At the moment, a collective of Resolution regulars are busy penning their own personal top-ten lists.  The theme?  Favourite games of the decade.  Not the best, not the most polished, not the most influential.  Just favourite.  Next up: Christos, and ten games that made him love the noughties.

10. Fallout 3 (2007)
I don’t think I can adequately express how deep and terrifying my experience of this game was without settling back into the mindset I had while playing. I can summarise the mindset quite simply: the words “oh” and “shit,” repeated ad infinitum, whether I was shopping for new gear without enough money, or being chased by three really angry Mirelurks after stumbling across a nest of seemingly innocuous eggs.

You are the last hope of the post-nuclear wasteland that is Washington DC, a location that resonated with me deeply as my favourite “been there” place in the United States. To see the White House decimated, and the Washington Monument nothing but a glorified radio mast, is shocking to say the least. This is before you see everything from virtual reality, to aliens, to creatures made out of human arms and torsos, to your dad (finally!)… If there’s a list for every possibility, then it’s something I’d like to put aside four weeks to see.

9. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004)
Take every time you’ve ever drawn an esteemed videogaming icon in your exercise book, and how many times you’ve wondered how great it would be if they suddenly sprang to life in all their two-dimensional glory. We’ve seen Mario in two dimensions for decades, but before the N64 brought us Paper Mario, we’d never seen him turn sideways, turn into a paper aeroplane or roll up into a tube.

The Thousand-Year Door brought the concept forward even more, by introducing deeper RPG battle mechanics, more upgrades and more characters. And it looked fantastic, years before the Unreal Engine showed us the Meat Cube and hordes of Locust.

The best part of all of it? Luigi’s side story, regaled to you if you ask him in town; its bizarre, B-movie parallel to your own quest a hilarious commentary on the struggle of the man in green.

8. Final Fantasy IX (2000)
I’d have loved to put the seventh instalment here, but that came out a couple years before the span of time we now take into consideration. However, if there’s any RPG that I loved anywhere near as much as the journey of Cloud and co, it’s most definitely Square Enix’s ninth perfect RPG. Set in a world of magic, airships, tyranny and politics, it goes for a far more whimsical approach to Final Fantasy’s traditional serious undertones of class and race. Following Zidane, a monkey-tailed thief with a penchant for witty retorts, it’s a journey to find himself by chasing a mysterious gentleman who happens to have the only other monkey-tail in existence. In that dimension, anyway.

No prizes for guessing who the main antagonist of the title is, of course. But it doesn’t take away from the massive amount of effort put into the mechanics and aesthetic appeal in comparison to VIII’s bland menus and unintuitive character progression system. For a game to become as associated with the high-class of Japanese fantasy as its 1998 predecessor has with science-fiction is nothing short of a massive achievement.

7. Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)
When the fourth (in a sense) instalment in the GTA franchise finally made its way into my 360, I could barely focus on starting it up due to the excitement I was experiencing. I had no PS2, no Xbox, just a GameCube, and only brief flirtations with the previous instalments at friends’ houses had allowed me just a whiff of the open-world potential this game could bring onto my television.

What happened over the next few days changed my perspective of sandbox gaming almost as much as a certain Nintendo game I’ll mention later. It was just so open ended, so close to the Manhattan we all know and love, and the protagonist was someone I could enjoy simply being while I cruised around Liberty City, capping heads and generally being a scary motherfucker of an immigrant.

But the moment that hooked me on the game, probably for the rest of my life, was not the characters, the weapons, or the fantastic multiplayer. It was when, between missions, I decided to go driving, for the sheer enjoyment of it. On a biker’s bike, cruising across a bridge, night sky ahead, listening to 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins, something told me this wasn’t just a game you had fun in. It was one you could live in.

6. SSX 3 (2003)
What is there to say about this game? I’ll try and extend it, as most of the time when describing it to anyone from my girlfriend to a toddler, I’ll end up saying the same thing: “it’s just… it’s so… just take this, and go play it.”

What they wrote on the box was something generic, something that told devious, devious lies about how it was similar to SSX Tricky in many ways. It wasn’t similar at all. What should have been written was this:

“This is the game that allows you to play a paranoid schizophrenic. This is the game that allows you to unbuckle his straightjacket. This is the game that allows you to strap him to a board and force him to outrun an avalanche whilst listening to a DJ talk about keggers and play The Ceasars at you.”

If I were in games PR, they’d make millions.

