This post will work the same way my "BEST and WORST Monsters in Monster Hunter" list does. I will alternate being a negative entry and a positive entry, starting with the negatives before making my way. First, some clarifications. I will rank these entries based on both my personal feelings toward them, in addition to the impact on popular culture they had. Because of this, some entries on this list I have never played myself, but still make the cut because the impact they had, whether good or bad, is just that great. Also, most of this is opinionated, so feel free to disagree. Oh, and just because I think a game is bad doesn't mean I hate it. Unless I explicitly say I dislike the game in question. Without further delay, let's do this.
BAD GAME #10!
No Man's Sky (2016). Starting the negatives list, this game is at the bottom of the "bad games" section for one simple reason. The current, updated version of No Man's Sky (titled No Man's Sky Beyond) is actually really good. That's the thing you must keep in mind. This is the decade where game developers could fix flaws with their products by releasing updates and patches. But the version I'm referring to is the original form the game launched in. Hello Games boasted about their ambitious Open-World Sandbox game with infinite planets for you and your friends to explore, space ships to pilot, and galactic empires to conquer. When the game launched, it was seen largely disappointing, since while you could explore an infinite galaxy, most of the planets wounded up being glorified palette swaps of each other rather than wholly unique like Hello Games boasted. There were also several features that straight up weren't in the game at all. While the game itself wasn't terrible, by any stretch of the imagination, it was dismissed as yet another Minecraft clone that failed to do anything unique with its outer space aesthetic. The fact that Hello Games stuck with No Man's Sky for three whole years, pumping out update after update until the game finally resembled what the company promised to begin with, is equal parts inspiring and confusing. Inspiring for the fact that a company stuck with a project with such a rocky start. Confusing, since it begs the question of why No Man's Sky launched with so little content to do. The only real theory I can give is that it was an issue of scheduling or budgeting. It's not uncommon for developers to trim what they feel is unnecessary fluff to speed up a game's development and production to meet a strict deadline.
GOOD GAME #10!
Fire Emblem: Awakening (2013). After poor sales in America and Japanese trends pushing the Fire Emblem series of strategy games into obscurity, developer Intelligent Systems needed a big hit or face shutting down for good. They poured their heart and soul into this one game. Fire Emblem: Awakening was planned to be the swan-song for the franchise. One last game to end the series on a high note. To the surprise of longtime fans and Intelligent Systems themselves, Awakening was a massive hit, selling 3 million copies within the span of week, more than doubling its original budget. Why was Awakening so successful? Combine a cast of lovable characters, the ability to tone down the franchise's now infamous difficulty, a more front-and-center marketing scheme, and 'shipping (no, I'm not making that up), and you have a modern classic. Is the game perfect? Of course not! Out of all the Fire Emblem games out there, this one is the one that can be most easily exploited due to how forgiving it is. Case in point, with minimal grinding, the only lose condition you have to worry about, that being if the three main heroes Chrom, Lucina, and Robin are killed, gets nullified with even a small amount of grinding. Long before the second act, these three characters just naturally get so powerful that they stop taking damage from anything short of a boss's magical attack... In a game where only three bosses actually use magic. All of whom are fought right at the end of the story, so by then you should have a designated "Mage Killer" character on your team.
BAD GAME #9!
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (2014). Ever since Sonic '06 was released back in 2006, the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise has been in a Dark Age. Occasionally making a hidden gem of a game, but usually making platforming games that mediocre at best. Then we have Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. Meant to tie into the Sonic Boom cartoon (which was apparently decent, though I never watched it myself), Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is a platformer in which Sonic and Friends are sporting their new character designs. Which somehow ticked off the Sonic fandom, though let's be real for a moment. Making Sonic slightly taller and giving him a bandanna is the least worrying redesign Sonic's had. See the initial reveal trailer for the Sonic the Hedgehog live action film (not the second one). But anyway, this game wasn't expected to perform well critically. In addition to releasing during the franchise's Dark Age, it was also a licensed game being handled by a dev team that had no prior experience with Sonic the Hedgehog. The result was a broken, poorly balanced mess of a game with an idiotic plot that makes no sense. "But wait a minute!" you cry. "That description sums up Sonic '06 perfectly!" And to that I say, yes. Yes it does. Because that's ultimately what Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is. A completely joke of a game rushed out in time for Christmas. It seemed Sega never learned their lesson after their initial fall from grace. The only reason why this game isn't higher, is because everyone expected it to be bad. Not as bad Sonic '06, but at least mediocre.
