Games of the Generation

Eurogamer has a curious list up today, a top ten Games of the Generation compiled by a panel of 19 developers and critics. So, not in any way your usual source for lists of this type.

It's… esoteric.

10 . The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
9 . Threes
8 . Nier: Automata
7 . Slay the Spire
6 . Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
5 . Titanfall 2
4 . Kentucky Route Zero
3 . Outer Wilds
2 . Bloodborne
1 . The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

There are a couple in there I agree with. Slay the Spire would be a real contender for my game of the generation. I can't argue with the quality of Bloodborne, or Witcher 3.

But honestly - Uncharted 4? It's popcorn entertainment at best, like saying The Fast and the Furious is the greatest movie of the last ten years. I bounced off Nier Automata pretty hard, couldn't get into Outer Wilds and really wouldn't put Threes anywhere near this. I'll have to accept that everyone likes that Zelda game more than I do.

There's a "best of the rest" section on the page which includes a few more of the games I'd expect to see in this list: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-09-18-the-top-10-games-of-the-generation They may not be my personal favourites but I'd argue that games like Hollow Knight, No Man's Sky and The Last Guardian will be much more memorable as part of this generation than bloody Threes.

I know we don't typically do lists here but this has got me thinking…

Played two of them. Yeesh.

While I disagree that popcorn-flick games aren't deserving of accolades like this, Uncharted 4 isn't even the best Uncharted game this generation. Glad to see Titanfall 2 getting some love, though.

I've no idea offhand what I'd put on a top 10. I could maybe stretch to 5.

Breath of The Wild is number 1 for me too I think. If not if have said Witcher 3 but imo botw has changed open world games forever and was so good you still Cool Shit on the internet for it several years after release.

In decades to come when someone wrotes the complete history of videogames, this generation will get a short chapter.

No Heavensward!?
No Shadowbringers!?

And no they wouldn't just come under FFXIV, even though that's not on the bloody list either

Everybody's Gone To The Rapture is missing too…

Well if we're allowing XIV then sure. :p

Breath of The Wild is number 1 for me too I think. If not if have said Witcher 3 but imo botw has changed open world games forever

It's a very polished game, but I just don't see this at all. I mean, if Ubisoft hid a thousand seeds in an Assassin's Creed game and the only reward for collecting them was a literal polished turd, people would be (rightly) furious; but when Nintendo do it, it's suddenly adorably whimsical.

The climbing model is interesting, sure, but it hasn't exactly set the open-world genre alight with imitators, and other than that it doesn't really seem to do much that other games hadn't done before.

The seeds are neither here nor there for me, as far as exploration there's tons of (unmarked mind, not Ubisoft style icon clean up) rewards that are way more substantial, like the boss fights, shrines or sidequests or even just rare weapons.

That is also kind of goes hand in hand with how they barely hold your hand at all and just let you find stuff and what works with the games internal and mostly consistent logic. There's the obvious stuff by design that I still think is really impressive in its own right, mainly that you can literally beat the game as soon as you have all Link's little doodads, someone correct me if I'm wrong but is this possible in say, Ghosts of Tsushima? I've seen a clip of the main character going to a Camp he wasn't supposed to go yet and literally gets juggled in the air by undodgeable arrows for what seemed to be several minutes until he died, isn't this sort of 'anti sandbox'? If you go to the Volcano area in botw too early you will probably burst into flames but this isn't some punishment for going there it's just because it's really fucking hot and there's several ways to negate this entirely and explore that area if you want. There's that hilarious picture online for Red Dead 2 of the guy who failed a mission to kill a guy and the message he got was 'that guy has died' so basically he died…just not in the way Rockstar wanted.

And tbh if no one is copying bits of botw they should be, because I saw streamers playing Ghost of Tsushima (sorry if anyone is really enjoying this game >_<) when it was released, one streamer tried to pull a fast one by having him escape fall damage through use of falling of his horse somehow…I dunno what he was trying to do. another was trying to reach something but couldn't because the wall wasn't designated as a climbable wall and it just…seemed like a big step back to me, especially the wall climbing thing. If no one is going to copy that idea in practice than surely in spirit?

TL (and it was too long, sorry Ninchilla ;_;) ;DR - I feel like botw is the only sandbox game that is a sandbox game and the botw 2 is the only one I'm even looking forward to.

That is also kind of goes hand in hand with how they barely hold your hand at all and just let you find stuff

I hated this approach in Morrowind, and I hate it in Breath of the Wild. It doesn't feel like exploring to me, it just feels aimless. I'm aware I'm probably firmly in the minority on this, it just doesn't encourage me to play.

It's more themes than games this generation. But Fortnite is clearly the biggest and most socially impactful title. PUBG, Warzone, Apex, Fall Guys and others also forming part of the battle royale domination.

The continued rise of e-sports compatible competitive shooters/team games, Rocket League, Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant, Overwatch etc. Yes, CS:GO started it years ago, but this is the generation it matured and exploded

The rise of workable, affordable VR - Astrobot, Beat Saber, Pistol Whip, Half Life Alyx etc….

