Destructoid’s staff combined forces this week to deliver “The Games that Defined the Decade,” a series of essays that looked back at some of the highlights of the last ten years.
Occams singled out the unfulfilled potential of Hideo Kojima’s PT: “P.T. may be gone but it’s not forgotten. You can see the influence of it in games like Allison Road and Layers of Fear. For those not interested in those “inspired by” projects, we have fans recreating the experience and releasing it on PC. Hell, in January of 2019, a fan released it with VR and controller support added. I’m not sure there’s enough money in the world to get me to go through that. The influence that P.T. had can be felt in gaming and will continue to have a profound effect on developers for years to come. While I will always wonder what could have been with Silent Hills, I am eternally grateful for what we have.”
CJ Andriessen found a new appreciation for open world games thanks to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: “Nintendo saw the path carved by other open world titles and decided to blaze its own way forward. And while it’s still too early to say if its impact on the genre will be transformative, the bar has been significantly raised of what we should consider “open world.” There is a new frontier for these types of games, and I hope developers realize they don’t have to bind progress to the stories they want to tell; that they can put their trust in the audience to see a title through to the end on their terms.”
Stepping outside into an even wider world, Andriessen also had a lot of praise for Pokemon Go: “Pokemon Go may not get the headlines it did in its first few months. There are no more stories of people trespassing onto government property, getting hit by cars, being assaulted, having their phones stolen, or stumbling upon dead bodies while trying to catch that Raichu. But don’t for a second think that means nobody is playing. It’s not the fad people claimed it would be in the same way Pokemon isn’t the fad many thought it would be in the ’90s. Pokemon Go is a cultural landmark and currently the best example of how augmented reality can change how the world interacts with games and how those games interact with the world.”
Destructoid – The Games that Defined the Decade
- Dark Souls
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
- Fortnite
- Grand Theft Auto V / Grand Theft Auto Online
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Minecraft
- Overwatch
- Pokemon Go
- PT
- Stardew Valley
- The Walking Dead
Eight other games made the cut for “The Games that Defined the Decade,” and the folks at Destructoid put their robot heads together to also honor From Software’s Dark Souls, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Epic’s Fortnite, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, Mojang’s Minecraft, Blizzard’s Overwatch, ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead.