Top 50 Video Games Of The 2010s | #1: The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

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1. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

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There was never another option. This is not just the greatest video game of this decade; it's one of the greatest pieces of digital media ever created.

Miyamoto conceptualized the original The Legend Of Zelda in 1987. He was inspired by his childhood treks through the woods outside Kyoto and the childlike sense of adventure that they invoked. Though he was limited by the NES' hardware, he and his team made a game that was a turning point in gaming itself. People saw for the first time that a video game could be a grand, sprawling adventure, and not necessarily a linear one.

Breath Of The Wild is the original The Legend Of Zelda untethered. It's a visit back to the original 1987 vision of Hyrule, but instead of much of the imagery and adventure having to come from the player's imagination, it's now presented in full life. We can visit the sweltering Gerudo desert, or the rainy forests and plains that surround Lake Hylia, or the snowy peaks where the Ruto live, or the scorched, volcanic Death Mountain, all in immense detail and without any loading screens. Hyrule extends in every direction that surrounds you, and as long as you have the stamina, the clothing, and sometimes the weapons, you can go anywhere you can see.

It is that exact feeling that truly recalls the first game in this series. When you boot The Legend Of Zelda, you're presented with a short prompt that tells you that you have to recover eight pieces of something called the Triforce that were stolen by an evil entity named Ganon. You're then placed in South Hyrule, and that's it. You just have to walk around and start investigating to see what's accessible.

Breath Of The Wild works almost exactly the same way. You awaken on a plateau in central Hyrule and have to start walking around to collect and investigate. You're obviously given significantly more prompting than in the original game, but the spirit of adventure is maintained. By the time you complete your initial objectives, you absolutely cannot wait to get out and see what else is in this land.

Your first few objectives also serve as a tutorial for Link's toolkit, which is brilliant in its simplicity and versatility. You're given the ability to produce two different kinds of bombs, to attract and retract metallic objects, to briefly freeze objects in place, to grow ice blocks in water, and to paraglide. Mastering each of them is essential to your success in the game's challenges.

Speaking of the challenges, they are numerous. I have over 150 hours in this game and I feel like I'm nowhere close to completing all that it has to offer. I'm not sure that I ever will, either, as you can only run one save file at a time without making a second profile on your Switch (and if I had one lone complaint about this game, that would be it).

The main quest tasks you with toppling four ancient beasts, each of which culminates in a thematically-related bossfight. Doing so will make your final task - defeating Calamity Ganon - a less daunting task. In the true spirit of the free-will nature of this game, though, you don't even have to do that if you don't want to. That's right, if you're feeling extra froggy, you can head straight for Hyrule Castle immediately after leaving the plateau and see how you fare against the beast himself.

There are also 120 mini-dungeons called shrines throughout Hyrule, each of which is either a puzzle for you to solve, a battle with enemies, or both.

The guardian and boss enemies are somehow both organic and mechanical; it's honestly remarkable. They move with the durability of an insurmountable steel foe, yet they ooze with the primordial purple and black glowing muck that is their lifeblood, adorned across their frames in the aesthetic of everything else you see.

The art, dungeon design, and enemy design in this game are astounding. The aesthetic permeates literally everything you see, and yet it never makes things seem boring or repetitive in the slightest; rather it serves to guide you on your adventures, serving as a silent indicator that you're doing the right thing or doing the right way.

As I said when I wrote about Super Mario Odyssey, thinking about where this series goes from here is kind of strange, because this too feels like a culmination of 30 years of knowledge, skills, and design. Nintendo announced that a sequel is being developed, and that's fantastic, because I'm ready to spend more time in this version of Hyrule.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go put on my Hylian Hood.

Top 50 Video Games Of The 2010s | #2: Cuphead

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2. Cuphead

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Though it now stands alongside Dark Souls as a quick reference for something that is extremely difficult, Cuphead is so much more than that. It's a work of such brilliant precision that can only come from a very deep love and understanding of the very essence of video games.

Cuphead and his pal Mugman get into a big heap of trouble when a risky gamble finds them endebted to none other than Satan himself, who agrees to release his vendetta on their souls if they'll take care of some collecting for him by defeating a series of bosses (who are, in my opinion, presented as normal people, animals, or beings that have been possessed by evil).

The setup sounds simple enough, but - in case you have somehow never heard of this game - that is obviously absolutely not the case. This is a gamer's game; a test of precision platforming and muscle memory that will stretch your abilities to their absolute limits.

