Saw this prompt making the rounds and thought it might be a fun way to take stock of things from 2011-2021.
2011
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
- Dark Souls
- Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution
- Mortal Kombat (2011)
- Terraria
- Dead Island
- Magicka
- Pokemon Black
On a whole, I can probably still hang with most of this list. I remember thinking I might want to switch Dark Souls and Skyrim back then, but I’d been playing Skyrim for well over a month and got a PS3/Dark Souls for Christmas that year. Considering how quickly I really fell off Skyrim into 2012, I think Dark Souls is probably first in my heart. I’m fine with Deus Ex where it landed. I’d probably shift DAO Awakening a little further down the list. My affection for it was borne of how disappointed I was with Dragon Age II. I don’t actually remember much of the storyline.
Some other honourable mentions for me:
- Goldeneye 007 for the Wii
- Aliens: Infestation for the DS
- Dungeons of Dredmor
- Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City
- E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy
2012
- Borderlands 2
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown
- The Walking Dead Season 1
- Diablo III
- Crusader Kings II
- Trials Evolution
- Journey
- Resident Evil: Revelations
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Far Cry 3
Look, 2012 was an absolutely shitty year for me and mine. My partner and I played through Borderlands 1 together and while the highs of Borderlands 2 never matched the highs of Borderlands 1, there were fewer lows to speak of. Borderlands 2 was the thing we did to disconnect from a particularly stressful year. The rest of the list, I can pretty much back except my putting Far Cry 3 at the end of the list was conditional on that game delivering on any of the narrative trappings it was playing with. It did not. Also egregious is the fact that Dragon’s Dogma does not appear on this list. If I were to shuffle some stuff around, I’d find a way to get Tokyo Jungle and Armored Core V on there and get Dragon’s Dogma at the top.
Some other honourable mentions for me:
- Dragon’s Dogma, obviously.
- Tokyo Jungle
- Wargame: European Escalation
- The Secret World
- Armored Core V
2013
- Howling Dogs/SABBAT (and Twine)
- Papers, Please
- Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan
- The Last of Us
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
- Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
- Shin Megami Tensei IV
- Fire Emblem: Awakening
- Teleglitch
- DmC Devil May Cry
This was another weird (but pivotal) year for me. Howling Dogs technically came out the year before, but it wasn’t until early 2013 that I encountered it (and Twine). SABBAT was probably the more influential of the two for me in terms of tone and design, but I loved them both. I’m mostly fine with the lineup here. I’d probably switch Dragon’s Dogma and The Last of Us at this point, but I played The Last of Us in a rush during my only vacation that year, which led to that game taking up more space than it ordinarily would in my life. Superhot also apparently came out this year and probably deserves to be on this list somewhere, but I fell off of it the moment I finished the campaign. Also missing from this list would’ve been Hoplite.
2014
- Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
- Dark Souls II
- Destiny
- Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
- Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
- Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball
- Abyss Odyssey
- Crimsonland
- The Wolf Among Us
- Dragon Age: Inquisition
Not much to really complain about here. Reaper of Souls turned Diablo III into the game I really wanted at launch. Dark Souls II might be one of my favourite souls games (even though I was a little let down by the lack of interconnectedness/verticality of the world from the first game). Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is one of my favourite fighting games (and probably my favourite persona game?). Abyss Odyssey is the only game I might have subbed out for Toukiden: The Age of Demons or Freedom Wars. 2014 was the year that I started to really understand and get into hunting action games and both of those helped me figure out how to love Monster Hunter.
2015
- Life Is Strange
- Her Story
- Splatoon
- Bloodborne
- Monster Hunter 4
- SteamWorld Heist
- Nuclear Throne
- Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight
- Invisible Inc.
- Xenoblade Chronicles X
I excised the two repeat games from 2014 (Diablo III and Destiny) to better account for some of the other games I played. Mostly hang with this list and this order. I think I probably put more time into EO2U than Nuclear Throne or SteamWorld Heist, though. I didn’t get Xenoblade Chronicles X until the holidays, so I wasn’t able to get deep enough into it to push it higher. Can’t wait for a remake on the Switch.
2016
- Titanfall 2
- Doom (2016)
- Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
- Brigador
- Hackmud
- Devil Daggers
- Quadrilateral Cowboy
- Stellaris
- The King of Fighters XIV
- Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate
I graduated and had to change jobs in the same five-month period over the summer, so this list probably reflects how fragmented everything was. Missing are some games I adore to this day but were too stressful to deal with when I was going through all that (e.g., XCOM 2 and Stranger of Sword City). It’s also why Shiren was so far down this list. Obviously, my love for Brigador cooled once one of the developers revealed how much of a shitty edgelord he was. Hackmud captured my attention but I was never interested in learning to code to the point where I was ever going to be much more than a casual player. I stand by that top three, though. That’s a good-ass top three. Wish I could’ve found room for Hadean Lands on that, too.
2017
- Unexplored
- Haque
- Subterfuge
- Persona 5
- Destiny 2
- Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth
- Toukiden 2
- Absolver
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
- Cinco Paus
Yeah, I’ll mostly stand by this list. Cinco Paus came out on December 25, but it was such a delightful experience that I needed to acknowledge it. Technically, Hades’ Star should be on there, since this was the year I started playing it, but I don’t think I quite appreciated how deep a hold it had on me.
