Coming hot off the heels of IGN’s terrible “Top 100 Games of All Time” list Polygon, another top notch dumpster fire gaming “journalism” site decided to publish their own top 100 list, this time on the “Best games of the Decade” spanning 2010 to 2019.
I’ll spare the criticism that a decade really starts at the “1” year mark, so it would actually be the year 2011-2020 — suffice it to say this is the kind of attention to accuracy (or lack there of) I’d expect from a site like this, and sets the stage for what we’re in for.
Of course they open their list with the kind of explanation that’s required, explaining how they came up with this list and the criteria games wound up on it:
For criteria, we gave ourselves a lot of latitude. Most importantly, this list represents games that Polygon’s team members have enjoyed playing the most, and still admire. Most of 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. We wanted to present a list that represents how games have forged an ever more intimate relationship between the player and the experience.
https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/11/4/20944265/best-games-2019-2010-ps4-switch-xbox-pc-100-51
https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/11/4/20944573/best-games-2019-2010-ps4-switch-xbox-pc-50-11
https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/11/4/20947389/best-games-2019-2010-ps4-switch-xbox-pc-10-1
As you actually look at the list, the first thing that sticks out is the large number of strange mobile games here — Device 6? What the hell is that? Two Dots? Huh? Mobile gaming has been massive the past decade, sure, but I wouldn’t consider some of these titles to be “represent how games have forged an ever more intimate relationship between the player and the experience.” Last I checked Flappy Bird, for example, was just a fad that got out of hand — no one is going to cite it as the greatest game ever, that’s for sure.
There’s plenty of pompous “art” titles here as well, fleshing out the “indie” quota – Virginia, Gorogoa, Firewatch…you know the kinds of games. I’m not saying they are bad, but if they were as influential as people say I’d imagine I’d have heard people not shut the fuck up about them. Perhaps they have a personal significance, sure, but I don’t see the next Halo stealing elements from any of these titles anytime soon.
Naturally there’s high-tier titles here as well, both indie and mainstream — you have Undertale being obsessed over at only #52, far lower on the list than I would expect it to be. Of course Overwatch is there getting all the praise it gets from every corner of gamerbro media. Other popular major titles get some love here, like The Last of Us, Super Mario 3D World, Bayonetta 2 (for some odd reason), Civilization 6, Portal 2, and hell, even Destiny 2 and Titanfall 2 getting some love is honestly refreshing, I’d have to say.
You also have your esports standards, League of Legends, Dota 2, Rocket League, and others with their usual commentary. I’m neutral to these beyond the fact I think esports is anathema to what gaming is, but that’s another story for another time.
Then there’s things that needs to just go by the wayside. Skyrim, honestly, is one of the most overrated games in the past decade, and yet of course here it is on the list, the adventures of dragon-screaming custom character in a boring frosty wonderland gets #50, a lowish but still, to me, too high ranking.
Following behind at #48 is No Mans Sky, a game which I still feel deserves nothing but scorn – released nothing like it was advertised as, it took the developers 2 years after release to begin getting the game to what it should have been like on release. How that’s acceptable is beyond me, and it’s something that shouldn’t be ignored.
Then you have to think about the outright odd stuff on it. Grand Theft Auto V isn’t listed explicitly — only the GTA Online portion of the game. What? That’s not it’s own game, it’s a part of GTAV and set in its world and time frame. Similarly you have Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 lumped together as “Red Dead Redemption Collection” which I don’t think is anything that actually exists. Hell, even their text on the game reads odd, talking about the original RDR release then shifting into post-commentary on RDR2 (which seems pretty negative, honestly) so, I don’t know what they are trying to get at here.
Then come things that are indicative of the type of people who wrote the list – games like “P.T.” show up — yeah, the “Playable Teaser” or whatever to the game that never came, Silent Hills. Yeah, it probably was a fun experience for many of you but in the end it was just a demo for a game which was never released. It may have been a great experience but let’s put it in perspective — I don’t think it made much of an impact beyond people never shutting up about it.
And we end with the kinds of things that made me just say “what the actual fuck.” Namely, for some fucking reason, a mobile game titled “Kim Kardashian Hollywood” is on this list. A cell phone game based on the Kardashians. How and why is that at all on such a list? Is it a joke? Compared to so many other titles which, to many (just read the comments) deserve their own place on this list? What’s worse, one of the editors comes into the comments and actually tries to defend the game being on the list. Wonderful.
Then comes the ultimate in what the fuck moments in this list: Death Stranding. Now, keep in mind this list was published on November 4th – Death Stranding wouldn’t be released until November 8th.
Please explain to me how in the hell a video game which has not been released yet, let alone has not had time to make any impact on gaming culture beyond the “hype” factor common with any new release which is promoted at all able to be considered in the top 100 “best games of the decade?” It’s absolutely insane to me that this would be on here, that it could be on here, and is, more so than even the Kim Kardashian game, the number one reason this list is absolute trash to me — it clearly shows it’s a list based purely on hype and personal fanboyism, rather than on any of the criteria stated at the start of the list: How can a game which, at the time, no one had actually played “[forge] an ever more intimate relationship between the player and the experience.” It can’t, and I don’t care if the game is good or bad to you now, having played it, the fact is on November 4th 2019 it had no business being mentioned here.
The only thing I can say I fully agree with directly regarding the games position on this list is, amazingly, the #1 game on it – Minecraft. I’d have to say it, out of all of these, really set the stage for a new era of sandbox titles, and in and of itself became more of a long-standing force in gaming culture than anything else, even now, effectively a decade into its life. I’m honestly amazed they got this one right by me, given how much of a fucking mess this list is.
As you can imagine, I only scratched the surface of what I have to say on it — this list is a clusterfuck of good games that no ones heard of, great mainstream titles, games of shall we say lesser quality, and selections that spawn pure confusion and nothing else. What a fucking mess.