PixlBit

As of January 1, 2020, we're entering a new decade in gaming (let's not go into pedantic debates about the.year zero here). It's hard to believe, it just seems like 2010, a time of Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, and Kinect, was just yesterday, and the world of the 2000s was still fresh in my mind.

The 2010s started out as kind of a lull for me. Brown-and-grey shooters and Kinect were the rage, there weren't a lot of the type of games I enjoyed, and most of those were confined to low-res handheld screens. Also, mobile stuff like Angry Birds and Clash of Clans seemed to be the talk of the town. But right now, I'm having more fun gaming than I've had since a kid. What a difference.a few years make.

2010: Started out with Bayonetta, one of Platinum Games' early Sega titles, which went on to become my favorite hack-and-slash of the genre created by Devil May Cry in 2002. Valkyria Chronicles II came out on PSP, which was disappointing as far as platform, but I was just glad to get another one. Yakuza 3 came out, barely. The year ended on a high note, however, with Fallout: New Vegas, which took everything good about Fallout 3 and mixed it with the RPG mechanics of Fallout 2, along with a lot of the story from the cancelled Van Buren prototype. FFXIII was a step down from XII and FFXIV was a disaster that thankfully got better. I finally got a much wanted English version of a Sakura Taisen game when NISA released So Long, My Love on PS2 and Wii.

GOTY: Fallout: New Vegas (PS3/360); runners-up: Sakura Wars: So Long My Love, Bayonetta

2011: Another meh year. Other than Skyward Sword, which was good but a decidedly weaker Zelda than Twilight Princess or Wind Waker, the only games that really kept my interest were Catherine, Yakuza 4, and a localization of the last untranslated Dragon Quest game, Dragon Quest VI. On the plus side, Namco decided to start releasing Tales games this year. But it was so dry at times that I thought about giving up on video games. On the plus side, Mortal Kombat made a big comeback, to the point where it's been consistently better than Street Fighter ever since. Unfortunately, MK came out right at the same time as the infamous PSN shutdown due to the massive hack that almost killed the PlayStation brand.

GOTY: Skyward Sword (Wii), runner-up: Mortal Kombat 9

2012: Things were looking up a little this year. Tales of Graces f was released, the Wii U came out. Also, Operation Rainfall finally bore fruit, as Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story made it out.

GOTY: Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii), runner-up: Tales of Graces f

2013: Two years ago, I was thinking of quitting gaming. This year, there were almost too many games to play. It was my favorite 7th gen year. The stand out was Ni no Kuni, a gorgeous Pokemon-eseque 3-D RPG from Level-5 (makers of Dragon Quest VIII), A Link to Between Worlds, sequel to A Link to the Past, Dragon's Crown, one of the best beat-em-ups I ever played, and Fire Emblem: Awakening, which resurrected that series and laid the groundwork for one of the most amazing games I've ever played. Tales of Xillia was a step forward for that series. There was also Bioshock: Infinite, which looked great, but a lot of things they grandly promised for years didn't make the cut in the final product. And The Last of Us, which was good but not quite my cup of tea. We also got a Virtual Console release of Earthbound. The PS4 and Xbox One came out, and I got a PS4. The PS4 and Xbox didn't have any real standout titles, but they promised to be better than PS3 and 360.

GOTY: Ni no Kuni (PS3); runners up: A Link Between Worlds, Tales of Xillia, Fire Emblem, Dragon's Crown

2014: The Wii U was faltering, but most of the games I played were on it. Bayonetta 2 was far and away my favorite, but I probably spent the most time with Mario Kart 8. I also played a lot of Hyrule Warriors and the remaster of Wind Waker.

GOTY: Bayonetta 2 (Wii U); runner-up: Mario Kart 8

2015: The PS4 started getting good. I got Mortal Kombat X, Tales of Zestiria, Final Fantasy Type-0. Fallout 4 came, and while I enjoyed the settlement-building, the actual RPG was a step down from New Vegas. It seemed a lot of Western franchises from last gen were stumbling in this gen. Meanwhile, Japanese games were on something of a comeback. Trails of Cold Steel was good. And then we finally got our dream of making our own Mario levels. I know The Witcher 3 was the big game this year, but I still haven't quite caught on. I'm thinking of giving it another shot on Switch.

This was also the year I moved to Baltimore for my job, which in retrospect turned out to be something I really regretted. It didn't go well, to put it mildly.

GOTY: Super Mario Maker (Wii U); runners-up: Fallout 4, MKX, Trails of Cold Steel

2016: Gaming continued to improve. The Wii U wound down, sadly, having sold poorly. The NX was around the corner. Final Fantasy XV came out, and was a great improvement over XIII, though not without its flaws. SNK was making a comeback with King of Fighterx XIV.  Doom brought that series back from the dead in style. Nintendo also re-released Twilight Princess, my favorite Zelda, for Wii U, and released Tokyo Mirage Sessions. 