You're only allowed three hits per boss fight, and considering that most go on for at least a solid two minutes of action, that is no small task. The various fight settings and enemy abilities will test your skills in all the classic platforming maneuvers: Jumps, double jumps, dashes, projectiles (both firing and dodging), ducks, and dodges, just to name a few. Imagine having to play through the most difficult sections of the hardest Mega Man, Donkey Kong, Super Mario, and Gradius games, and you start to form the tapestry that is Cuphead.

And the ART, my goodness THE ART! Lovingly hand drawn with so much personality and character given to every single entity on the screen. Every time you play, you'll spot something new in the background, on enemies, and even on yourself as you complete various objectives. It's all absolutely stunning.

Complementing it is the equally incredible soundtrack, which was recorded with a real live big band!

The entire experience is just so unbelievably unique and just so damn fun. It's one of the hardest games you'll ever play, yes, but it's the kind of hard that makes you okay with 500 deaths to get one knockout.

Absolutely recommended without qualification of any kind. All gamers must experience Cuphead.

Top 50 Video Games Of The 2010s | #3: Friday The 13th: The Game

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3. Friday The 13th: The Game

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Other than Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I have never gotten into an online multiplayer game. They always seemed so toxic based on comments from friends who did play them, and I'm certainly below whatever gaming skill threshold exists above which people won't grief you when you screw up (if such a threshold even exists), and frankly I'm very fragile and just thought it was best I avoid it altogether.

I have no idea why I decided to give this game a crack. Actually, that's not true; I do know: It had been out for a few months and was half price in a Steam sale, and I love love love horror films and '80s aesthetics, so I figured if it was totally miserable that I would just move on after a few matches.

I was completely unprepared for how fun this game would be, how much I'd enjoy playing it, how much I'd want to play it, and actually meeting some cool people who also play it.

So here's how this works: A single match may last up to 20 minutes and consists of a maximum of eight players. Seven players are camp counselors, and one is Jason Voorhees. The counselors' objective is to escape, and Jason's objective is to kill all the counselors.

Counselors work toward escape by repairing various objectives. You might try to get a battery, gas, and keys to a car, for example, and then drive yourself and a handful of passenger counselors out of the camp. You might try to repair a phone and alert the police, then safely make it to them once they arrive. You might try to repair a boat and then safely speed away from the camp.

Most of this legwork is done in cabins placed around the camp, searching through various desks and chests of drawers looking for car keys, the phone box fuse, or other helpful items that may help temporarily fend off Jason.

And you must look very carefully, because some of the key repair items are found in various spots on the floors of the cabins and they can be easily missed if you aren't paying close attention.

Meanwhile, Jason is using a toolkit of supernatural abilities to hunt your asses down, including teleporting around the map, zipping around invincibly at high speed for a short time, and "sensing," which makes all nearby counselors glow bright red.

And as would be fair and expected in a 7-vs-1 situation, Jason is a heck of lot more powerful than the counselors, so once he catches up to you, your odds of survival are not great.

If you're thinking by now "Well it seems like the best thing to do if you're a counselor would be work with the other counselors, right?" Yeah! You're right! And one thing I've loved about this game is that even if there are people acting weird or straight-up cheating in matches here and there, most people who play this game also want to survive the night and work together. I've run into my share of griefing assholes, sure, but I've run into far more people who helpfully tell you what cabins they've already searched, or notice that you're playing as a weaker/slower character and will run objectives for you so you don't have to endanger yourself. I've also run into people who were very clearly new, and they have almost always been willing to listen and learn and stick with me so we can make it out together.

From a fanboy perspective, the attention to detail put into the maps is astounding. They're all based on the real settings of the first six movies, and the creators went to great lengths to study them and translate them to this game. It never felt like authenticity had to be sacrificed for playability, either, which is a true testament to how correct they got it.

You also have a slew of Jasons and counselors to play as, each with different stats and abilities and customizations, which really makes the gameplay varied and continuously fun. For example, the friends that I play with know that I like to play as Deborah and AJ, who are both very slow and weak but with very high stealth and repair abilities, so they often play as faster, heartier characters so that we complement each other in useful ways.

Tommy Jarvis is here too! By completing an objective on the map that calls him, one of the first two players to die will return as Tommy, who has maxed out stats and is supposed to help the other counselors escape. If you're feeling particularly confident, he is also the only path to killing Jason, which involves the risky process of finding Jason's cabin hidden somewhere on the map, having a girl counselor grab and wear his mom's sweater, pummeling him with the game's weak weapons enough times to remove his mask, then using the sweater to stun him, and having Tommy finish him off with either an axe or a machete. I've only pulled this off with others a handful of times, but boy does it feel amazing when you do.

