Which was better, the 2000s or the 2010s?

[Shadow1980]

The 2000s had a lot of standout titles. However, Gen 6 was the absolute nadir for my interest in gaming. There were only a literal handful of games from the first half of the 2000s I'd put in my all-time Top 100 favorites. Halo CE is by far my favorite Gen 6 title and one of my favorite video games ever, and Halo 2 was a solid follow-up. One of my favorite games from the 2000-04 period was an N64 game (Perfect Dark). Those three games made up the majority of my play time in the early to mid 00s. The only other games that came to mind from Gen 6 are Rogue Squadron 2, The Wind Waker, Gradius V, and Shadow of the Colossus (for whatever reason, Super Mario Sunshine didn't click with me). My interest in gaming was starting to get rekindled in Gen 7. The portion that occurred in the 00s had Halo 3, ODST, BioShock, Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii., Gears of War 1 & 2, and a successful reboot of Mega Man with MM9.

On the other hand, the later years of Gen 7 had less that kept my long-term interest. There was Gears 3 and Mega Man 10. There was also Halo 4, but that's still one of the weaker entries in the series for me, and probably my least favorite mainline Halo title. I don't think there was a single Wii game from its last couple of years that I ever bought. But Gen 8 may have actually been my peak gaming purchasing period. I bought a Wii U and it had a lot of solid titles, including Mario Kart 8, New Super Mario Bros. U, Pikmin 3, Super Mario 3D World, and DKC: Tropical Freeze. Despite its commercial failure, I though Nintendo made a very good system with the Wii U. Nintendo also released the Switch in 2017, and it had some amazing titles in its first couple of years, especially Super Mario Odyssey and Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Meanwhile, the PS4 & XBO had a lot of amazing titles as well. The PS4 had strong exclusives like Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, and Spider-Man, and there were some other games I enjoyed like Driveclub, Infamous: Second Son, and the TLOU games. The XBO had Gears 4 & 5, and Ori and the Blind Forest. Halo 5 was okay as well, and I don't know if it really counts but there was also The Master Chief Collection, which was an outstanding compilation once it finally got fixed (those first months though... ugh), and Halo 2 Anniversary, arguably the centerpiece of the collection, was a solid remaster that still looks great, plus the original multiplayer component associate with H2A was actually solid, even if it lacked in map variety. Standout third-party games for me included Doom 2016, the Resident Evil 2 remake, Hollow Knight, Alien: Isolation, Mega Man 11, Sonic Mania, and Jedi: Fallen Order.

Overall, I'd give the edge to the 2010s in terms of quantity of solid titles, but the 2000s did have more games I'd put higher up on my list of all-time favorite. Halo CE, Mario Galaxy, BioShock, and Perfect Dark are all in my Top 30, while the closest 2010s titles that could be Top 30 contenders are Mario Odyssey, Doom 2016, and RE2 Remake. Then again, when it comes to my all-time favorites, I tend to favor older games that I've spent more time with, and most of them are shorter games. The longer a game is, the bigger the time investment and the less I'm going to replay it, and so there's less familiarity. There's plenty of more recent games that I did enjoy in terms of gameplay and story, but for some of them I got to a point where I felt like saying "Is this game ever going to end? Wrap it up, B!" While many gamers expect games to be longer and longer, but I prefer shorter games ("price divided by hours to complete a single playthrough" is a means of measuring value that I strongly disagree with). Probably why modern Resident Evil is something I've really gotten in to, as they're not overly long, and they play like how I wish RE played 20-30 years ago (God, how I hated tank controls). I need to start looking for more games I can reasonably beat in 8 to 12 hours.