GamingBible’s Editors Select “The Greatest Video Games of All Time” to Celebrate the Site’s Relaunch

GamingBible opened the doors to their redesigned website last month, but this rollout didn’t just consist of a new coat of pixels on their digital digs. The British outlet also published “The Greatest Video Games of All Time,” their first-ever Best Games list.

Starting out with Codemasters’s Dirt Rally at #100, GamingBible’s editors tapped ten titles with their first appearance on a Best Games list, including Soma (#96), TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (#95), Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (#83), Total War: Warhammer II (#81), RuneScape (#62), Oxenfree (#56), and 2017’s Prey (#40).

A pair of gems from 2020, Supergiant’s Hades (#48) and Moon’s Ori and the Will of the Wisps (#75), made an instant impact on players and wasted no time in qualifying for a Best Games list.

While GamingBible dug up a few forgotten favorites for their list, the Top Ten looks very familiar, including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at #1. Link’s newest mainline adventure was followed by CD Projekt’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (#2), Valve’s Portal 2 (#3), Mojang’s Minecraft (#4), Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (#5), Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V (#6), Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (#7), Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy (#8) and Super Mario Bros. 3 (#9), and Bungie’s Halo 3 (#10).

GamingBible’s “The Greatest Video Games of All Time” will be included in the next update to the Video Game Canon, which will be published later this year.

Eurogamer Asked Developers and Journalists to Help Curate the “Top 10 Games of the Generation”

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.”

[Continue Reading…]

Wired Goes Their Own Way With “The Decade’s 10 Most Influential Videogames”

“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.”

Whether you attribute this quote to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde, it turned out to be fairly accurate when comparing “The Best Games of the Decade” lists created by Wired and Wired UK. The publications could only agree on three games… Mojang’s Minecraft, From Software’s Dark Souls, and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Instead, Wired’s “The Decade’s 10 Most Influential Videogames” hit upon some rather obscure indies in the bottom half of their Top Ten (including Thirty Flights of Loving, Pathologic 2, and Cibele), before locking on to some more mainstream titles (including the aforementioned trio) in the Top Five:

Wired – The Decade’s 10 Most Influential Videogames

  • 1. Fortnite
  • 2. Minecraft
  • 3. Dark Souls
  • 4. Gone Home
  • 5. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • 6. PT
  • 7. Nier
  • 8. Cibele
  • 9. Pathologic 2
  • 10. Thirty Flights of Loving

In between, the outlet delivered a nice little note about Hideo Kojima’s PT, the legendary Silent Hills demo that never got the chance to become a full game, as well as Fulbright’s Gone Home, and Square Enix’s Nier.

But it was Epic’s Fortnite that landed at #1 on Wired’s list, with Julie Muncy praising the battle royale as “one of the only games of the decade to truly infiltrate broader pop culture.”

Stuff Selects “The 25 Best Games” of the 2010s

The writers at Stuff Magazine love a good Best Games list. Want more proof? The long-running “lad mag” delivered their verdict on the “100 Greatest Games” in 2008, the “100 Best Games Ever” in 2011, the “Best Games Ever” in 2014, and “The 50 Greatest Games of All Time” in 2017.

So even though they closed up shop in the US more than a decade ago, it wasn’t much of a surprise when Stuff’s UK branch pushed out “Stuff of the Decade: The 25 Best Games” earlier this week.

[Continue Reading…]

“Ranked For Your Displeasure”: Wired UK Expects Some Disagreement With Their “Best Games of the Decade”

The 2010s were an absolutely incredible decade for video games, but as we take our first baby steps into 2020 (and new hardware from Microsoft and Sony sometime this year) some publications are still interested in looking back.

Wired UK understands the futility of trying to rank ten years worth of games, which is why they’ve used “The Best Games of the Decade, Ranked For Your Displeasure” as the title of their retrospective.

But while Wired UK’s contributors were quick to temper expectations, they ultimately made the uncontroversial choice of naming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as the best game from 2010 to 2019. Nintendo’s Pokemon Go also landed near the top of the list at #3.

Wired UK – The Best Games of the Decade, Ranked For Your Displeasure

  • 1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • 2. The Last of Us
  • 3. Pokemon Go
  • 4. Red Dead Redemption 2
  • 5. What Remains of Edith Finch
  • 6. FIFA 17
  • 7. Minecraft
  • 8. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
  • 9. Return of the Obra Dinn
  • 10. Dark Souls
  • 11. Spider-Man

Sony was the only other publisher to place two games on Wired UK’s list, with Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (#2) and Insomniac’s Spider-Man (#11) both making the cut.

Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 (#4), Giant Sparrow’s What Remains of Edith Finch (#5), EA Sports’s FIFA 17 (#6), Mojang’s Minecraft (#7), PUBG Corporation’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (#8), Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn (#9), and From Software’s Dark Souls (#10) made up the rest of Wired UK’s list.

You know, that’s not really a displeasing selection of titles at all.

GQ Looks Backs at the 2010s in “The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade”

Just before the end of the year, the editors at GQ got together and published a look back at some of the “most important and best games” of the last decade. Here’s how they decided on which games to include:

Some of the best games we’ve ever seen came out in the past decade, but the 2010s were also the most turbulent, transformative, and revealing years for video games. Game development costs skyrocketed to new, unsustainable heights. Some games became never-ending, always online, services that you pay for in subscriptions. As advancements were made in public health care, indie game development flourished, and then regressed accordingly as it was dismantled. Games also reached beyond what was previously thought possible, delivering beautifully detailed worlds, touching and intimate narratives, and shared cultural experiences unlike any others. Here, according to the GQ staff, are the most important and best games of the decade.

The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade” zigzagged it’s way through many of the titles that reshaped the game industry over the last ten years, as well as two that originally launched in Early Access in the previous decade (Derek Yu’s Spelunky and Mojang’s Minecraft). But which other games made the cut?

[Continue Reading…]

NME Salutes the Wonderfully Weird in “The 50 Best Games of the Decade: The 2010s”

Depicting the 2010s as the decade when gaming got weird is a theme that’s been hit again and again as publications ponder the Best Games of the 2010s, and it was definitely on the minds of NME’s editors when they created their list of “The 50 Best Games of the Decade: The 2010s” (which actually goes to 51):

Since we’re approaching the end of the decade, we decided to make a big old list of the 50 greatest games of the last 10 years – yes, we know it says 51, but read on for the reason why… Some of you may read this list and become irrationally angry. Some may read it and nod sagely in agreement. But what we guarantee all of you will do is read it and think, ‘God bless videogames, aren’t they the absolute nuts…’.

You’ll find hidden gems such as Bulletstorm (#50), Superhot (#38), Night in the Woods (#25), Untitled Goose Game (#20), Oxenfree, and Doki Doki Literature Club (#15) throughout the list, though plenty of big blockbusters were also represented.

And in a not-that-shocking twist, NME chose two of those blockbusters for the top spot, crediting both Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with a tie.

You can find NME’s full ranking of the last decade after the break.

[Continue Reading…]

Destructoid is Talking About “The Games that Defined the Decade” This Week

Destructoid’s staff combined forces this week to deliver “The Games that Defined the Decade,” a series of essays that looked back at some of the highlights of the last ten years.

[Continue Reading…]

Edge Honors the “Games of the Decade” in Their Christmas 2019 Issue

The venerable and prestigious Edge Magazine is jumping on the “Games of the Decade” discussion with their Christmas 2019 issue (“E339”), selecting a dozen different games that shaped the “ten industry-changing years” of the 2010s.

As seen on Twitter, each selection has been given its own variant cover, and collectors will even be able to purchase all the variants in a special boxset.

Edge – Games of the Decade

  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent
  • Broken Age
  • Dark Souls
  • Destiny
  • Dota 2
  • Fortnite
  • Gone Home
  • Grand Theft Auto V / Grand Theft Auto Online
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • Minecraft
  • Spelunky
  • The Walking Dead

Like many of their peers, the editors at Edge selected Derek Yu’s Spelunky, Mojang’s Minecraft, and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as three of the decade’s best. The outlet also chose to highlight Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Double Fine’s Broken Age, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, Frictional’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent, From Software’s Dark Souls, Bungie’s Destiny, Fulbright’s Gone Home, Epic’s Fortnite, and Valve’s Dota 2.

Edge’s “Games of the Decade” boxset and single issues are on sale now.

Paste’s Editors Glue Together a Ranking of “The 100 Best Videogames of the 2010s”

We’re still waiting to see how a few of this Fall’s biggest new releases turn out, including Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Game Freak’s Pokemon Sword/Shield. But the editors of Paste Magazine’s Games section, Garrett Martin and Holly Green, have poured over the digital publication’s last ten years of coverage to compile “The 100 Best Videogames of the 2010s.”

[Continue Reading…]