25 Favorite Video Games of the 2010s

Disclaimer: These are my favorite video games released between 2010-2019. It is not meant to be a ranking of the "best" or "most influential" - these are just the games that meant the most to me over this decade.

25. Stardew Valley

Genre: Your idyllic farmer life

I resisted the call of Stardew Valley for years. I'd heard what it offered - a charming, calming world wherein I could life the idealized life of a farmer in an idyllic small town, complete with repetitive, addictive, and yet oddly satisfying game mechanics. I knew that it had a colorful cast of characters, many of whom my handsome farmer alter-ego could befriend and some whom he could marry. I knew there would be weird little nooks and crannies, strange ghosts and forest spirits, and that I could even go to visit my friends' farms and see what they'd crafted out of the weed-choked starting area. I knew that I'd be sucked into it if I started playing it. I knew it, and yet, it came for me eventually.

Stardew Valley is all the things I thought it would be. It was all I played for months. I've broken free of its spell at the moment, but...that new update just came out...

24. Crusader Kings II

Genre: The best A Song of Ice and Fire game ever un-officially made

George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire book series is one of my favorite fictional stories of all time. I have...conflicted feelings towards the famous show...but my love for the books keeps growing, even though there hasn't been a new main installment since 2011. I've even fallen down the rabbit hole of learning all about the fictional world's history and landscape. I love this setting and these characters, and I've often thought about how the grand political machinations and histories could have gone differently.

Turns out, I'm not the only one. Crusader Kings II, released in 2012, is one of those very complicated grand-strategy games for the tactics crowd. In the base game, you play as the leader of a noble family in the Middle Ages, plotting, scheming, and dealing your way to political prestige and power. Rather than focusing on military might (though that's still present in the game), CK2 instead turns its attentions to the human dramas behind history's momentum: alliances, lies, secrets, affairs, marriages, parenting, religious debates, and more. It proved a hit among strategy fans, and it didn't take long before fans of ASoIaF realized it would make the perfect framework to tell stories in the world they loved so well.

In the nearly 100 hours I've sunk into this game, 99 of them have been spent in the game's fan-created A Game of Thrones mod, which painstakingly distills every bit of lore we know about the world into the code of the game, allowing you to choose (or create) any character in the series and lead their family to the Iron Throne, or ruin. Usually, it's ruin. It perfectly captures the precarious nature of feudal politics, particularly the kind endemic to the book series and the show. If you've ever wanted to be a scheming noble, there's no better game out there. And the mod itself is entirely run and updated by fans, for free! Sometimes, fandoms are great.

23. Dishonored 2

Genre: Fifty ways to incapacitate a guard

Deposed Empress Emily Kaldwin crouches under a railcar somewhere in the sun and blood-soaked streets of Carnaca. Several guards mill about beneath her, their swords and guns gleaming in the evening light. She has only a knife, and a gun. She could leap down and try to fight them all; she’s been well trained, so she might succeed. But she’d have to kill them, and the alarms would blare, and she’d have to flee to the cellars like a rat until everything died down. If it ever did. She doesn’t want to bloody her hands any more than she already has.

So she relies on a different power. She reaches her hand towards the three guards, one by one, marking them with an ethereal power they cannot sense. They have been bound to each other. She leaps down, quietly, sneaking up behind one of them, ignoring his own mutterings to himself. She reaches out for his throat, pulls him into an alley, chokes him until he falls unconscious. And simultaneously, the other guards reach towards their own throats, trying to pull away hands that aren’t their. And they topple together. Emily Caldwell races across the courtyard, free for a moment longer.

Dishonored 2’s wide array of unique powers make for one of the funnest game experiences of the decade. Following up on the first game’s success, this one adds a protagonist, a batch of unique powers, and a whole new setting, featuring such levels as an extravagant party at a sea-side resort, a web of train-cars riding over a port town, and a clockwork mansion that can rearrange itself to catch any invader. Even now, I’m itching to go back to this game, just to try a different approach, just to see what else lies hidden in the shadows.

22. God of War

Genre: Father-son bonding time

God of War is actually the 4th main God of War game. Yeah, it's confusing. The original God of War trilogy was released in three major installments from 2005-2010. I never played any of these games, but they gathered a reputation as being excellent action games with the testosterone turned all the way up. Blood, violence, mass death, nudity; all the often juvenile impulses of the gamer crowd condensed into an action series.

And then, after 8 years lying dormant (an eternity in franchise time), God of War grew up. The new game, which has stripped back all number markers to presumably reboot the series, still takes place in the world and continuity of the original series. However, violent god Kratos has left the bloody carnage of Ancient Greece behind and settled down for a quiet life somewhere in Scandinavia. He's buried his past, fallen in love, and even had a son, Atreus. He - and at times, the game's creators - seems regretful, almost ashamed, of his old life.

