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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What games defined the decade (2010-2019) for you?

What 5 games defined 2010-2019 for you? Your number 1 game gets 5 points, your number 2 game gets 4 points, etc. After everybody counts down their five decade defining games, I'll tally the totals and update at the end of the year. 

As an example here's my top five decade defining games...

1. Dark Souls (5 points)

2. Breath of the Wild (4 points)

3. Stardew Valley (3 points)

4. Poke'mon X/Y (2 points)

5. Skyrim (1 point)

Darks Souls was the game that brought back the idea of "hard isn't a bad thing". It spawned it's own genre that in turn influenced a ton of other games. Dark Souls isn't a Rogue Like, but Rogue Likes wouldn't be as popular if Dark Souls hadn't come around and shown people how fun a hard game could be. 

Breath of the Wild redefined open world games, and gave Switch a huge boost. The checkmark lists of tedium from other open world games are gone. Having to Bethedsa jump over mountains is gone. Now it's all about discovery, interesting locales, and gliding to your destination. Also physics work across the entire game, letting you just create your own solutions to problems. 

Stardew Valley showed us what a single developer could do. And it is the pinnacle of the building, crafting, survival genre. 

Poke'mon X/Y because it redefined competitive Poke'mon play, and brought the main series into 3D. 

Skyrim because it pretty much defined the open world genre up until BotW came around. 



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EDIT: I realized this post would give away too many of my top 50 games.



SanAndreasX said:

EDIT: I realized this post would give away too many of my top 50 games.

Yeah I think I'll bump this thread after the new year rolls in. Too many people not wanting to spoil top 50 lists. 



I thought it was weird noone had made a thread like this before. Also, this is for the games that objectively defined the decade, not your favourites of the decade?



You know it deserves the GOTY.

Come join The 2018 Obscure Game Monthly Review Thread.

mZuzek said:

Pokémon Sword & Shield defines the 2010's more perfectly than anything else. Starts off promising, then turns out to be a load of garbage that makes you question how the fuck has this happened.

Um, if you mean my 5 favorite games of the decade, I'll pass. There's too many of them near the top of my 50 favorite games list for me to start spoiling stuff here.

This decade was very polarizing. The good got better, but the bad got worse. Switch and Indie games exploded.

We finally had powerful consoles that weren't destined to be horribly outdated by the end of their 7 year lifespans. This was mostly thanks to the Pro and X versions of the HD twins. Single player games got better by a huge margin. Nintendo and Sony both returned to form with their exclusives (not counting Sw/Sh here.) The crafting genre exploded and was an awesome addition to gaming. 

And then we have all the terrible shit from this decade. The rise of social/esports gaming. Some games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Destiny 2 deserve their popularity. Other games like League, Fortnite, and Poke'mon Go are trash, but hugely popular. The rise of lootboxes. MS taking a massive backseat in the console war, and not even trying to compete. The rise of EGS exclusives and the store wars in general. The fall of Bethesda with Fallout 76, and no Skyrim sequel after 8 years. 



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Eh, screw it. How many people are going to read my post anyway? LOL.

The 10s, despite two great games releasing in 2010, started out very lackluster for me, to the point where I really considered hanging up gaming for good. Brown-scale shooters, mobile pay-to-win crap, and an increasing dearth of content from Japan. I also wasn't impressed with the PS4 or Xbox One when they launched. That's why it's so surprising that the decade went from 0 to 100 starting mid-decade to the point where I'm having more fun gaming than I've had since the PS1/N64 era, and maybe even more than that.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (5p)

This game defines this decade perfectly for me as far as the positive. I felt almost like I was playing the original Zelda for the very first time back in 1987.

2. Dragon Quest XI S (4p)

If Ni no Kuni was the beginning of the Japanese Renaissance, DQXI S is the culmination of the Japanese Renaissance (so far). After Dragon Quest IX ended up on DS, I wondered if we would ever see a console Dragon Quest without online play again. It's also amazing that a series that is over 30 years old and was previously known as staid and resistant to change could reach such a high water mark here in 2019, but Square Enix did it.

