Guides Editor Chris Jecks
Favorite Games of the Decade: The Witcher 3, Fallout: New Vegas, TLOZ: Breath of the Wild, The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, Life Is Strange, Fortnite, TES V: Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption 2, Pokemon GO
I’m not going to spend my time talking about the top few games on my list, but a handful of those that stand out for particular reasons to me.
So let’s kick it off with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt .Prior to CDPR’s 2015 masterpiece, Bethesda’s Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series largely dominated the western open-world RPG scene. Sure the gameplay was compelling, the worlds interesting, and the content seemingly never ending, but the same issues always reared their heads. Namely in wonky combat and a plethora of bugs.
The Witcher 3 achieves the same jaw-dropping scale, but with even more visual fidelity, a complete, satisfying combat system, and aside from a few funky moments with Roach, a near-perfect gameplay experience.
CDPR poured such an immense amount of detail into every tiny facet of The Witcher 3 that, for me, it stands untouched as the greatest game I’ve ever had the chance of playing. After pouring hundreds of hours into a single save, including the two exceptional expansions, I still want to go back and do it all again.
Moving on, let’s talk about one of my most-played games of the past couple of years – Fortnite. Despite the core gameplay actually being very simple, it was for this very reason that Fortnite has to be recognized as one of this decade’s most important games.
Fortnite became a cultural phenomenon unlike anything else… except Pokemon GO (which is on my list for more or less the same reason). The tense gameplay loop of trying to be the last of 100 people standing on an island is compelling, and the way you go about trying to get that Victory Royale is completely down to you.
Fortnite would be nothing, however, without the incredibly committed and hard-working development team behind it. Each and every week, players get one or a combination of: new Missions to grind out XP and level up their Battle Pass, balance patches, new cosmetics, and once a season there’s a live event unlike anything seen in a video game before.
Just as mine (and I imagine others) interest began to wane in the BR title, it comes back with Fortnite Chapter 2, adding in a ton of new gameplay features, switching the map up entirely, and making the grind that little less painful. Fortnite is among the best examples of a live game right now, and I imagine it’ll remain relevant into the next console generation and decade.
It’d be very remiss of the massive Zelda dork inside of me not to talk about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at least a little bit. Talking to Twinfinite’s Reviews Editor ZhiQing Wan earlier today, I noted that while I’ve poured so many hours into Breath of the Wild, many of those were spent wandering off the beaten path and just seeing what laid in wait in the world.
Hours later I’d come off the game and have achieved nothing in terms of main story progression. To have a world that immersive, exciting, and overflowing with puzzles and challenges to take on is seriously impressive, and sets a benchmark for open-world games moving forward.
