More Lists – Page 7 – Video Game Canon

The Best of “The Best Games of the 2010s”

The dawn of a new decade is a great time to reflect back on what the previous ten years were like, and that’s exactly what two dozen publications did over the last few months.

Hundreds of titles (337, to be exact) were selected as part of the Best Games of the 2010s when looking back at lists such as Mashable’s “15 Favorite Games of the Decade,” Paste Magazine’s “The 100 Best Videogames of the 2010s,” Polygon’s “The 100 Best Games of the Decade,” and many others.

Like the original Video Game Canon, this Best Games of the Decade list is a statistical meta-analysis of multiple lists using our C-Score formula. The rank order was compiled by measuring each game’s Average Ranking across every list, as well as the Appearance Frequency of how many lists it was included on.

Average Ranking + (100 – Appearance Frequency) = C-Score

The lower the C-Score, the higher a game is ranked in the Best Games of the 2010s. But which games were the absolute best? You can find out below.

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House House’s Untitled Goose Game Wins “Game of the Year” at 2019-2020 DICE Awards

I guess The Goose can cross “Win a Few Major Awards” off of its To-Do List. And that’s because House House’s Untitled Goose Game won “Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game,” “Outstanding Achievement in Character,” and “Game of the Year” at this year’s DICE Awards.

While the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’s voting body (which is comprised of more than 30,000 members) loves The Goose, it was Remedy’s Control that took home the most statuettes last night. Predictably, the outstanding action game won “Action Game of the Year,” as well as “Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction,” “Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition,” and “Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction.” Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding was the only other game to win multiple awards, with the AIAS honoring it with “Outstanding Technical Achievement” and “Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design.”

A nice array of other games were also big winners at the 2019-2020 DICE Awards, including Sayonara Wild Hearts (“Portable Game of the Year”), Apex Legends (“Online Game of the Year”), Super Mario Maker 2 (“Family Game of the Year”), Mortal Kombat 11 (“Fighting Game of the Year”), Baba Is You (“Outstanding Achievement in Game Design”), and more.

The complete list of winners and nominees for the 2019-2020 DICE Awards can be found after the break, along with a video replay of the ceremony.

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The Washington Post Picks Ten Titles as “The Most Influential Games of the Decade”

The calendar is nearing the end of January, but here I am sifting through yet another “Best Games of the Decade” list. This time around, the Launcher team at The Washington Post gets their time in the sun, as they chose ten games to stand tall as “The Most Influential Games of the Decade“:

Gaming is now humanity’s favorite form of entertainment, and the medium’s legacy was cemented this past decade. While the early 2000s saw video games honing their ability to tell stories and build worlds in 3-D, this last decade built off those nuts and bolts of game making and propelled the medium toward bigger ambitions like open-world design, virtual and augmented reality and an influx of new genres such as battle-royale multiplayer.

The chronological list begins with 2010’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent, continues through the middle of the decade with 2014’s Destiny, and ends with 2017’s Fortnite. In between, you’ll find a few other familiar titles, as well as a more unusual choice in King’s Candy Crush Saga:

The Washington Post’s Launcher – The Most Influential Games of the Decade

Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Candy Crush Saga
Dark Souls
Destiny
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Fortnite
Minecraft
Pokemon Go
The Walking Dead
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Apologies to all the games from 2018 and 2019 that didn’t make the cut for The Washington Post’s list.

Slant Magazine Highlights the Games That Point the Way Forward in “The 100 Best Video Games of the 2010s”

Slant Magazine has published a list of the “100 Greatest Video Games of All Time” twice in recent years, and both times they’ve included 2010’s Red Dead Redemption as the highest-ranked game from the previous decade (#4 in 2014 and #2 in 2018). But the publication’s editors went in a different direction for “The 100 Best Video Games of the 2010s,” awarding the #1 spot to Yoko Taro’s Nier: Automata instead.

Rockstar’s western would have to settle for the #8 spot in Slant’s reevaluation of the decade.

For the remainder of the list, Slant’s staff looked to “the games that point the way forward” as they chose to focus on how much the game industry has changed in the last ten years:

This was the decade that saw tiny studios, lone creators, and crazy concepts reign supreme. This was the decade that saw every platform become a viable place for ideas to sprout and bloom. The limits of the medium are seemingly bound only by the human imagination, and at every level, regardless of the horsepower needed, it now feels like anything is possible.

So which other games from the past does Slant think can give us a glimpse at the future? The Top Ten includes a few obvious picks (Mass Effect 2 at #4 and God of War at #5) while also veering off the road less traveled (Outer Wilds at #7 and Superhot at #9).

Further down the list, which is available below, you’ll find titles as varied as PT (#41), Tales From the Borderlands (#51), Gorogoa (#90), and 91 others.

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Wired Goes Their Own Way With “The Decade’s 10 Most Influential Videogames”

“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.”

Whether you attribute this quote to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde, it turned out to be fairly accurate when comparing “The Best Games of the Decade” lists created by Wired and Wired UK. The publications could only agree on three games… Mojang’s Minecraft, From Software’s Dark Souls, and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Instead, Wired’s “The Decade’s 10 Most Influential Videogames” hit upon some rather obscure indies in the bottom half of their Top Ten (including Thirty Flights of Loving, Pathologic 2, and Cibele), before locking on to some more mainstream titles (including the aforementioned trio) in the Top Five:

Wired – The Decade’s 10 Most Influential Videogames

1. Fortnite
2. Minecraft
3. Dark Souls
4. Gone Home
5. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
6. PT
7. Nier
8. Cibele
9. Pathologic 2
10. Thirty Flights of Loving

In between, the outlet delivered a nice little note about Hideo Kojima’s PT, the legendary Silent Hills demo that never got the chance to become a full game, as well as Fulbright’s Gone Home, and Square Enix’s Nier.

But it was Epic’s Fortnite that landed at #1 on Wired’s list, with Julie Muncy praising the battle royale as “one of the only games of the decade to truly infiltrate broader pop culture.”

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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