Eurogamer’s staff and contributors did a lot of looking back in 2019. The site’s video team traveled to PAX East last Spring to host a debate to determine “The Best Games of the Last 20 Years.” And just before the end of the year, more than 15 contributors highlighted a variety of unconventional titles as the “Games of the Decade” in a series of personal essays.
With the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X looming, it was time to produce another list. But this time Eurogamer turned things over to an outside panel of developers and journalists to help them pick “The Top 10 Games of the Generation.”
The answer was simple: step out of our bubble, ask some other people what they thought, and see what, if any, consensus might form. So we assembled a panel of 19 game developers, critics and journalists – some of our favourite people in the games business – and asked each of them to submit a list of their five favourite games released since November 2013. (That was the only restriction: the games could be of any kind and on any platform.) Then we number-crunched the results to produce a top 10.
Over on the developer side, Eurogamer tapped an eclectic series of names, including Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail, Supergiant’s Greg Kasavin, Spelunky creator Derek Yu, and Portal writer Erik Wolpaw. They cast an equally wide net among game journalists, roping in The Guardian’s Keza Macdonald, Polygon’s Chris Plante, and Heather Alexandra and Jason Schreier (both formerly of Kotaku).
Eurogamer – The Top 10 Games of the Generation
- 1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- 2. Bloodborne
- 3. Outer Wilds
- 4. Kentucky Route Zero
- 5. Titanfall 2
- 6. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
- 7. Slay the Spire
- 8. Nier: Automata
- 9. Threes
- 10. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The panel came to a “pretty strong consensus” when deciding the best game of the generation, with most of the votes tipping towards Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But the rest of the Top Ten splintered out into a lot of different directions, from indie darlings (Outer Wilds at #3, Kentucky Route Zero at #4, and Slay the Spire at #7) to big budget adventures (Titanfall 2 at #5, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End at #6, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt at #10) to the uncategorizable (Bloodborne at #2 and Nier: Automata at #8).
Finally, Threes clocked in at #9. Puzzle fans adore this mobile classic (which is also available for the Xbox One and playable in your browser), but it’s usually left out of discussions about the “Best Games.”
Clearly, Eurogamer’s panel has good taste.