But then, his wife dies, and he and his grief-stricken son decide to carry her ashes to the tallest mountain in the world, as she wanted. What starts as a somber journey between a taciturn and emotionally-distant father and an energetic son becomes a grand journey through the annals of Norse mythology. Like the best of this decade's AAA titles, God of War marries satisfying and fun action with beautiful graphics and a surprisingly emotional story of father and son. The game - and Kratos himself - can't entirely escape the bloody legacy of the past, but both seem on the edge of charting a new path forward, one richer, deeper, and more moving than the juvenile fantasies they've left behind.

21. Fire Emblem: Awakening

Genre: Fantasy tactical warfare/dating sim

(Slight spoilers)

The Fire Emblem series has been part of my life over 15 years, reaching all the way back to its role in bringing together my main group of middle school friends as the self-titled "Fire Emblem Force Four." Yeah, we were cool. I've loved the Fire Emblem games ever since - their combination of character-driven fantasy tactics makes for fun stories with just the right level of difficulty. Famously, if one of your characters in a Fire Emblem game is killed, they stay dead for the rest of the game. I can never let this happen, so I always restart a Chapter (level) if someone falls to the enemy, even if this means a chapter I've almost finished is lost at the last minute.

Fire Emblem has always been a niche series in America (the first game to be released in the US, the one my friends and I bonded over, was actually the 7th in the series), and despite the success of previous entries, at the beginning of this decade the series was on the verge of being well and truly ended. There just wasn't enough of an audience in America for this anime-inflected strategy game on portable consoles. Nintendo would release one last FE game, with the fate of the series' future riding on its success.

And Fire Emblem: Awakening lived up to the expectations, and then some. It saved the series.

FE:A's story is mostly standard for high fantasy (dragons, evil wizards, scheming kings, etc.), but throws a wrench in the formula with a time-travel plot, in which the main characters' children travel back in time from a reality where the good guys lost, all to help them finally prevail. The game lets you pair almost any man and woman from your army together - once their relationship is solidified, their child will appear from the future. It's a decidedly odd feature, but its focus on getting your soldiers to grow close helped give an emotional anchor to the story, not to mention provide for hours and hours of replay-ability. I loved FE:A, and it remains the best use of my Nintendo 3DS.

20. Dragon Age: Inquisition

Genre: Upper management, with dragons

From 2008-2014, game developer Bioware released two trilogies of action-RPG games: the space opera Mass Effect, and the dark fantasy epic Dragon Age. Mass Effect told the story of Commander Shepard (the customizeable protagonist), and their companions over the course of one long narrative, while each Dragon Age game featured a new hero in one continuing timeline of grand history.

These games remain some of my favorite video games ever, with their blend of customizable protagonists, deep lore and worldbuilding, cast of likeable and interesting characters, fun action gameplay, and the sense that I was building my own version of these worlds and their histories. But soon after the 2014 release of the third Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition, the teams behind these RPGs began to leave the company, marking the end of this series. The new shambling corpse of Bioware would release a broken shell of a Mass Effect game in 2017, and follow up with a huge flop of a massively-multiplayer online shooter in 2018. Whatever Bioware is now, it’s not the place that told some of my favorite stories in games.

If Bioware never recovers or has a successor, than Dragon Age: Inquisition was a good way to close this era in game history. Striking a balance between the tactics of the first game and the action of the second, DA:I is a sprawling, epic game, in which your main character (The Inquisitor), leads an entire faction to victory against the forces of darkness. You sit at a wartable with your advisors, planning out the missions to acquire the relevant resources and stem the tide of the enemy. You upgrade and customize your armies, equipment, and infrastructure, and even sit in judgment of enemies and prisoners. The game’s main villain and overall plot isn’t the most interesting, but I still look back fondly on my loveable crew of companions and warriors, and all our adventures in the many beautiful vistas that the world of Thedas has to offer. Pour one out for Bioware. Rest in peace.

19. Oxenfree

Genre: A straightforward night on the creepy island, where nothing weird happens, definitely

Early in 2019, my girlfriend Jane and I spent a weekend at my family’s beach house (I wrote about the experience of what it meant to me elsewhere on this blog), cooped up in the old cabin under a blanket while the world froze around us. Jane isn’t much of a gamer, but we’d both heard good things about the story-based game Oxenfree and wanted to try it out. So we booted up the game, had our food and drinks ready, and dove into it.

Oxenfree tells the story of a young woman named Alex, whose reluctantly agreed to go to a beach party on a mist-shrouded island off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. St. Edward’s Island was once used a military base that conducted experiments with radio frequencies, but is now a sort of tourist trap. The perfect kind of mysterious, slightly-adventurous place to host a party for college-age kids. But Alex and her friends soon find themselves trapped in the island, which has more mysteries and haunted pasts than they expected.

In Oxenfree, you control Alex, moving along a 2D landscape and interacting with objects in her environment. But the main draw of the game is the ability to choose what Alex says (or doesn’t say) when interacting with her friends. Unlike other games, the choices don’t stay there forever - click a button while someone is speaking and Alex interrupts them, click nothing and the moment passes with Alex staying silent. This gives the game’s dialogue a fluid, realistic edge, as people stumble into confusing sentences over each other, and as the game’s young protagonists grow closer together or further apart over the course of their very strange night.

