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ArbitraryWater

Internet man with questionable sense of priorities

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Some games that came out this console generation that I thought were pretty good (in a unordered manner)

I think the idea of an all encompassing "Game of the Generation" is really stupid. While I happily participated in the popularity contest that happened on the forums and and am more than willing to tell you dickbaskets exactly how much New Vegas is better than Fallout 3, I figure I may as well just throw out some games that I really enjoyed these past 8 or so years that also came out these past 8 or so years in an unordered manner where everyone gets a trophy and I don't have to deal with the stigma that comes from picking an obvious populist choice like Skyrim or Mass Effect 2 or an ironic hipster choice like your Gone Homes and whatnot.

If you think I've missed something, chances are it's probably slipped my mind. Feel free to remind me and I'll probably tell you "WHY WOULD THAT GAME EVER BE ON THIS LIST"

List items

  • Saints Row: The Third is a weird, self-aware cartoon of a video game. Which is why it is great.

  • While the original campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2 is a competent but unspectacular romp around the Sword Coast, Mask of the Betrayer is the weird, gloomy and thoughtful title I'd more expect from Obsidian. It doesn't really fix the problems I have with Neverwinter Nights as a game, but it's so well written I didn't even care.

  • It steals blatantly from Heroes of Might and Magic, but if the end result is something as well-made as this, I can't really complain.

  • Far Cry 3 is a big dumb island sandbox where you sneak up behind guys and shank them with your knife, then proceed to kill all of his friends by shooting open the lock of the tiger cage. Playing through the main story of Far Cry 3 is a great way to watch a good premise get continually squandered as it slowly drags itself to an inevitable, underwhelming conclusion. It also has one of the more reprehensible protagonists in recent memory, but the game itself is so fun I almost don't care!

  • Eador is the weird russian strategy game I've always wanted. Note that this is for Genesis, and not Master of the Broken World, because the latter is still buggy and sort of a mess in the way that russian-developed strategy games tend to be.

  • It may be hard to look back now without the stigma that now exists with the franchise, but Call of Duty 4 was friggin' great, both the campaign and the multiplayer.

  • And Modern Warfare 2 was also great. I guess.

  • Once again, screw the haters. It's no Devil May Cry 3, but I'd still rather play this angsty failed reboot than play through the half game that is Devil May Cry 4.

  • It's a RTS that isn't really a RTS, which is why I liked it.

  • I think Mount and Blade's singleplayer suffers from being TOO open, too sandboxy and too unstructured. I also think it's sort of dumb and great all at the same time. With Fire and Sword added muskets, to which I reply "EFF THAT NOISE"

  • Sure Brad Muir. I'll throw you a bone. Trenched was a pretty decent game. Don't know why it shows up as this "Iron Brigade" nonsense.

  • I dunno man. Dual stick shooters.

  • Hilariously enough, this is the only Fire Emblem game that can make this list. Radiant Dawn has some serious difficulty issues, and both of the DS installments are a little too bland for me to feel ok putting them on here.

  • When Bioware said "We're going to make a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate", I said "Sure, go for it" because it was before regular people hated Bioware and even mediocrity like Jade Empire got a pass. And it's sort of that! Sure, their fantasy world takes a few too many cues from George R.R. Martin without removing the generic fantasy stink, but when it comes to characters, pausing in combat to issue commands, and sort of grasping attempts at dark fantasy, this is the one to get.

  • Have I ever told you that it's a shame that there will never be a sequel to this game because Chair will be making Infinity Blade sequels for the rest of eternity? Because it is.

  • I like the way that SNK makes fighting games. This is one of those.

  • Borderlands 2 is a marginal improvement from the first game in pretty much all aspects, though its sense of humor is probably WORSE. As far as mindless first person shooting with looting is concerned, it still has yet to be matched... mostly because no one has bothered to imitate this style of game yet. Still enjoyed it.

  • My on-again, off-again addiction to League of Legends is probably partially responsible for the direction my grades went in school (i.e. Downward) I'll most likely keep on playing it for as long as I have people to play it with, so that's probably bad.

  • Given the (reasonable) stigma that revolves around licensed games, it's insane that Arkham Asylum is not only a good "one of those", but a great game in general.

  • I wouldn't be surprised if The Witcher 2 made it on to this list as well if I ever get around to playing it. While it's not necessarily the most polished RPG out there, The Witcher the first deals with choice and morality in a way that most games don't bother to touch (and unlike The Walking Dead, it's still a video game).

  • Ok fine, I'll put Fallout 3 on this list. ARE YOU HAPPY AMERICA?

