Read on to discover why this picture shows how Omikron: The Nomad Soul could have been even better!
In composing my top 10 list for games released between 2010 and 2019, my only criteria was that I remembered the games that would make it. Even so, I had to look back through my finished games list at thevgpress.com to remind myself of what games I’d played! The threads containing said lists do not go back to 2010, so some games may have missed out (but when you look at what games came out in 2010, that’s unlikely).
Nevertheless, while I may not have been able to recall what games I played over the last decade without prompting, these are the games that have permeated my subconscious and thus become a permanent part of me.
![This absolute filth is easily the best third person shooter since Gunstar Heroes (though Hotline Miami is a big contender from this decade), but it makes me sad that I couldn’t figure out how to shoehorn in Binary Domain or any Nagoshi [Japanese] ga…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/51661d34e4b035d7482e8ce6/1583120091722-7NQWNK66HV9SWHZ1I195/mdk2.jpg)
This absolute filth is easily the best third person shooter since Gunstar Heroes (though Hotline Miami is a big contender from this decade), but it makes me sad that I couldn’t figure out how to shoehorn in Binary Domain or any Nagoshi [Japanese] game into my top 10. If not for my silly rule detailed above, Yakuza Kiwami 2 (without having played it) would have been the perfect choice!
I also excluded remakes and remasters of games that originally came out earlier, so alas MDK2, Another World, Beyond Good and Evil and Dear Esther were disqualified; the fore and lattermost of the list would probably have made it.
The former, unlike any other third person shooter, managed to achieve what the best first person shooters do: be a hallucinogenic experience, which would probably have put it above Hard Reset as the most hedonistic game of the decade; if Hard Reset’s aesthetic was an acid trip, then MDK2 HD with its filthy hues of rusted metal and vomitus projectiles and explosives—not to mention the latex bodysuit worn by one of its protagonists—was the physical and psychological humiliation of a dominatrix.
Eustacia’s bonfire burns even as she falls into the weir!
Conversely, the Dear Esther remake is the only game to live up to the name of the genre it helped invent by literally simulating the joy of a countryside stroll; making it a solid replacement for any of the more ascetic games on my list. The narration, due to its ambiguous obscurity is really little more than the conversation of someone whom you are promenading with: you are here to enjoy the scenery, and the only game with greater scenery is the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.—but unlike the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. you are never in any danger, and may explore at your own leisure with no interruption except that of the narrator; a slightly less intrusive narrative voice than the force that was time in Proteus—another contender in this category.
There were also several games that did not make the list that deserve mentioning as examples of pure personal expression: To the Moon, Duskers, Fran Bow, Cibele and Sunset; the last two, much like my favourite game of the decade, grew on me the more I thought about them so that they are now two of my favourite games, in spite of me being only impressed by the former’s technique and the latter’s sheer audacity at the time. We also mustn’t forget the just plain weird, like Zeno Clash, Hyperdimension Neptunia: Victory, Wattam, Papo & Yo and Untitled Goose Game!
Due to my own failings, I had not played enough Assetto Corsa or Dirt Rally [2] for them to be in consideration for the list, so no racing game was a genuine contender; but I had played enough of what was arguably the second best game of the decade and also the second best game not to make my list, Rocket League. Not so much a car game as a genuinely realistic simulation of indoor soccer. Some have compared it to basketball, but the joy in Rocket League comes from the awkwardness of hitting the ball around, not the ease with which a ball may be thrown; thus making it closer to the much more difficult sport of football: a difficulty which allows for players to show off some truly sublime simulated ball skills—in indoor soccer, or futsal, the Harlem Globetrotters of the sport are the best players not circus performers.
And last, but not least, though it didn’t make the final top 10, The Last Guardian must be mentioned.
The incompleteness of some of the platforming’s visual logic actually ended up emphasising how surreal Ueda’s vision was.