The experience of playing this game multiple times with Jane, as she shouted out what Alex should say in any given moment, as we held each other when something creepy happened or agonized over the right thing to do, has already cemented this game as one of my favorites. It’s a great, accessible example of the kinds of storytelling that games can do better than any other medium, and is a great jumping-on point if you’re intrigued about what modern story games can do.

Oxenfree is moving and creepy, with a puzzle of a narrative that rewards going back and playing again. The game knows you’ve played once, and more pieces begin to reveal themselves. It’s simple art style is evocative and beautiful, and the surreal mysteries of St. Edward’s Island still linger on after the game is done. After all...Is. Leave. Possible?

18. Bloodborne

Genre: Victorian-Gothic masochism

The streets of Yharnam are overrun with monsters. Dark, gothic spires tower over cobble-stoned streets infested by fat, land-bound crows, muttering plague victims swinging bloody cleavers, and half-beast monstrosities screaming in pain and laughing. Into this madness, a hunter walks. Yharnam was once a city like any other, grand and beautiful and terrible and full of life, but now its past and promise lay shrouded in blood and death. What was Yharnam? What happened to it? The truth is only ever glimpsed, only ever seen incomplete, frustratingly and tantalizingly vague.

Bloodborne is a difficult game. I only managed to make it halfway through the game before I stopped. Few experiences better deliver on the sense of dread than Bloodborne; not only does each street feature its own fresh hells, but even the most basic of enemies has the potential to kill you. And most of them will kill you. Over and over again, forcing your resurrected hero to wander back to the site of their own death in order to keep your scattered experience and advances. Die again before retrieving them, and you’re doomed to lose your advances forever. Bloodborne rewards patience, teaching you each enemy’s style of fighting, letting you learn from your mistakes and improve in a real way rather than simply increasing your stats or getting you access to new weapons like most games do. There’s nothing else I’ve ever played that’s really given me the sense that I’m improving - even if it’s just in a video game.

I still haven’t returned to the haunted streets of Yharnam, but I hope to someday. But if I leave them behind for good, the game still impressed and terrified me enough to sing its praises, even years later.

17. Dragon Age II

Genre: My friends, my dog, and the mage revolution

Dragon Age II gets a bad reputation. Following up 2009's big dark fantasy RPG epic, Dragon Age: Origins, DAII made some surprising decisions. The big, sprawling adventure with tactical turn-based combat, starring your voiceless customizable main character became an action-heavy game set in one city with repetitive, re-used graphics and locations, starring a voiced character name Hawke. DAII's production woes are widely known at this point, and it's detractors have some good evidence on their side. The game's combat is far from complex, the graphics range from fine to bad, and the game throws many of the same types of enemies in the same places at you over and over again.

But, the thing is, this is my favorite Dragon Age game. DAII has a cast of great characters; the storytelling sarcastic heart-of-gold rogue dwarf Varric, the driven mage revolutionary Anders, the swashbuckling pirate Isabella, the good and noble knight Aveline, the kind and adorable blood mage Merrill, and the soulful escaped elven slave Fenris. They're all great characters with far more complexity than their typical RPG archetypes suggest, and they quickly became one of my favorite casts in video games. But they all pale to my favorite: my Hawke. See, my Hawke was a wise-cracking mage revolutionary, devoted to bringing justice to the downtrodden and having witty one-liners ready for anyone she came across. Watching her and her allies grow over a span of years in the blood-soaked streets of Kirkwall, culminating in an intense final battle that began a war, made DAII one of my favorite RPGs of the decade, and well-worth checking out.

16. Nier: Automata

Genre: Sad robot action

Nier: Automata is a deeply weird game.

At first glance, it's a post-apocalyptic anime action game about two androids, 2B and 9S, fighting other robots in an overgrown desolate earth. And it's basically that, up until you beat the game.

And then, if you decide to play again, things change.

And they keep changing after each ending.

Filled with difficult and frenetic battles, bizarre and strangely affecting moments with sad monotone robots, and more absolutely bonkers anime plot mechanization than you can wave a mecha-sword at, this game is unlike anything I've ever played. I haven't even finished all the endings yet; knowing that there's still more weird pieces to unlock in this puzzle keeps me thinking about it, even years later.

15. Life is Strange 2

Genre: Just two brothers on the run from the law

Following up the unexpected success of Dontnod Entertainment's hit story game Life is Strange (stay tuned later in this list...) was always going to be tough. Fans (myself definitely included) fell in love with that game's nostalgic take on a small, weird town, and with its central characters in particular. Rather than try to recapture the glory of a previous creation, Dontnod decided to take the core emotional experience of playing a Life is Strange game, and turn it into something different.

Life is Strange 2 tells the story of Sean and Daniel Diaz, two young brothers who are forced into a life on the run through some strange circumstances. Only sixteen, Sean - and therefore you, the player - has to deal with a dangerous, uncertain life far from the teen drama he'd been dealing with so recently, all while essentially raising his younger brother on the road. Throughout the five episodes of LiS2, Sean and Daniel meet a rotating cast of colorful characters along the West Coast, all culminating in a heart-wrenching finale that takes into account both your final decision and how you've been making choices up until then.

Life is Strange 2 was always going to have a hard time competing with the first game, and while it doesn't quite reach those heights for me, it's a great, compelling story and improves upon the first game in many ways. The story of two Latino teens on the run from police in the aftermath of the 2016 election is timely, if sometimes a little on the nose. But we live in unsubtle times. Life is Strange 2 is moving, and beautiful, and one of my favorite stories of the decade, in any medium.

14. Horizon: Zero Dawn

Genre: Cave-people fighting robots, and everything is beautiful

Many years after the collapse of modern civilization, Earth has mostly recovered. A diverse spread of humans live in small tribes and forge new mythologies and civilizations from the ashes of our world. Nature has reclaimed our grand cities, and it's never looked more beautiful. Oh, and most large animals have been replaced with giant robots, many of them in the form of dinosaurs. Get ready to go hunting with a bow and arrow!

Horizon: Zero Dawn is a big, sprawling, beautiful action game. It has the hallmarks of many of these genres; lots of side-quests, customizable and craft-able items, towering vistas, monstrous enemies, and a pretty good story. It's also one of the most satisfying bow-and-arrow shooter games out there. Did I mention it's incredibly beautiful??

13. Dishonored

Genre: Stealth-action in the coolest world you've ever seen (infested with the rat plague)

Even if Dishonored wasn’t an incredibly fun game to play - which it definitely is - it might make it onto this list through the sheer strength of its setting. The city of Dunwall is an industrial-punk amalgamation of late 19th century England, if the twisting, industrial streets of London were powered by the blood of monstrous whales, if secret cults carved relics of bones in the shadows, if cops patrolled the streets in tall robotic mechs, and if somewhere hidden in the alcoves of the city, a telepathic beating heart guided an assassin through a political conspiracy.

Dishonored is a great example of a particular subgenre of video games called the immersive sim. It’s a first-person game with shooter elements, but these games live and die on their sense of exploration, of wandering into an intriguing story and world, and of utilizing unique powers and advances to handle problems in different ways, from direct violence to stealth to anything in between. The game’s sequel improved on many of the game’s mechanics, offering a new playable character, a new city, new powers, and a new sense of variety in how you handled each mission, but the first still holds a higher place for me.

One of my favorite table-top RPGs, Blades in the Dark, owes its own complex setting to the world of Dishonored, so even now my own imagination and writing is steeped in images of tall Victorian towers, leviathan hunting, masked killers teleporting through shadowy canals, and the oily, noxious fumes of plague and industry. And always, the beating sound of that metallic heart, constant. Immortal.

12. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Genre: Millennials' favorite party game

I've been playing the various installments of Nintendo's party-friendly Super Smash Bros. fighting games for most of my life. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the culmination of the series, with an astonishing 80+ playable characters from across Nintendo (and several third parties') history. To date, there's no more fun and zany video game to sit down and play with a bunch of friends in person.

SSBU remains accessible for newcomers while also offering enough complexity for the true fighting game masters, as long as you play with people of your approximate skill level.

There's also no game this decade that my brothers consistently crush me in more. I hope no footage of me falling to my knees, screaming "NOOOOO" exists, because I've definitely done it enough, playing this game.

One day, I'll beat them.

One day.

11. Uncharted 4

Genre: Indiana Jones' mid-life crisis, the game.

The Uncharted games have been telling the tale of Nathan Drake - an explorer in the Indian Jones vein - since their first installment in 200?. They're consistently fun, often beautiful, action-filled rides that play well and give you the same sense of excitement the very best action movies can deliver. Nathan is your typical charming, roguish lead, and over the years he's explored an encyclopedia's worth of presumed mythological locations (all before they inevitable get destroyed in the ensuing shootouts).

I've liked all the games in the series, but Uncharted 4 stands heads above the rest, in particular due to the strength of its characters and narrative. The gameplay remains intuitive and fun, but it's Nathan Drake's "one-last-job" exploring the toll his relentless treasure hunting has taken on his friends, his loved ones, the world, and himself, that makes this game worthy of my list. It's a genuinely emotional journey that deploys the best tricks of exciting storytelling to keep you pulled along from exciting locale to shootout to death-defying feats of climbing.

Uncharted 4 doesn't quite put its hero under the microscope that "treasure-hunting" heroes deserve in the year 2019, and it never full reckons with the inherent problems and morality of characters, who are, essentially, cultural thieves, but the games remain one of my favorite series, and in many ways, are basically some of the best action films of the decade as well. Few games take the time for the small moments that Uncharted 4 still manages to find, like playing video games with your (Nathan's) wife on the couch after a long day of work.

