Top Ten of the Decade: Part 4

By Lewis Denby

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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