I've had countless hours of fun in this game over the last year and a half, and also make a couple of great friends in-game (Hi Jayce! Hi Josh!). It's a shame that an ongoing legal battle kinda halted things in their tracks, because I think the momentum would otherwise still be churning. It still received a Switch port, and the game is still active, so I guess I'll just keep playing and holding out hope that the lawsuit gets resolved.

Top 50 Video Games Of The 2010s | #4: The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter

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4. The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter

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This will be a difficult entry for a couple of reasons. First, this game was a gut punch to me, and revisiting it will no doubt reawaken some of those feelings. More importantly, though, I want to be able to write about it without censoring myself, but spoiling this game's plot for someone would be a horrendous thing for me to do, so I've decided to split this entry into two sections. I will write my initial thoughts completely without any plot spoilers (nothing that wouldn't be found in the game's description on Steam, let's say), and then I'll clearly mark where you should stop reading if you haven't played it yet.

And if you haven't played it yet, go do that right now. As of this writing, Steam's Winter Sale is happening, and this game is a whopping $1.99.

The most notable thing about this game is that you are given almost zero exposition or instruction. It really counts on you to do the legwork of exploring and investigating in order to figure out how to proceed. Upon launch, through some self-narration you learn that you are a paranormal investigator named Paul Prospero, and that you've received a disturbing letter from a 12-year-old boy named Ethan Carter. You apparently found it upsetting enough to travel to the small mining town in Wisconsin where Ethan lives to try to help him.

And...that's it. That's all the instruction you get. It's then up to you to walk around this town and begin inspecting the things you find in order to trigger more exposition and explain more of the story. My favorite mechanic in the game occurs a handful of times when you find the scene of an important event, and suddenly various stages of the event appear around the area, and you must walk around numbering them in the order that they must have happened.

This is where you should stop reading if you haven't already played this game. It's a unique experience, and one that you should not spoil for yourself needlessly by reading any further in this entry or elsewhere about the game before playing it. It's finishable in a single day, so pick it up and you'll have something to do on your next day off.

SPOILERS BELOW HERE!

STOP READING NOW!

REALLY, I MEAN IT!

Seriously, go play the game. Don't be that person. It's $1.99.

You've been warned!

It becomes evident very quickly that very bad things have happened in this place. Adding to the unease of being in a strange place and encountering bloody scenes, there seems to be no other people at all in this town. The houses are all rickety and abandoned. The train station is broken down, even though you seemed to arrive by train, as you began the game in a train tunnel at the edge of town.

As you uncover more of the story, it seems Ethan's family believed in a dark being called The Sleeper. They blamed Ethan for awakening it, and decided that sacrificing him would appease it. His grandfather appeared to empathize with Ethan and even helped him fend off an attack from his brother, but ended up turning on him, his final plan seemingly being to sacrifice both of them to destroy the Sleeper.

All of this, however, turns out to have been one big garden path. There is no Sleeper, no cultish family: Just a very lonely boy whose family neglected and emotionally abused him, which he dealt with by writing elaborate stories, including the adventures of a paranormal investigator named Paul Propsero. While hiding in the room of an abandoned house where he went to escape from his family, Ethan became trapped in an accidental fire. The events of the game take place in the moments before his death; he called on you, the player, to comfort him as he died.

There can be beauty in tragedy, and this game finds that sweet spot. I was so shaken by the ending that even thinking about it today gives me chills. It's so painfully, deeply sad, and it makes you wonder how many Ethan Carters there are out there now who are just lonely, misunderstood, different, creative people who are stuck in unwelcoming environments. There is a lesson in empathy there which all us humans would do good to remember and pass along to others.

Top 50 Video Games Of The 2010s | #5: Portal 2

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5. Portal 2

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As I mentioned earlier in this series, you'd be hard pressed to find any gamer who'd disagree that Portal is one of the greatest and most important video games ever made. A sequel was, thus, a very risky undertaking, but I don't think anybody doubted that Valve would deliver, and they absolutely did.

Portal is iconic for subverting the player's expectations at what they believe to be the end of the game, the big reveal being that it's actually the halfway point, and that you then must step behind the curtain to make it through the second half of the game. Portal 2 kind of succeeds in pulling this off again, finding a new way to throw you behind the scenes.

You begin by waking up in a dilapidated version of the Aperture Science facility that you knew, having been in stasis for an indeterminate amount of time. You begin getting guidance from a friendly little ball named Wheatley (voiced brilliantly by Stephen Merchant), who guides you through the broken-down testing chambers through to the central control area so that you may rendezvous with your old friend GLaDOS.