3. Ni no Kuni (3p)

Ni no Kuni is the game that revived my interest in gaming after I was seriously thinking of giving it up altogether. It was beautiful, had a wonderful soudtrack, and a huge explorable world. And it wasn't on a handheld system with graphics somewhere between the N64 and the PS2 (note that ironically, another arguably underpowered console, the Switch, is a serious contender to be my favorite system of all time.)

To me, Ni no Kuni was the start of a Japanese renaissance, where we saw games that were previously confined to the DS, 3DS, PSP, and PSV due to the economics and demographics of the Japanese market, finally returning to full consoles.

4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2p)

Valkyria Chronicles was one of my defining titles of the previous decade, a game which brought strategy arcade games out of the Disgaea and FF Tactics molds and gave them pleasing visuals and a new gameplay style. Valkyria Chronicles 4 was a great return to form, but Three Houses has now become my new gold standard for the genre. The battles are great, the music is great, I like the visuals, and there's so much content stuffed into the game.

5. Fallout: New Vegas. (1p)

It was the last good game of the early 7th gen, before gaming seemed to hit a slump for me. It had the engine of Fallout 3 with the mechanics of the classic Fallout games. I wish Obsidian was still making the Fallout games.

Two other games that defined the aspects of the 2010s that I hated:

1. Angry Birds. A cheaply made game that made huge profits, which was emblematic of the rot of the mobile market, which I feared would spread to console gaming. It isn't even the most egregious mobile game out there, but it just really summarizes what I hate about mobile and F2P.

2. Fallout 76. Fallout went from New Vegas to this hot garbage fire. I remember my reaction to its unveiling: excitement. Then came the announcement that it was an online dependent game. My response: "Aaaaaaand it's gonna suck."

And even though I'm not a huge fan, you can't really talk about the 2010s without talking about Minecraft, which was the biggest phenomenon of the decade.

Last edited by SanAndreasX - on 03 December 2019

Gonna go with my top 5 for this one...

Zelda Breath of the Wild
Persona 5
Witcher 3
Bloodborne
God of War

With a special shout out to Fire Emblem Three Houses. It was very hard for me not to put it on that list.



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mZuzek said:


2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (4 points)
Conversely, BotW is by far the most prominent example of the open-world adventure which has been the most prominent style of single-player gaming. Again, many other games could've gone in here, like Skyrim or The Witcher, but Breath of the Wild is the new standard every game will be looking to emulate, and is currently the average gamer's favorite game ever, so, yeah.

How would you even get such data?  What is your source?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that "most prominent" line.  Skyrim has sold over 30 million copies and Witcher 3 over 20 million.  I would imagine they'll be every bit as influential to the open-world RPG genre as Breath of the Wild, at the very least.  



The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
Xenoblade Chronicles
Super Mario Odyssey
Red Dead Redemption
Final Fantasy 15

This are some of them



1) Minecraft. (5 points) - Spent thousands of hours playing this. It's crack for kids. (And Adults!)

2) Overwatch. (4 points) - Despite it's lack of content, game modes and maps. It always kept bringing me back, done really well in the eSports arena too.

3) Zelda: Breath of the Wild. (3 point) - The last Hurrah for the WiiU and probably the WiiU's best title, new gameplay design concepts is something that open world games will likely try to emulate going forth.

4) Diablo 3. (2 points) - It's not the best Diablo game, it was marred by multiple issues on launch, but today it's a solid title and the best modern hack and slash out.

5) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyim. (1 point) - The game that has pretty much been ported to every platform that exists, surprised there isn't a 3DS version yet, it built upon the founding concepts that preceded it in other Elder Scrolls titles like Morrowind and Oblivion, but throws it into a far better package. It went viral.



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