The Big Gaming in the 2010s Discussion Thread (the 2010s-Defining Game currently being discussed)

Oh man... I reckon it might just have to be Civilization V for me. Pretty sure that me and a couple of mates played through a couple of games from start to finish online and for those that know Civ V, you'll know that each game is looooong.

On release of The Last of Us, I started playing it at 5pm, stopped for an hour at around 8pm, then kept playing through to completion at 7am. It's probably that.

Hmm . . .
The session on Halo 5 which saw me crowned the Master Cheese was kinda long, but that game was short enough that they even ran a competition to finish it on the night of release.

I think both Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 saw me play through the final act on one 8 hour session, unable to tear myself away.

Had some big multiplayer sessions of Mario Kart, Smash and so on. Muss and I did every track in one VS Race circuit, for example, and I definitely played Smash Bros Brawl solidly for one whole summer vacation. We also tried the 50-round Mario Party, which was an error in judgement.

My Mario Kart 8 Switch session on the bus back from Newcastle was pretty long . . .

I played Breath of the Wild pretty solidly when it came out, but I was working shifts so I doubt any one session was too long.

But the winner is undoubtedly Monster Hunter World. That game released on January 27th and I had sold my XBox and was on an airplane to Japan on February 1st. In that time, I clocked in considerably more than 30 hours. I can't tell you exactly, but one of those sessions was over 12, for sure.

For the last one, I didn't know if my low playtime was a good thing or a bad thing. This time I know that I don't have anything worthwhile to contribute, and I'm happy with that. Little and often.

I don't think I've ever actually committed a whole night or day to one game. Granted, it's because I rarely get a game at launch and spent much of the 2010s playing catch-up on older games, but if I was to answer this it would be a boring answer like PES or FIFA on launch weekend.

Time to boot up this thread again. Let's talk about games from the 2010s that you feel are unfairly maligned. Here's your chance to defend the games that nobody liked but you, and stand up to injustice by saying: 'naw, bollocks to that'.

~



We're in an age where seemingly any dick can review something and have it factored into the aggregate Metacritic rating. This causes all sorts of fallout and backlash, and debacles where certain games get a rough time, for a long time. I think that's flavoured the perception of Sonic Lost World, which sits at 63/100. I see this come up in conversations about the worst Sonic games fairly regularly, being lumped beside Sonic '06, Sonic Boom and such like. That's utter pish for a lot of reasons. 

Lost World is a clumsy, messy game with some unbalanced gameplay and peculiar design choices. But absolutely doesn't deserve the baw-bootin' that it's got over the last seven years. I'd maybe go as far as to say it's the most underrated game on the Wii U. It dares to be different: it's a far more experimental and creative Sonic game than I think anybody was used to. And or every arrow that doesn't hit the darts board, there's another that wins Bully's Special Prize. There's several moments of pure genius here. There's an excellent quote on the game's Wikipedia page from Jim Sterling's Destructoid review, saying it "can wildly swing from brilliant to horrific at the drop of a hat, but when one steps back and takes a look at the whole production, one sees far more to love than hate". That sums it up brilliantly.

But even if you didn't like the eShop demo, I'd think this game deserves credit for it's beautiful visuals, brilliant soundtrack and it's NiGHTS, Yoshi's Island and Legend of Zelda DLC. Go watch it, it's really well done!

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

We're in an age where seemingly any dick can review something and have it factored into the aggregate Metacritic rating.

Hey! I actually have some work on Metacritic so there are certain rap albums that I've contributed to. An example is Eminem's latest (https://www.metacritic.com/music/music-to-be-murdered-by/eminem/critic-reviews) - the RapReviews.com one is me. They only pick up some of our reviews, for the more mainstream artists, but always found it a nice touch, considering it's essentially a site run by volunteers with full-time jobs.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

But even if you didn't like the eShop demo, I'd think this game deserves credit for it's beautiful visuals, brilliant soundtrack and it's NiGHTS, Yoshi's Island and Legend of Zelda DLC. Go watch it, it's really well done!

