Author: VGC | John

John Scalzo has been writing about video games since 2001, and he co-founded Warp Zoned in 2011. Growing out of his interest in game history, the launch of Video Game Canon followed in 2017.

Get Excited for Thrillist’s List of “The 20 Best Video Games of the 2010s”

We’re a few days into 2020 and Thrillist wants you to get excited about the score of titles they chose to highlight in “The 20 Best Video Games of the 2010s“:

The past ten years of gaming were a whirlwind of fantastic triple-A titles, curious indie gems, and a series of excellent remakes and sequels that turned into smash hits. From sprawling RPGs to aesthetically impressive puzzlers, there was a spread that could please even the most discerning player, with exciting narratives and compelling mechanics baked into each title.

Now that a new decade is upon us, it’s time to take a look back on the games that were more than memorable — they defined the art form from 2010 to 2020.

Thrillist’s selections should actually look rather familiar, as they’ve included games like Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, CD Projekt’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Blizzard’s Overwatch, and Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 in their unranked list.

Though they did travel a bit off the beaten path as the only outlet (so far) to select Capcom’s Devil May Cry 5 as one of the best of the decade. See the full unranked list after the break.

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Stuff Selects “The 25 Best Games” of the 2010s

The writers at Stuff Magazine love a good Best Games list. Want more proof? The long-running “lad mag” delivered their verdict on the “100 Greatest Games” in 2008, the “100 Best Games Ever” in 2011, the “Best Games Ever” in 2014, and “The 50 Greatest Games of All Time” in 2017.

So even though they closed up shop in the US more than a decade ago, it wasn’t much of a surprise when Stuff’s UK branch pushed out “Stuff of the Decade: The 25 Best Games” earlier this week.

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“Ranked For Your Displeasure”: Wired UK Expects Some Disagreement With Their “Best Games of the Decade”

The 2010s were an absolutely incredible decade for video games, but as we take our first baby steps into 2020 (and new hardware from Microsoft and Sony sometime this year) some publications are still interested in looking back.

Wired UK understands the futility of trying to rank ten years worth of games, which is why they’ve used “The Best Games of the Decade, Ranked For Your Displeasure” as the title of their retrospective.

But while Wired UK’s contributors were quick to temper expectations, they ultimately made the uncontroversial choice of naming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as the best game from 2010 to 2019. Nintendo’s Pokemon Go also landed near the top of the list at #3.

Wired UK – The Best Games of the Decade, Ranked For Your Displeasure

  • 1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • 2. The Last of Us
  • 3. Pokemon Go
  • 4. Red Dead Redemption 2
  • 5. What Remains of Edith Finch
  • 6. FIFA 17
  • 7. Minecraft
  • 8. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
  • 9. Return of the Obra Dinn
  • 10. Dark Souls
  • 11. Spider-Man

Sony was the only other publisher to place two games on Wired UK’s list, with Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (#2) and Insomniac’s Spider-Man (#11) both making the cut.

Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 (#4), Giant Sparrow’s What Remains of Edith Finch (#5), EA Sports’s FIFA 17 (#6), Mojang’s Minecraft (#7), PUBG Corporation’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (#8), Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn (#9), and From Software’s Dark Souls (#10) made up the rest of Wired UK’s list.

You know, that’s not really a displeasing selection of titles at all.

GQ Looks Backs at the 2010s in “The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade”

Just before the end of the year, the editors at GQ got together and published a look back at some of the “most important and best games” of the last decade. Here’s how they decided on which games to include:

Some of the best games we’ve ever seen came out in the past decade, but the 2010s were also the most turbulent, transformative, and revealing years for video games. Game development costs skyrocketed to new, unsustainable heights. Some games became never-ending, always online, services that you pay for in subscriptions. As advancements were made in public health care, indie game development flourished, and then regressed accordingly as it was dismantled. Games also reached beyond what was previously thought possible, delivering beautifully detailed worlds, touching and intimate narratives, and shared cultural experiences unlike any others. Here, according to the GQ staff, are the most important and best games of the decade.

“The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade” zigzagged it’s way through many of the titles that reshaped the game industry over the last ten years, as well as two that originally launched in Early Access in the previous decade (Derek Yu’s Spelunky and Mojang’s Minecraft). But which other games made the cut?

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The Strong Museum of Play Helps Wired Pick “Every Year’s Most Iconic Video Game Since 1979”

It’s been slightly more than 40 years since Space Invaders transformed video games from a niche hobby into a global phenomenon. Picking up a year later from that point, Wired recently teamed up with curators from the Strong Museum of Play (which is also home to the World Video Game Hall of Fame) to determine “Every Year’s Most Iconic Video Game Since 1979.”

Jon-Paul Dyson and Shannon Symonds from the Strong Museum of Play dive into the last 40 years of video game history and come up with a list of some of the greatest games of all time. With memorable titles like Halo, Super Mario Bros., The Last of Us, Doom, The Sims and more, see which games were chosen as the most memorable and iconic of the year they were released.

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Bite-Sized Game History: PlayStation’s First Mascot, Happy Gilmore: The Game, and Why Every Arcade Game Used the Same Font in the 90s

The PlayStation is 25! So let’s take a trip back to 1995 and the console’s debut at the E3 Expo in this edition of Bite-Sized Game History.