2018
- Extreme Meatpunks Forever
- Vampyr
- BattleTech
- Monster Hunter World
- Dusk
- Life is Strange 2
- EXAPUNKS
- XCOM 2: War of the Chosen
- Frozen Synapse 2
- Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock
Yeah, I’ll probably stand by this order and this list. I fell off on LiS 2 after I saw a certain plot point involving a puppy play out exactly as I predicted it would. I might have subbed that out for Into the Breach. I’d probably move Battlestar Galactica higher up my list, considering the amount of time I dumped into it relative to the rest. That top 4-5 list of games is pretty solid, though. Exapunks is great but got to be too much for my mortal brain to process at a certain point.
2019
- Daemon X Machina
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
- Resident Evil 2
- Etrian Odyssey Nexus
- Remnant: From the Ashes
- Pokemon Sword
- Samurai Shodown (2019)
- Apex Legends
- Mortal Kombat 11
- Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
Ahh, the last of the pre-pandemic years. I love Sekiro a bunch but absolutely got stuck earlier than I’d like. I want to believe it’s due to performance issues with the PS4 and not that I suck *that* bad. I didn’t have the time and space to play Disco Elysium until 2020, otherwise it probably would be up right behind Daemon X Machina. 2019 was just The Year of Daemon X Machina and Resident Evil 2, with bits of Etrian Odyssey Nexus scattered between.
2020
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Final Fantasy VII Remake
- Blaseball
- Phasmophobia
- Crusader Kings III
- Hades
- Spelunky 2
- Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock
- 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
- Hardspace: Shipbreaker
The closer we get to the present, the less I really have to say about these lists. Conspicuously absent from this list is EVE: Echoes, a game I played a *lot* of, and then one day, just stopped playing. It did lead to me picking up Eve Online for a month or two, but I just couldn’t fit it into my life anymore – not with Hades’ Star taking up my daily attention span. Spelunky 2 is another game I could probably ditch from this list.
Others I just kind of lazily tacked on at the end of this list:
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon
- Streets of Rage 4
- Mutant Year Zero
- Disco Elysium
- Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children
- Circle Empires
- Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II
- Receiver 2
- Doom 64
- Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia
- Gears Tactics
- Treachery in Beatdown City
- State of Decay 2
Restless year, as you can see.
2021
- Battleship Apollo
- Dungeon Encounters
- The Longing
- Wildermyth
- Resident Evil Village
- Monster Hunter Rise
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite
- Trials of Fire
- HighFleet
- Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector
A couple quick notes about this list:
- Battleship Apollo has to top this list because it was the Hades’ Star killer for me. I still play Hades’ Star, but when it came down to very limited mental space for a daily check-in space strategy game, Apollo won out every time. Everything from the capital ship design to the different build strategies based around the different modes, Apollo scratches an itch in my brain that seems to find no satisfaction.
- Dungeon Encounters was an absolute revelation for me this year. The fact that Square Enix just… put this out and refused to market it is absolutely wild to me.
- I had a torrid month-long affair with The Longing on the Switch and enjoyed every minute of it. What a tremendous melancholy slow-moving idle/adventure game.
- I didn’t spend as much time with Wildermyth as I’d like this year, but what an incredibly special experience. I’ll be coming back to it for a good long while.
- RE: Village did for me what I hoped RE7 was going to do (but I’m a big baby and got too scared playing RE7).
- I burned bright and hot with Monster Hunter Rise this year but once I got close to the endgame, there just wasn’t much road left for me. I needed to grind hunter levels to get to some of the new monsters and I just wasn’t feeling it. Maybe I’ll go back at some point. Loved what I played of it, but it also led to me just reinstalling Monster Hunter World, too.
- I thought Back 4 Blood was going to be my go-to “I just want to shoot stuff” game this year. And for the most part, it was. My main complaint was that all of Back 4 Blood’s ambitions didn’t always add much to the core Left 4 Dead formula (or in some cases, actively hindered it). Aliens: Fireteam Elite is clearly working with a much smaller budget, but the care they put into the smaller details: the writing, the worldbuilding, the audio cues when your mag is starting to run dry, the little orchestral stingers when you land a crit? Aliens just did more for me than B4B did.
- In a year of roguelike deckbuilders continuing to flood the market, I had to pick between Trials of Fire or Inscryption. Since everyone is already talking about Inscryption, let’s give a neat little deckbuilder that folds in some Heroes of Might and Magic-esque combat design some respect.
- HighFleet is a mess. It’s a visual novel, a lunar lander clone, and a sort of Altitude-like side-scrolling aerial combat sim all mashed together. It feels like a game that could’ve come out in the mid-90s that nobody ever heard of or talked about but my mom saw it in the bargain bin, liked the cover art, and gave it to me for Christmas. Her track record for pulling absolute gems from those bins was damned impressive. Yeah, the games weren’t *perfect*, but the highs were tremendous, even if the lows were dismal. I get why the reviews were so tepid – the game explains very little of itself to you without reading the manual. The community has also done a lot of great theorycrafting to make the combat less of a slog, too. The fact that folks can export ship designs and it’s *very* easy to import those ships into your game is a brilliant design decision.
- Battlesector was done by the Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock folks. I wish they would figure out why the “stream this game” function in Steam isn’t working, since it doesn’t run well on my laptop. It’s not quite as amazing as Deadlock was, but I thoroughly enjoyed what I was able to find the time to play.
- I got Shin Megami Tensei V, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Hitman 3, and Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi over the holidays. Haven’t spent enough time with any to speak to their presence on this list quite yet.
Some other honourable mentions I either didn’t spend enough time with, or didn’t like as much as the other games on this list:
- Tactical Nexus
- Jupiter Hell
- Loop Hero
- That Quake re-relase
- Stirring Abyss
- Slipways
- The Ascent