The years of 2010 to 2019 were some of my most important in terms of growth—becoming an adult, moving, entering a serious relationship, figuring out what kind of job helps me find a balance between passion and paying the bills. Through all of this, I’ve been playing video games on a regular basis. Here were the games that made lasting impressions on me, whether it was because they were beautiful, they were fun, or they were simply a piece of art I needed at that moment in my life.
1) Splatoon (1 and 2)
It’d be a huge error on my part not to list the new series of the decade that has completely changed how I play games. Splatoon also reflects parts of my working life because of when it came out. I was working at E3 during the announcement trailer for the series, and I was absolutely enamored from the start. There is something magical about being at E3, in a crowd of people, when something completely new from one of your favorite publishers is released, and it’s hitting everything on your checklist—as well as making you interested in a genre you never thought you’d like.
Splatoon is Nintendo’s foray into online shooters, and it quickly became my number one in the genre (which I suppose wasn’t hard, considering I barely play online multiplayer games at all, but it is still my favorite). You play as Inklings (or Octolings, as introduced in Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion) and compete for the most turf covered in your team’s ink color. At the end of the three-minute match, the judge (a cat!) announces the winner. Cute music plays, the player characters dance around happily, and it’s all-around a good time.
The first game launched only with Turf War, but it wasn’t long before a competitive mode was added, which at the time only had one style of match: Splat Zones, a sort of Turf War battle, but focused on much smaller zones for teams to control. Initially, Splatoon competitive stressed me out, and I went back to having fun in Turf War and not stressing out over my wins. I can’t remember what got me to try competitive again, but once I finally went back with an open mind and could see myself clearly improving every week I practiced, I understood why people love competitive online gaming. To think that Nintendo of all companies would help me see that.
Fast forward to 2019, and I’m still playing Splatoon 2. It’s one of my favorite games, and I’ve streamed it on Twitch a lot this year, which has led me to making many more friends on Twitch and in the Splatoon community. I hit X-rank this year (the top online ranking level), and a part of that was thanks to everyone I met on Twitch, who helped me learn and practice!
2) Tales of Berseria
Two things immediately come to mind for me about Tales of Berseria—beyond it being a genuinely fun game.
First, Velvet’s journey reflects what a lot of women have had to go through, especially when the #MeToo campaign started. When we see Velvet Crowe at the beginning of the game, she’s a cheery young woman (who has already gone through some hardship) who lives outside of a village and is helping take care of her younger brother. Her brother-in-law comes to visit sometimes, but he’s often busy with heroic work.
Fast forward and we find Velvet in a prison cell, isolated from everyone, as her brother-in-law tries to persuade her that she’s an evil demon. When she escapes, she discovers he’s being treated as a “Shepard” figure.
We play Velvet as “the bad guy,” and she doesn’t fit the image of a “perfect victim,” and that’s the point—a man who hurt her is publicly celebrated for his good deeds, and because of his public persona and Velvet’s status as a daemon, people assume she’s in the wrong.
That includes Eleanor, a character I’ve cosplayed.
And that also brings me to the next thing that comes to mind.
Tales of Berseria was announced at a time when I was incredibly defensive about how women were portrayed in media, particularly in terms of sexualization and objectification. When I first saw Velvet, I expected the worst, and I got into fights online over it (hey, 2015 was still an embarrassing time for me on Tumblr). That resulted in a cosplay acquaintance and I having an explosive fight (partially fueled by unrelated external matters that are too messy to get into publicly), and we had a falling out. As 2016 went on and we got to see more information about the game and the characters, I was warming up to Velvet more and interested to see how the game would portray her hinted-at character arc. By early 2017 when the game had just come out in English, this acquaintance and I reconnected, apologized for our actions, and got excited to cosplay from Berseria together! I think I was a bit like Eleanor in 2015 and jumping to conclusions based on a knee-jerk reaction, and I matured once I learned to listen to others.
But also, it’s just a fun game!
3) The Dragon Age series
Dragon Age: Origins, the first of BioWare’s fantasy series, found its way into my friend circle in 2011, and I latched onto it when I saw it. It was one of my first Western-style RPGs with an emphasis on customization and your own made-up character. In Origins, you choose from one of a few pre-written paths that serve as your character’s origin story before you get into the rest of the plot. I’ve played it twice—once as a poor city elf and once as a magic user in the Circle Tower. BioWare writes characters well, and the relationships have only gotten better with each installment.
Dragon Age II was overall a very fun game for me (the writing made up for the reused environments), and it was fun to go from a huge overworld to a bustling city (and then back to an even bigger overworld in the third game). I was a snarky magic elf who used Intimidate in every situation I could.