A turn of events suddenly sends you and your archnemesis tumbling down a long shaft, into the belly of the abandoned salt mine upon which the facility was constructed many years ago by eccentric bizarreionare (I just invented that word!!!) Cave Johnson. That's the only bit of backstory that you're spoonfed, but if you take the time to look around the rooms that you encounter, you can learn more about Aperture Science's origins.

There wouldn't be much point in a sequel without introducing some new mechanics, of course! There's a reversible beam that will carry you across dangerous pits and in and out of portals at its end. There's a light bridge that can be sent through portals. And there's gel! Three colors of it, in fact, all of which do different things, leading to some fantastic puzzles that make you lay out the various goops in ways that allow them to play off of each other.

Portal 2 is an absolute slam dunk. If you loved the first one (and I don't know how you possibly could not), you will love this one too. I would eventually love to see these characters in a third installment of this story, but I'm glad that Valve takes their time with this series, because the puzzle mechanics themselves lead to infinite room possibilities, and in the hands of a lesser developer that would no doubt have led to a series of shovelware Portal titles. That shows how much they care about and respect this series.

I must also mention the co-op story mode, which is as fantastic as the single-player campaign. Grab a friend and play through it!

Top 50 Video Games Of The 2010s | #6: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

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6. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

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Believe it or not, this is the first game in the Smash series that I ever bought. I played it a handful of times throughout high school and college at friends' houses and sleepovers, but I never really understood the grammar and mechanics of the game, and with my exposure to it being limited to those specific instances and my not making any effort to learn how it worked, I just never had any interest in it. I was a Mortal Kombat kid anyway; I understood the concept of button combinations to fire off special moves, and didn't understand Smash's bizarre setup of having only one attack button.

Something clicked, though, when SSB Ultimate was announced. Having become a much more focused gamer as an adult, and having close friends who also got excited about gaming, the prospect of playing 8-player Smash with friends and having a 70+ character roster to unlock and master had me positively foaming at the mouth. I was all in on the hype.

Sakurai himself noted that this series is - at its core - about collaboration, the joining of universes in whimsical and exciting ways. And with the introduction of more and more beloved characters all in this one place, he's remained true to that mantra. I mean where the hell else will you ever get the chance to send metal King K Rool flying into a Super Mario Galaxy star with a swift kick delivered by Isabelle from Animal Crossing?

And believe you me: The loudest noise that has ever emanated from my apartment was when that jiggy flew across the screen during a certain Nintendo Direct.

I'm not even sure how many hours I've clocked in SSB Ultimate at this point, but I'd guess it's over the 200 mark. I love playing the Spirit Board and trying to collect all 1,300+ spirits. The single-player World Of Light mode was a gargantuan blast of a challenge. And (once you get a hard-wired ethernet adapter for your Switch) the online play is great too!

I feel so happy that I finally get Smash. I actually took the time to learn its mechanics and quirks, and even though I'm still a very novice player, I always always always have fun with it.

Top 50 Video Games Of The 2010s | #7: The Binding Of Isaac

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7. The Binding Of Isaac

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Alternate title: Mommy Issues: The Game.

Meet Isaac. His relationship with his mother could be described as less than ideal. She is a fan of a nondescript brand of dogmatic christianity (but it's probably Catholicism), and not much of a fan of anything else, including Isaac. One day, she decides that her god has commanded her to kill Isaac, so he runs into the basement to escape from her, and that's where your game begins.

This was the first roguelike I ever played. If you're unfamiliar with that term, it derives from the early-'80s ASCII-character terminal game Rogue (which you can play for free here), a game that uses procedural generation rather than static level design to introduce a random element into the game and - though it almost certainly wasn't the developer's intention - up its replay value.

This means that Isaac's levels are different with each play (or "run"), so memorizing layouts is not really a required skill. Instead, you must fire Isaac's tears in twin-stick shooter fashion at swaths of gross enemies as you battle through each level of the cellar and the Earth below it, facing bosses of increasing strength and grotesqueness with each further descent.

Yes, that is a blob monster made of blood, nondescript organs, and shit.

Your final stop (at first, anyway) is, of course, a showdown with mom, who appears only as a stomping cellulitic leg with varicose veins.

If you're a fan of the 2D top-down entries in the Zelda series, you'll feel mostly at home with the physics and general grammar here, even if you aren't hunting for specific treasures and the shooting is straight out of Robotron 2084.

There is also Greed Mode, which is a boss-rush style version that tosses increasingly tough swarms of enemies your way while occasionally giving you time to breathe and purchase upgrades.

I loved this game enough to buy it on three different platforms, so I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys roguelikes and can stomach all the blech.