PixlBit

An imagined library of games I would have from the best of the 2010s. In order of rank on the Metacritic list for those years. 

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (#1) - I need to pick this up again. I certainly love the theme of the SMG games. I just have to power through all the challenges next time I play them. 

Mass Effect 2 (#6), ME3 (#23) - I recently played the trilogy all the way through. I enjoyed them all, so setting the second one highest doesn't really mean much to me. I'd play them again, maybe on Playstation this time. 

Bioshock Infinite (#15), B2 (#144) - I really enjoy replaying Infinite from time to time. I find the story a pretty pessimistic view of America around 1900, but not inacurate. Again, maybe next time I'll play it on a different system than Xbox. B2 is one I need to revisit because I've played it the least of the three. 

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (#16) - What a fantastic reimagining of Pac-Man. Would that every 80s hit arcade game would get this kind of attention. The DX version is interesting. I think I don't own this version. It's been called a remake and a sequel, so what is it? It does seem it's a improvement over the first game. 

Minecraft (#20) - I got into this on Xbox in 2011. I was dubious at first but subsequently Mad Krammer and I played probably a thousand or more hours into this over the next few years and beyond. Neither one of us are impressed with the current editions of the game, and so I've been looking at hard copies for 360/PS3/Wii that might have earlier versions. 

Forza Horizon 4 (#30), FH3 (#50), FH2 (#323), FH (#389) - I stumbled across this series via a demo of FH2, if I remember right, and immediately saw a racing game both I and Mad Krammer would get into. The racing sims out there like Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport are not the style we like. Kart racers, destruction derbys and arcade racers are where it's at. The Forza Horizon series blends a sim look and feel without the limitations of having to race within the gaurdrails. Go offroad, plow through fields, leap off cliffs, whatever gets you there. This is my kind of racer. 

God of War III (#31), Ghost of Sparta (#295) - I was wowed by the graphics but was a little annoyed at all the QTEs in III. Ghost was an amazing PSP game that worked so well on handheld. I have the Saga collection now and play it on PS3, the PSP having left the building. 

Uncharted 3 (#32) - The first trilogy is ace all the way through. 4 was fine too but the first 3 are essential in my book. 

Bloodborne (#33) - Spinoff of the Souls series. I feel it is really a true second game to Demon's Souls sharing it's atmosphere a little closer than even the rest of the Demon's Souls games. I feel like the doom and gloom of the games after Demon's Souls in that series are a touch less gloomy. Bloodborne, however, is just the doom I'm looking for. I find it a difficult game, but I keep going back to it for it's style. 

Rayman Legends (#45), Origins (#247) - I always struggle with platformers but when they come this visually stunning, loaded with amusing music, and full of such joyful exhuberance, I can't resist bashing my head against its challenges. This and Origins are must-haves. 

Dragon Quest XI (#49) - I feel for the DQ series with VIII and this is the second one I've put a hundred hours or more into. Miraculously it came to Xbox and Mad Krammer and I played it in tandem for just weeks on end when it came out. I love how you can change all the graphics to a retro style if you want. 

Halo Reach (#54), Halo 4 (#200), Halo 5 (#505) - Reach was the last Bungie made Halo game and one of my favorites in the series. I feel like I haven't enjoyed any Halo game after this quite as much as the first five games under Bungie's direction. Halo 4 was very competant but the story didn't thrill me. It just didn't feel like Halo to me. 

Gears of War 3 (#56), Gears 5 (#488), Gears 4 (#503) - The Gears series began with me and Mad Krammer with this third game and boy did we spends the last months of of 2011 immersed in it. We've since went back to the first two, played them again in remastered form, and then Gears 4 and 5 as well. I've enjoyed them all, although, MK dropped off after 4. They're always fun to replay from time to time. 

Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition (#66) - Summer of 2014 is when MK and I got this and played the heck out of it. There's always something new to do in it - always a worthy replay. 

Dead Space II (#77) - Initially, I bounced off this series not liking the controls that much, but when the remaster of the first game came out in 2023, I fell for the series hard. I've always like the story partly penned by a favorite comic author of mine, Antony Johnston, and the dark visual look of the game. I need to go run the whole series sometime soon. 

Borderlands 2 (#95) -  As much as the series really annoys me at times, I had great fun with many of the games over the years. Mad Krammer and I have run through all the games co-op and we've 100% completed them all too. We were always primarily into shooters, although, our mutual gaming interests have expanded quite a bit over the years. 