GOOD GAME #9!
Five Nights at Freddy's (2014). Does this game need an introduction? Developed and published by exactly one person (Mr. Scott Cawthon), Five Nights at Freddy's is a point-and-click horror game that took the world by storm. An indie title in name only, with the amount of publicity and merchandise this series gets, one would be forgiven for thinking that it was a Triple-A game from a well-known publisher. But its not just the fact this series gets so much publicity that puts it on the list. From the deep, theory-spawning lore, to rarely using violence and gore for its scares (instead using psychological tactics such as claustrophobia and surreal imagery), the Five Nights franchise forever changed how horror games are made. Of course, there are flaws with the games. Namely, all of them use some variation of the concept of making a last stand in a room. While each game handles the concept differently (FN@F 3 has you defend your office with security cameras and audio lures while FN@F 4 has has hiding out in a child's bedroom armed with nothing but a flashlight), if you were to play the games consecutively you would find that not much changes between each game. But still, the fact that one man, with a painfully small amount of resources and very humble beginnings made something as impactful as Five Nights at Freddy's is a miracle. Now we just need the inevitable crossover with Nightmare on Elm Street to figure which of the two Freddy horrors is better.
BAD GAME #8!
Valkyria Revolution (2017). I remember calling Valkyria Revolution "The most underrated game ever" in my review of it a few years back. Truth be told, I did so for click bait. That was the only times I did so, and for that, I apologize. Valkyria Revolution is a spin-off of Valkyria Chronicles, a series of strategy/shooter game hybrids. Valkyria Revolution is neither a strategy game or a shooter. It's a hack'n'slash RPG, and not a particularly good one at that. The game had some very strange mechanics to it. Pressing the attack button once would make your character perform a whole combo, but you can't dodge at all until the combo is finished. And for a hack'n'slash, being able to stop what you're doing and get out of the way of an attack at any time is a crucial component of game design. The story was also a mixed bag. Sometimes being a very interesting tale of political intrigue, toying with the idea that history is written by the victors and how the consequences of our actions will affect us all for generations to come. Other times, it's your run-of-the-mill anime plot with doomsday weapons, curvy girls with ridiculous super-powers, and a brooding, dark-haired, revenge-craving protagonist who feels like a blatant rip-off of Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto. While the game runs fine (especially compared to Sonic Boom), it outranks the other "bad" games for having so much wasted potential. Valkyria Revolution had some great ideas, but the end-result is admittedly kind of a mess.
GOOD GAME #8!
Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017). I will be the first to admit that without context, the title of this game may seem ridiculous. But at the same time, Horizon: Zero Dawn is a fantastic game. Starring the delightfully snarky Aloy, this game follows an underdog Hero's Journey, and I am a sucker for a good Hero's Journey. Additionally, this game, along with God of War revitalized interest for big-budget single-player games with an emphasis on story-telling, and were released during a time where Triple-A companies were pumping out multiplayer games one right after another. Horizon: Zero Dawn was set up to become a major mascot franchise for Sony, and given the success of the game, I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes Sony's answer to Microsoft's Halo.
BAD GAME #7!
