Game(s) of the decade!

 

So the decade is coming to a close.  I hope it’s been a good one for you.  All in all for me I really can’t complain.  I’ve been blessed with a ton of great things, including a ton of great games!  I thought it would be fun to list off a few of the games that I felt are deserving of the “game of the decade” award.  These are the games that made gaming so important for me.  I could have picked a ton, but I really wanted to narrow it down to just a few.  Keep in mind, this is a personal list.  This is a list of the games that mattered to me most.  Other games out there might matter to other gamers more, but this is my list.  So without further French word type stuff, here we go.

 

Sex, violence, and killing Greek gods.   Does it get any better than that?  With God of War, no it does not.  The God of War franchise is all about great story, violence, and being epic.  What more could you want from a game?  I first decided to get this game because a friend of mine had seen a commercial and said to me, “dude I saw this commercial for a game called God of War…god damn right…tons of blood” ( anyone who knows me can figure out who that was ).  Man was he god damn right.  But what impressed more about GoW, was the fusing of the ultra violent, with an great epic story and even more epic game play (  which includes some puzzle solving ), by having those elements it made the violence seem warranted, not like Grand Theft Auto which makes the violence just seem dumb at times.  The story follows a Spartan named Kratos who feels he has been wronged by the gods.  In the first God of War, he is asked by the gods to kill the God of War who was gone drunk with power ( hence the name of the game ), in return he assumes the gods will grant him his wish of forgetting his horrible past, ( he killed his family in a fit of rage…which he also blames on the gods).   God of War 2 picks up right where the first game left off.  The sequal is 100 times more epic, and it’s very first battle is so huge that it rivals any final battle in any other game to date.  Why didn’t I pick GoW2 as game of the decade material I assume you ask?  Because I feel I should give it to the game that started it all.  Plus, about the only difference between GoW and Gow2 is the setting and some of the enemies.  Everything else is the same, which is a great thing!  Way to often game designers feel they need to change up the game play  in order to keep people interested in a franchise.  The GoW team however understood they had something great already, and knew people didn’t need it changed.  It works, they know it works, so they stick with it……and it works! The combat system has been copied by many other games since it’s release. If you haven’t played GoW or GoW2 and you own a PS3 you are in luck.  Sony just released a collectors edition which includes both games on 1 disk for only $40.  Do yourself a favor and pick it up!! 

 

 

It’s amazing how a little surgery can get you really into something.  This past year I had knee surgery and in order to keep myself from getting bored I decided to play a little game called Fallout 3.  Let me be really honest here.  I had purchased Fallout 3 the day it came out because everyone at work was raving about it, but people who know me know that I am not a huge RPG guy ( at least I wasn’t ).  I always found it hard to get into games that took a really long time to progress. I used to like to get in, do what I had to do and get out.  But an RPG is a big investment and I always had trouble getting into them.  That is until Fallout 3.  I always knew there was something good about the game, I just really sucked at it.  I finally had my friend Tim take a look at my character and tell me why it is I can’t play.  Turns out I tried to make my character way to balanced, and in doing so he wasn’t strong or smart enough to actually do anything, thus I kept getting my ass whooped.  He told me to play how I like to play, ( I like playing as strong guys who can get right into battle ).  One re-roll later and BAM I fell in love with the game.  This game changed the way I viewed RPGs.  I actually enjoy them now because I finally have an understanding of how to play them, as lame as that sounds haha.  Before I used to try to figure out how the game wanted me to play, and ultimately I would create a character that was all kinds of fail, but I learned to create a character that plays the way I want to play, thus making the game fun and fitting it into my play style.  Fallout 3 plays great, has a pretty interesting story, and is huge in scope, meaning there is just a ton of stuff for you to do and explore, and really who doesn’t want to explore a post-apocalyptic Washington D.C?!?  Fallout 3 is available for PC, 360, and PS3, and they have released a ton of DLC that will give you more then enough game to last a really long time.  Definitely give it a shot as this game will go down as one of the more important games in history.