This looks incredible! Didn't Matt Castle heap praise on Lost World when it released, even comparing some of it to Mario Galaxy? He may have been thinking about chocolate. I actually owned the 3DS version of Lost World and enjoyed it - the boss battles in particular were inventive and utilised the 3D really well.



I'm going to pick Just Cause 3, because it's utterly fantastic fun yet was on the end of a bunch of 6/10s and 7/10s when it released. It was a bit buggy and in the wake of GTA V and The Witcher 3, it seems a little empty for an open-world adventure, but that's not how I play these games anyway. If you spent the PS2 GTA games dropping tanks from the sky and going on "kill frenzies" then Just Cause 2, 3 and (presumably - I've not played it) 4 are the perfect ointment for that anarchic scratch you've got going there. There is a plot of sorts - free an island from an evil dictator - but it's often more fun just navigating the world and causing destruction. Much like in the Saints Row games where you defeat gangs to gain an area of the map, here you blow up bases and fuel depots. This usually involves weapons, but you can essentially be Spiderman while you do it, thanks to the grappling hook you have. Not only that, but you can throw your grappling hook at ANYTHING, and then throw the other end at ANYTHING else, meaning you have a wild physics system to play around with. Some of my funniest memories are in this game, where you might find yourself being chased by an enemy soldier in an airport. Throw your hook at their vehicle, and then throw it at the plane that's taking off, and away they go! It's basically a playground of destruction, more along the lines of Mercenaries or Blast Corps, than it is an actual GTA clone, and I think that's where the series may have been mis-marketed over the years. My main criticism is that the maps are way too vast, so you can sometimes find yourself stranded in a jungle or on a deserted island, but it remains one of the most satisfying "piss about" games I've sunk many hours into.

You know, I'm not very good at this sort of thing.  I don't have the time to play many games and so only tend to get those that are well reviewed in the first place.  I wouldn't say that any of my top 25 Switch games, for example, got a critical drubbing.  Perhaps the closest I can remember is Yo-Kai Watch, a 3DS game that was met on here and in the West generally with a resounding 'meh', and that I had to open my '3DS drawer' to recall.




It wasn't going to give Pokémon nightmares but, at a time when the active Pokémon games were the kinda mediocre XY and the not-as-good-as-it-was ΩRAS, I had a lot of time for Yo-Kai Watch.  I thought Pokémon could actually learn a bit from its battle system: it got a fair bit of flak for not allowing you to order the monsters directly, but hey, they're monsters!  They aren't extensions of your arm!  Of course they do their own thing now and then.  Also, you swapped around your yokai and triggered special moves in real time.  That on its own is better than anything main-series Pokémon battling has ever done.

I thought the writing was better than a lot of Pokémon's efforts too, and the monster designs were pretty great for someone who was a big fan of yokai anyway.  Of course, there were also issues: slow pace, palette swapping, and an abysmal catching system.  And then Sun/Moon came out, a much better game if we're honest. But I have fond memories of Yo-Kai Watch, a game nobody else seems to have any memories of.  I even wrote about it in Gintendo!  ( at giving ΩRAS 8/10...)

What's more, as a result of all y'all not paying attention to it, it looks like we'll never see the fully real-time and really intriguing-looking Yo-Kai Watch 4 in the West.  Boo, boo I say!

I really like the way you’ve made Just Cause 3 sound, gjones. You had me at “more along the lines of Blast Corps”. It’s been ages since I’ve played a “playground of destruction” game like Just Cause 3.

Yo-Kai Watch is permanently £1.99 at Argos and Amazon if anybody’s thinking of giving it go based off of Balladeer’s thoughts.

Aye, Just Cause 3 is an easy recommend from me as well, I remember spending ages setting up explosive charges on a massive bridge just so I could use the wing suit to fly under it while I blew it up.