Digimon World: next Order (2016). I wrote a review of this a few years ago and never published it. Maybe I should finish it so you could understand why I dislike this game. But all you need to know is this. It has a good presentation, and a terrible everything else. A story that fails to grab your interest, a game play loop that is frustrating to deal with, and one of the worst English dubs for a Japanese game ever. Seriously, the English voice acting is torture. And I'm speaking as a Digimon fan! I love the franchise, wish it got more love, but then we get garbage like this game. Honestly the game would have been bearable if it wasn't for the fact that your Digimon have finite life-spans and can literally die of old age, forcing you to roll up a new Digimon and start from scratch. That, combined with the inconsistent power gap between levels, makes Digimon World: next Order a test of endurance to see how long you can put up with the game before its archaic and counter-intuitive design makes you drop it. To give you an idea of how bad this game was. I never played past Chapter 3. Normally I wait until after I finish the main story of a game before I review it, but next Order was so bad I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I think Bandai Namco realized how much of a bad idea next Order was, since the next game in the franchise (Digimon Survive) has a completely different style and genre from this abomination.
GOOD GAME #7!
Monster Hunter World (2018). Oh hey, my favorite franchise is on the "good" games list! This totally isn't biased or anything! No sir! But in all seriousness, Monster Hunter World is the most accessible entry in a collection of excellent action-RPG's. World was a massive hit partially due to the beginner friendly nature of the game. It would go on to sell 13 million copies, making it the most successful Capcom game ever made, outselling both Mega Man and Resident Evil (the previous Capcom best-sellers). And as someone who adores the franchise, I can say that it is definitely a worthwhile experience.
BAD GAME #6!
Might No. 9 (2016). This game is a case study on how not to market a game. Developed by Naoya Tomita, the original creator of Mega Man, given a very generous 3 MILLION dollar budget thanks to a successful Kick-starter campaign, AND riding off the adrenaline high of fellow Kick-starter success stories Shovel Knight and UNDERTALE. What could go wrong? Simple! Getting delayed multiple times, Tomita promising that he won't delay the game again, delaying it anyway, and releasing a trailer that included the line "Make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on Prom Night!" ...For a game with an anime-inspired art style, meant for a fandom that loves anime as much as gaming. Needless to say, many people were turned off by the passive-aggressive nature of Mighty No. 9's marketing. Then once the game finally released, it had to compete with widely-praised Mega Man 11. Mighty No. 9 was viewed as disappointment and waste of time, and this game was what gave people a much needed wake-up call that hey, Kick-starter games don't always work out, so before you invest in a game that you might not get a chance to play for years, consider holding off until the game is further along in development. Also, fun fact! Mighty No. 9 holds the Guinness World Record for longest end-credits of all time, all because of the people who donated money to the Kick-Starter (the end credits take a whopping 4 hours to play through in their entirety).
GOOD GAME #6!
Xenoblade Chronicles (2010). A story-driven RPG made by Monolith Soft, famous for making philosophical games that question the nature of mankind, religion, and the universe itself. A game that almost never made it to America (or Canada) due to Nintendo viewing the game too niche to justify shipping it overseas. But this was during the Age of the Internet, and when us Americans found out that a game was being withheld from us, we banded together to form Operation Rainfall, a Nintendo fan-project to get them to release Xenoblade Chronicles (and its sister games The Last Story and Pandora's Tower) Stateside. And it actually worked! Though out of the three games brought over, Xenoblade Chronicles was by far the most successful out of the three. Making almost four times its original budget back, Xenoblade Chronicles was given not one, but two sequels. The first one, Xenoblade X, was a spiritual successor in a Sci-Fi setting (compared to the original game's cyberpunk fantasy setting) and the second being a direct sequel simply titled Xenoblade 2. Featuring a beautiful soundtrack, an emotional story, an imaginative world taking place on the frozen bodies of literal Gods, and a unique combat system unlike anything the RPG industry has seen before, Xenoblade Chronicles stands the test of time as a beloved classic. Is it any wonder why one of the most highly anticipated Nintendo games next year is literally just an HD remake of Xenoblade Chronicles?
BAD GAME #5!