But what definitely impacted me the most in the series was Inquisition. This decade taught me that I love heartbreak and tragedy in fiction, so who better to romance than Solas?! Even though parts of Inquisition dragged on—feeling like padding for the sake of padding—the character banter, the feeling of naturally-forming relationships, and the chance to set things on fire once again delighted me for months in 2014-2015.
4) Journey
Playing Journey was like letting go of a breath I’d been holding onto for weeks.
In 2014, my mom died, and I spent weeks on my living room couch doing absolutely nothing, because I had no energy. I stayed in pajamas, I didn’t go out shopping, and I barely got any work done. On a rare day when I actually had enough motivation to start a game, I figured I’d try out thatgamecompany’s Journey, since I heard it was short, and I’d interviewed its composer, Austin Wintory, for a documentary I made as a part of a school assignment.
Journey is what you make of it. On its surface, the game is nothing more than the Hero’s Journey, but it has a funny way of reflecting your feelings and anxieties, if you choose to bring those to the experience. Because the game’s mechanics are largely unobtrusive, and the music is contemplative, it gives you space to work through what you’re feeling in the moment. For me, I felt alone.
When an ancestral-like figure appeared to urge me onward, I had a goal, and I had someone looking after me. If I were a spiritual person, I’d liken it to feeling like my mom was watching over me while I figured what to do with my life going forward. Regardless, by the end of the two hours, I put away the game with a sense of togetherness, knowing that I had people in my life who were still around who could help me keep going.
5) Animal Crossing: New Leaf
When I was graduating from college, I was navigating 1) having no idea what to do with my life and 2) a friendship what was falling apart. Thankfully—and I’m being completely serious—I could focus my mind on fictional chores and neighbors.
Once you’ve played a few Animal Crossing games, the gameplay loop starts to feel repetitive, but that doesn’t have to be bad. It’s nice to have a familiar game to turn to in unfamiliar times. I spent my lunch breaks at my summer job after graduation collecting and selling fruit, fetching items for villagers, and slowly paying off the debt on my house. As much as we rag on Tom Nook for his loan system, I gotta say that he’s a lot nicer than any of the student loan companies!
I was putting off sleep one night by playing New Leaf when I received a letter from Apollo, who told me I was a good friend and to disregard anything that people say otherwise. It was so silly, but I started crying. Since then, I’ve talked about Animal Crossing with lots of people who have similar sweet stories from their villagers, and I can’t help feeling like there is something magical about this series. I’m really looking forward to New Horizons in 2020.
6) Pokemon (Black and White, Black 2 and White 2, X and Y, Sun and Moon, Sword and Shield)
Pokemon is another comfy game series that just makes me feel at home. I’ve included all the games of the series in this decade as I’m talking about them in general terms, but I will note that I am currently in the Sword and Shield hype and have really enjoyed my experience with it.
I got into Pokemon far earlier—we’re talking, like, pre-2000. Every beginning of the latest Pokemon game gets me close to that feeling I had during all of Pokemon Blue, where everything was new and exciting. My parents once told me I probably wouldn’t like Pokemon as an adult as much as I did at the time. Joke’s on them, because I’m approaching 30 and absolutely loving it still!
Do I have critiques of the series now? Of course. I’d love to see them stray from the traditional Pokemon formula, despite me saying that I love how comfy the games make me feel in their familiarity. But the chance to have all my favorite cute Pokemon on my team while I’m exploring a new region never ceases to be enjoyable.
Also, a big shoutout to N from Pokemon Black and White for being one of my fictional crushes in college.
7) Sayonara Wild Hearts
My favorite new game of 2019 is a short indie game with a light plot, changing gameplay, and a killer soundtrack and visual aesthetic. There are motorcycles. There’s a sword, a bow and arrow, something that reminds me of magical girls, and the teddy girl subculture.
Just go into Sayonara Wild Hearts without knowing too much about it. The plot is there just enough as a premise. The game doesn’t tell you what to do—you figure it out (which is fun for some, not fun for others—I’m moreso in the latter camp, but I will note that the game is not punishing while you’re still figuring it out). All of the characters are cute, their outfits are amazing, and the different blends of electronic music make for a wonderful soundtrack late at night.
8) Undertale
Undertale took 2015 by storm. If you were online and in the games community, you couldn’t go anywhere without there being a discussion of Undertale. How could we not talk about it? The game’s charm was in both its celebration of old JRPGs as well as being an entirely new take on them. The “ACT” button in battles allowed the character to do things other than fight, and if you were playing a pacifist run, the game became more like a puzzle. It also borrowed from “bullet hell” games, in which the player must avoid an overwhelming number of projectiles. Because I had never played those games before, I struggled with some of the mechanics, but Undertale—for the most part, and when it broke from this, it did so intentionally—never felt downright mean.