We’ll also get a chance to talk about another mid-90s mainstay, Adam Sandler, and a funky font choice that popped up a lot in arcade games from the era.

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Listology 3.0: Critics from the UK Choose the Best Video Games of All Time

Roughly a month ago, a discussion about the distinctly American flavor that dominates most of the discourse around classic games broke out on Twitter. Some of the UK’s best-known game writers weighed in throughout the thread, and they all agreed that games that were popular in the US, but virtually unknown in UK, somehow managed to push out many would-be blockbusters that never made it across the Atlantic.

Games such as Contra and Chrono Trigger were specifically called out by name as titles that weren’t all that big in the UK, but are still widely remembered all the same. And at some point, the conversation shifted and began to ask where the retrospectives and re-releases were for Sensible Soccer, Zool, Turrican, Elite, and many others.

As an American, it’s fair to say that I know little to nothing about all four of those games. But what would happen if the UK had more say in which classic games get remembered? It’s an interesting question to ponder, so I pulled out all the UK-based “Best Games of All Time” lists from Version 3.0 of the Video Game Canon to peak into this alternate reality.

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NME Salutes the Wonderfully Weird in “The 50 Best Games of the Decade: The 2010s”

Depicting the 2010s as the decade when gaming got weird is a theme that’s been hit again and again as publications ponder the Best Games of the 2010s, and it was definitely on the minds of NME’s editors when they created their list of “The 50 Best Games of the Decade: The 2010s” (which actually goes to 51):

Since we’re approaching the end of the decade, we decided to make a big old list of the 50 greatest games of the last 10 years – yes, we know it says 51, but read on for the reason why… Some of you may read this list and become irrationally angry. Some may read it and nod sagely in agreement. But what we guarantee all of you will do is read it and think, ‘God bless videogames, aren’t they the absolute nuts…’.

You’ll find hidden gems such as Bulletstorm (#50), Superhot (#38), Night in the Woods (#25), Untitled Goose Game (#20), Oxenfree, and Doki Doki Literature Club (#15) throughout the list, though plenty of big blockbusters were also represented.

And in a not-that-shocking twist, NME chose two of those blockbusters for the top spot, crediting both Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with a tie.

You can find NME’s full ranking of the last decade after the break.

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“The 10 Best Video Games of the 2010s” Have Been Selected by Time Magazine

The editors at Time Magazine have produced several “Best Games of All Time” lists, and with New Year’s Eve fast approaching, they’ve once again turned their gaze backwards. This time, they’ve selected “The 10 Best Video Games of the 2010s,” though like most outlets, they make an exception for two very huge games from 2009:

The video game industry was already a billion dollar behemoth when it rolled into the 2010s. Over the past decade, the cultural cache of video games has grown and its profits are now greater than movies, television or music. The 2010s are when the hobby stopped being something semi-niche, and solidly took its place in the mainstream.

Those games, of course, are Mojang’s Minecraft and Riot’s League of Legends. Describing them as a “global phenomenon” and a “cultural institution,” respectively, Time’s editors argue that the rules should be bent for them as the two games were so important to what gaming became in the 2010s.

Time Magazine – The 10 Best Video Games of the 2010s

  • Dark Souls
  • Disco Elysium
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  • Fortnite
  • Grand Theft Auto V / Grand Theft Auto Online
  • League of Legends
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • Minecraft
  • Pokemon Go
  • Portal 2

The remaining eight selections went to Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Portal 2 from 2011, Grand Theft Auto V from 2013, Pokemon Go from 2016, Fortnite and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild from 2017, and Disco Elysium from last year.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Wins “Game of the Year” at the 2019 Game Awards

Geoff Keighley and his co-presenters shotgunned their way through dozens of awards during tonight’s Game Awards, but in between all the World Premiere Trailers, they managed to shine a brief spotlight on a wide variety of titles. Unlike most years when a handful of titles dominate the conversation, this year’s Game Awards spread the wealth among a lot of worthy winners, including Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, this year’s recipient of the “Game of the Year” award.

From Software’s ninja adventure also claimed the “Best Action/Adventure Game” trophy, but it wasn’t able to sway the jury for the other three nominations it was up for. Instead, ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium became the most-honored game of the night, winning “Best Narrative,” “Best Role Playing Game,” “Best Independent Game,” and “Fresh Indie Game.”

Some of the ceremony’s other winners included Kojima Production’s Death Stranding (“Best Game Direction,” “Best Score/Music,” and “Best Performance” for Mads Mikkelsen), Remedy’s Control (“Best Art Direction”), Beat Games’s Beat Saber (“Best VR/AR Game”), Respawn’s Apex Legends (“Best Multiplayer”), and Activision’s Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled (“Best Sports/Racing Game”).

In addition to a rousing speech by their former President, Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo had a great night too, taking home trophies for “Best Fighting Game” (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate), “Best Family Game” (Luigi’s Mansion 3), and “Best Strategy Game” (Fire Emblem: Three Houses).

The complete list of winners and nominees from the 2019 Game Awards, as well as a video replay of the ceremony, can be found below.

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