Jump Force (2019). Allow me to clarify something about this game. The combat system, arguably the most important aspect of a Fighting game, is decent. It uses the same style that Dragon Ball Xenoverse uses, but with the flying mechanics heavily toned down. But now for some context! Jump Force is a crossover Fighting game taking every anime and manga series Shonen Jump owns, and tossing them into a crossover adventure. But for some reason the characters are coming into the "Real" World. This translates to all the beloved anime and manga characters getting "realistic" redesigns (even all they did was put realistic looking textures on preexisting models). Some of the characters look fine, namely the ones who were always portrayed in a realistic art style to begin with (Ichigo from Bleach, Jotaro from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, etc), but the more cartoony characters, such as Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece and Goku from Dragon Ball Z look really bad in the "realistic" art style. Apparently the realistic art style was meant to appeal to Western gamers, who typically gravitate towards realistic games. But this is the same game where a were-monkey from space can fight a pirate with stretching limbs, a kid trying to become the next Superman, a time-traveling vampire named after a 90's rock band, a goofy ninja with fox powers, and an Egyptian Pharaoh trapped in the body of a 10-year-old. The whole premise is about as ridiculous and unrealistic you can get. Honestly, they should have gone all out on the anime. I mean, this is literally the biggest ANIME crossover ever, yet it only goes halfway, and winds up failing at being both a realistic game and celebration of the biggest Japanese sensation ever. That's not even mentioning the story mode, which is filled with awkward, stilted animations (making the realistic art style look worse) and cliche-filled plot. Seriously, the only real unique thing the story does is have Light Yagami NOT try to kill the cast in their sleep with the Death Note.
GOOD GAME #5!
UNDERTALE (2015). Oh boy, here we go. UNDERTALE is what I like to call one of the Big Three Indie Games. The others are Five Nights at Freddy's and Minecraft. UNDERTALE is a relatively unassuming game. It's literally just an 8-bit RPG made by the Video Game Funny Man (aka Toby Fox). But if you look closer, its a game with more beneath the surface. Once you get past the skeleton puns, the goofy monster designs, and the playful subversion of video game cliches, lies a tragic story of a prince driven mad by the memories of his death in another life, a karmic judge who has grown largely apathetic to the plight of others, and a bloodthirsty demon who transcends reality. Strong characterization and story-telling is what gives UNDERTALE its distinct identity. There is nothing quite like UNDERTALE, and Toby Fox himself admitted that he simply can't top, or even replicate its quality ever again. Hence, when we got deltarune, a spin-off set in the same universe as UNDERTALE, it didn't even attempt to imitate its predecessor at all, aside from playfully subverting cliches once more. But that's more of Toby Fox's "Stamp of Approval" more than anything else.
BAD GAME #4!
Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017). This game is the reason why micro transactions are banned in several countries. This game is the reason why EA as a company is looked at with suspicion the same way a known con artist tries to sell a new bootleg product. This game is the reason why demand for single player, story driven games sky rocketed during 2017. Star Wars: Battlefront II while being a decent-enough multiplayer shooter game, became incredibly controversial due to the Loot Box system. Now, well-received and even popular games like Overwatch and Fortnite have loot box micro transactions. The difference? In those games not only can you get loot boxes by playing the game normally, but all they give you is aesthetic stuff to further customize your character. Battlefront II only gives you loot boxes if you pay real-life money, and the stuff inside can give people with more money to spare an unfair advantage. I'm talking weapons that deal more damage, armor that grants more health, things that give people who spend extra money a leg up above everyone else. Multiplayer gaming is a naturally competitive sport, and the knowledge that you lost not because of the other person's skill, but because they paid more money than you did not sit well with anyone. The controversy was so great that Disney had to step in, force EA to remove the loot boxes, and give everyone who spent money on them a refund... Only for EA to add them back in a few months later, this time at a reduced price, and a way to collect loot boxes without needing to pay real money. That last one sounds great doesn't it? Well, to "balance" out the new business model, EA cut the rate at which you earn in-game Credits in half, making the reduced price worthless since you still need to put in the same amount of time as before to get the same thing. Battlefront II was a victim of corporate greed and poor management. It cost EA their reputation, a good chunk of their long-time consumers, and forced the company to deliberately course correct with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a single-player, story driven game with no additional purchases beyond the initial $60. That game literally exists just so EA can win back the disgruntled Star Wars fans they themselves drove away with their unethical, barely legal business practices. The sad thing is had the controversy never happened, Battlefront II would have become a beloved multiplayer shooter on par with Call of Duty or Halo.