10. Into the Breach

Genre: Hopeless time-traveling giant mecha chess

You can never really win in Into the Breach, not really, not finally. There's always another timeline to save.

Into the Breach, a brilliant strategy game that's really more of a puzzle game, takes place in an apocalyptic future ruled by corporations on a flooded planet, but that's not the real crisis. Earth is being invaded by an armada of giant bug aliens, and the only way to stop them is with giant robots. The odds look grim, even with this technology, and victory is always a vague promise. But there's a catch - in the world of Into the Breach - multiple timelines exist. Timeline after timeline will fall to the invasion, but there still remains hope that one can win, and send its best soldiers and aid to the rest of them. Every battle in Into the Breach takes place on the same sized grid. You always have 3 mechs, each with predictable powers, each facing off against an array of alien bugs with their own abilities. You know exactly what each enemy will do on their next turn, but that doesn't make it easier to stop them. Mech pilots give you special powers, but are dead forever if they're killed. Mechs can take a beating and be destroyed for the rest of the mission, but can be repaired in between. The only thing that's really precious, the most important thing you can do in this game, is protect the innocents of Earth. Maybe, will enough strategy and luck and passion, you and your squad can save this timeline, and send one of your own through time to assist the endless other worlds in need of your help. Or, if all hopes seems lost, send someone to carry what you've learned on, and hope that the next time goes better. Or the next. Or the next.

In the face of a grim world where every hope of revolution brings with it disappointment, Into the Breach is a masterfully crafted game that makes you feel like a genius when you succeed, all while providing an intense challenge and forcing you to realize that there will always be another world in need of saving. Both in the game, and in the world we see when we look up from it.

9. The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt

Genre: Big fantasy epic hero-for-hire

Big open-world games really came into their own this decade, and The Witcher III is no exception. There’s a decidedly interesting and complex narrative in this one, but you’re free to approach it in your own time, handling missions mostly in whatever order strikes your fancy, or riding off on your trusty steed Roach to other towns all together, taking in the beauty of this medieval fantasy’s landscapes or hunting giant monsters for coin and glory.

Most games like this find ways to pad the player’s time, giving side-quests and little extra tasks that don’t ultimately add up to much, other than as a source of gold or experience. The Witcher III excels in many areas - it’s beautiful, the story is great, the characters are fun, the action is fast-paced and exciting - but for me, what makes this game shine is its side-quests. Most of them function as short stories, with their own arcs, surprises, characters, and tragedies. From diving into the complicated and confusing personal life of the Bloody Baron, to being trapped in the hut of a trio of truly horrifying witches, to protecting one small insignificant town from a monster, The Witcher III manages to be funny, heart wrenching, morally complex, and horrifying in equal measure. The life of Geralt is eventually caught up in a fantasy plot of mythic proportions that stands with the best of them, but it’s these little side stories that make his story sing.

I never played the first two installments of this series, and while I think they’d be fun, playing the 100+ hour journey of this one was enough, and stands well enough on its own that I recommend people start with it. There are definitely some story beats and character histories that I had to learn through a quick google search, but the story of The Witcher III has enough meat on it, and gives its characters enough room to connect, that I was hooked by this meal alone. For a big, sprawling game of fantasy, swordfighting, card-playing, and horse-riding, few other experiences match up. Oh, and it even has free Downloadable Content with many more hours of some of the best stories in the entire franchise!

8. Mass Effect 3

Genre: Big epic space opera - the conclusion

Many of the games on this list are defined by choice, either in how you can approach a particular level or in how your character responds to shape the story. If your game features a branching story depending on player action, there’s a high chance I’m interested in playing it. Maybe it’s my own love of running table-top RPGs and writing books, but I’m always a little frustrated at playing with the predetermined confines of a video game’s world. Anything I can do to make the character(s) and the story my own, I will.

Bioware thrived on cultivating this sense, and in doing so crafted one of my favorite fictional stories of all time - the Mass Effect trilogy. Mass Effect 3 had a lot weighing on its shoulders when it was released back in 2012. The grand story of Commander Shepard (however you created them to be) would have to conclude, taking into account the many important choices you’d made over the past two games. How could any game possibly mutate itself enough to accommodate for all of them? It turns out, such choice is often an illusion. Most choices in these types of games, even the best among them, don’t make the story deviate too harshly. After all, games are expensive and difficult to create. Small changes might account for different lines of dialogue, the presence or absence of a character, and other minor alterations. But these games promised a real story in which your choice mattered - which was why Mass Effect 3’s final ending boiling down to 3 color-coded endgame decisions angered so many fans.

