The PlayStation 4 releases on Friday and I’ll be getting mine at midnight. The XBox One releases next week and the next generation will truly be upon us. This doesn’t mean the immediate death of the current generation, but it is a good time to look back. This will be the first of a three part series highlighting our best games of the generation. Why three parts?
I’m an old school gamer that really started with the Nintendo Entertainment System and puke screen GameBoy. For the last three console generations (and two handhelds) PlayStation has been my platform of choice. I have a hard time with the first person perspective and consequently don’t play much of it (though Portal 2 nearly made my top ten). I also don’t enjoy much online play. This means my list is biased. Next week’s part two will have a list from a gamer whose interests offset my bias. The following week’s third part will be a roundtable with a much more eclectic point of view.
Let’s get started with a couple (dis)honorable mentions:
Fallout 3, I love you. You’re broken as hell on PS3 and your little brother, New Vegas, is even worse. It’s a shame.
The Last of Us is something special. Unfortunately, it also has some incredibly frustrating design and gameplay elements that made it less enjoyable than it needed to be. Heavy Rain misses the list for similar reasons.
LittleBigPlanet deserves credit for user-generated content alone. Sackboy didn’t make the list because the competition is too strong, not because he didn’t deserve it.
And now, officially, my top ten games of this generation:
10. LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes – I never had any doubt a LEGO game would make the top ten. LEGO Batman 2 has the tough job of representing everything I love about the entire collection. It’s the perfect culmination of all that came before it meshing into something unique and familiar at the same time. Credit where due, selecting Batman 2 over Marvel Super Heroes was the last refinement to this list. MSH goes a little too far with the open world and fetch quest gold bricks. It’s a minor point, but in a list this tight it’s enough.
9. Batman: Arkham Asylum – Two Caped Crusaders in a row? Good job DC. Like LEGO, a great series is great, but picking the best game within a series is harder. Arkham Asylum‘s more direct narrative and linear path was better at capturing what makes Batman cool: being right where he needs to be, when he needs to be there. Arkham City saw me spending 20 minutes flailing around the city to get to the right place, being constantly interrupted by side missions. Batman shouldn’t have distractions.
8. The Walking Dead – Telltale has done something special and this one speaks for itself. It comes in low on the list simply because it barely qualifies as a game. If this were a list of the most emotional experiences of the generation, it’s number one. The Wolf Among Us has also impressed in one episode. Alas, it is unfinished and not qualified for the list.
7. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – This is really a flagship series for the generation. Uncharted 2 is just a little more mature than the first game, but a little grittier and a lot less bombastic than the third. Drake, Sully, and Elena are strong contenders for the best game cast of the generation.
6. inFamous – The second game is also completely deserving, but the origin just seemed so much more interesting than the resolution. The introduction of new powers, as well as the unique combos, makes the game continually provide something new to keep the player moving. Pacing is one of the most difficult factors to control in an open world but this game does it masterfully. More impact from the karma system could have moved this higher.
5. Red Dead Redemption – Grand Theft Horse? Yes, that and more. This game has many fantastic bullet points, but those bullet points can’t do it justice. Every open world activity and minigame is perfection. Even the unstructured elements, like tying women to railroad tracks, work better than many full games. The Undead Nightmare DLC could easily top a list of best add-ons. Grand Theft Auto IV and V were both a great evolution of the best of previous generation. But Rockstar created a new bar with Red Dead Redemption.
4. Tomb Raider – In the age of the reboot, Crystal Dynamics has done it better than anyone else. This was a great evolution of the franchise’s former games but refined into something so new and fresh it was almost unrecognizable. This game gets a lot of credit for exceeding my admittedly low expectations in such a fantastic way. Young and inexperienced Lara is fascinating. Her reaction to her first kill is just so human. As an asie, there’s a certain justice in the idea that the franchise clearly inspired Uncharted, which clearly inspired this reboot.
3. Rock Band 2 – This is really a credit to the entire Rock Band “platform” which cannot be ignored in this generation. It was a phenomenon for a reason. The second game had that little bit extra that the first game was missing, while the third seemed to go a little overboard. Incidentally, Rock Band gets first place in games that took way too much money out of my wallet.
2. Mass Effect 2 – The series as a whole deserves hall of fame status, but the second game simply sits on a higher plain. The first was a fantastic RPG with tragically bad controls. Despite the controversy, the third was as good a finale as could reasonably have been expected and even got me interested in multiplayer. But Mass Effect 2 has the most heart. The decisions in this entry seemed to carry much more weight than even the genocide decisions in the bookends. And Jack, you beautiful bald vixen. You’ll always have a special place in Bub Shepard’s heart.
1. Assassin’s Creed II – This is another franchise that defines the generation. So why this game of the six (eight if you count the PSP and Vita entries)? The first entry in the series was a great proof of concept, intriguing but quickly boring. Brotherhood and Revelations each added some interesting but mostly unnecessary elements. AC III and IV both have their strong points but suffer from Ubisoft losing control of the story and simplicity that made this work. Assassin’s Creed II was the high point with no buts. This was, and probably still is, the most platinumed game on PlayStation 3 for good reason. If you played it, you couldn’t get enough and wanted to play it some more. You weren’t satisfied with this one until you’d devoured every element it could provide. Had Brotherhood been included as DLC (particularly training novice assassins) rather than a separate title, it might be the perfect game.
There you have it. That’s my list. Keep an eye on Big Shiny Robot! for the next installments.
Please post your top ten in the comments. Or destroy mine. I can take it.