Posted on 02/21/2020 at 04:42 PM
| Filed Under Feature
I was going to sit down and pour over lists of the games from this last decade and carefully weigh my choices for Stage Select...but it's the day you record and I'm out of time, so I'm doing this by the seat of my pants! (Yes, wearing pants. Sorry.) But I guess it's the games that stick out in my memory that should top my list anyway, right?
3. Super Mario 3D World (Wii U, 2013). I love all the Mario platformers but I've always preferred discreet, contained levels over an emphasis on exploration (I liked Galaxy better than Odyssey, for instance) but something about 3D World really grabbed me. The levels are varied and inventive, the cat suit power up is awesome, and the music is soooooo good! My wife and I played through the whole game—including all the postgame content!—when it first came out, and I've played bits and pieces of it multiple times in recent years with my kids. I could play it again right now.
2. Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Director's Cut (Wii U, 2013). I played and loved the original release of this game, but it had problems, particularly the boss fights. The developer had contracted out the bosses to a different studio, so while levels were intricate affairs offering lots of options for how you wanted to approach any given situation, the boss fights were brain dead battles of attrition. Fast forward a couple years and the Director's Cut of the game fixed all that. The boss fights were completely redone in-house and now stack up with the rest of the game. Plus the Wii U version makes excellent use of the GamePad. Yeah, it's mostly the menus and loadout and stuff but it does so much to keep you immersed in the game when you don't have to leave the on-screen action to take care of that stuff. I love the cyberpunk setting and story. I love trying to be stealthy but having the option to blow everything up if/when I get spotted. I really enjoyed the sequel, 2016's Mankind Divided, but I think the Director's Cut of Human Revolution is the stronger game.
1. Graviy Rush 2 (PS4, 2017). No game from this last decade grabbed me quite like Gravity Rush 2. The gravity-shifting gameplay still feels unique and fresh and the addition of multiple fighting styles, based on how light or heavy you make the gravity, helps alleviate potentially repetitive combat. The world—two large Ghibli-esque cities that look like idustrial revolution Europe...in the sky!—are a joy to fly through and explore, and the stylized graphics and music fit the game perfectly. I enjoyed the story and characters and ended up putting in the extra time to platinum the game, and it's not short either! It's not a perfect game and I think for me it was greater than the sum of its parts, but I think all those parts are very well made. I wish more people had played it.