ME3 doesn’t quite end in a way many consider to be satisfying, but I still love it. It brings together the characters I’d grown to love through the past two installments and really builds a sense of comradery and the grand scale of an impending ending. It feels the weight of this world, these characters, this world, all wrapped up in a thrilling package that delivered on action and spectacle in spades. In the end, the choice doesn’t really matter - too much has been predetermined for any one person, even a hero like Shepard, to fully chart a new path. But what I remember about this series are my Shepards, the characters I created over several playthrough, and what the choices they made said about them. Because, at least for me, I often forget plots. What lasts with me about the very best stories is the characters, and the quiet moments where they reflect on what matters to them. And for that, Mass Effect 3 reaches for the stars and manages to hold onto them, if only for a moment.

7. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5

Genre: Anime teens steal the evil right out of the adults

Darkness plagues the streets of Tokyo. But to eyes of most, it's nothing more than the usual darkness of the world; evil people taking advantage of those less powerful, greed, broken relationships, predatory men, shattered families, fear and hate and sadness. Life could be so good if not for the evil in men's hearts; if we could reach into a person's soul and take the darkness out of them, shouldn't we? For the ambitious high schoolers that make of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5's cast, the answer is yes.

Through magical and surreal means, the main character of Persona 5 (real name determined by you, alter ego "Joker"), has discovered a secret world lying inside the collective hearts and minds of the people. In particular, he realizes that the evil at the root of society is strongest in some people, and with the right crew and the right powers, he could venture into their own mind palaces and steal the darkness from them, turning them into good people.

Throughout the epic length of this turn-based RPG, you and your friends must juggle your responsibilities as "Phantom Thieves" working to make a better world, and your lives as regular high schoolers. There are so many hours in a day: do your study for your test tomorrow (increasing your intelligence stat and making friends with other students), hang out with your friends (increasing the powers of your bond and gaining access to powers in the other realm), attempt to advance further in these dungeons of the mind, or even just call it an early night to recover? That's right, this game is time management: the game.

The Persona games are absolutely wild: incredibly stylish, frequently problematic, hugely entertaining, bafflingly weird, and chock-full of oddly charming bits of real life. There's no turn-based RPG that plays this well. You'd be hard pressed to find a game this stylish...or weird, or thematically contradictory.

Committing to a game like Persona 5 is an intense undertaking, but isn't it always, trying to save the world?

6. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Genre: Cooking simulator, with side of mountain climbing

What more can I possibly say about Breath of the Wild? Since its release in 2017 on the Nintendo Switch, the latest game in the Legend of Zelda series has been crowned everything from Best Game on the Switch, Best Game of 2017, Best Game of the Decade, and sometimes, Best Game of All Time.

It’s not hard to see why. Breath of the Wild breaks free from the Legend of Zelda’s traditional story structure and sends its incarnation of the hero of Legend, Link, into a wide, beautiful world in which even the mountains on the horizon can be climbed. This version of Hyrule is a gorgeous, melancholy one, marked by the failure of heroes past and the specter of a monstrous darkness ruling over the kingdom. And yet, despite everything, the people carry on.

Breath of the Wild has a story - one more fleshed out than most Nintendo games, though it won’t be winning any narrative awards - but it’s really up to you how much you engage with it. The joy of this game is wandering around, climbing mountains, cooking a surprising variety of food in your camp-pots, discovering hidden fairies, using anything and everything as a weapon, and sometimes, just standing on a mountain-top, the whole wide beautiful world sprawling out beneath you.

Breath of the Wild lives up to its incredible hype, and is a culmination of the entire genre of big, open-world action RPGs. The rest of gaming will be swimming in its wake for years to come.

5. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Genre: 1/4 dating sim, 1/4 socio-political warfare, 1/2 teaching your anime children

Before the release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses this past summer, the Fire Emblem franchise was at a crossroads. The hardcore fans from the games early installments (who prized high difficulty, complex political warfare, and epic narratives) were becoming disillusioned with the recent games' implementation of over-exaggerated anime character types, dating and romance elements, and catering to new players with easy game-play. The announcement of the game and its cryptic early images suggested the game would return to its grand roots, while the first full trailer and presentation at gaming conventions revealed that it would be, essentially, a school game with the main character the professor for teens of noble birth to learn how to wage war.

Needless to say, us fans were nervous. What exactly were we getting with this new game? What was Fire Emblem becoming, anyway? Was Three Houses a grand, morally complicated tactics story of competing visions for political power, or was it a charming school and dating simulator with anime personalities and meme-able story beats?

Both. The answer is, somehow, both. And it's all the better for it. I've been a Fire Emblem fan since I was 11, and I've played most of the new games since. This is the best one.

As the professor at the Garreg Mach Academy, your silent protagonist chooses one of three political factions: the Red Eagles of the Empire, the Blue Lions of the theocratic Kingdom, or the Golden Deer of the mercantile Republic. Each faction comes with its own leader and students, who can be taught and molded into your own perfect fighting force. You can also get to know them, understand their drives and traumas, their wishes and loves, and maybe, play matchmaker too.

