Popcorn Games of the Decade

written by Blain Newport on Tuesday, 31 December 2019

The Rules

I went through my game libraries on Steam and other digital services and looked at games that came out this decade (on those services, some may have come out earlier on consoles).  To be on this list they had to spark a specific feeling: "That was a cool game, and I wouldn't mind another go."

At some level, this list may be a celebration of my poor memory. :)

The Games

Alan Wake (2010)

Control is a fine game, but the supporting cast of Alan Wake feel so much more real and present.  And the pacific northwest is so much more scenic than concrete box architecture.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013)

Plunder the seas.  Sing all the shanties.

Aliens vs. Predator (2010)

The game has issues for sure, but I still enjoy the campaign.  AvP 2's was probably better mechanically, but this one still looks good and feels good enough.

Cargo! The Quest for Gravity (2011)

Developer Ice-Pick Lodge is better known for the dour Pathologic, but this childish post apocalypse is stupidly charming to me.

Dark Scavenger (2014)

The only turn-based RPG on the list, like Alan Wake and Cargo, it's got a lot of character.  Developer Psydra Games bills itself as a small team, but this game is so quirky it feels like a one person operation.

DmC Devil May Cry (2013)

Developer Ninja Theory slightly simplified the DMC formula, and it worked.

EDF 4.1 (2016)

Big Dumb Fun.  EDF 5 (2019) brought some nice enhancements to the Air Raider class, but overall wasn't as fun largely thanks to an even worse loot system.

Forager (2019)

As the newest entry on this list, it may not hold up.  But it's a fun, actiony take on a clicker / watch the numbers go up type game that got entertainingly bonkers by the end.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2014)

It's one of the few Stylish Action games that can hang with Devil May Cry.

Stalker: Call of Pripyat (2010)

The Metro series is kinda sorta carrying the torch, but Stalker was it's own thing.  Anomalies, monsters, secret military facilities, and humans of various stripes made for a unique world to survive and explore.

Just Missed The Cut

Singularity (2010)

Singularity is a good popcorn game, but felt derivative enough that it didn't quite make it.

Watch Dogs 2 (2016)

Getting upgrades felt a little too laborious and a lot of missions felt like running errands.  Still, having non-lethal options and a protagonist that wasn't another generic white dude was cool.

Vanquish (2017)

It's Gears of War but with rocket boots.  There's a lot of cool elements that that didn't quite gel into greatness for me.

Notably Absent

Bayonetta (2017)

It may just be my age, but some of the enemies had attacks with so little warning that it felt like I took hits that weren't my fault.  Plus a QTE death in a cut scene tanking my level ranking and upgrade currency rewards felt cheap.

Doom (2016)

The collectibles initially felt like a good excuse to play more Doom, but I couldn't figure out where some of them were without going to YouTube and it dulled my eagerness to return.

Saints Row 3 & 4 (2011)

Saints Row 3 lost the plot, and four was fluffy fan service.  And let's be frank, I liked Saints Row 2 enough that nothing was going to escape its shadow.

 

Popcorn Hall Of Fame

These are the games that sparked that feeling still even though they're more than a decade old, or that I've already played so many times that they're locked in.

Broforce (2015)

While sometimes this engine of chaos will kill you with no warning, that chaos is also part of fun when you don't die.  Plus it takes about three hours to finish once you know what you're doing.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (2013)

Take Far Cry.  Up the player speed and jump height by about 50%.  Cut the entire progression down to roughly six hours.  Make everything a dark 80s neon poster.

Warframe (2013)

It's super grindy. But the moment to moment of flipping all over the place and mowing down hordes of enemies with a great variety of space ninja magic and weapons feels so good I don't mind spending a lot of time with it. I do take long breaks from time to time. But eventually I'll get the urge to turn into a murder fly with Titania or be a chill magic monk with Baruuk and come back.

Dead Space 2 (2011)

Action horror which, thanks to EA screwing up their micro-transactions, gives you a ton of interesting weapons right out of the gate.  The Aliens of video games.

Magicka (2011)

Initially a great game, Magicka was reduced to being just exceptional by PvP balance changes that made the single player / co-op feel less crazy.  I used to be able to turn into a volcano. :(

NightSky (2011)

I normally hate puzzle platforming, but this toy version streamlined it down to pure joy.

Lost Planet 2 (2010)

Funky and clunky, but I still kept running those missions.  Never did try the co-op.

NecroVision (2009)

Bulletstorm before Bulletstorm and combos built on each other in a way that was more satisfying.

Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: New Order, Wolfenstein: New Colossus (2009)

Shooting megalomaniacal Nazis is always good.

Clive Barker's Jericho (2007)

Horror action schlock with enough character and lore to keep it interesting.

Prototype (2009)

Like Magicka, Prototype puts too much power to control in your hands and lets you figure it out.  The sequel tried to reign in that chaos and suffered in the fun department for it.  I'll always wonder whether Hulk: Ultimate Destruction would have made this list if it had gotten a PC port.

Saints Row 2 (2009)

The classic.  GTA but sillier, but over the top gritty cut scenes that shouldn't have worked, but did for me.

Star Wars: Republic Commando (2005)

I enjoy Scorch.  I appreciate Fixer.  And I'm glad Sev is on my side.  The action's okay, but the bromance is what makes the game special.

F.E.A.R. and expansions (2005)

There's something particular about this mash-up of Akira and The Matrix that no other game even tried to copy (except the sequels, which failed).

Devil May Cry 1, 3, & 4 (2001)

The games that created, and for my tastes comprise most of, their own little genre.  I feel like I should like DMC5 more, but the frequent character switching kept me from really digging in.

Blood (1997)

More schlocky action horror.  I'm sensing a pattern.

System Shock (1994)

A space station full of robots, monsters, audio logs, and a great villain.  Most seem to prefer the sequel, but I find it sterile and ugly and burdened with a class system that adds nothing.  I never liked early, low-poly 3D.

 

Notably Absent

DooM 1 & 2 (1993)

It was a drastic step forward in tech.  It defined a generation.  I preferred its multiplayer to most of what came after.  But my time with it is over.

Update

I forgot one Popcorn Game of the Decade.

Wasted (2016)

The indie 80s post-apocalpse FPS roguelite where you power up using hard liquor. I enjoy the setting and characters, but mostly I enjoy quickly and carefully working my way through the bomb shelters the game dubs Coolers. The mix of combat, stealth, and situational awareness required keeps me on my toes.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 13 July 2014

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (4 of 5)

I don't really care about Metal Gear in general. Heavy handed messages about militarism coupled with waiting for security guards to do their rounds is not my idea of a good time.

Luckily in Revengeance, hiding in a box like this is largely optional. Most of the time you'll be playing a Devil May Cry style action game and doing stuff like this:

Raiden has just sliced an enemy in half, exposing his blue glowing spine full of delicious health and energy. Why wouldn't a blow that slices the rest of a battle cyborg in half slice the spine in half? Because video games.

Here we see Raiden running from a helicopter, the natural enemy of most video game characters.

And here we see him slicing it into pieces. Yep. Slicing helicopters into pieces with a sword.

340 pieces is my personal best.

This is now and forever shall be my favorite Metal Gear game.

Catching Up

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 20 April 2014

I continue to play games. I just haven't felt the urge to write about them in a good while.

Diablo 3 (3 of 5)

Game not pictured because it doesn't really look like much.

Since they fixed the loot system and reduced the cost, I figured it was finally time to try the premiere action RPG.

It's okay.

I can only imagine what a disappointment it would have been with the auction house where instead of finding great loot you just find stuff to sell then have to spend every trip back to town scrolling through auction listings. Bleh.

As it is the game still isn't really grabbing me. As a melee class the biggest threat was groups of elite enemies with lava or toxic abilities that made it hurt to get close to them. Difficulty spikes determined by a random number generator leave me pretty cold.

---

EDF 2025 (4 of 5)

Game not pictured because I don't have an HDMI capture setup.

EDF 2017 was a budget game. EDF 2025 doesn't actually add or change a huge amount and was priced at $50.

For me, it was worth every penny.

In case I haven't properly introduced it before, Earth Defense Force is a campy game about defending the earth from hordes of enemies. Dead Rising, with it's oceans of zombies is the only game I can think of that puts as many enemies on screen as EDF. But the enemies of EDF are giant ants and spiders and robots and space ships, giving it a bit of the feel of a 50s monster movie. The hammy histrionics of the voice acting confirm that none of this is to be taken too seriously.

Beneath the silly trappings is a simple loot chase. Shoot bugs. Grab armor crates to increase health and weapon crates to get random weapons. More difficult levels give better weapons. The weapons themselves can be pretty wacky. Grenades that don't travel far enough for you to get out of the blast radius, close range weapons with reload times guaranteed to get you killed if you don't take out all of your opposition in one magazine, weapons that fire in two directions, neither of which is straight; etc. Working around these limitations (throwing the grenade from higher ground so it travels farther, carrying a more practical backup weapon to switch to after unloading the first one, and maneuvering opponents into the fire pattern of a multi-directional gun) makes the player feel very clever.

