Best year of gaming this decade?

[MMC]

Which year this decade do you think was the best year for gaming?

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[SniperHF]

Well it's sure as shit not '19

'14 or '15 probably.

 

[Beau Knows]

I'd have to think about it, but I recall 2011 being quite good:

Dark Souls
Portal 2
The Witcher 2
Skyrim
Bastion

 

[tacogeoff]

For me personally it was 2015.

Witcher 3 which has become far and beyond my favorite console game to date.

Fallout 4 which was my first entry into the fallout series. Enjoyed it quite a bit.

Madden 16. For me this has been the best rendition of the madden series.

Tom Clancy rainbow six siege. Was a great team based shooter.

Batman Arkham knight. Really enjoyed it.

Dying light. I found it very fun.

Probably logged the most playing hours that year

 

[Commander Clueless]

For me it's a tough choice between 2013 for two extremely heavy hitters (Mass Effect 3, BioShock Infinite) and some other pretty good entries, and just the all around quality that was 2018...

 

[syz]

2017 was the best year of any decade.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Seems like an easy answer but I would probably say 2017

Breath of the Wild
Horizon Zero Dawn
Mario Oddysey
Nier Automata
Fortnite and PUBG (especially these two, even though I tried battle royales and got bored immeditately, you can't deny the impact)

Obviously pretty popular games, but a ton of other games came out, I thought about listing them but the list is so insanely long I'd feel like it was spamming.

 

[Trap Jesus]

Toss-up between 2011 and 2015 for me but I'd go with 2011:

Portal 2
Skyrim
Uncharted 3
Skyward Sword
LA: Noire

2015 was awesome though: Witcher 3, Undertale, Fallout 4, Bloodborne

 

[Warden of the North]

I think its 15 for me

Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 both captivated my attention for a long, long time

 

[Frankie Spankie]

I feel like 2011 had the best heavy hitters for a single year because:

• Portal 2 - Just an awesome experience, great puzzles, hilarious humor, not much explanation needed
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Revitalized a dead game series and kind of the genre as a whole.
• Witcher 2 - A huge improvement over the first. The first was great but this one really made the combat feel a lot better and continued an amazing story.

2015 also had some huge heavy hitters with Witcher 3, MGS5, and Cities: Skylines

But I think my best year, since I have to pick one for the poll, is 2017

• Resident Evil 7 - I never really cared for the Resident Evil series. I played 2 & 4 and wasn't impressed with either. I played 5 in coop with a friend of mine but know that was never a great RE game anyway. I was interested because this one was first person and it was incredible. I loved the gameplay, the mansion, the tension, the characters, the puzzles, pretty much everything except for the tanker. I did end up playing the RE2 remake which I'm not sure I would have done if I didn't play 7 but didn't like it nearly as much as RE7.
• Nier: Automata - Awesome story with the stellar gameplay by Platinum games.
  
• Super Mario Odyssey - It's actually the only 3D Mario game I ever beat but I couldn't stop playing. I loved how many different routes there were to do things and the exploration within the game.
• PUBG - I know H1Z1 was kind of your first popular BR game but this one ended up blowing it out of the water. I don't have much desire to play it anymore but I put a lot of hours into it and can appreciate what it did for the genre.
• Cuphead - Who doesn't love this art style? The bosses, while challenging, were all a ton of fun.
• Wolfenstein 2 - A solid sequel, not as good as the first of the reboot, but still worth mentioning.
• Prey - I still feel a bit jaded over how the difficulty ramped up towards the end of the game but the first 80% of the game was still an awesome ride.
• Sonic Mania - Your first great Sonic game in forever
• Pavlov - Still the best VR shooter out ther

Honorable mentions for me based on just amount of games I really enjoyed are 2012 (Dishonored, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Spec Ops: The Line, Hotline Miami, Sleeping Dogs, Mark of the Ninjha, Legend of Grimrock, Dust: An Elysian Tail) and 2013 (Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Papers, Please, Stanley Parable, Metal Gear Rising, Gunpoint, The Swapper, and Rogue Legacy.)