Having recently played it, Deadly Premonition definitely deserves a spot in this discussion.

I've talked a lot about ARMS not getting the playerbase it deserved, but it has a Smash rep now and I think it reviewed pretty well.

I'd also say Dark Souls II. It's considered the Black Sheep of the family now, the one people always shit on. For my money, it approached the task of creating a sequel to Dark Souls the right way, expanding the world and the lore but millenia removed from the original, evoking the feelings but not often explicitly featuring locations and characters. In Dark Souls III, my fandom was constantly being serviced but it didn't give me strong feelings.
Dark Souls II also has some great characters and themes, some excellent music and tough, measured gameplay. I'm a big fan.

The real answer, though, is Breath of the Wild. People appreciated it, but not nearly enough.

I've watched a real slow playthrough of DaS II & III recently with a lot of great lore discussions for both of them and while you are not wrong about DaS III having more fan service moments it makes sense seeing as the lands from the Souls series are converging together. As always though dig a little deeper in DaS III & there's a lot of interesting things going on other than that, I think some of the dislike of II just unfairly comes from some systems feeling a bit different from DaS and folk had a preconceived opinion before release as they knew it was made by a From soft "B team" but I actually see a lot of folk say that Dark Souls II is their favourite these days.

Of course they are wrong because the best is Bloodborne.

Nah Demon's Souls is the best mate, git gud help Maiden in Black, what more do you need

Looking back the years section and what games I considered great and not overrated garbage that may have gone overlooked

Deadly Premonition, like Buska says
Enslaved, is pretty good and not a lot of people do talk about it
Binary Domain, from the Yakuza team
Gravity Rush, PlayStation's unloved IP
The Last Story, It's best the JRPG on Wii
DmC: Devil May Cry, I'm going to say it this is the second best DMC game after 3
Sunset Overdrive, mainly because it's on Xbox One
Tacoma, like Gone Home with a bit more game
Moss, because of being in VR
A Plague Tale, a very recent one and one of the best games I played last year that I'm pleased it was announced sold over 1m


Really there're two answers


You might be thinking a Zelda game but for a mainline game I didn't do that well commercially that you could say not a lot played it, being on the Wii may have not helped it by the time it came out because I know some would have been like urghh motion controls

Yet nearly everything is great, which for most games would be fine but unfortunately will get compared to the other games in the series no matter how good SS.

The other choice is


Even more so now in 2020 with what Kojima set out achieve with the connections and the set up to the world, it's MGS2 all over again

The_Jaster wrote:

while you are not wrong about DaS III having more fan service moments it makes sense seeing as the lands from the Souls series are converging together.

Mostly Dark Souls III didn't bother me, I just thought the Dark Souls II way of doing a sequel to the original was more interesting. That said, the Nameless King was a bullshit slap in the face, replacing a bunch of exciting fan theories with a boring, generic lad.

Quote :

Of course they are wrong because the best is Bloodborne.  

I am excited to give BB a bash when the PS5 comes out and I finally buy a PS4.

masofdas wrote:

Binary Domain, from the Yakuza team

BELTER! In the podcast circles I listen to it's quite beloved though.

Quote :

Sunset Overdrive, mainly because it's on Xbox One

This was pretty fun but didn't have legs.

Quote :

TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword.jpg

I mean, I love this game enough that I had it permanently scarred into my back with needles . . .

masofdas wrote:

The Last Story, It's best the JRPG on Wii

I remember it being quite critically well received (or, er, well received by NGamer anyway) at the time, before sliding into obscurity. Not sure if that's a shame or not: I would have loved an RPG with its battle style and some more exploration.

I'll throw another one onto the pile: Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, probably my favourite Layton? But it feels like people had slid off the wagon by that time (after 4 and 5 were both muh), so nobody really appreciates it or remembers it exists these days.