I could go on, but I'd rather just go play some more.

---

Goat Simulator (3 of 5)

Here I am licking a bucket.


Here I am getting hit by a car, still with my bucket.


Here I am, struggling internally with whether to trash this party, still with my bucket.


Goat Simulator is basically a silly physics toy where you can knock stuff about and jump around and then push a button to make a goat noise. There's a bit more to it than that, but just a bit.

Game Journal: Saint's Row 2

written by Blain Newport on Wednesday, September 23, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

I bought Saint's Row 2 a long time ago. It was unplayable. I felt cheated. But it turns out that the only reason every time I got in the car the game sped up %150 was because I hadn't updated my video drivers.

Wait... what?

Yeah. Apparently. It's still a really bad PC port. Any time I drive anywhere fast, the loading of new terrain makes the game stutter so horribly that the race events are largely unplayable. But it's got a spirit of nonsense and mayhem that even lousy performance can't completely kill.


You can shoot rival gang members in the face.


You can blow up cars with RPGs.


Ha ha ha! That guy flew out of his car on fire!


And you can blow up a trailer park with your gang. Remote sticky bombs are probably the greatest thing in all of gaming.

You can also make your character really scary looking, but I didn't do that. Some of the guys from the Penny Arcade forums are playing fat men in lingerie and sombreros. Yikes. I prefer committing atrocities as a stylish urban Asian lady for some reason. (What is wrong with me?)

Maybe some day I'll have a computer beefy enough to overpower the loading hassles and make the game good. But I had some fun and got some nice pictures out of it.

Keepalive: Champions Online

written by Blain Newport on Thursday, September 17, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

I'm still dinking around with the character creator. I'm assuming they'll be turning it off soon (whenever the contest ends), so I'm getting in the stupid while I can.



Uh. Yeah. Like I said, I like tech. I should stick with capes and cloaks. But even as I know intellectually that this is laughable, I still like it. It's loosely based on a character I had in the Champions pen and paper RPG called Blue Streak. He was a speedster who shot beams.

Unfortunately the name is banned in Champions Online, so he couldn't exist there. I mean sure, there's a phrase "curse a blue streak", but that's so obscure nobody would make that connection. Plus "The Streak", the name of a Ray Stevens song about running through public places naked, is perfectly acceptable. I tested a few, much more obviously lewd, names which also worked. I'll spare you a full accounting. :)

[time passes]

Ah. Apparently Blue Streak was the name of some obscure super hero. They're just paranoid about getting sued by comics people. Profanity is just fine. :P



I named this guy Leatherneck, with the idea that I'd give him a "military accident" background.

Look at that guy.

He is so generic.

But I can't stop looking at him.

Why do I find him so awesome?

He's like, majestic or something.




And this is the first of a pair of characters I made.



It was partly just an experiment to see if I could make matching male / female characters. It failed a little. I'd originally had them with a weird techno face plate, but the female didn't support it. I kinda like the glowing eyes, but it was still weird not to be able to make what I wanted. It seemed arbitrary.

Review: Blacksite: Area 51

3 of 5

<Farnsworth>Ho hu wha?</Farnsworth> But people hated that game? You yourself bought it for five dollars and it hasn't been out for a year yet! And that's the same score you gave to Stalker! You pig!

All my belly aching and indignation aside, I enjoyed Blacksite. The gameplay is straightforward FPS fare. Guys pop up; you shoot them. Occasionally they shoot back enough that you have to take cover. Blacksite is another victim of its own hype (see Jericho). It was billed as being edgy and topical, but it's really a standard conspiracy plot. The government did some bad stuff that blew up in its face, and you have to clean it up. It's just an excuse to shoot stuff and doesn't get in the way, well, mostly.



See this guy? He's showing you a picture of his daughter. Plus he's black. Plus he believes in the government. I would have preferred it if he'd just worn a big neon sign that said "I'm going to die."

Plus look at the ridiculous lighting. The highlights have nothing to do with where the light is coming from, and if you look at the full size version you can see that the shadows on the ground and the self shadowing on the white guy's face are being done on a low res grid. I find it distracting. Of course, this game was made using the Unreal engine, so almost everything in the game looks like it was "pooped out by the Vaseline Monster" (to steal a phrase from 1UP's Shawn Elliot).