It turns out, letting you guide and experience the lives of these teens and young adults in school only makes it that much more moving and powerful when they're sent off to war. Each of the three houses has its own storyline that reveals a piece of the grand puzzle, resulting in a behemoth of a game that benefits from seeing all points of view, eventually.

But of course, I have my allegiance. The Red Eagles wouldn't seem a likely pick for me, as my own anti-imperial and egalitarian political views don't mesh well with the red-and-black wearing Empire. But, I liked Edelgard and her friends the most, simple as that. Having finished her campaign, now I understand why she'd want to unite the world under her imperial banner, and I even helped her do it.

4. Life is Strange: Before the Storm

Genre: Sad gay teens in love have the most intense 3 days. Really, just the most intense.

Note: Despite how much I love this game, I have to mention that it was developed during the Voice Actors' Strike, and therefore the voice acting in this game (while often quite good) was done by strikebreakers. That's...not great.

Two years after Dontnod Entertainment's story game Life is Strange was released to a huge cult-following, the game's publisher, Square Enix, released a prequel. It was made by a different company entirely, Deck Nine, and covered a spot in the original game's backstory that didn't seem all that interesting or necessary. It would have none of the, well, strange-ness of the original game's premise, and it's status as a prequel meant that it couldn't really change the story too much.

I'd heard of the upcoming new game, and since I loved the first one, I decided I'd give it a shot. It couldn't be that bad, right?

Turns out, it became one of my favorite games ever.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm tells the story of Chloe Price, a sixteen year old girl living in a small town in Oregon, feeling abandoned by her former best friend and still reeling over her father's death. She spends her time getting high, watching Blade Runner, sneaking away to see punk shows in abandoned old mills, and finding new ways to insult her mother's new boyfriend. That is, until she strikes up an unexpected relationship with the school's resident cool kid, Rachel Amber. Over the next few days, the two grow close as they get pulled into an intense web of crime and lies. The mystery plot is intriguing, but the strength of the story lies in the often painfully honest and complex characters and relationship of Chloe and Rachel, both of whom are rich characters.

The best moments, the ones that had me in tears, or restlessly pacing back and forth, or staring with a big stupid grin on my face; all of them stem from the characters, and from that all-too-familiar feeling of being young and in love and dealing with darkness, both internal and external.

LiS: BtS is probably my favorite example of a prequel done right, and in many ways (the facial animations, lip-syncing, dialogue, etc.) is an improvement on the original. I hope that Deck Nine make something else, whether or not it's set in this universe I love so much.

3. The Last of Us

Genre: You know, the genre where a grizzled "dad" protects a strong-willed "daughter" in the face of a grim, fungus-zombie apocalypse? That one.

We're obsessed with the apocalypse. When society inevitably falls apart, the ugly, violent truth of humanity will reveal itself. We'll be fighting each other, stealing from each other, killing each other, maybe even eating each other. Survival will take priority over everything else, forcing those left behind to make the difficult, harsh decisions, most of which will be decided with blade and gun and fist. Or at least, that's the vision that our post-apocalyptic literature would have us believe in.

I think this genre often paints too bleak a portrait of individual people, who are often good even, and perhaps especially during, disasters and collapses. We've perhaps exhausted this vein of fiction, at least for a good, long while.

But I think there still exists a place for this kind of fiction, despite its current over-saturation. To me, The Last of Us is the best of this genre. It's beautiful, grim, harrowing, genuinely scary, and exhilarating to play, though none of that would matter if not for its central two characters of Joel and Ellie. Joel and Ellie have both lost most of what they've loved in the world, and the bond they form while going through hell is a powerful emotional anchor in which to ground the gameplay of murder, exploration, and bleak survival.

The game oscillates between beautiful vistas of overgrown cities, snowy forests, sunsets and small precious moments of human connection, and pure horror, violence, hatred, and desperation. It goes to some dark places, and it's hard not to imagine that most of the moments of goodness in the story are there just to lead straight into despair.

But then the game pulls back from the brink, if only a little, to show us how humans can't help but connect to each other, can't help but try to save each other, even if we're all at odds with each other because of it. We might be done with this kind of genre, at least for awhile, but that's in large part because it's already been done so well with The Last of Us. The game's getting a sequel next summer; I hope it's good, but it's ultimately not necessary. The ending of The Last of Us is already perfect.

2. Mass Effect 2

Genre: Big epic space opera - the middle one

Mass Effect 3 may bring the story to its close, but Mass Effect 2 is the best of the trilogy. It strikes the perfect balance between tactical RPG elements (stronger in ME1) and action game elements (stronger in ME3). Its characters are the most unique and fleshed out: lab-grown “perfect” human Miranda, struggling with her place in the world, eccentric, principled, yet guilty doctor Mordin, the soulful, dying assassin with perfect memory Thane, the tortured orphan and rebel Jack, the warrior monk Samara, and as always, the Mass Effect trilogy’s greatest character, everyone’s alien space boyfriend Garrus Vakarian.

