Game of the Decade?

[miketehmage]

From a purely PC centric position, an award from 2002-2012 belongs to World of Warcraft. It's an enormously successful game...possibly the most financially successful of all time, and certainly one of the highest sellers. It was a pop cultural phenomenon that held 10-20 times more subscribers than most of its rivals had sales. It popularized what had until that point in time been a niche genre and pushed it into mainstream awareness. And it is STILL relevant today, 8 years after the date of its release, as one of the most played/populated online games.

This.

You might dislike it for the stagnation it causes in the industry, but it was a brilliant game and for me definitely deserves game of the decade.

 

[josemlopes]

I'm just glad a game like CoD wasn't nominated to begin with.

I hate to say it, but the original CoD (PC version, not the PS2 spin-off) actually was pretty ground breaking in its day. Prior to that, only MoH had gone near WW2 and even attempted to stay grounded in reality. Wolfenstein did it, but went all Nazi-zombie pretty early on. What CoD did for the first time though, was to truly make you feel like a small cog in a large machine, participating in some of the most famous actions in history. MoH still insisted on giving you one obligitary epic D-Day scaled level before leaving you to your own 1-man-army devices for the rest of the game. They tried to address this in expansions, I know, but it never worked the way it did in CoD.

I still have my copies of CoD and CoD 2, both of which get played regularly to this day. As single player experiences they took the FPS rule book and while not exactly throwing it away, at least gave it a comprehensive updating and kicked off the entire modern "military shooter" genre (not to be confused with the "modern military shooter" genre which only emerged as a result of running out of the battles everyone has heard of to set WWII games in.

Maybe not game of the decade material, but I always think people tend to forget how good the franchise used to be.

And lets not forget that COD4 also breaked some cliches (although they ended up creating their own cliche) and was very innovative in some regards. The death of the main character after the helicopter crash was really well done, and it worked better because everyone was expecting the same usual stuff (the main character being the only survivor of the crash). Now every COD seems to try to surpass the previous one so it becomes incredebly predictable (you already know that the "player" character will die at least 3 times) and there will be a sniper mission and a scene where civilians die, etc.

Basicly I wouldnt mind to have seen COD 1 or COD 4 nominated in there (COD 2 while being good and dont think that it pushed anything forward in terms of creative innovation.

OT: Its very hard to think of a single game that could top all the others, that being said I would consider Spec Ops The Line to be a very important game in this decade, unfortenly its nowhere to be seen in any game of the year award nomination. Shit, Gamespot has this bracket thing where people can vote on the games that where chosen by the staff there, of about 30 games (including FIFA 13, SSX, Nintendo Land, etc) there is still no sight of Spec Ops The Line

 

[The_Scrivener]

Portal.

 

[srm79]

Gamespot has this bracket thing where people can vote on the games that where chosen by the staff there, of about 30 games (including FIFA 13, SSX, Nintendo Land, etc) there is still no sight of Spec Ops The Line

Unfortunately, more and more so these things seem to be simply industry wankfests for the AAA cut-n-paste garbage released annually. Such is the price we pay for video games being (rightly IMO) accepted as a mainstream past time.

 

[Beautiful End]

I'm just glad a game like CoD wasn't nominated to begin with.

I hate to say it, but the original CoD (PC version, not the PS2 spin-off) actually was pretty ground breaking in its day. Prior to that, only MoH had gone near WW2 and even attempted to stay grounded in reality. Wolfenstein did it, but went all Nazi-zombie pretty early on. What CoD did for the first time though, was to truly make you feel like a small cog in a large machine, participating in some of the most famous actions in history. MoH still insisted on giving you one obligitary epic D-Day scaled level before leaving you to your own 1-man-army devices for the rest of the game. They tried to address this in expansions, I know, but it never worked the way it did in CoD.

I still have my copies of CoD and CoD 2, both of which get played regularly to this day. As single player experiences they took the FPS rule book and while not exactly throwing it away, at least gave it a comprehensive updating and kicked off the entire modern "military shooter" genre (not to be confused with the "modern military shooter" genre which only emerged as a result of running out of the battles everyone has heard of to set WWII games in.

Maybe not game of the decade material, but I always think people tend to forget how good the franchise used to be.