GOTY: Final Fantasy XV (PS3); runners-up: TMS #FE, Twilight Princess HD, Doom

2017: The Switch came out and rapidly became one of my favorite systems of all time. Persona 5 signaled a much-welcomed return of RPGs to consoles after mostly being stuck on 3DS and Vita. I replayed Final Fantasy XII, one of my favorites from that series, and almost 100%ed it (still haven't beaten Yiazmat). On the Switch, there was Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Oh, and a little game called Breath of the Wild, which took me back to 1987 playing the original Zelda for the first time. What an amazing game. It reminded me of why Zelda is my favorite overall video game series.

GOTY: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch); runners-up: Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade Chronicles, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

2018: More RPG goodness on Switch, I finally got a home release of the arcade version of Donkey Kong, my favorite arcade game of all time, as well as a lot of other much-loved classics. Valkyria Chronicles 4 marked the return of one of my favorite game series of all time. Unfortunately, Bethesda screwed up Fallout 76 very badly.

GOTY: Valkyria Chronciles 4 (Switch); runners-up: Octopath Traveler, Ni no Kuni II

2019: This year saw the release of two of my favorite games of the entire generation. Fire Emblem: Three Houses did the impossible and supplanted Valkyria Chronicles as my favorite SRPG series. Even more amazing was Dragon Quest XI S on Switch, which took an already great game and made it into an absolutely content-stuffed beast of a game, it was pure RPG bliss. Nintendo launched a potential new IP with Platinum Games' Astral Chain. Link's Awakening got a beautiful new remake in 3-D on Switch, and it was a joy playing it again.

GOTY: Dragon Quest XI S (Switch); runners-up: Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Astral Chain, Link's Awakening

For a decade that started so "meh," the '10s ended on a great note, at least as far as gaming was concerned.

 

Game of the Decade Runners-up:

A series now more than 30 years old, rooted in tradition, yet Square Enix still managed to surpass itself. In addition to a huge world with likeable characters, the Switch version is stuffed with extra goodies like a 2-D mode and the fully orchestrated soundtrack. Easily the best traditional RPG of the decade.

In 2008, Sega released Valkyria Chronicles, my favorite game of the 7th generation, which redefined SRPGs for me. Fire Emblem: Three Houses did the impossible by establishing itself as my new standard for SRPGs. I thoroughly enjoyed both the story and combat portions of Three Houses, and the game looks very nice, thanks to the efforts of Koei Tecmo, who assisted Nintendo and Intelligent Systems in the production of Fire Emblem. I also really enjoyed the characters and got kind of attached to them, particularly the Black Eagles.

In addition to satisfying the craving for a console Pokemon, Ni no Kuni was important to me for two other reasons. First, it brought the talents of Studio Ghibli into the game space. Studio Ghibli has been conspicuously absent from video games, with the culprit being an ill-conceived 1980s video game adaptation of Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind that completely missed the point of the movie by turning it into a hack-and-slash, which upset Hayao Miyazaki a great deal. Secondly, to me it marked the beginning of a Japanese RPG renaissance. One of the things I disliked about the 360/PS3/Wii generation was that so many RPGs were confined to the low-resolution screens of the DS and the PSP. Most of this was economics, as Japanese developers had been blindsided by HD development costs, and Japanese gamers were increasingly turning to handhelds and mobile phones for gaming. Since neither the Wii nor the PS3 achieved the successes of the PS2, PS1, or Super Famicom (to say nothing of the Xbox 360's abysmal performance in Japan), Japanese developers turned to the portable market. Ni no Kuni did have a DS version, but thankfully we got the PS3 version, which still looks beautiful to this day. I even bought the Switch version of this game. Ni no Kuni heralded a return of Japanese RPG development to consoles, though arguably Persona 5 was a stronger influence in that area.

And my Game of the Decade, 2010s, is...

Breath of the Wild, simply put, was magnificent. Previously, my favorite Zelda was Twilight Princess, and while that game is still a masterpiece, BOTW is on a whole other level. One criticism I've had of recent Zeldas is that the overworlds have been very skimpy. They've mostly been tiny, empty space with a few locations, or basically long outdoor hallways. While these designs have mostly been used to good effect, I was despairing of ever getting a fully explorable world. But BotW is more than that. When I first played The Legend of Zelda back in 1987, my imagination had me in a huge 3-D world where if you could see it, you could explore it. Breath of the Wild is like that long-ago fantasy finally brought to life. And I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic works, and it was chilling seeing the last days of Hyrule in flashbacks. Plus, it was fun just playing with the physics engine. I didn't feel shepherded into another dungeon constantly. A lot of times I explored just for the sake of exploring. And Lynels were genuinely scary enemies. Hopefully Nintendo learns the lessons of BotW well in future games. BotW did something I didn't know was possible. It was a new high-water mark in gaming for me.