I should preface this article by saying that I personally, nor anyone associated with Stage Select Start is affiliated with Polygon.com or their parent company Vox. However, if Polygon is looking for a new west coast-based writer to join their ranks, I am more than happy to enter into talks. I do know a few lawyers if that helps.
As recently as November 4th, 2019, Polygon.com released a two-part article titled "The 100 best games of the decade (2010-2019)" as determined by the writers and some of their video producers. The range of video games covered included mobile games, VR games, to the current generation of systems. My own journey through video games has changed a bit over the last 10 years, starting heavily on the Nintendo DS and 3DS, then moving more towards PC gaming for the better part of seven years, and over the last couple of years has been dominated by the Nintendo Switch. I obviously would not have played all of the games on their list as there are a number of exclusives for systems that I do not own or that my computer is not powerful enough to run them faster than 12 fps, but I was still interested in finding out, out of Polygon's 100 Best Games of the Decade, which of those games have I played? And would I rank them any different than the communal ranking they received?
The criteria used to determine what those 100 games would be varied from the amount of enjoyment people received from playing, a purely subjective point of view since not every person is going to enjoying open-world games or turn-based RPGs and would rather play first-person shooters or Tetris-like puzzle games, to other criteria which included whether
...these games either significantly advanced the art and craft of game design in the past 10 years, or innovated in the specific context of their genre.
Some of them represent wider shifts in gaming culture in the last decade, including esports, games as a service, representation, streaming, and the rise of indies.*
So the tl:dr if you only want some numbers, is that out of the 100 games listed, I have played 29, although not in all of those 29 did I reach the end of the game. Of those 29, I did finish 15. Of the 13 I did not finish, only six have traditional "The End" type screens, while the rest are more along the lines of play for as long and often as you like, leave, then come back later for some more, like Super Mario Maker and Flappy Bird do not have traditional endings. So, let's get down to the 29/100 games that I have actually played, with their rank from Polygon. But of those 29 games, I am only going to talk about 14 of them right now because I do not have all day to write briefs about them all and because a paragraph-long snippet for 29 games in one article could be visually intimidating.
So here are the first 14 of the 29 games that I have played from Polygon's 100 Best Games of the Decade (2010-2019)!
I just finished my first playthrough of this game after 90 hours. Some might say that I cannot say that I have finished the game until I have played through all four (??) possible story-paths, but I say that if you are going to be that picky, then you would need to play through the game no fewer than six times, and I have too many games right now that I have yet to play. . .shut-up Fortnite! I probably would have ranked this higher on the list because of a lot of reasons that I will get to when I write my Game EXP article, but as previously mentioned, having a possible four playthroughs without any DLC requirements (although there is DLC available) is pretty awesome, especially since the story has been so engaging.
Now, the Super Mario Maker that I have was gifted by Dr. Potts for the 3DS since I did not have the required Wii U, but I am still counting it as they are essentially the same game with some minor differences. I would have thought that this game would have been higher as well if only for the amount and quality of the content that the online community created with the toolset given. I have not unlocked all of the tiles yet, but I hope to get back to the game after I either replace or fix my 3DS.
This is a game that I received free form the Epic Game Store (hence using the link to their store) and after playing it, I am highly considering picking it up for the Nintendo Switch as well, if only to give the developers some money that I would have gladly given them for the experience they gave me. I already talked a bit about WRoEF and I can kind of understand this being ranked in the mid-90s based on Polygon's criteria, but from my own experience, I definitely would have rated it in the top 50.
I loved the first game in the series, I played the 400 Days DLC which had an effect on Season 2, which I really enjoyed as well, but that first season was hard to live up to. I did start Season 3: A New Frontier, but I had so many issues with that game either crashing or characters missing entire body parts or organs that it made playing the game doubly stressful between figuring out how I wanted to consistently play Clem and hoping that I would reach a checkpoint before the game crashed. Again. And if Skybound were to get off their asses and release the entirety of The Walking Dead on the Nintendo Switch like they did for PC, Xbox One, and PS4, then I might actually rebuy/replay all the games so that I can see the finale of this wonderful series.
I did really enjoy Me: SoM and at the time was surprised that my computer (the same one I am using now) was able to play the game as well as it could. I wrote about it two-and-a-half years ago and rereading the Game EXP take, is still pretty accurate. I never did go back and finish The Bright Lord DLC I saw some pretty drastic frame rate drops and stuttering during the cinematics.
I might lose some points for this one, but I only played FTL a handful of times with one time reaching the final confrontation before I died. I know that part of FTL's charm is that it is so difficult, kind of like the fervor around the Dark Souls games, but for me, there was not that much of a hook to continue playing. Sure there were times where I thought, "Oooh, next I will do this differently," but eventually that next time never came and I have not picked up the game in close to five years.