Pinball FX2 (#162) - I played this series first as Zen Pinball on PS3. Zen Studios is the dev and they do great digital interpretations of pinball, not so much sims of real tables but unique interpretations for the modern age. This series hit it's height with FX3 imo, but it's still going. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops (#229) - MK and I played all the COD games up until Modern Warfare where we dropped off, not liking the style of that game. I largely ignored the COD series up until a few years ago when I sampled Black Ops 2 and realized this was the type of shooter MK and I liked back in the day. We've like other Treyarch made games as well, and so I'm determined to play all of at least the first two games soon and see about 3 and beyond after that. 

Wolfenstein II (#241) - MK and I have always played the Wolfenstein games too. They've always had great devs from ID to Raven to Machine Games for this reboot of the series. There are few shooters like look and feel this good. 

Pikmin 3 (#257) - I've always liked this series. It took me a while to get a Wii-U though to play this. I think I had a Switch before a Wii-U in fact. 

Kirby's Epic Yarn (#268) - Maybe my first Kirby game. I remember seeing it running at a Best Buy in 2010 and was just wowed by the creativity and color in this game. I've since become a huge Kirby fan and have been trying to play all the games. 

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (#281) - I stumbled across this game recently and was totally blown away by the graphics and gameplay. I loved the 2.5 D elements and all the actions you can do above and below the 2D scrolling ground level path. It really uses the enivironment to make this feel bigger than it actually is. 

Saint's Row IV (#282) - I started this series with the standalone expansion to IV, Gat out of Hell. I got MK to play it too and we ran through it a lot. I returned to IV and loved the humor, the wacky character customization and the wild over-the-top gameplay. I was keen on the recent reboot of the series but I've heard it isn't good at all. Such a shame. 

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (#308) - This game gets the best rating of all the Prof. Layton games, but I like them all and especially on DS where they are perfect. Put a puzzle game, which I normally shy away from, with a great art style, music and story and I'm in, all the way. 

Ni No Kuni (#360), NNK II (#462) - Level-5 and Studio Ghibli, a match made in heaven. I was on it day-one in 2013 but had some troubling liking the battle system. I got much more into the sequel years later. But this is a must-have for my PS3 and I will retry it again and try and beat it. 

Super Mega Baseball (#421) - Out in 2014, I was at once hooked. I always like more arcade style sports games and this fit the bill exactly. You can customize everything. The series is in it's fourth incarnation now. 

Ratchet & Clank (#435) - This 2016 reboot of the series for your PS4 came out with a movie as well. I played this nearly to 100% completion, the first in the series for me, and I saw the movie. I enjoyed both quite a bit. Now I just have to play the rest of the series as completely as I did this. 

Mario & Rabbids Kingdom Battle (#458) - One of my first Switch games. It's a odd mixture of XCOM style strategy, Rabbids humor and Mario exhuberance. I find it fun, but strategy games get hard, and I haven't beaten it yet. 

Rare Replay (#471) - One of the first Xbox One games I was excited about in 2015. This collects many of Rare's earliest games, and would've been fine with just that, but then it adds many of their later games as well such as Kameo, Perfect Dark and Viva PInata. It's a mega collection. 

Darkest Dungeon (#514) - Along the lines of favorite dark fantasy themed games is this indie gem of an RPG. Highlight is a system for psychological states during battles that can see your characters run or act irradically due to panic. I love this series even though I will likely never beat either of them. 

Wargroove (#526) - I really got into a lot of indie titles late in the 2010s and this was one of them in 2019. Imagine a fantasy Advance Wars game. I wish this was one a cool handheld like DS or 3DS. Looks great on the Switch though, which is kind of both a console and a handheld. 

Stacking (#527) - Probably my favorite DoubleFine game surprisingly. The dev is so darn creative. Who would think of using Russian nesting dolls as a core gameplay element? Well a great dev like DoubleFine of course. I wish I had physical copies for these smaller downloadable titles that turn out so well, though. 

Etrian Odyssey IV (#545) - The series continues on 3DS. I used to have all the 3DS titles but now I don't and it's hard to get them now. I'm annoyed, but mostly at myself. 

Bulletstorm (#547) - People Can Fly, makers of Painkiller and Gears Judgment did this and it's a blast. Super fun tether mechanics and scoring of brutal kills and zany humor, potty mouth style. Duke Nukem gets added as a playable character later to put the icing on the bloody cake. Love it. 

And I had to stop at page 23 on Metacritic. I'm always surprised at just how much there is in any one decade. So many other great games I didn't mention because I hadn't played them much. I'm sure you have a bunch you could add to this list, I'm sure. Wow. How to many all this? I'm working on it.