So my good Twitter friend EscoBlades, a consultant over at Ubisoft, tweeted out a link to an article on Entertainment Weekly talking about the Top 10 Best Games of the Last Decade. So naturally I’m interested and want to check out what they listed. You see, EW is teaming up with Spike TV for this year’s Video Game Awards in choosing the game of the decade. But the thing is, some of these titles just seem odd to be on the list.
Spike TV/Entertainment Weekly's Nominees for Game of the Decade include:
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- Half-Life 2
- World of Warcraft
- Shadow of the Colossus
- Wii Sports
- BioShock
- Portal
- Mass Effect 2
- Red Dead Redemption
- Batman: Arkham City
Within their article they lay out what exactly went into creating their list:
In attempting to put together a list of the 10 best games of the last decade, the EW brain trust looked at games that pushed the medium forward. Some popular choices fell by the wayside — there are a lot of great games hovering at No. 11 on this list.
Even with that explanation, I’m a little confused. Mostly all of these titles deserve to be on this list. Batman: Arkham City basically showed us all what a comic book/super hero game should be. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft has continuously shown us what makes a good MMO.
When one looks and finds Red Dead Redemption on the list, it just leaves you a little perplexed. What exactly did that game do to push the medium? Whenever I ask someone to tell me what’s so great about Red Dead, they simply say “Because it’s basically Grand Theft Auto, but like in a Western setting with horses.” No seriously, I’ve heard way too many people describe the game like that. This is not saying Rockstar didn’t put out a great game with Red Dead, but I would most definitely put Grand Theft Auto IV on that list before that game.
There’s no mention of hit games like Call of Duty (any of them), Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Halo (any of them), Uncharted and countless other games. So what am I missing? How exactly is Wii Sports game of the decade? I would 100% say that the Wii console itself changed a lot of things in the industry. We all would have to agree that a PS Move or Xbox Kinect would not even be around if it wasn’t for the Wii console sparking the whole “movement based” games. But how did the Wii Sports game itself change things?
I will leave this to you, the readers. Do you agree with this list? What games do you think deserve to be considered for Game of the Decade?