It's amazing the vehicle gets any traction at all. :P

So, as per usual, I'm my own worst enemy. I'd like it if games were more innovative, but I really didn't mind it that Blacksite wasn't. Then again, I bought it for five bucks off of GoGamer, so my standards are lower, and no game company is licensing the Unreal engine to pursue the five dollar game market.

Scope the Ennui

I'm pursuing the following activities to shake the ennui (boredom).

1) I bought my airline tickets and reserved my room for PAX.

Last years PAX was a revelatory experience. I forgot how much fun it was to be around gamers. The fact that I also got to get hands on time with unreleased games, hear Wil Wheaton's awesome keynote, listen to nerd bands, and see Gabe and Tycho were all secondary benefits. I suppose I should just get some proper gaming friends, but that's never gonna happen.

2) I'm looking to see what E3 is bringing.

Here's a rundown of everything in Next Gen's top 30 I currently know enough to care about.

Nothing.

Seriously. There are two games we might play at a future LAN party (Left 4 Dead and Borderlands). The rest of it might be wonderful, but until it's in my hands, it's just the same empty promises all over again. Let's review.

30. Rise of the Argonauts
Another beat 'em up.

29. High School Musical 3: Senior Year Dance
Ew.

28. Borderlands
Mad Max on an alien planet. With so many guns that it's guaranteed I'll never get one that suits me perfectly.

27. Mortal Kombat vs. DC
Plumbing new depths in stunt casting.

26. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
A game I'm already bored of, only prettier.

25. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
No Jedi Knight game has been good, so far. Only tolerable.

24. Beyond Good and Evil 2
Won't be out this year.

23. Lock’s Quest
An RPG that lets you reshape the world. Will it be as fun as Rocket Slime?

22. Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
I got bored with the first Puzzle Quest by just playing the demo.

21. Crysis: Warhead
I got bored with the Crysis by just playing the demo.

20. Tomb Raider Underworld
I tried to play Tomb Raider Anniversay on GameTap and got bored.

19. Sonic Unleashed
Sonic died to me a long time ago. If after a decade the best you can hope for is that it will be as good as a game which wasn't as fun as Mario back in the early 90s, what's the point?

18. MadWorld
God Hand developers do a Sin City styled beat 'em on the Wii. At best, I'm hoping for it to be as good as God Hand. I'm not holding out hope, though.

17. Animal Crossing Wii
Nintendo hasn't even said they're going to announce this. And I let my original Animal Crossing town go to seed a long time ago. Games that require me to play them are not games, they're jobs.

16. Left 4 Dead
Since we enjoy Zombie Master at the network parties, I'm guessing we'll like Left 4 Dead. I don't expect to play it at any other time.

15. Resistance 2
I loved the Ratchet and Clank games. I hope Insomniac does well with this one. But nothing I've heard makes me want to play it, and I listen to the friggin' Insomniac podcast.

14. Killzone 2
Everything I've read about this game is graphics focused. The gameplay videos I've watched are bland.

13. Fable 2
It's from Molyneux, so it's automatically overhyped. And Fable 1 made me feel empty and alone, not an experience I want to pay for.

12. Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3
I've never been into C&C. I tried the FPS because I love FPS, but it was crap.

11. Far Cry 2
Between Crysis and Stalker, my enthusiasm for open world games has been well crushed.

10. Prince of Persia
I've had the third of the new Prince of Persia games sitting on my desk for what, two years now? That's epic scale apathy.

9. Final Fantasy XIII
Oh please. I still can't believe I finished FF9. I haven't played an FF game since. And I haven't missed them.

8. Street Fighter IV
Maybe if Dan's in it I'll fish it out of the bargain bin to play through his wacky story.

7. Rock Band 2
I bought Rock Band cheap on Amazon and, thanks to a crappy mic, never finished the single player on Medium. I can't imagine why I should care about the sequel.

6. LittleBigPlanet
A platformer that supports custom avatars and user made levels. It looks like a powerful tool, but none of the gameplay has actually looked fun yet.

5. Halo Wars
I'm bored enough with Halo that I often forget Halo 3 ever got released and that I should maybe play through it someday. On the other end of the spectrum, I found my old DVD with I Love Bees burned on it and had a hard time tearing myself away. It might be a decent console RTS, but not having a 360 makes it extra hard to care.

4. Spore
I'm not sure this is even a game. Make a creature. Help it thrive. It sounds like another one of those building games I might enjoy once in a blue moon. I dinked around with the free creature creator and was immediately bored.

