick experience with loads of visceral thrills, narrow escapes, and brutal ends. It's also got a versus mode as well, which rocks. The game, and its sequel, prove that Valve truly is the king of shooters.
Metroid Prime series - A first-person Metroid? Blasphemy! We all remember that feeling, but somehow the MP series WORKED. While a bit uneven from one game to the next, the series proved that just because a game is in first person, doesn't mean that it's a frenetic shooter that pushes you through long corridors filled with monsters. At times haunting, at times heart-pounding, Metroid Prime catapulted Retro Studios to the forefront of Nintendo's stable of developers.
European RPGs - There's some standouts here and there that are better than the average, but the genre as a whole has absolutely exploded in the past few years. The Witcher, Drakensang, Gothic series, Risen, King's Bounty, Sacred 2, Two Worlds, Spellforce and more prove that the PC RPG is far from dead.
F-Zero GX - Blinding speed, pulsing music, and heart-pounding tracks make this Gamecube update of a franchise that started the SNES a standout futuristic racing title. On top of all that, it just looks really, really great, even if you only rarely get the chance to check out the scenery on account of how fast you're going. The only real problem is that Nintendo still has yet to bring in the team from Sega to do another sequel for the Wii.
Mirror's Edge - A mixture of puzzle-based gameplay and first person shooting, Mirror's Edge is one of the most innovative FPSs since the genre came into being. While often frustrating when you have to do one jump over and over to get it just right, when you DO get it just right and everything clicks it is an absolute thrill ride. And did I mention that it looks amazing?
Fallout 3 - Despite the belief by some that F3 was a trainwreck waiting to happen, Bethesda's first scifi RPG/Shooter exceeded expectations and provided a sprawling post-apocalyptic world filled with all sorts of nuclear horrors. While still bearing some of the hallmark jankiness of past Bethesda titles, it attained surpassed their previous games in writing, dialogue, and world building and took a few steps back towards giving the player a real choice based on the character.
Dead Rising - Zombie hoards in my mall? It's more likely than you think. Taking cues from George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Dead Rising offered players the chance to rampage through the undead with a wide variety of items that vary in their zombie-maiming ability, all the while escorting equally brainless NPCs through dangerous hotspots to safety.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines - Despite coming out about eight months too soon, a combat system that's one of the worst in RPG history, and a final third that crumbles, Bloodlines remains one of the crowning achievements in writing, dialogue, world-building, and characters that the past decade. Certainly an experience not to be missed, just make sure to enable god-mode during the last four or five hours.
Grand Theft Auto PS2 - The epitome of sandbox gaming. These titles provided a wide range of thrills from flying helicopters to street racing through massive cities and so much more, while still giving the player a story and characters to care about.
Resident Evil 4 - Took a horror series with tank controls and lots of confined spaces and upped the ante with a faster pace and lots of action.
Boom Blox - One of the few Wii titles to take full advantage of the Wiimote and use them in such a way that the experience is both new and fun. A combination that few titles have been able to match, BB remains one of the top puzzle titles of this generation and largely on its own merits.
Gears of War - A scifi storyline, a decaying world, and loads and loads of aliens to splatter all over the screen. In one swoop, Epic proved not only that they can make really fun, action-packed shooters with massive bosses and visceral gameplay, but that they also know how to make really, totally awesome game engines. And who doesn't love The Cole Train?
Test Drive Unlimited - An open world racing game with pick-up-and-play multiplayer right from your singleplayer gameworld. The actual racing may perhaps have left a little to be desired, but the detail of the world and it's massive scope meant you could take a leisurely drive along the coast or go bare-knuckles against a group of real-life racers ready to burn rubber from one side of O'ahu to the other.
Burnout 3 - Big time races, big time crashes. Both go hand in hand in Burnout 3, the culmination of work done with the previous two titles to create a heart-pounding racing experience packed with narrow escapes and the sorts of crashes you rarely see outside of NASCAR. Aside from some amazing races, you could also play the Crash Mode where it was up to you to cause the most havoc possible in what was more of puzzle than a race.