This is a mobile that I heard about a bit in online gaming news sites and then Conklederp downloaded it on her brick iPhone. I played it a handful of times and I can see why there was an addictive quality to the game. It was brightly colored, it was a simple concept and easily played, and every time the bird crashed into a green pipe you would think, "Oh, I could have made it past that one if I had only tapped the screen one more time." And then you would tap the screen and the game would start again. I can kind of understand it being in the low 80s for all of the reasons why I felt this game was addictive. I do not recall what my high score was, but I can assure you it was in the high single to very low double digits.
I love the concept of this game and thought that it probably should have been ranked higher, because on paper, this game should not work. Playing a security checkpoint agent in a totalitarian country checking, verifying, and double-checking people's documents while under the pressure of a clock, coupled with the pressure of your daily bills to power your house and feed your family should not work. At all. But it does, and that is why Lucas Pope, the creator of Papers, Please is a genius. Or at least I think he is.
I talked about this game just over a year ago and pretty much everything holds true. The weakest parts of the game are that there is no or very little context for the player about the already existing relationships that the main character Alex has with the rest of the other characters. That being said, this was a wonderfully written and brilliantly voice-acted game. I think its placement is about right.
I cannot possibly say how much I love this game in a short paragraph. From the initial Demo which wasn't at all a part of the actual game (meaning the demo was not the first area/stage of the full game), to the narrator, to the writing, to doing things that you were convinced outside the realm of what the creators had in mind only to find out that they had already thought about it and five more steps past that too. I personally would have put The Stanley Parable in the top 50, but based on all of the games in the full list, and the fact that I have not played 72% of them, I guess I can understand it being at 78.
74. Two Dots
I forgot how I first heard about Two Dots, but it was sometime in the winter because I was in SoCal while lying in bed listening to it snow outside; so maybe it was late 2017? I also do not recall how many stages I played, but for being a calm puzzle mobile game, I did have a lot of fun matching a string of the same colored dots that did not feel like a typical match-three game. There was no story to continue, no mandatory micro-transactions to keep playing (although there were micro-transactions but you could play without them), and calming music there in the background. I later uninstalled the game to make room for other more pertinent apps, but I can agree with the placement on Polygon's list.
73. Mario Kart 8
The article does not differentiate between the Wii U release of Mario Kart 8 and the Switch release of Mario Kart 8: Deluxe that was released three years after the initial release, which also includes all of the DLC racers, maps, and whatnot. This was the first game that I purchased for the Switch thinking that having a possible co-op game for a brand new system would be better than buying a single-player game, but I still ended up playing single player most of the time as racing games are not Conklederp's thing. While I feel that there are no major innovations with this iteration of Mario Kart and I do not count the anti-gravity track portions or bumpers as a major innovation, this is a pretty damn well put together game, and having it just higher than the bottom 25 is understandable.
72. Mass Effect 2
Considering how many people/places/things feel that Mass Effect 2 is the epitome of an effective mass (see what I did there!?), I am a little surprised that Polygon did not rate this one higher up on the list, but at the same time I appreciate that they did not. If you have been with us for a while, then you will know my current feelings about Mass Effect 2, having only played up through having re-acquired Garrus and realizing that I was wasting a lot of fuel putzing around the solar system I found myself in and wondering why Liara won't return my calls. I cannot recall how many hours that was, but I do recall losing interest in the game as well as being annoyed in what was not included in the version of the game that I had purchased.
71. Warframe
Warframe is another game that I have started, played for about 30 minutes then put down because of something else going on like leaving for work, going to sleep, leaving for the store. It was something that required me to put down the Switch and leave the house. I was impressed with the graphics, the engine and the overall look of the game considering that it is free with optional microtransactions that are not required to play or advance in the main campaign. I liked what was presented, but I just never went back. Maybe I will someday. So all of that being said, having this listed higher than the gem that is Mass Effect 2.
So that is my first 14 of 29 games. While there were some games that I kind of disagreed with as to their ranking in the list, I can understand the inclusion of nearly all of them, even games that I had either never heard of before and have no interest in (#86. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood) games that I had previously never heard of but looked intriguing (#100. Virginia), and games that I have heard of but have yet to play for one reason or another (#75. Beat Saber); You know, I might start a third article about the games that do interest me that I had not heard of before, because that sounds a lot more fun to write than the other two option. I also wonder if there is something to be said about the first half of the games that I have played being in the first 30 games listed (100-70) and the remaining 14 being in the remaining 69-1. There could probably be some deeper meaning there that I might be able to parse by the end of the next article.
So stay tuned for Monday (hopefully) where you could do some more reading. Or not, that's cool too. We'll still be here.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental