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At the moment, a collective of Resolution regulars are busy penning their own personal top-ten lists.  The theme?  Favourite games of the decade.  Not the best, not the most polished, not the most influential.  Just favourite.  And today, it’s Lewis’ turn to pen some words on ten astonishing masterpieces released between 2000 and now. 

10. Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)
I didn’t own an Xbox at the time.  A friend and I used to head up to our local LAN café, of which we were both members, just to play Halo.  They had a pair of Xboxes set up in the corner so people had something to do while they waited for a PC during the busier times.  We used to pick the busiest times we could think of, just as an excuse to play the first FPS to come close to approaching Half-Life’s level of action polish.  It feels a bit sloppy today, with its repetitive level design hitting a particularly sour note, but there was no tighter shooter back then.

9. BioShock (2007)
Oh, of course, there was a backlash.  There always is against things this good.  There’s no denying that the ending was a misstep.  It would be difficult to argue in favour of some of the more menial tasks the game has you plod along with.  But other than that… it’s basically the perfect straight-shooter.  And that’s what people failed to understand about BioShock: that it isn’t a role-playing game with meaningful choices and expansive character progression; that it’s only System Shock 2’s aesthetic successor, rather than an exact mechanistic copy.  What BioShock did astonishingly well, better than almost any game out there, is craft a tangible, believable world and tell the most dramatic, enthralling and deeply clever story.  That its shooting mechanics were pretty much top-drawer too… well. You don’t get games like this often, put it that way.

8. Pathologic (2006)
I think my friend put it best the other night when she described playing Pathologic as like doing your homework.  It’s a chore, it’s draining and you’d rather watch the telly, but you know that if you sit down in front of it straight after dinner every night, you’ll somehow come away from it a stronger person.

It’s the game that made J.D. feel physically unwell with its ferociously over-sensitive mouse controls and dizzying architecture (the latter of which I recently interviewed the developers about, for a feature that will appear on Resolution in the New Year).  It’s a shame he couldn’t persevere, as it’s right up his street: a harsh game of survival in an otherworldly dimension, a place where fact and fiction meet and a whole new reality pops into existence.  It’s really, really obtuse, and isn’t exactly the most tightly designed thing you’ll ever play, but it could well be one of the most fascinating.

7. Wii Sports (2007)
Yeah, so it’s a tech demo that didn’t demo the tech all that well.  It’s a collection of crude mini-games that only marginally represent the sports they’re trying to be.  But my goodness, Wii Sports was a lot of fun.  This was my university game, the one we spent so many drunken hours playing.  There are just so many memories, so many stories.  I could tell you them, but you’d probably think less of me.  But the fact that it created those memories, those stories, is just such a wonderful thing.  It formed the basis for so many fabulous times with fabulous people.  That’s basically what multiplayer gaming is all about, right?

6. Portal (2007)
This was a triumph. I’m making a note here: HUGE success.  Etc.

You know, I have a sneaking suspicion that line’s more than just character work.  I have a feeling Valve and their newly employed development team knew exactly how astounding their game was.  A short-form puzzle-em-up in Half-Life 2’s engine, it completely defied all expectation of how genres are performed in videogames.  It was also easily the funniest game of the last ten years.  But what makes it shine so brightly for me is how it completely transforms two-thirds of the way through to meet the demands of its story.  It strikes me that, if BioShock had been bold enough to do the same thing, it could have been one of the greatest games ever made.  Because Portal certainly is.

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This week, a collective of Resolution regulars will be penning their own personal top-ten lists.  The theme?  Favourite games of the decade.  Not the best, not the most polished, not the most influential.  Just favourite.  Here’s Greg, with the ten titles he remembers most fondly…
 
10. Crazy Taxi (2000)
Crazy Taxi was entertaining at the time, there’s no doubt about that – but let’s be honest: the fun was short-lived and more appropriate in its native arcade form. So my wonderful memories of Crazy Taxi will always be for one single reason: it introduced me to my now all time favourite band, Bad Religion.

Crazy Taxi’s soundtrack, consisting of The Offspring and Bad Religion, made the game an instant hit for me. I was already a huge fan of The Offspring, and Bad Religion caught my attention straight away. For that, Crazy Taxi, I thank you. You introduced me to the greatest band in the world. 

9. Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors (2000)
Age of Empire 2 was a great game, but The Conquerors expansion made significant improvements to the experience, turning it into one of the finest RTS games on the PC.

(And, of course, making special mention of the expansion allows me to mention Age of Empires 2 in this feature at all.)

We were lucky enough to have two computers in our household at the time of The Conquerors’ release, and so the inevitable war between my father and I began. Nothing brings a father and son closer than the mutual want – no, need – to see the other obliterated by a superior force, and that’s why Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors is so important to me. The exceptional multiplayer allowed me to vent my want of genocide in a healthy way, and as such deserves to be on all greatest games lists – not just because it’s a great game, but also because it saved millions of lives from my tyranny.

8. Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)
Halo introduced us all to a deep and intriguing universe full of history and future potential, as well as providing the console crowd with a definitive FPS to compete with the high quality of PC shooters that had previously dominated the genre. But its not the game alone that makes me worship it so much. It’s the fact it inspired and gave a canvas to the hugely successful Red vs Blue machinima series.

I’m a huge fan of Red vs Blue and all productions from creators Rooster Teeth, and their machinima using the Halo series is the prefect example of a game transcending a single medium. 

7. Mass Effect (2007)
The sheer depth of Mass Effect’s back-story is phenomenal; Bioware truly out did themselves with its conception. When this much effort is poured into any project, the result is usually mind-blowing – and Mass Effect, for me, is certainly that, proving how critically important narrative is to the creation of a game. That’s what made Mass Effect special: the depth. When playing a RPG you need immersion to play out your role. Mass Effect provided that, without a shadow of a doubt.

6. Super Mario Galaxy (2007)
As far as I was concerned, the platform genre was dead, perished at the turn of 3D or possibly evolved into the action-adventure genre. Mario Galaxy proved me completely wrong.

Having found no joy even in the much revered Mario 64, I could never have guessed how much I would love Mario Galaxy. The platforming was smooth and enjoyable, the quirks of reversed gravity and additional suits to wear were hugely imaginative, and the 3D environments were exceptionally designed. I am very much looking forward to the next instalment in the series.

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Over the coming days, a collective of Resolution regulars will be penning their own personal top-ten lists.  The theme?  Favourite games of the decade.  Not the best, not the most polished, not the most influential.  Just favourite.  Our trusty comrade Jennifer is up first…

10. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003)
I’d never actually played a Prince of Persia game for more than five minutes until Sands of Time. And the only real reason behind my spontaneous purchase of Sands of Time for the Gamecube was because it was cheap and I was bored. Fortunately I adored it. I wasn’t very good at it, dying far too often, but it was still brilliant. The fluid movement felt so new, so exciting, that I would repeatedly play levels just to try to pull off a more impressive acrobatic sequence. This was also why I never actually finished the thing, but just the memories of the first few levels make me desperate to return.

9. Final Fantasy X (2001)
Ever since the Christmas of 1997 hooked me on Final Fantasy VII, I’ve adored JRPGs and the Final Fantasy series. My foolish young mind meant that I was disappointed by VIII and IX despite them being fantastic games, simply because they didn’t live up to my personal hype. However , when X appeared, I was ready to embrace a new RPG love. Tidus might have been a little whiney for my liking, but with the likes of Auron balancing things out, and the tremendous Sphere Grid levelling system, I loved it so.

8. The Sims 2 (2004)
Everyone has a guilty pleasure that they don’t want to admit. The Sims 2 was mine for many a year. Surely no one can honestly resist playing God, and The Sims 2 perfected what its predecessor had started wonderfully. Even now, it’s the game that I’ll play obsessively for three or four months at a time. Then I stop and realise that actually all I’m doing is living, which is exactly what I can actually do in the real world. Yet I still always go back to it a few months later. It might be ultimately pointless, but it’s so addictive to see what happens next. Kind of like a gaming soap opera, really.

7. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (2000)
I’ve never been any good at skateboarding. The fear of breaking a bone always put me off as a child [I believe it's worth noting that Jennifer recently broke her foot while answering the door - Ed], but it never stopped me being impressed by the likes of Tony Hawk. Pro Skater 2 was perfect for allowing me to live my hidden dreams of being a skateboarding champion. It also captured the real drive that games had before achievements: the high score. I would repeatedly play the same arenas over and over again in an effort to acquire the best high score, simply for my own satisfaction. And it was glorious when I finally pulled off a particularly difficult move.

6. Fahrenheit (2005)
Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy in North America) is one of a handful of games for which only five minutes spent with the demo meant that I had to buy it. I was a poor student at the time, but this game was way more important than food. It might have been greatly flawed at times, especially with its weak ending, but I loved it for its potential. It actually felt like I was in an interactive film. After so many years of being promised this was the future, I felt like I’d finally reached it. Sure, the mini-games felt a little silly and, in hindsight, weren’t very well implemented, but the innovation Fahrenheit demonstrated for the time was tremendous.

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