Crackdown - This one put you in control of the city's toughest cop and, as you went along, you only got tougher. From climbing to the tops of the tallest building in the city and then leaping down on unsuspecting baddies to collecting orbs and dispensing your own brand of justice, it was the sort of open world game that set the bar just a little bit higher.
Super Smash Bros. Melee - It's over the top, it's kind of goofy, but it's some of the best mutliplayer fun that the Gamecube had to off. Also, it served as some great fanservice with loads of favorites to play as or check out as trophies. The remixes of classic tunes is a nice addition as well.
Baldur's Gate II - One of the greatest RPGs of all time. BG2 is a sprawling RPG packed with more quests and NPCs than you can shake a stick at. Featured some great writing that's among the best in the genre, lots of great characters, and an adventure that keeps you involved for hours and hours.
Metal Gear Solid 2 - Love it or hate it, MGS2 was certainly not what everyone expected after Snake's first outing on the PS1. In some ways, it set the bar for espionage titles to come and in other ways it proved that videogame stories can throw some pretty mean curveballs before they finally barrel through to one of the most confounding finales in videogame history.
Europa Universalis 3 - Ever wanted to rule your own country? Well, with EU3 you can! This grand strategy title puts you in control of whichever country you want from the fifteenth century all the way through to the nineteenth. You control taxes and war bonds, you control the armies, and you control the provinces. There's no winning or losing, it's all about setting your own goals and then accomplishing them.
STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl - In development for nearly five years, Stalker had a great deal of hype to live up to. Thankfully, it did a good job of achieving them and, in some cases surpassing them. The gunplay is stark and steeped in a greater sense of realism than most and the underground passages you sometimes traverse are filled with all sorts of unimaginable horrors waiting to leap out at you. It absolutely oozed atmosphere from every pore.
Morrowind - Third entry in the Elder Scrolls series. It provided a massive world filled with strange places, strange people, and strange monsters. While also filled with wonky glitches that have come to define the Bethesda experience, it nevertheless provided an RPG adventure that could literally last more than a hundred hours for those hardy souls willing to plum the loneliest depths the world had to offer.
Titan Quest - A bit like Diablo 2, Titan Quest providing some of the best looting since Blizzard decided to take a rest from the genre. Your character traverses many locales from ancient Mediterranean civilizations, all of which are filled with monsters waiting to be killed and looting waiting to collected.
Neverwinter Nights 2 + Expansions - When it comes to traditional RPG adventures, NWN2 is some of the best around. It has a large world to explore, loads of quests to undertake, numerous cities, and writing that's some of the best in the genre post-Black Isle.
Dead Space - Mix scifi with Resident Evil and you've got Dead Space. It's a creepy, atmospheric horror title that drops you into a derelict space craft packed with all sorts of grisly horrors. While it often sends you on fetch quests, the journey to your various destinations are fraught with peril and unnerving visions of insanity and monstrous transformations.
Beyond Good and Evil - A mixture of adventure and action-platforming, BG&E is a fun game that provides a lot of great situations and puzzles to navigate through. The story's not half bad either and it's got a nice mixture of the lighthearted and serious.
Psychonauts - Oozing with Tim Schafer's brand of humor, Psychonauts is another action-platformer. This time around, the levels are often very twisted, as you must travel into various people's minds, and always visually stunning. Unfortunately, it sold like repackaged gum and quickly went into the bargain bin.
ICO/Shadow of the Colossus - Sony didn't get much respect during the days of the PS1, but when the PS2 came around they decided to show people what they made of. With two titles, loosely connected by certain shared similarities, ICO and SotC relied on minimalist storytelling to convey emotions in a way that very few games have managed. On top of that, they also pushed the console to the limits and featured an extraordinary art design.