  • Sure, this game is probably important... aside from the fact that it steals most of its ideas from its spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2.

  • Yeah, I feel no shame in saying that Bioshock Infinite will probably worm its way onto this year's GOTY list despite being the target of the tumblr pseudo-intellectual crowd for the last few months.

  • For all the love I give Fire Emblem, I think a lot of Japanese SRPGs are bloated, slow and grindy. Tactics Ogre is bloated and slow, not necessarily grindy, but I enjoyed it regardless for reasons yet unknown to me.

  • An exceptionally solid stealth game that avoids the problems of most stealth games by eliminating a plane of movement and making everything super binary. I'll still take Thief over this, but I'm not going to complain about another good stealth game in a genre without many.

  • Dude, I dunno. I like this game not so much for its fighting system (which seems totally solid in the way that ArkSys games are), but because it's Persona-related. Bite me.

  • The caveat here is "with expansions". While Civ V on its own is still a great way to flush your time down the toilet, its two expansions help that happen that much more willingly.

  • I'll start this list off right by saying "To hell with your console restrictions". Persona 3 FES came out in 2007 damnit, and that makes it a part of this generation, PS2 or no. Also, Persona 3 is a fantastic game and the only reason Persona 4 isn't on here too is because I never got very far in it despite watching all of the Endurance Run.

  • Dishonored succeeds where its Deus Ex-like contemporaries don't by being mechanically competent, which means that it's fun for a vast majority of the time and frustrating for less of the time. DLC is fantastic too.

  • While Mask of the Betrayer recently usurped New Vegas as my favorite Obsidian game, I think Fallout New Vegas is a much worthier follow-up to the old Black Isle games than Fallout 3 ever was. It's full of clever writing, great characters and some serious allowance for multiple playstyles. The trade-off is that it's a lot less open, but.... eh. Raw Open World Freedom is overrated.

  • The game that convinced me to ask for a Xbox 360 for christmas in 2007. While I don't think ME1 is Bioware's best game in any sense (I'd actually go as far as to call the gameplay and mechanics straight up BAD at certain points), it was still well worth playing, technical issues be damned. It also has the strongest 80s sci-fi aesthetic of the franchise, something that was drowned out with explosions later on.

  • I'll also break rules by throwing in multiple installments of the same franchises! Mass Effect 2 takes the RPG elements of the first game, throws them on the ground, stomps on their head a few times and spits on their grave for good measure. It's also a better game because of it. I'd rather have 3rd person shooting and linear vignettes than the uncharted planet nonsense and horrid inventory management of the first game.

  • Mass Effect 3 isn't half-bad either. It's still a weaker game than the other two, but I enjoyed it... Apart from its abysmal ending, that is. Also bonus points for having a multiplayer that went above my expectations and was actually something fun.

  • That doesn't necessarily apply to all franchises though. I liked the first Dead Space just fine, but I like the second one a lot more, mostly because I can shoot guys with harpoons and electrocute them. It's a pity that the third one is complete trash, but eh.

  • If Rare had to pick a game to go out on (well, before becoming a dessicated husk responsible for making Kinect games), they couldn't have picked a better one.

  • Maybe this one is a bit too recent, but to hell with it. Dragon's Dogma is such an awesome, weird, seriously flawed game that I can't help but include it.

  • I can attribute Super Street Fighter IV for my interest in fighting games, and while that has waned a bit as I realized exactly how much work it takes to get good at them,

  • Like, the only Wii game you're going to see on here, though maybe I'll put Mario Galaxy 2 in just for kicks. Seriously though, what else am I going to put? Super Paper Mario? Wii Sports? Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn? Ehhhh....

  • Dark Souls is sort of the polar opposite of everything that modern games represent. It's sadistic, inscrutable and more than a little unfriendly. But... at the same time, that's why it's so great.

  • Oblivion is responsible for changing the way I see games. Part of that simply boils down to the fact that I was 13 when it came out, but it's the first time I had seen video games work on this kind of scale. You may laugh now at its generic NPCs, bad combat and janky RPG mechanics, but I found it revelatory, and back in 2006 it really was. Unless you're one of those jerks who loves talking about how great Morrowind is because you had to walk everywhere at a snail's pace because "immersion bro". (Morrowind is actually totally fine)

  • AC2 took a great concept (the first Assassin's Creed) and turned it into a game one would want to play for more than 3 hours.

  • The only driving game that I put any sort of serious time into this generation, though that probably still has to do with the fact that I'm not a huge fan of driving games. Whatever. Burnout Paradise is awesome.