GOOD GAME #4!
Splatoon (2014). Nintendo's first ever shooter game, and their newest First-Party Franchise since 2002's Pikmin. Splatoon became a overnight phenomenon thanks to the imaginative concept of anthropomorphic squids using paint both as a means of transport and as a weapon, as well as the distinct 90's punk aesthetic that permeates the series. And Splatoon was no one hit wonder, as its sequel (Splatoon 2) wounded up making even more money than the original. And honestly speaking, this is my personal favorite shooter. Say what you will about Switch Online, but that $20 subscription is worth it just to play the fantastic multiplayer modes. And if you don't want to partake in the multiplayer, there's an actual story campaign that is surprisingly good. How good you ask? The only DLC made for Splatoon was an expansion that adds even more single-player content. And I cannot stress enough that it is important for a shooter to have a good campaign. The story doesn't need to be Shakespearean or anything, but giving the players a handful of pseudo-scripted levels to practice is much more effective than a bland, 2 minute tutorial that only covers the bare minimum.
BAD GAME #3!
Portal Knights (2016). I want to like this game. It looks good, it runs great, and its a sandbox-RPG, a genre I quite like. But I could never really get into it. The music gets annoying very quickly, the classes aren't balanced well at all (Ranger can handle everything in the game with no problem, Wizard has to play a metaphorical game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to do anything, and Warrior just sucks because of cripplingly restricted range). Inventory management is a nightmare. And despite being an sandbox game, which are supposed to be big in scope to encourage exploration, the randomly generated islands are so small that you can cross from one side to the other in less than a minute even if you set World Generation Size to Large. I know some people love this game due to striking a balance between Minecraft's wonder and exploration and the thrill of Terraria's combat. But the game is to be quite frank, boring. And that's ultimately the worst fate a game can have. Being forgettable.
GOOD GAME #3!
Super Smash Bro. Ultimate (2018). Sakurai's Magnum Opus, and a celebration of ALL things gaming. It would be wrong of me to exclude such a title from a list of outstanding games from the past decade. If you were to tell me 10 years ago that there would be a Smash Bros game with 80+ characters, 100+ stages, a 30+ hour story campaign, and over 1,000 different songs, I would have asked you "How do we achieve this perfect timeline?". Evidently we didn't have to do anything because of Sakurai's compulsive desire to outdo his previous projects in every way. Now if only we could get Shantae, Spyro the Dragon, the Master Chief, and a Monster Hunter in the game...
BAD GAME #2!
Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure (2011). Am I biased against this franchise for the dubious business model? Yes. Am I still bitter about how Activision treated Spyro the Dragon? Yes. Does the franchise deserve to put on the list because the games themselves are bad? ...Actually no. If it wasn't for the Toys-to-Life gimmick being an elaborate pay-wall, these games are actually decent platformers. But I dislike Skylanders for the same reason the rest of the gaming community hates EA. I've never liked the idea of game developers intentionally withholding content in exchange for more money. Now if the content in question was developed after the fact, I don't mind. But Skylanders is a game where if you want to experience everything it has to offer, you'll have to spend a bare minimum of $160. The first three sequels were okay, since your characters could carry over between games. Then they stopped supporting preexisting characters, forcing everyone back to square one. And despite inventing the concept of psychical toys that directly interact with a video game, the concept is surprisingly underutilized. And all the games that tried to cash in on the short-term success of Skylanders had to drop out of the competition, and eventually Activision themselves gave up and went back to making tradition games. And thus, the shortest trend in video game history was born, and died out. Our descendants will look back at this rather peculiar franchise with the same morbid curiosity the same way we look back on our ancestors who thought that women baring their ankles was too inappropriate.