In a decade dominated by the indie scene and the narrative (and to a degree even creative) freedom it encouraged in triple-a development, there is arguably no other game in history that is such an astounding achievement of the relationship between triple-a developers and the publishers without whom they could not exist. Nearly a decade in the making, Sony did not give up on Fumito Ueda, instead allowing him the time and money needed to complete his vision; and he more than repaid their faith. A technological mongrel of a game, The Last Guardian nevertheless managed to be a satisfying ending to what is without question the most powerful narrative in videogames ever; and one of the most powerful narratives of its age in any medium.
So it is without question that The Last Guardian is the greatest achievement of this decade and, if it weren’t for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, it would be the greatest achievement in a collaborative commitment to storytelling of the decade in any medium! Yet it does not make my list because to put it any place but first would be to do it a disservice, and in spite of all rational arguments that may be made to the contrary, my number one choice has permeated my consciousness to a greater degree than The Last Guardian did; it would win, just barely, even if my list could include games that weren’t released this decade (which would result in most of the other games on my list being replaced)!
Bowie’s part was originally intended for Björk, but sadly David Cage was talked into seducing Bowie instead. Someone probably pointed out that if he included a nude model of Björk in the game she might have killed him, whereas Bowie would have simply found it endearing.
That is not to imply it has been a bad decade, but it’s hard to compete with the likes of Omikron: The Nomad Soul, which was surely the first game that allowed you to urinate in a virtual toilet!
Like Tetris, Hard Reset doesn’t look like much without you playing it, so here’s a cartoon of a naked lady without nipples.
While I have never taken any hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs, I have never needed to to hallucinate or be entranced by geometry, so I am somewhat confident in saying that playing Hard Reset must be what playing Tetris on acid is like.
First person shooters, like Tetris, are hypnotic experiences. They force the player to focus on a very small field of vision then follow in that small field of vision a very limited number of visual stimuli; success is the disappearance of the repeated elements placed in this limited field of vision: the crumbling of Tetris blocks or the death of enemies. The only difference as a visual experience between Tetris and first person shooters is that the backgrounds of first person shooters are more varied and elaborate. All the better to hypnotise the player and induce hallucinations with!
But even so, it does look alrigtht; just like Tetris!
If Metroid Prime—the greatest first person shooter ever—induced meditative hallucinations including not only the appearance and death of enemies, but even the backgrounds in which they appeared and died, then Hard Reset is more like the psychedelic and abstract metaphor for evolution in 2001: A Space Odyssey—yet even more intense; a weird blending of all the elements in the game, both background and the enemies superimposed over the background, running together into blended colours that are neither the background nor the animated foreground!
This makes for an unending kaleidoscope of various shades of neon blue, red, yellow and silver all dancing together in a mesmerising harmony courtesy of the combat’s mixture of both forward and backward momentum (whereas Doom, both the reboot and the original, have you moving almost always forwards and Serious Sam almost always backwards!)—this is a colour organ whose productions are as beautiful as you are able to make them. For the best results, make sure to raise the difficulty and run around as erratically as possible, first furiously into battle, then just as furiously into an improvised retreat—both to give you the greatest chance of survival, and also the most beautiful collision of colours.
Spoiler alert: but the end of day summaries best illustrate the beauty of Papers, Please, and the only picture of it I had at hand was of the final day!
One might be tempted to talk about how there are more refugees in the world today than there were during the second world war, making the theme of Papers, Please fascinating and timely. But that would be a political analysis, and Papers, Please goes out of its way to avoid political themes, as most artworks today do; in spite of accusations to the contrary by critics and enthusiasts who gladly embrace subjugation by endorsing the substitution of morality for politics.
Set in a fictionalised member state of the Soviet Union, Papers, Please contains no commentary on the brutality or economic achievements of the Soviet empire, but it does present the player with increasingly more interesting moral quandaries to solve—but this is not why I love Papers, Please.
Papers, Please, looks deceptively uninteresting outside of its text-heavy screens, so here’s a picture of the always beautiful Eufloria instead!
