It’s something of a futile effort to crown one game as the definitive best of the past decade. We at TN2 Magazine are choosing to take a different route with this idea. 

Games mean many different things to different people. For some, they’re a form of escapism. For others, they’re an exhilarating competition. Like other media, games can also have personal meanings to the people who play them. The past ten years have seen the medium mature more and more, and along with it, the players themselves. Here are our personal favourites from the 2010’s, along with the stories and memories they carry for us. 

 

Fallout 4 – Sean Clerkin (Games Editor)

 

Fallout 4 was announced ahead of E3 2015 at about 3pm Irish time. I know this because I nearly missed a 4pm job interview that day, because I simply had to see the trailer when it was released. For me, games are the best way to get lost in a world other than our own and this escapism began months ahead of the game’s November 2015 release date. I found myself intently reading the Fallout wiki for any information I didn’t already know about the game’s world. This made the game all the more engaging when I finally got my hands on it. I happened to be in the midst of a particularly stressful time in college. As a Science student, I would go to college early and come home late at night, in dire need of a way to wind down before doing it all again the next day. Fallout 4 was exactly the game I needed for this. Though it had the trademark bethesda bugs, a plot like a B-movie, and felt like it was made in 2007, simply inhabiting  in post-apocalyptic Boston for a little while every night was exactly the break from reality that I needed. As DLC was released, I kept going back to the game time after time and I still occasionally play it today. Fallout 4 played a non-trivial role in keeping me going through my time in university and for this reason, is my personal favourite game of the decade.  

Red Dead Redemption 2 – Daniel Antcliff (Contributor) 

After an eight year gap between Red Dead games, Red Dead Redemption 2 was worth the wait for me. The experience is incredibly deep, with painstaking detail put into the minutiae of RDR2’s frontier world. The game succeeds in portraying several different fictional U.S states during the 1880s in one environment, whilst taking inspiration from real-life locales. RDR2 boasts an enormous free-roam map, allowing players to travel from snow-capped mountaintops to open plains with nary a loading screen in sight.

An open-world game would be lacking without the immersive characters, stories and soundtrack that have made Rockstar famous. The fact that RDR2 is a prequel to 2010’s Red Dead Redemption meant that the studio not only had to juggle the backstories of characters that players already know, but that they also needed to keep things interesting and unpredictable. With the introduction of protagonist Arthur Morgan, I feel that they nailed this perfectly. Making an almost limitless amount of personal choices in the story made Arthur feel like a protagonist tailored to my own preferences. Incredible voice acting along with intuitive game design solidified Red Dead Redemption 2 as my Game of the Decade.

 

The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild – Sam Hayes

So often video games are defined by marketing that boasts what a given video game brings to the table. New features or improved graphics are some common examples. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is no exception with its physics engine and large world, I think what sets Breath of the Wild apart is what it says through subtraction. The game does away with the masses of quest markers that litter one’s map in games such as Assassins Creed in order to ask the player to pay more attention to the landscape after scaling a tower. The score is minimalist, using fragmented versions of recognizable tunes in order to create a more reflective and sombre atmosphere. This all ties into the game’s main themes of rediscovery, reflection and redemption. When I played Breath of the Wild I was studying for my Leaving Cert, and while I was restricted in my freedom I felt as though escaping to the kingdom of Hyrule I was swept away, freed and empowered.