 

[tealhockey]

Probably one of these years because there was a great variety and level of quality on the whole from 2015-2017, some games lived longer than others but there was a lot of potential and fun to be had playing around this period. 2017 was probably the peak and it seems to have paled since

2015: MGS5, Cities skylines, Rocket League, Bloodborne, fallout 4, Fire Emblem Fates, Rainbow six siege
2016: FFXV, Stardew Valley, Overwatch, Battlefield 1, Dark Souls 3, XCOM 2, The Division, Darkest Dungeon, Shadowverse, Stellaris, Factorio, Hearts of Iron 4, Offworld trading company
2017: Fortnite, Nier:Automata, Persona 5, PUBG, Fire Emblem Echoes, Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, FFXIV Stormblood, Nioh, FFXII remake, For Honor

I think there have been some good games recently, Fortnite, Monster Hunter World, Apex Legends especially but it seems like a lot of the staples from the first half of the decade are still going pretty strong like League, CSGO, GTAV, Hearthstone, POE, SC2. Or games that are new improvements on big franchises like Smash Bros, MTG Arena, wow classic, modern warfare. It seems like there has been kind of a lull since that period in the middle of the decade where a lot of great, new games were flying out and now we are returning to the staple franchises. There were some cool new things like death stranding, code vein, spider-man game was cool, sekiro etc but it just isn't quite like what those years were like imo

 

[Shareefruck]

I generally don't care about quantity of "good" games when it comes to these kinds of things (which 2017 admittedly had a ton of-- but the unanimous classics like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey I felt were kind of overrated). The only year in the decade that gave me two all time favorites that I felt were perfect and timeless and that shot right to the top of my favorites was 2018, personally, so I'll go with that.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

2017 was the best year of any decade.

2004 was stacked, especially when you consider less games were being made back then.

 

[syz]

2004 was stacked, especially when you consider less games were being made back then.

'04's definitely up there and I don't even like Halo, Half-Life, or GTA. Would still take '17 though.

 

[Leafs at Knight]

Personally I'd go 2015 for just Witcher and Bloodborne alone but overall it's definitely 2017 - BOTW, Odyssey, Horizon, Nier, PUBG, Fortnite, Persona 5 - yes I'm counting it, RE7, etc.

 

[Nickmo82]

I choose 2015, because Bloodborne is the only Souls game I've enjoyed, and I frigging loved it. Witcher 3 was brilliant. Mario Maker was lots of fun and a fantastic concept well executed. I still play Cities: Skylines a whole bunch.

All top notch.

 

[JaegerDice]

2017.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Personally I'd go 2015 for just Witcher and Bloodborne alone but overall it's definitely 2017 - BOTW, Odyssey, Horizon, Nier, PUBG, Fortnite, Persona 5 - yes I'm counting it, RE7, etc.

2017 strikes me as the "tons of high quality games that aren't for you" year for me personally. Aside from Persona, none of them really hit with me.

Disclaimer: I haven't played BOTW yet (hope to try it out soon).

 

[tacogeoff]

2017 strikes me as the "tons of high quality games that aren't for you" year for me personally. Aside from Persona, none of them really hit with me.

Disclaimer: I haven't played BOTW yet (hope to try it out soon).

I agree with that as well, I didn't really have much interest in a lot of 2017s offerings. Its all personal preference.

 

[Ducks in a row]

From my personal experience I like 2010 the most.

 

[x Tame Impala]

Skyrim is boring and tedious. Dark Souls is tediously difficult and the whole sub genre of those games sucks.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Skyrim is boring and tedious. Dark Souls is tediously difficult and the whole sub genre of those games sucks.

I personally enjoyed Skyrim, but I agree with you on the Dark Souls side of things. It's not a popular opinion, but this decade's "Souls-like" revolution is not my jam at all. I just don't understand their appeal.

That's okay, though, there are plenty of games to go around and other people getting to play games they enjoy is all well and good.

 

[syz]

Conversely people who are aggressively outspoken against Souls-likes tend to be overcompensating for something and just don't like being emasculated by a video game.

 

[780il]

2013 for sure.

Black Ops 2 released the year prior and GTA 5 also came out. My two favourite games.

 

[Beau Knows]

Conversely people who are aggressively outspoken against Souls-likes tend to be overcompensating for something and just don't like being emasculated by a video game.

I love the Souls games, but that's a silly claim.