Aesthetically, Papers, Please is a masterpiece. Every action is accompanied by a perfectly-timed sound effect, both reinforcing the player’s actions as well as rewarding them due to the satisfaction of the actions themselves, and creating a sense of tactility unmatched by anything other than Gran Turismo’s delectable menus. The navigation between separate screens transports one to different worlds: personal interaction with those who the player holds power over at the border checkpoint and the bureaucratic process which holds power over the player, nicely emphasising one of the most important yet oft-forgotten elements of disassociation and dehumanisation: the legalese and rituals of the bureaucratic process!
This may sound dreadfully simple an aesthetic achievement—it is. Papers, Please pips *Eufloria as the most beautiful minimalist game of the decade. One can practically smell the ink on the stamps, and the vodka on the breath of the migrants; it’s amazing how redolent a few hundred pixels and a few well-timed sound effects can be!
The Eufloria soundtrack is also probably the best of the decade; but you just can’t beat quality menu navigation when it comes to videogame minimalism! Plus, only the console port came out last decade.
I bet that even this was a deliberate surrealist flourish!
Deadly Premonition is a litmus test for aesthetic, literary and gameplay taste in games. If someone likes Deadly Premonition because they think it’s so bad it’s good, they are revealing themselves to be a self-isolating ignoramus. If someone likes Deadly Premonition’s narrative because they believe its irony is accidental, rather than the result of a meticulously designed post-modern digital decollage*, they are an illiterate philistine. If they think that aesthetically and thematically it is a masterpiece, but the gameplay sucks, then they are a middlebrow moron.
Not only did SWERY manage to take the work of someone who symbolises auteur genius in the modern film canon (David Lynch) and cut away its surrealism and pop sensibilities until it was even more idiosyncratic than the source material—if not quite as original—he also made a damn find sandwich of a game in the process, filled to overflowing with eclectic ingredients few would think to combine, yet ones that complement one another surprisingly well.
In the trippy finale, the random levitation of character models really did complement the atmosphere!
While both the Grand Theft Auto-style mission design and structure and tank-style horror levels (in place of GTA-style shoot ‘em up segments) lack the originality and skill of the narrative and aesthetic, the combination of the two is not only original, but more seamless due to the narrative and setting than the awkward mix of shooting, driving and cutscenes in Grand Theft Auto-proper. (But if we’re being honest, it is only inferior to Grand Theft Auto mission and world design in terms of its stiff mechanics and scope, respectively. And if one really thinks about it, its mechanics are “technically” superior to all 3D GTAs with the exception of V, anyway! Let’s also not forget that GTAV is an awful mess in how it tries to synthesise its technically complex mechanics and simplistic world and mission design!)
Even more impressive, the open world itself is an achievement surpassed only by the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. The characters go about their daily activities as you play, and if you take the time to stalk them (err, I mean be a good detective), you not only flesh out their backstories and learn little titbits that contribute to the narrative, but you can actually figure out who the serial killer is long before the plotting as it unfolds in the main storyline intends you to.
It’s not immediately apparent why I took this photo, and I certainly don’t remember why I did either. Maybe I’ll remember if I pay close attention to my next cup of coffee…
As a mystery, it is Lord Edgar Allan Poe not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in that the joy is in you figuring out stuff yourself and if you are particularly astute, you will figure out things before the author openly reveals them—the protagonist is not the detective, you are!—and the author is not interested in showing off how smart his protagonist is, but in giving you a literary puzzle to solve (and thus showing off how smart they themselves are by coming up with a difficult, yet solvable, mystery).
And that’s not even taking into consideration the triple threat that was Riyou Kinugasa, Takuya Kobayashi, and Hiromi Mizutani’s magnificent soundtrack!
*I will admit my main motivation for referring to Deadly Premonition as decollage, not collage, is the alliteration, but I think it is also a fair description of SWERY’s technique. In many ways the disparate elements of Deadly Premonition do not feel as if they have been combined to form an aesthetic whole like the elements of most collages, but cut out of their source material to make de-contextualised juxtapositions instead, much in the manner of a decollage. But it is also true that the elements of David Lynch, GTA, Silent Hill and the cannibalistic sensibilities of indie cinema that have been whittled down to suit SWERY’s needs are then combined in the manner of a collage so, really, it’s both: a collage of decollages!