Streamer friendly multiplayer games, as diverse as Sea of Thieves and Rust through to Among Us and Jackbox Party Pack

I think we've seen the falling away of the traditional MMO, the generic open world game and driving games.

I think cav's absolutely right - and the most important games of this generation, the ones that'll have the most impact going forward, aren't necessarily the ones people will put in their list.

I don't think VR has really broken through yet - and if it does I can see it being standalone headsets rather than consoles/PCs that make that leap. Likewise I don't know if Battle Royale games will end up being a fad, something that defines a moment in time rather than being an ongoing genre. It'll be interesting to find out. Certainly stuff like Fall Guys dragging it away from the "shoot people in the head" demographic is a positive sign.

For what it's worth I put together my own, very personal top ten of the generation and it looks like this. In alphabetical order as I couldn't possibly rank them. And I couldn't necessarily defend any of these as the most "important" games of the generation, but they're the ones that have made the most impact on me.

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
Beat Saber
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture
Final Fantasy XIV
Hitman 2
Hyrule Warriors
Invisible, Inc
Monster Hunter World
Slay the Spire
Yakuza Zero

I'm honestly surprised not to see Hitman on there.

Shit. Yes that should absolutely be on there. I’ll add it now.

Four of those would make my list: MHW, FFXIV, Yakuza 0, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. I'd also have Persona 5 in there plus Sayonara Wild Hearts. The Last Guardian left an impact on my for positive and negative reasons

Breath of the Wild
No Mans Sky
Animal Crossing

In no particular order:

Sea of Thieves
The Last of Us Part II
God of War
Titanfall 2
Horizon Zero Dawn
Hitman 2
The Witcher III
Return of the Obra Dinn

I haven't finished all of these (yet), but they're the ones that stick with me - the games that I still think about regularly.

A lot of the other games I played this generation felt like refinements on formulas, but these five gave me something I'd never really experienced before (which isn't to say they were all totally new, but they felt new to me). More of them are on PC than I'd have expected when the generation started.

Hitman 2's levels are astonishing in their flexibility – open-world in a way that was much more interesting than the kind of sprawling, ironically repetitive environments usually associated with the "sandbox" descriptor.

Sea of Thieves is just a great experience. Sailing across the waves is enjoyable, in a weird mix of relaxing and anxious like nothing else, and mucking around with friends as you move from island to island is a lovely way to spend an evening. It's just gone from strength to strength as they've added content, especially the Tall Tales.

Slay the Spire is the first – and still the only – roguelike I've played more than a couple runs of. The deckbuilding and strategy of it is more my pace than the kind of twitch-reactions needed for the platforming and shooting mechanics normally used in the genre. I've still only managed to beat the third act with two of the four characters, which I know is far from seeing the actual end of the game.

Elite: Dangerous is like a more solitary Sea of Thieves-type experience, just a nice way to relax of an evening, without any objectives except those you set yourself. I'm increasingly drawn to the Solo experience, avoiding other players who can (and will) ruin significant time investments "for the lulz", but there's still few moments that bring a smile to my face quite like flying into the mail slot on a station and touching down.

Opus Magnum's efficiency-'em-up puzzles eventually proved too difficult for me to see the game through to the end, but I lost hours to the process of refining, testing, and adjusting my machines.

If NMS hadn't been quite so big that the journey towards the centre had exhausted me (and if subsequent expansions hadn't undermined it with features encouraging you to settle down somewhere), I think it would be on this list. Breath of the Wild is a game I similarly admire but can't really say I enjoyed, though I do expect to see a lot of influence from it in the coming generation.

Uncharted 4 is amazing, you philistines. The ending is arguably the best thing from any game this generation.

Uncharted 4 is amazing, you philistines. The ending is arguably the best thing from any game this generation.

(ring ring)

Hello, social services? Felt's on the meth again, can you send someone round?

I particularly enjoyed the bit in Uncharted 4 where they introduced a new character who was a black South African woman and then when it came to voice her they couldn't be bothered to hire a black woman or an actual South African and so they just used the same white American woman everyone uses for everything, but doing a funny voice.

Yeah, that is terrible, but the game itself is great. Fun to play, spectacular, very funny, and as I said, the ending is wonderful. I reckon it would make my top ten games of the generation, to be honest.

I particularly enjoyed the bit in Uncharted 4 where they introduced a new character who was a black South African woman and then when it came to voice her they couldn't be bothered to hire a black woman or an actual South African and so they just used the same white American woman everyone uses for everything, but doing a funny voice.

It's arguably worse – they'd cast Laura Bailey as the character (who was always South African, so the accent hasn't changed), but partway through development Druckmann decided to change her from white to black.

Uncharted 4 was excellent. The absolute peak of blockbuster gaming. Fair enough don't fill the entire list with blockbusters, but it'd be crazy to ignore them altogether.

I dunno, I'm not a huge fan of Uncharted games at the best of times and I didn't even think it was the best Uncharted game this gen (Lost Legacy was far better, IMHO).

If I had to go for one blockbuster game this gen, it would be God of War.