Mass Effect 2 just works on every level. The combat is loads of fun, whether you’re crouching behind barriers and lobbing psycho-lightning bolts, turning invisible to snipe enemies from a distance, or just barreling straight ahead guns-blazing. Each character has their own arc, and their own variations on a relationship with Shepard. Each mission builds on the sense of time-ticking importance, as the mysterious Collectors continue to abduct innocents and destroy cities. The enigmatic Illusive Man gives you orders from on high, while old friends and allies don’t know if they should believe Shepard, kill them, or fight beside them. And the game’s final mission - the Suicide Mission - is a masterclass in epic finales, in which who lives and who dies is determined by knowing your squad, both as people and as fighters, and assigning them to the right job at the right time.

There’s never been a game that marries story and action so well since Mass Effect 2. Its characters are some of my favorites in fiction. Its gameplay remains fun and near-perfect even now. Its legacy has already been cemented in the world of gaming. It may just be the best second installment of...well, any trilogy? Maybe I’m throwing in too much hyperbole. But Mass Effect 2 means a whole lot to me, and for a long time, was my easy pick for favorite game of the decade.

Until...

1. Life is Strange

Genre: Difficult Moral Dilemmas, the Game

If you know me well in real life, you'll know that I can't shut up about Life is Strange. I've slowly chipped away at a fanfiction based on this game for 2 years (it'll be done in January!), I have art of it covering my walls, I've woken up in tears thinking about it, and I'll evangelize about it every chance I get at parties. Rarely does a fictional story lodge itself into my heart and my mind like this one did, and I know it's already assured itself a place in my own canon of favorites. Throughout 2015, indie French developer Dontnod Entertainment released Life is Strange, a story game broken into five separate episodes. It tells the story of Max Caulfield, a young woman who's recently returned to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, OR to attend a prestigious art school for her photography. One seemingly normal day in October, while in the girls' bathroom, she witnesses the school's resident rich kid murder a mysterious girl. Max reaches out in anguish and confusion, only to realize she has the ability to rewind time. She saves the girl, and soon realizes that it's her old childhood best friend, Chloe Price. Over the course of a week, Max and Chloe reconnect (and fall in love?) while trying to solve the twin mysteries of Max's strange powers and the disappearance of Chloe's friend Rachel Amber. Like other interactive story-based games on this list, most of what makes Life is Strange great is the story and characters, and the difficult decisions Max - and therefore you - is forced to make. Unlike most of the other games of this kind, here you can sit and stew with decisions. There's no timer; after all, you can always rewind time. Max can make a tough choice, then rewind to see how the other choice is received, but if she leaves the scene and more time passes, that choice is set in stone. But rather than make the process of choosing easier, the ability to keep rewinding in the immediate aftermath of a decision makes things all the more unsettled and ambiguous. Personally I'm very interested in the idea of multiple realities, of what-ifs and what-could-have-beens, both in my own life and in history writ large, and Life is Strange nails so well the feeling of indecision that comes with modern life. Life is Strange is far from a perfect game. The usual criticisms of the game aren't entirely unfounded: the animation isn't great (especially the lip-syncing), the dialogue often leans heavily into the sort of teen-speak that's more representative of teen fiction than actual teens, it wades into some tricky sensitive issues that aren't always handled perfectly, and the time powers nature of the whole plot lends itself to confusion and contradictions. I don't really deny these issues, but for me, the strengths of the game more than make up for them. The art style is evocative and beautiful, the voice acting is generally excellent, the characters are well-written and engaging, it deals with real-world issues earnestly, and the undefinable nature of the sci-fi/fantasy elements only adds to the compelling sense of mystery. Oh, and it consistently makes me weep like a baby. There's a lot more I can and will say about Life is Strange, particularly in a couple posts/essays I've been thinking about and that I hope to publish this year. There's something in here about the nature of Difficult Moral Dilemmas in fiction and games, and a more personal essay about what this story meant to me, playing it for the first time over the course of two weeks, alone in my family's beach house, in the weeks immediately after the gut-punch that was Trump's election. Stay tuned for at least those two essays...if not...more...in 2020.

But 3 years after playing this game for the first time (and after about 2 more playthroughs, plus watching Jane play through the game just a few months ago), I'm still not tired of it. It's the perfect whirlwind of my favorite fictional tropes, motifs, and topics: small towns with weird mysteries, the agonizing difficulty of big choices, teen melodrama, romance, guilt and grief, time travel, whales, and coming of age stories. Its incredibly divisive and difficult final decision leaves me a wreck every time I think about it, and the mysteries still left dangling keep me coming back. Max and Chloe are two of my favorite characters ever now, and I'll always remember these last few years as being the time when Life is Strange (both this game and its series) took over my thoughts and my creativity.

There's no other game that meant as much to me this decade. Maybe ever.

Honorable Mentions:

• Disco Elysium

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

• Night in the Woods

• Bastion

• Kentucky Route Zero

• Tales from the Borderlands

• XCOM 2

• Titanfall 2

• Vampyr

• The Wolf Among Us