Persona 3 - An RPG as much about connecting with the people around you as it is about fighting monsters. As the main character, you must go to school during the day, take tests, meet with your friends, and hang out at the mall. Then, at night, you must travel into a winding tower filled with strange monsters. It sounds a bit goofy, and maybe it is, but it does a nice job of balancing the two sides and making the experience an engaging one.
The Bad
Honestly I can't really remember any truly bad games I played this decade, which is sort of weird. Maybe Gothic 3, that wasn't very good.
The Disappointments
Spore - Hyped as a game that will follow your own personal civilization from microbe to space-fairer, Spore just couldn't deliver. Aside from the space level, much of the game felted paired down, boring, and simplistic. Like several games stitched together that couldn't match the complexity of their stand-alone counterparts. The space level was great fun, but that hardly made up for everything else.
GTAIV - An Oscar-caliber story couldn't save this fun-less sandbox title from feeling bland and boring compared to its PS2 predecessors. Much of what made those earlier titles so much fun is utterly gone here, everything is played seriously and the game seemed more like it wanted to be a critically acclaimed mob movie than a videogame. It wasn't all a waste, but the massive hype surrounding it and the gushing reviews guaranteed that a lot of people were going to be sorely disappointed.
Fable - Hyped as the most innovative RPG ever made, Fable's creator promised that it would allow an unprecedented level of freedom and player choice that would send ripples outward for years and decades [in-game] to come. Unfortunately, what we got was a generic action-RPG that let you play as a polygamist and grant you the ability to insult NPCs in realtime. And the huge world? A series of tiny locations linked by tubes.
Half-Life Orange Box - One of the greatest deals in videogame history. $50, if we're talking about the superior PC version, got you a top-tier FPS and two parts of its sequel, one of the great multiplayer FPSs ever made, and an innovator puzzle game.
Mass Effect series - Bioware took a big risk with they decided to make a scifi shooter wrapped in an RPG system. The first was a flawed experience hampered by trying to be a shooter and an RPG, but never really succeeding at either. The sequel upped the ante with a much better shooter system and streamlined RPG system that cut out a lot of the elements that just didn't work. It is one of the great works of scifi in the videogame realm.
Super Mario Galaxy - Mario in space? The idea sounds bizarre, but in execution, it was Mario's greatest adventure since at least Super Mario 64 and set a high water mark for what the Wii was capable of.
Left 4 Dead - A co-op zombie shooter to trump all co-op zombie shooters. It's a slick experience with loads of visceral thrills, narrow escapes, and brutal ends. It's also got a versus mode as well, which rocks. The game, and its sequel, prove that Valve truly is the king of shooters.
Metroid Prime series - A first-person Metroid? Blasphemy! We all remember that feeling, but somehow the MP series WORKED. While a bit uneven from one game to the next, the series proved that just because a game is in first person, doesn't mean that it's a frenetic shooter that pushes you through long corridors filled with monsters. At times haunting, at times heart-pounding, Metroid Prime catapulted Retro Studios to the forefront of Nintendo's stable of developers.
European RPGs - There's some standouts here and there that are better than the average, but the genre as a whole has absolutely exploded in the past few years. The Witcher, Drakensang, Gothic series, Risen, King's Bounty, Sacred 2, Two Worlds, Spellforce and more prove that the PC RPG is far from dead.
F-Zero GX - Blinding speed, pulsing music, and heart-pounding tracks make this Gamecube update of a franchise that started the SNES a standout futuristic racing title. On top of all that, it just looks really, really great, even if you only rarely get the chance to check out the scenery on account of how fast you're going. The only real problem is that Nintendo still has yet to bring in the team from Sega to do another sequel for the Wii.
Mirror's Edge - A mixture of puzzle-based gameplay and first person shooting, Mirror's Edge is one of the most innovative FPSs since the genre came into being. While often frustrating when you have to do one jump over and over to get it just right, when you DO get it just right and everything clicks it is an absolute thrill ride. And did I mention that it looks amazing?
