A Decade Of Games In Personal Fingerprints
One game each, every year from 2010–2019, that meant something to me in the year it was released.
From notable multiplayer experiences, unique ways you relate to a character, or when and where you first played a game, play experiences are always going to have a personal fingerprint that publishers can’t package in the box. Any list, whether of ten games or one hundred, would be subjective, but I explicitly choose to own that ‘I played this in my attic and cried’ is an inclusion criteria, and ‘this game has critical acclaim and/or value to the games industry’ is not. I would love to hear anybody else’s game-per-year in the responses — until then, here is my round-up of a decade of experiences in gaming.
Spoilers for the ending of Gone Home, light/implied spoilers for the ending of Mass Effect 3.
2010: Alan Wake
This article admittedly begins with an exception to the release-year rule, because I didn’t begin gaming “properly” until later. Alan Wake was, however, the first game I ever bought for my Xbox 360. I was charmed by an introduction to horror games that plays the dread of all-consuming darkness equally straight as a shadow-possessed monster who advises in roaring tones that you try Nordic walking during your visit (it’s the latest thing!) while trying to hack you to pieces with an axe. I recently played Quantum Break and was thrilled by the Alan Wake easter eggs, which is possibly the best way to experience it at this point, as the original controls were clunky. That, or go Nordic walking in the dark with a Stephen King audiobook.
2011: Portal 2
Portal 2 was the first game I ever bought on release day because I was very excited about getting to play the co-op with a friend of mine. I even installed Steam to do so, having played the original Portal on my dad’s computer and promptly lost the login details. My friend and I thought we were the only two people who knew what videogames were, and it was a thrilling secret to share. Portal 2’s puzzle-filled journey back through Aperture Laboratories passes the test of time even without fond memories of dunking your co-op partner into a pool of acid, but it sure does add a fun meta-layer every time GLaDOS says something particularly mean.
2012: Mass Effect 3
In 2012, I buy my first games console and play every single Mass Effect game, for the first time, back to back. For tens of hours of well-loved game time, I am space captain, alien lover, and big goddamn hero. No matter who condescends, who disbelieves, Commander Shepard knows what’s right and fights to end a war that most people don’t even know is coming. Mass Effect is a game about strength in the face of adversity, against threats vast and existential, petty and bureaucratic, when your own moral integrity is on the line. At the culmination of everything, with a battlefield behind her and a world-changing decision ahead of her, she sits beside Captain Anderson, who has supported her from the very beginning. And he says:
“You did good, child. You did good.”
And I cry, every time.
2013: Gone Home
This entry is a cheating entry, and here is why: I didn’t play Gone Home in 2013. I watched a stream of it, at a time when watching-horror-streams-and-eating-pizza was a ritual I had with my best friend at uni. “But Gone Home isn’t a horror game?” I hear you say, and you are correct. We did not know this, and nor did the streamer playing it. “Wouldn’t it just be nice if this was actually about lesbians falling in love?” I joked, as the tension seemed to ramp up. And it was! As was our shared ritual of watching horror streams and eating pizza. We live together now, and there are no jumpscares in our attic either.
2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Dragon Age: Inquisition is a comfort game for me. I have accumulated 300 hours of play gradually over five years, as if ageing a fine wine, if the fermentation process involved getting very emotional about mage rights. And trees. Inquisition doesn’t rank so highly in play time for me because it is better than every other game, but because even when it was new, there was something akin to going home in its familiarity. Inquisition is grounded in a recent history that you formed in earlier games as the Hero of Ferelden and Champion of Kirkwall. Their friends and companions are in the world and its history as monarchs, religious leaders, players of the political Game… and Varric. Dragon Age is always at its best when it tells a story about people and, for me, many of those people are home.
2015: Life Is Strange
I have, in retrospect, complicated feelings about Life Is Strange, but I can’t deny for a moment that it belongs in 2015’s game of the year. With every episode that came out, I played it that very day, bundled up in front of a space heater in the tiny attic room where I kept my game consoles. I recognised Max’s need to act in the face of overwhelming odds, even while her desire to snoop was not my desire to snoop. I snooped anyway, eternally anxious about getting caught, because I owed it to her and the other characters to observe their stories fully through their dorm room ephemera. I wanted to keep everyone safe as much as Max did, and my heart ached in baby gay recognition of Chloe as that one really good friend you just want to protect more than anything else, okay? I chose waffles over pancakes, because waffles are good.
2016: Dishonored 2
I love chaotic Emily Kaldwin who brutally murders anyone who looks at her twice and reclaims her throne in rolling out a red carpet of blood. I love ghostly Emily Kaldwin, moving through the heights of Karnaca swift and silent, barely leaving momentary confusion in her wake. I love mundane Emily Kaldwin, and her conviction to say “no” to the Outsider, and I love void-touched Emily Kaldwin’s embracing of eldritch powers for her own gain. I love the myriad other ways you can make choices about how to play this game and the consequences they deliver for player and character alike. I even hear the protagonist from the first game can make a cameo?
2017: Pyre
This is how Pyre goes: Play fantasy basketball. Have the option to… kind of be canonically disabled, even if the narration calling me a cripple does make me wince a little. Cry about this found family of demons and harpies and bog witches and friends in a magical all-terrain caravan. Dedicate the rites to Darren Korb in the hope that he will spare some of my feelings with his beautiful soundtrack. Cry again throughout the finale, because he does not. Then play it again, because your choices matter, and I could still get better at fantasy basketball.
2018: Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire
There is something in the character creation for both Pillars of Eternity games that feel simply full of potential. Making a new Watcher is something of a creative self-care activity for me because I love engaging with the game’s in-depth lore in this step-by-step way. I reach the end of character creation meeting a brand new person. I know who they are and where they’ve come from, and who they used to be and who they are now, firmly grounded in Eora’s rich lore. I don’t mind retreading quests that I’ve done a good few times over by now when the role-play with each new Watcher feels deep and layered because of the way the game recognises who you are and the choices you’ve made… and because I’m determined to make taciturn elf Aloth love me without using cheats.
2019: Sunless Skies
I have not stopped talking about Sunless Skies all year. I wrote about finding myself welcomed into the narrative as a gender-nonconforming person from the very beginning, and it’s a pleasure to continue to find that, unlike a lot of lauded horror, the real terror isn’t The Person Unlike You. That sentient bit of green goop living inside your ear can be a friend and travelling companion! The real terror is old-fashioned English values, with an Empress Victoria untethered from both the earth, and from time itself. Also, bees. Don’t anger the bees.
So, there’s a decade! There were games I loved that I couldn’t include, and a list of honourable mentions that could run twice as long, but I look forward to seeing what the 2020s will bring to gaming. It will never be these ten years of experiences again — but the next ten years will be new to me, too!