  • XCOM is a game that gives its proper nods to the originals without feeling constrained to follow them exactly (Hi Xenonauts!). To some extent, it is sort of a watered-down strategy game that compensates by being really effin' brutal on the harder difficulties, but to another it's a sensible, fun and accessible streamlining of the best turn based strategy game to feature aliens.

  • FTL is still awesome, even if its unlock system and final boss are more reliant upon the cruel dictates of fate than actual skill.

  • Screw y'all, Resident Evil 5 is alright by me. Wait, do I really even need to say that? It's no Resident Evil 4, but it's also no Resident Evil 6. Just sayin'.

  • Screw y'all. Dragon Age 2 is ok by me. A lot of that comes from the supporting cast, whom I consider to be some of the best in a Bioware game, aside from two stinkers, but its otherwise frustrating story becomes a lot more interesting if you take the interpretation that it's a deconstruction of the traditional RPG narrative where despite all of your efforts you are still the victim of forces outside of your control and your choices are naught but statements of intent. I'm not going to pretend it's a "GREAT" game though.

  • Portal is pretty good guys. The Cake is a Lie, am I right?

  • Heroes V doesn't get its fair shake with the generally bitter and delusional Might and Magic hardcore. Tribes of the East is what finally defined Heroes V as its own game, not just a 3D imitation of Heroes III.

  • I really need to start thinking up all of the great DS games that came out between late 2005 and now, because I know there are a lot even if some don't immediately come to mind. I'm not going to include any of the original Phoenix Wright trilogy because those are technically just GBA ports (and the other two DS Ace Attorney games aren't as good), so I'll go with the next best thing and say Ghost Trick. Because man, Ghost Trick is awesome.

  • Similarly, Skyrim wasn't quite the mindblowing thing that it seemed to be for some other people. It's a significant step up from Oblivion, both in terms of worldbuilding and mechanics, but not a fundamental one, and I still feel that some of its questlines are actually worse than their equivalents in TES IV (Dark Brotherhood comes to mind)

  • When I mentioned "Other Deus Ex-type games" up there in Dishonored, I was pretty much talking about Human Revolution, which is both a worthy sequel to Deus Ex and more than the sum of its admittedly mediocre parts.

  • The only Halo game that will make its way onto this list, and a lot of that has to simply do with how much time I spent with it (the answer: more than all the time I spent with the other Halo games combined) and the people I spent it with (friends, back in the days when a LAN party was the holy grail of interaction). It's also probably the best Halo game regardless. Reach is alright, 4 is alright, but they never quite grabbed me the same way. Time and place are everything.

  • They made a modern game that's like Eye of the Beholder, but playable by normal humans. Sold.

  • Even though Nintendo has managed to run this concept INTO THE GROUND, those first two New Super Mario Bros games are no joke.

  • Easily the best Murder Simulator/Music to be released last year.

  • The sequel to Portal, where instead of starting disastrous memes, J.K. Simmons rants to you about lemons. Even trade.

  • Everything I know about Mortal Kombat suggests it was bad far longer than it was good, given the dubious nature of its PS2-era installments and whatever the heck MK vs DC Universe was. This is a good fighting game that for once has a story mode that is sort of worth playing.

  • Yep. Two wii games on this list, and two wii games is all this list is going to get. Maybe if I had played Skyward Sword I'd be singing a different tune, but given the reception to that game...? Maybe not. I'm sorry. Wii Sports was fun for like a week (wiik) and Twilight Princess is technically a Gamecube game. Smash Bros? Ok sure. If I never got into real fighting games, Smash Bros would easily be on this list.

  • Castle Crashers is the sort of mindless, goofy brawler that made sense in 2008, back when XBLA was still relevant and Steam had not yet become all-powerful. It's also quite fun to play with friends!

  • To be fair, I like the ideas put forth in Frozen Synapse far more than I like actually playing it, because actually playing it is sort of daunting and insane.

  • This is sort of fudging it, since Dual Strike came out in 2005 before the 360 launched, but this is my list and I can do whatever I want. Dual Strike is the best Advance Wars game, and I won't let any Days of Ruin apologist say anything different.

  • While we're in the DS strategy neighborhood, I'd like to bring this game out as an example of an unappreciated gem. It pretty successfully translates most of Age of Empires II's concepts into a turn-based strategy game, so that's cool.

  • I'm going to guess that this game's presence on my list is conditionally based on the fact that I've never played the first Valkyria Chronicles because I (currently) don't own a Playstation 3. Even disregarding the incredibly obnoxious characters, inane plot and PSP technical limitations (there are like 8 maps that are repeated ad nauseum) I still enjoyed the heck out of this game, proving something or other about my tolerance for bad anime tropes in my vidja games.
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