 

 

 

I had bought myself a PS3 about a month after it launched.  I tried to get it the day it came out but was unsuccessful.  I kept trying and trying until one day around Christmas I was helping my mom with some shopping, I asked her if she would mind if I  walked into Best Buy to see if they had any PS3’s….to my luck they just got a shipment and I was the proud owner of a 20gb PS3.  I was a very happy dude indeed.  Over time though I kept noticing these games popping up on the 360 and not the ps3…or at least arriving late on the ps3.  I kept telling myself that I don’t “need” another gaming console.  But then a little game called Bioshock came out.  It looked really interesting and my friend Tim had told me good things.  I tried to load it up on my laptop but it just couldn’t handle it so it was pointless to play, but from what I had played I dug.  I was bit….I wanted to play Bioshock and the only way was to get myself a 360.  I “broke down”, went to Best Buy again ( granted this was over a year after i got the PS3 ), picked up a 360 a copy of Guitar Hero 3 and Bioshock.  I was blown away by Bioshock, ( not so much of Guitar Hero 3 ).  The atmosphere that was created through the artwork, the amazing sound design, the incredible music, and a great story just sucked me in.  It was the first time I had ever been “sucked” into a video game like you get “sucked” into a movie.  I would always forget that I was playing a game.  This game gave us 2 very iconic characters.  The Little Sisters, and the Big Daddy’s.  The little sisters are a sort of “guardian” of ADAM.  ADAM is used to give your character special abilities, like telekinesis.  The Little Sisters roam the city of Rapture looking for fallen people in order to extract the ADAM from their bodies.  If you are able to capture a Little Sister, all the ADAM that they have collected becomes yours.  The only problem?  Every Little Sister is protected by their Big Daddy.  These Big Daddy’s are uber powerful and will stop at nothing to protect their Little Sister.  Every time you hear the groan of a Big Daddy you tense up a bit as you know a huge battle is about to start.  The other interesting aspect to the Little Sister is how you obtain the ADAM once you defeat the Big Daddy and capture the little runt girl.  You see you can “save” her, which removes the mind control that she has over her, and she will give you a little ADAM as a gift, or you can take all the ADAM from her which kills her.  You get to decide.  Save a little girl get a little ADAM, or kill a little girl get a ton of ADAM.  What you choose actually changes the end of the game, so you need to choose wisely.  Me?  I choose to kill most of the Little Sisters….I wanted the ADAM, but if it makes you feel any better the game does a really good job at making you feel bad every time you do it.   As I said the sound design and music is phenomenal and as an audio guy that really impressed me, but was more “amazing” to me was how the story was told in Bioshock.  A lot of times in a game you play a level, then watch a cut scene to get the story, then play some more and then watch some more.  This is a fine way to tell a story in a game, but it always takes you out of the game and reminds you that you are indeed just playing a game.  Bioshock changed that though.  You never leave the game, even when the story is being told.  A lot of the story is told through audio tapes you find throughout the game, which you can listen too while you are battling, or through characters you are fighting, or through Atlas the guy on the radio whose trying to help you get out.  It’s this never leaving the game that gets you sucked in.  I wish more games would use this approach.  Bioshock is now out for the PC, 360, and PS3, a sequel is releasing in 2010. If you haven’t played the first game, do it.  Please!!!

 

 

Some of you my be surprised to learn that there was a pretty long stretch of time in my life were I didn’t own any current gen consoles at all.  You can thank college and having a job that didn’t pay all that much for that.  When the PS2 came out, that’s all I wanted, but I just couldn’t afford it.  I tried ebay all day long, trying to see if some moron was selling it way to cheap but of course it never happened.  Because of that, I kind of fell off current gaming for awhile.  I missed out on a lot of games.  School was way to busy and trying to earn money kept me even busier.  I stuck with the old school consoles like Nintendo 64.  After college I finally got a full time gig at a radio station, the pay still stunk, but I was living, ( and living at home which helped out a lot).  One day while playing poker over my friends house, he took out this game that he happened to come across while in the mall.  It was called “Guitar Hero”, he set it up for us and played a tune.  I was hooked….I mean instantly hooked.  While playing poker, I was having bad luck and decided to play dumb just to finish up so I could go and play some more GH.  That was it, I was bit by the bug again, and bit hard.  I made a choice..I must own a PS2 and I must own GH.  I got up some money, ran to game stop ( well drove ) and bought myself a used PS2, with GH.  Man I played that game to death.  It was great, I finally had a current gen system.  Though it didn’t last long as a current gen system as the 360 came out a few years later, it was still great.  So many games to go back and play so little time.  I’ve been a loyal fan to Harmonix ever since then.  Though it was just a music game, it was the game that pushed me back in gaming in a huge way.  It got me loving games hardcore again, it got me wanting to pursue a career in gaming.  It changed a lot for me.  And for that,  Guitar Hero makes my list of Games of the Decade.  Harmonix decided to sell Guitar Hero to activision…they ruined the game in my opinion.  But Harmonix was smart and created a new music game called Rock Band, which again defined an entire genre, and again with The Beatles: Rock Band….Harmonix just knows how to innovate.

 

Of course a ton of games came out over the past decade, and I am sure if I sat down a bit longer I could come up with a ton more to add to this page.  But I’ll leave that up to you, any games you consider “game of the decade?”  Leave a comment and let me know!