Fallout 3 - Despite the belief by some that F3 was a trainwreck waiting to happen, Bethesda's first scifi RPG/Shooter exceeded expectations and provided a sprawling post-apocalyptic world filled with all sorts of nuclear horrors. While still bearing some of the hallmark jankiness of past Bethesda titles, it attained surpassed their previous games in writing, dialogue, and world building and took a few steps back towards giving the player a real choice based on the character.
Dead Rising - Zombie hoards in my mall? It's more likely than you think. Taking cues from George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Dead Rising offered players the chance to rampage through the undead with a wide variety of items that vary in their zombie-maiming ability, all the while escorting equally brainless NPCs through dangerous hotspots to safety.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines - Despite coming out about eight months too soon, a combat system that's one of the worst in RPG history, and a final third that crumbles, Bloodlines remains one of the crowning achievements in writing, dialogue, world-building, and characters that the past decade. Certainly an experience not to be missed, just make sure to enable god-mode during the last four or five hours.
Grand Theft Auto PS2 - The epitome of sandbox gaming. These titles provided a wide range of thrills from flying helicopters to street racing through massive cities and so much more, while still giving the player a story and characters to care about.
Resident Evil 4 - Took a horror series with tank controls and lots of confined spaces and upped the ante with a faster pace and lots of action.
Boom Blox - One of the few Wii titles to take full advantage of the Wiimote and use them in such a way that the experience is both new and fun. A combination that few titles have been able to match, BB remains one of the top puzzle titles of this generation and largely on its own merits.
Gears of War - A scifi storyline, a decaying world, and loads and loads of aliens to splatter all over the screen. In one swoop, Epic proved not only that they can make really fun, action-packed shooters with massive bosses and visceral gameplay, but that they also know how to make really, totally awesome game engines. And who doesn't love The Cole Train?
Test Drive Unlimited - An open world racing game with pick-up-and-play multiplayer right from your singleplayer gameworld. The actual racing may perhaps have left a little to be desired, but the detail of the world and it's massive scope meant you could take a leisurely drive along the coast or go bare-knuckles against a group of real-life racers ready to burn rubber from one side of O'ahu to the other.
Burnout 3 - Big time races, big time crashes. Both go hand in hand in Burnout 3, the culmination of work done with the previous two titles to create a heart-pounding racing experience packed with narrow escapes and the sorts of crashes you rarely see outside of NASCAR. Aside from some amazing races, you could also play the Crash Mode where it was up to you to cause the most havoc possible in what was more of puzzle than a race.
Crackdown - This one put you in control of the city's toughest cop and, as you went along, you only got tougher. From climbing to the tops of the tallest building in the city and then leaping down on unsuspecting baddies to collecting orbs and dispensing your own brand of justice, it was the sort of open world game that set the bar just a little bit higher.
Super Smash Bros. Melee - It's over the top, it's kind of goofy, but it's some of the best mutliplayer fun that the Gamecube had to off. Also, it served as some great fanservice with loads of favorites to play as or check out as trophies. The remixes of classic tunes is a nice addition as well.
Baldur's Gate II - One of the greatest RPGs of all time. BG2 is a sprawling RPG packed with more quests and NPCs than you can shake a stick at. Featured some great writing that's among the best in the genre, lots of great characters, and an adventure that keeps you involved for hours and hours.
Metal Gear Solid 2 - Love it or hate it, MGS2 was certainly not what everyone expected after Snake's first outing on the PS1. In some ways, it set the bar for espionage titles to come and in other ways it proved that videogame stories can throw some pretty mean curveballs before they finally barrel through to one of the most confounding finales in videogame history.
Europa Universalis 3 - Ever wanted to rule your own country? Well, with EU3 you can! This grand strategy title puts you in control of whichever country you want from the fifteenth century all the way through to the nineteenth. You control taxes and war bonds, you control the armies, and you control the provinces. There's no winning or losing, it's all about setting your own goals and then accomplishing them.
STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl - In development for nearly five years, Stalker had a great deal of hype to live up to. Thankfully, it did a good job of achieving them and, in some cases surpassing them. The gunplay is stark and steeped in a greater sense of realism than most and the underground passages you sometimes traverse are filled with all sorts of unimaginable horrors waiting to leap out at you. It absolutely oozed atmosphere from every pore.
Morrowind - Third entry in the Elder Scrolls series. It provided a massive world filled with strange places, strange people, and strange monsters. While also filled with wonky glitches that have come to define the Bethesda experience, it nevertheless provided an RPG adventure that could literally last more than a hundred hours for those hardy souls willing to plum the loneliest depths the world had to offer.
Titan Quest - A bit like Diablo 2, Titan Quest providing some of the best looting since Blizzard decided to take a rest from the genre. Your character traverses many locales from ancient Mediterranean civilizations, all of which are filled with monsters waiting to be killed and looting waiting to collected.
Neverwinter Nights 2 + Expansions - When it comes to traditional RPG adventures, NWN2 is some of the best around. It has a large world to explore, loads of quests to undertake, numerous cities, and writing that's some of the best in the genre post-Black Isle.
Dead Space - Mix scifi with Resident Evil and you've got Dead Space. It's a creepy, atmospheric horror title that drops you into a derelict space craft packed with all sorts of grisly horrors. While it often sends you on fetch quests, the journey to your various destinations are fraught with peril and unnerving visions of insanity and monstrous transformations.
Beyond Good and Evil - A mixture of adventure and action-platforming, BG&E is a fun game that provides a lot of great situations and puzzles to navigate through. The story's not half bad either and it's got a nice mixture of the lighthearted and serious.
Psychonauts - Oozing with Tim Schafer's brand of humor, Psychonauts is another action-platformer. This time around, the levels are often very twisted, as you must travel into various people's minds, and always visually stunning. Unfortunately, it sold like repackaged gum and quickly went into the bargain bin.
ICO/Shadow of the Colossus - Sony didn't get much respect during the days of the PS1, but when the PS2 came around they decided to show people what they made of. With two titles, loosely connected by certain shared similarities, ICO and SotC relied on minimalist storytelling to convey emotions in a way that very few games have managed. On top of that, they also pushed the console to the limits and featured an extraordinary art design.
Persona 3 - An RPG as much about connecting with the people around you as it is about fighting monsters. As the main character, you must go to school during the day, take tests, meet with your friends, and hang out at the mall. Then, at night, you must travel into a winding tower filled with strange monsters. It sounds a bit goofy, and maybe it is, but it does a nice job of balancing the two sides and making the experience an engaging one.
The Bad
Honestly I can't really remember any truly bad games I played this decade, which is sort of weird. Maybe Gothic 3, that wasn't very good.
The Disappointments
Spore - Hyped as a game that will follow your own personal civilization from microbe to space-fairer, Spore just couldn't deliver. Aside from the space level, much of the game felted paired down, boring, and simplistic. Like several games stitched together that couldn't match the complexity of their stand-alone counterparts. The space level was great fun, but that hardly made up for everything else.
GTAIV - An Oscar-caliber story couldn't save this fun-less sandbox title from feeling bland and boring compared to its PS2 predecessors. Much of what made those earlier titles so much fun is utterly gone here, everything is played seriously and the game seemed more like it wanted to be a critically acclaimed mob movie than a videogame. It wasn't all a waste, but the massive hype surrounding it and the gushing reviews guaranteed that a lot of people were going to be sorely disappointed.
Fable - Hyped as the most innovative RPG ever made, Fable's creator promised that it would allow an unprecedented level of freedom and player choice that would send ripples outward for years and decades [in-game] to come. Unfortunately, what we got was a generic action-RPG that let you play as a polygamist and grant you the ability to insult NPCs in realtime. And the huge world? A series of tiny locations linked by tubes.
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