And lets not forget that COD4 also breaked some cliches (although they ended up creating their own cliche) and was very innovative in some regards. The death of the main character after the helicopter crash was really well done, and it worked better because everyone was expecting the same usual stuff (the main character being the only survivor of the crash). Now every COD seems to try to surpass the previous one so it becomes incredebly predictable (you already know that the "player" character will die at least 3 times) and there will be a sniper mission and a scene where civilians die, etc.

Basicly I wouldnt mind to have seen COD 1 or COD 4 nominated in there (COD 2 while being good and dont think that it pushed anything forward in terms of creative innovation.

OT: Its very hard to think of a single game that could top all the others, that being said I would consider Spec Ops The Line to be a very important game in this decade, unfortenly its nowhere to be seen in any game of the year award nomination. Shit, Gamespot has this bracket thing where people can vote on the games that where chosen by the staff there, of about 30 games (including FIFA 13, SSX, Nintendo Land, etc) there is still no sight of Spec Ops The Line

Oh, I agree with the original CoD games were good. They were so good that it became sort of a tradition to release one each year. But few people remember that. And for CoD to win Game of the Decade at this point wouldn't be because it was good and innovative (which it was) but because everyone and their mom play it now. That's also a good sign but...it seems to me those are the wrong reasons.
The best way I can put it is this way: if you get a bunch of FPS lovers and show them, let's say, Blops 2 and Half Life 2, they'll probably lean towards Blops 2 because zombies and guns and soldiers and manly things and they play it every day with their buddies, not because of the game's quality.

I don't know; personally, I don't think people would be objective about CoD right now. That's why I'm glad it wasn't chosen as a nominee. But I could be wrong.

 

[Beautiful End]

You know what. I'm gonna say that Katawa Shoujo is my game of the decade. It is just an amazing emotional and beautiful game, almost life-changing really (particularly true for Rin's path). To anyone that hasn't tried it it's free so please just give it a go.

As for Half-Life 2. It's a great game but not nearly worthy of being called game of the decade.

I--

Huh. I...actually agree. I didn't even consider Katawa Shoujo.
My game got deleted by mistake a couple of months back and I have to replay it now. I'm not even saddened!

And yeah, HL2 was good but...that's about it.

 

[unstabLized]

It's definitely not the worst choice. However, if it were up to me, I'd go with Shadow of the Colossus. Still, Half Life 2 is a good choice as well.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

You know what. I'm gonna say that Katawa Shoujo is my game of the decade. It is just an amazing emotional and beautiful game, almost life-changing really (particularly true for Rin's path). To anyone that hasn't tried it it's free so please just give it a go.

As for Half-Life 2. It's a great game but not nearly worthy of being called game of the decade.

I--

Huh. I...actually agree. I didn't even consider Katawa Shoujo.
My game got deleted by mistake a couple of months back and I have to replay it now. I'm not even saddened!

And yeah, HL2 was good but...that's about it.

You can never be saddened about having to replay Katawa Shoujo .

 

[The_Scrivener]

Portal.

Just to let you know, you should probably try to type more than that or you might get a low content warning, just a heads up!

OT: There can never really be a "game of the decade" because of everyone's different tastes, for example, I never found Half-Life 2 very fun to play. It should be split into genres, but knowing Spike, they will only choose games that are best-selling and insanely popular, instead of niche games that are possibly way better.

I sincerely appreciate your warning and I am typically all about forum guidelines, however if I broke one above, I happily face the wrath for I posted in a one-word manner with intention and purpose.

Portal hadn't been mentioned in the thread and I thought that was a travesty. Rather than elaborating on it in a thread filled with long explanations/viewpoints, I thought it would catch more attention just by being short and simple. I also find it reflective of the game's genius in terms of tight, taught brevity and to-the-point presentation.

Truthfully, Portal, Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, and some sum of other games could all reasonably be called the Game of the Decade and its hard to argue against any of them. Such a lofty claim and such lofty games are virtually beyond comparison because of their differences in execution and influence.

Personally, I think Portal is the game people will remember the longest in terms of influence. It is a textbook example of how to make a video game that is inspired when the entire industry is telling you to only write/develop/play the uninspired.

 

[SextusMaximus]

I think HL2 is the most overrated game of the decade. I don't think it's half as good as most people say...

That's because it's absolutely not. Games have done everything HL2 has done and done it far better.