Let's start a new conversation. Last time, I asked about unfairly maligned games, which instead morphed into a conversation about "underappreciated gems" like ARMS (!), Dark Souls (!!) and those extremely critically acclaimed and very well-known games that masofdas posted about. So that gave me this idea: what's the best game of the 2010s that nobody talks about?


The games we discussed last time - and indeed probably any other time - absolutely do not apply here. I encourage you to rethink here, and consider the games that nobody seemed to play and enjoy but you. Let's discuss the sorts of games that'll maybe never be discussed again.

~



I'm reaching back to the 3DS eShop in summer 2014 to type about Tappingo 2. In this, you're guided by numbers on blocks to draw lines of the correct length. Lines run until they hit other blocks, other lines or the edge of the screen. When all the lines are the correct length, you solve the puzzle and reveal the whole picture. It's very reminiscent of Picross. But Picross goes to bed wearing Tappingo 2 pyjamas. I think it's much better than any Picross game. I also don't think I've seen it ever come up in a conversation anywhere since it came out. 

I'm not saying it's the best game of the 2010s...but I think it might be the best game that nobody ever talks about.

Yo-Kai Watch and Azran Legacy probably both fit better this time actually.  They weren't maligned as such, just ignored.  As stated in that week, I tend to buy big popular games because I don't have time to seek out my own gems.

But you know, if I'm allowed to cheat a bit, I think hardly anyone picked up the remake of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga ('and Bowser's Minions', but nobody cares about Bowser's Minions) on 3DS.  It suffered from the same problems as Ever Oasis in releasing into a post-Switch world, and being a remake of an old game didn't do it any favours - combined with the later Bowser's Inside Story remake, it sold so badly as to doom Alphadream to bankruptcy.  

I really liked it, again.  I was afraid I wouldn't.  I actually think it looks worse than the GBA game it's based on.  But it's still a tip-top game, and the remixed soundtrack's excellent: it turned the final dungeon theme from no-hoper to absolute banger.  The final battle now also looks legitimately frightening.  It actually punted the game to number 21 in my all-time gaming charts by convincing me that it hadn't been my nostalgia-vision at work: the sequels really were worse!  (It's those tedious 2D bits wot dun it.)

Everyone talks about Superstar Saga.  Nobody talks about Superstar Saga & Bowser's Minions.  That's a shame in my opinion.

I have a few candidates for this one.

Last Window: The Secret of Cape West is a special game that doesn't really get talked about enough. Most people remember it's predecessor Hotel Dusk and I reckon if it was called Hotel Dusk 2 it would have definitely sold better. But it's Matthew Castle's favourite game (according to the final Nintendo Gamer) so it's had some recognition.

Pikmin 3 was an absolute belter that is probably too high-profile but deserves a special mention. Everybody's Golf (PS4) was a brilliant current-gen golf game that I feel many ignored - its career mode isn't quite as good as Rory McIlroy's PGA Tour (PS4), but does play the better game of golf. It was marketed on its "look, you can run around all the golf courses and see other people online doing the same" but that's a novelty more than a useful gameplay mechanic.

No, the unnoticed gem for me is WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011.

It continues the great gameplay of the PS2 titles, but is full of modes. There's the Road to Wrestlemania story-driven mode, the endless career mode that is WWE Universe, then the ability to create your own stories, and finishing moves. It just feels like the most complete WWE PS2 game, despite the omission of GM mode, but I never really enjoyed that. Mention the great WWE PS2 games to anybody and they bring up Shut Your Mouth, Here Comes the Pain and Smackdown vs. Raw, but never the last one. Much like PES 2011/2012/2013, these are the same revered titles with tweaks and updates, but unlike PES which is mostly a roster update, the last WWE games on PS2 are genuinely packed with hours of new content. Having played PES on PS2 recently, them games have aged and feel decidedly basic. The WWE games on PS2 are (in my eyes) better to play than the WWE 2K ones. They were, and are, still great fun.

