It’s October 5th, which means that most of this Fall’s major new releases are still ahead of us. But that hasn’t stopped CNET from selecting the games they believe best represent “The 30 Best Video Games of the Decade.”
That said, the listmakers aren’t ignoring 2019 in their overview, and they kicked things off at #30 with Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds, an extraterrestrial adventure that’s just four months old (and bears more than a passing resemblance to Groundhog Day). Going up the list, CNET’s editors took special care to highlight some of the weird and wonderful places that indie developers took us during the decade. This focus lead to appearances from ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley (#29), Denaton’s Hotline Miami (#25), Motion Twin’s Dead Cells (#23), Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight (#22), and Fulbright’s Gone Home (#18).
CNET – The 30 Best Video Games of the Decade
- 1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- 2. Dark Souls
- 3. Minecraft
- 4. Portal 2
- 5. Red Dead Redemption
- 6. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- 7. Bloodborne
- 8. Mass Effect 2
- 9. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- 10. Fortnite
- 11. Horizon: Zero Dawn
- 12. Super Mario Galaxy 2
- 13. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
- 14. The Last of Us
- 15. Rayman Legends
- 16. God of War (2018)
- 17. Nier: Automata
- 18. Gone Home
- 19. Pokemon Go
- 20. League of Legends
- 21. The Witness
- 22. Hollow Knight
- 23. Dead Cells
- 24. Alien: Isolation
- 25. Hotline Miami
- 26. Dota 2
- 27. Overwatch
- 28. Destiny
- 29. Stardew Valley
- 30. Outer Wilds
CNET also managed to sneak in a pair of games from 2009, League of Legends (#20) and Minecraft (#3), under the guise of the “living [and] breathing” nature of both games. Even though both games technically missed the cutoff, it’s easy to admit that they had a huge impact on all that was “shiny and new” in gaming in the 2010s:
When it comes to music or movies or television there’s a tendency to lionize the good old days. The classics. To remember older works or art with fondness or even rose-tinted glasses. Video gaming, as an art form intimately connected with cutting-edge technology, is slightly different. Often we forget the games that come before, or replace them with something shiny and new.
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This list attempts to represent the wide spectrum of experiences the increasingly fragmented video game space has to offer, from open-world masterpieces made by hundreds of people to indie experiences made by small, dedicated teams. From mobile games to MOBAs. We’ve tried to cover it all.
But in the end, the #1 game on CNET’s list was Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which showed us all that the old guard can still tap into that creative spark when they want to.