Themes of kindness and love went even further with a moving soundtrack, composed by Toby Fox, who was also the game’s creator. Five years later, and people still talk about the leitmotifs found in Undertale and how Toby Fox used them to tell stories about the game’s characters.
At the end of the day, Undertale is one of the most cohesive game experiences I’ve ever had, filled with hilarious dialogue, touching melodies, and a subversion of classic tropes in video games.
9) Overwatch
Once I was feeling the online multiplayer itch thanks to Splatoon, I was more open-minded about playing other shooters, including first-person shooters, but I was still wary of most of the ones already out there, because their playerbases were overwhelmingly male and hostile toward women who didn’t fit their idea of a girl who was “just one of the guys.” With Overwatch’s colorful style and adorably spunky mascot of Tracer, I decided I was willing to give that game a shot.
I had a lot of fun in the early days of Overwatch. It wasn’t always sunshine and roses—I had plenty of encounters with those same sorts of guys I was concerned about—but I was having fun playing as lots of cute girls like the tank character D.Va and the healer Mercy. I loved playing support character Lucio, because his speed boosts helped me get back to my team when I was learning the game and dying a lot.
Is this one of the best games of this decade? I’d argue no—Blizzard’s priority on their competitive league and the lack of speed they showed in the middle of the game’s life cycle in addressing a playerbase that was harassing players with more frequency and vitriol led to me dropping the game for a long time. At this point, I enjoy watching Overwatch more than I do playing it, but it’s a game that I can enjoy in small bursts with friends, and it introduced me to a group of really friendly people on Twitch.
10) Persona 4
I played Persona 4 a little less than 10 years ago (it actually came out prior to this decade, but I’m including it here anyway!), and I still talk about it on a semi-frequent basis, so I think that’s a pretty genuine reason to include it here.
It’s one of those games that I think works best if you’re in your own coming of age (or can remember it well). I was a college freshman when I played through P4—a young adult, but someone who also understands very little and is still early on in a developmental stage of adulthood. The game’s theme is about truth, and while its main plot is concerned with a murder mystery, the day-to-day moments are about personal truths, and coming to terms with things about yourself you might prefer not to show others. With every character’s, “No, you’re not me!” cry at their shadow, a reflection of themselves they hide away, I felt a prompting to examine the not-so desirable aspects of my own personality. One of Persona 4’s aspects that’s well-liked by general audiences is how relatable at least one character feels to the player. Chie’s jealousy of her friend hit me pretty on the nose, as did Naoto’s relationship with gender (although I do wish that Atlus had taken the opportunity in their game to properly explore experiences being someone who is LGBT, considering how things were not any better in Persona 5).
While the game utterly failed in some social spaces (e.g. in using homosexuality as a punchline, the cross-dressing pageant is pretty cringey now), I have to give it recognition for being fairly noteworthy in the early part of the decade for raising a middle finger to societal expectations placed on kids and adults. So what if Kanji is a buff guy who loves making stuffed animals? So what if Naoto feels more comfortable in masculine clothes?
While Persona 4 doesn’t have a sad ending, I was heartbroken to see it come to a conclusion, just because I loved the cast of characters so much and didn’t want it to end.
Heading into 2020, I’m hoping not for necessarily bigger games, but I’d like more personal games as an alternative to the games as a service model. While my list of impactful games this decade overwhelmingly features games from big AAA publishers, I still played a lot of small, personal indie games (Cibele, Heaven Will Be Mine, Analogue: A Hate Story, We Know the Devil, Her Story, Night in the Woods, to name a few) that left an impression on me years later. I can only hope that we’ll be in a place where people feel financially secure enough to produce weird, unique art.
Note: I edited this post on Jan. 8, 2020 to include Undertale, which I had somehow forgotten to write about. I have removed the entry for Stardew Valley to make room, because as much as I enjoyed it, Undertale just had that much of a greater impact on me. The original post for Stardew Valley is below:
I spent a great deal of my 2018 beginnings in games streaming with Stardew Valley, and it carried into a part of 2019. It’s just one of those games I love to play when I want to chill and hang out with people in my chat. But beyond that, it really is a wonderful game to play, and I love how no two people have the exact Stardew Valley experience.
For me, I immediately decided who I wanted to marry, and that was Elliott, the writer who lives on the beach. How romantic! Also, he’s living my dream surviving off a writing career. Dang. As a result, I spent a lot of my first year in the game barely working on my farm; instead, I made “excuses” to go to the beach and fish while I waited for Elliott to leave his cabin so that I could say hi to him and give him a lobster I caught in a crab pot.
We’re happily married and have one kid, and I am actually spending more time working on the farm in Year 3.