3. Gears of War 2
kill.switch again, huh? I don't know. I only just barely touched Gears on PC, but it immediately felt awful. kill.switch was actually better. Maybe it was just the wrong platform, but it made me lose all enthusiasm for Gears.

2. Resident Evil 5
Meh. RE4 was solid, if clumsy (as all horror games are). But the game won't be out this year, and I probably won't buy it until the year after that.

1. Fallout 3
Oblivion, despite it's promising start, devolved into another boring grind. This game, from the same developer, has made a lot of big promises. Considering one of my main problems with Oblivion was that its grand vision made it feel like no game elements were honed enough to be fun, I'm not holding out much hope for Fallout 3.


There you go. The most anticipated games for E3 and I'm so jaded I can't care about any of them. Part of me says I just need something crazier, that fortune 500 companies don't release the kind of madness I need to get me out of my rut. But I've been following the indie releases (at least the ones Game Set Watch post about) and they don't do it either. To bastardize a quote of dubious origin, "Your [game] is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."

I think I need a vacation from gaming.

I Have NO TASTE: GTA Driving

I finally got another PS2 memory card so that I could start playing GTA: Liberty City Stories, in earnest. As usual, I played a couple missions, then had to get behind the wheel of a taxi. It always happens at some point in a GTA game. Usually it's cool because it teaches me the lay of the land. But this is Liberty City. Admittedly, I don't remember every shortcut. But the general layout and most important shortcuts took no time to recall.

So I had a good run. My PS2 is currently paused. I've successfully delivered 200 consecutive fares in a single cab. It only takes 100 to complete the mission, and they don't have to be consecutive. So why did I keep playing?

It's partly because the radio stations are so fun to listen to, and the changing lighting and weather conditions keep things from getting stale, but also, I love driving in GTA. According to many people, this means I have no taste. Most of the reviews for GTA IV say the driving in the game is still "squirrely" or give it the backhanded compliment of saying it's better than the old games. So, why is every reviewer out there wrong about the driving in GTA, and not me.

(Rhetorical questions don't always get question marks. Deal with it.)

The cars in GTA use car chase physics. Every corner makes the car lean. Cars roll over all the time. It's cool that they do that because then everyone has to run away from them before they explode. (I've heard they don't always explode when flipped in GTA IV. I'm not sure I like that.) Spin outs are awesome because if you time them just right, you can drive out of them (sometimes in reverse) and keep going. Admittedly, this makes some missions a pain in the butt. But without it, GTA would suck.

GTA is about the crazy stories. Everyone knows it. GTA IV finally has a story good enough that people are actually finishing all seventy hours of it and are happy to do so, but the stories they really light up in telling are the crazy stuff that happens when they were supposed to be doing something else. Those stories virtually always involve a car wreck or the highly improbable avoidance of same.

Take a mission I recently ran. I'm supposed to be guarding a mafia restaurant from some rival mobsters. They come in waves. The first wave drives up. After a short gunfight, the guards and I dispatch them. Their car is now blocking the intersection and traffic is piling up. The second wave drives up. We gun them down as well. The area in front of the restaurant is now a barricade composed of two cars full of holes and a bunch of angry drivers. The third wave shows up in a Humvee which comes barreling down the hill, right into one of the shot up cars. Realistically, it probably would have just knocked the sedan aside, but in GTA, it pops up on two wheels, flips over, and skids to a stop upside down. The gunners crawl out and start shooting, but I'm already running because I've seen this film before. The Humvee starts to smolder. It explodes. This sets the shot up cars on fire. They explode. This sets the commuters on fire who panic and try to drive away before exploding as well. I ask you, do you want realistic driving phyiscs, or do you want the carnage I just described?

(See the question mark? Not rhetorical.)

No Taste AT ALL!

Just in case anyone ever reads these reviews and starts to take them at all seriously (or, ego forbid, personally), remember that I have no taste at all. After having a minimal amount of fun with Panzer Dragoon Orta and Black, I just laughed myself silly kart racing in Mortal Kombat Armageddon. I had the AI turned down to Easy because I just wanted to screw around, and it was awesome. I played Bo'Rai Cho, the silliest character I know. (He's a rotund Chinese binge drinker who pukes on his foes. Also borracho is Mexican slang for drunkard.) All the kart racers have special attacks based on the driver. Bo'Rai Cho leaves a puke slick behind him. As proof that I have no taste AT ALL, I found the message "You puked on Raiden" consistently hilarious for the better part of a half hour. I still can't read it without laughing.

Just a reminder, it's gaming. Don't take it too seriously. I obviously don't.