Last Window! Excellent shout. I liked it a lot - might even have liked it more than Hotel Dusk. I don't think not releasing in the US did it any favour as far as Internet buzz was/is concerned. Pikmin 3, on the other hand, I see a lot about - mostly from people hoping for a Switch port.

I've got one from just last year, actually. I gave Tangle Tower an 8/10 and admittedly a somewhat perfunctory summing-up in LGyFayT, but I think it's a really good adventure with some excellent voice acting and some very good dialogue. I haven't seen anyone else anywhere saying they've played it.

Blimey - out of those above, I completely forgot Tappingo was a thing. My now-obligatory answer is Knytt Underground - great ambient music and look, and what appears to be a standard Metroidvania will suddenly shoot off into who-knows-what direction.

Also a fairy says the word cunt

I hadn't seen that people responded to that - cheers.

~

Here's another one for "The Big Gaming in the 2010s Discussion": what was your favourite box art of the decade? Front covers usually go a bit unappreciated, but every so often there's one that just looks brilliant on the shelf in the shop, or on the screen of the website or, ideally, as part of your collection. 

I think Nintendo in particular have created some really striking box art from 2010 to 2019, but none were finer than the European cover for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D:



Simply majestic. The colours, the setting and the placement of the logo are perfection - truly, it's a cover befitting one of the greatest games of all time. 

An honorary mention to Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush on Wii U:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

So that gave me this idea: what's the best game of the 2010s that nobody talks about?

I really loved Big Bang Mini, but full disclosure, I just checked when it came out and it was 2009. So, I guess it doesn't officially count. But I thought it was an incredibly charming and fun take on a shoot-em-up, and while it wasn't perfect, I got absolutely hooked on it and its eccentric presentation. If you don't remember it, it's a DS game where you had to swipe up on the touchscreen to fight enemies on the top screen with fireworks - but you had to move your little craft around the bottom screen to avoid debris from the fireworks you flung up, as well as attacks from the enemy.

The final boss in particular stuck in my head very clearly for its visuals and soundtrack:

But, yes, a year too early, so you can ignore everything I said about it.

Flipz wrote:

Here's another one for "The Big Gaming in the 2010s Discussion": what was your favourite box art of the decade?

This might be a slightly cheaty answer, but the sleeve for Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana on Switch is reversible and the alternative cover art is really lovely, much nicer than its normal cover which is a very typical JRPG-y one. I particularly like the retro stylings of the rainbow font in the corner:

Rum's definitely cheating there, but I loved watching that BBM fight.  More videogames should have repurposed classical music!  And was the goblin head shouting 'GOVE' at you there?  Truly the scariest of bosses.

Another good topic from Cappa there, and both OoT3D and Ys VIII are beauties.  I thought that Xenoblade 2 was very pretty in the same vein as Ys VIII, and I quite like Bloodstained's sleeve.  I think I'm going to pick



Simple, effective, charming.  It's not dramatic like OoT or cute like Kirby, but it's the most striking one that occurs to me off the top of my head right now.

[Side note: I have an idea for a question which I think will be a good one that Cappa wouldn't pick but should still be able to join in with, if he'd let me? He's on a roll with these, so if he's got a pipeline of good ideas I don't want to intrude.]

I got Big Bang Mini because of you, Rum, but I've not really given it a chance, and I've not plugged it in for years. I'll need to have another go.

That Ys cover is *italian chef kiss*! I don't like the Luigi's Mansion 3 one very much though, I just think it looks off with Gooigi upside down!

EDIT: I was going to do one of these a fortnight until the end of the year, and I just drafted together ideas the other night. By all means jump in though - maybe let this box art one run until the weekend and then fire away with your question 

On brand choice:

Spoiler:

Actual favourite:



Whoever decided that little Pikmin figurines should be photographed on a real backdrop is a genius.