Since I banged out a Top 10 Movies of the Decade list, I figured why not put together a list on something I spend a lot more time doing than watching movies.
This list is primarily console games, my experience this decade has been on the Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and just the one computer game, but it's a doozy. The system listed next to each title is how I played the game, not necessarily all the systems the title appears on.
- World of WarCraft - Mac OS X
- No game has changed the video game landscape more in the last decade than WoW
- My own struggles with addiction to this game have inspired a pretty good chunk of my blog posts
- Bioshock - Xbox 360
- The first game I can remember playing that presents an agonizing, emotional, moral choice to make
- Not only the moral choice makes this game special, but the story of what happened to an Ayn Rand-ian laissez faire scientific society free of all restrictions was a powerful one
- See my full review
- Halo Trilogy - Xbox-Xbox 360
- The Xbox would not have survived or certainly made it into the current generation without this franchise.
- Local and online multiplayer pioneer with Xbox Live
- Uncharted 2 - PS3
- There has been no more cinematic experience than this game.
- Showed how powerful the PS3 really is with incredible graphics.
- Batman - Arkham Asylyum - PS3
- Most licensed games suck, and certainly all Batman games have sucked, until this game
- This wasn't just a great Batman game, it would have been a great game even if you didn't have Batman at all
- Wii Sports - Wii
- You can't deny, even if it's just a collection of mini-games, that this title demonstrated believable, usable motion controls for the first time in a home console
- In-person multiplayer opened people's eyes that the market for video games could be ages 5-85
- Rock Band 2 - Xbox 360
- Pushed the music game experience from solo to group play and added an in-game song store which constantly adds new content to the game
- Super Mario Galaxy - Wii
- Go read my full review, it says it all.
- Well not all, this is the only game on this list I couldn't finish. I just got to a certain point where I couldn't figure out how to get to the next world and gave up. That has certainly dropped the game in my decade ranking.
- NFL 2K1 - Dreamcast
- Redefined football games with better announcers, graphics, and play calling. I still remember seeing the close-up replays from across the mall when seeing a promo for this game and thinking when did EB Games get football on TV, only realizing it was a game when I got closer
- The Orange Box - Xbox 360
- With Half-Life 2, HL2: Episodes 1 & 2, Portal, and Team Fortress, this was the most value packed video game bundle to ever arrive
- It also helped that all the games are amazing. Half-Live 2: Episide 3 (or maybe it's Half-Live 3 now, the next episode is taking so long) has to be one of the most anticipated games of the 2010's