GOOD GAME #2!
Hollow Knight (2017). This is probably my second-favorite video game ever, right behind Monster Hunter. What DOESN'T this game have? An intriguing story, haunting atmosphere, precise and fluid game play, over 50 hours of content to enjoy while still being lenient enough to be finished in little over a single hour. You would expect that this game would fall into the kind of toxic indie crave that Five Nights at Freddy's and UNDERTALE fell into when those games first launched (said communities have mellowed out now, but back in the day...). But no. Hollow Knight has always had a relatively chill fandom from the moment it released. But anyway, Hollow Knight is fantastic, and is proof that Team Cherry are officially the best Australian developers ever. ...Actually I think they're the ONLY Australian developers ever. Correct me if I'm wrong.
BAD GAME #1!
Anthem (2019). Yet another reason why EA needed some much needed course-correction. Anthem is a looter-shooter developed by BioWare. BioWare is a dev team that specializes in single-player story focused games such as the Dragon Age series and Mass Effect. They have never made a looter-shooter before. EA's company policies make it so all dev teams that work for them must use the same general purpose engine (Frostbite). BioWare has never made a game using Frostbite before. On top of this, the BioWare staff were dealing with a plethora of psychical and mental health issues, with several of their most talented members needing to take doctor-mandated vacations in the middle of development. What I'm trying to say is, everything that could have gone wrong with Anthem's development did, resulting in a game that looks pretty, but launched as a glitch-filled mess. How bad was it? There was a glitch in the launch version that if triggered, could brick your console, making not just the game permanently unplayable, but effectively killing any collection you had on the console in question. I'm sorry, but if a video game has a glitch anywhere near that severity, the game shouldn't be released publicly. At all. Not until the cause of the glitch is fixed. And it's a shame, because the concept behind Anthem, in which you and your friends build Iron Man style suits of armor and go on adventures on a mutated planet, was really good. But the damage is done. Even ignoring the glitches, the game met a lukewarm reception, and many fear that BioWare's doors will be shut down for good because of this game's failure. BioWare are still working on the game tirelessly, patching as many glitches as they can and adding in new content when they find an opportunity, and even announced that they'll be releasing a "Major Overhaul" of the game, but the question on my mind is, why? What's the point, BioWare? Anthem is a lost cause. You don't even specialize in multiplayer games. The only thing I can think that BioWare can do to redeem Anthem is if they pull a Final Fantasy XIV and rebuild the entire game's structure from scratch, while still preserving the basic concept.
AND THE BEST VIDEO GAME OF THE DECADE IS...
Fortnite! ...Huh? Fortnite is only successful due to taking ideas and concepts from other, better games and mashing them together? Well, guess we'll have to hand the crown over to Minecraft. And before anyone adjusts their anime glasses and corrects me, I am aware that the earliest version of Minecraft was released in 2009 (albeit in the form of a bare-bones tech demo), thus excluding it from entry. However! The version most people are familiar with, Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, was released in 2011, so I say it counts towards the list. But anyway, Minecraft is the final member of the Big Three, but is much, much bigger than both Five Nights at Freddy's and UNDERTALE. A beautifully simplistic game. Minecraft has no story in it, since the ultimate goal of the game is to survive for as long as possible, turn your shelter into a wonderland, and forge your own path through the world. Minecraft is a game that has aged like a fine wine, going from a humble tech demo where the only thing you could do is move blocks around, to the single best selling video game of all time. It was the game that popularized the idea of open-world sandboxes, and it has spread like wildfire throughout popular culture. It's only a matter of time before Minecraft receives some kind of representation in Smash Bros. Minecraft is too influential on the gaming industry for Sakurai to ignore.
And that'll do it! Feel free to tell me how wrong I am for excluding Fortnite. Or you can do something productive, and share the games that you feel are the best and worst of the decade.
Wonderful details and concise reviews of popular games and impact on our culture!
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