Wolfenstein: The New Order - Hats off to Machine Games for humanizing B.J. to a degree in which his monologues came across like poetry. I hope they get back to this tone in the third game opposed to the zaniness of TNC. I also couldn’t be bothered with Young Blood.
The Witcher 3 - The hole in my heart that Bethesda had left behind with Fallout 4 was subsequently filled by one of the greatest RPGs of all time. The moral ambiguity of quests and attention to romance put it over the top for me.
Forza Horizon 2 - I enjoy all of the Horizon games, but 3 and 4 lacked the festival vibe that 2 had established. The series has felt less refreshing and more manufactured with each release. I hope that Playground recaptures this feeling in the next game.
Prey - A quintessential hidden gem. The narrative twists, level design, game mechanics and attention to detail make its poor commercial performance borderline criminal. I’m so happy that Arkane has stability under Xbox.
Firewatch - No other game has manipulated my emotions quite like this has. It’s clever, it hits you in the feelings, it keeps you on the edge of your seat. Its ending—perfection. A damn shame that Campo Santo was absorbed by Valve and their next project, In The Valley of Gods, has all but been canned. Truly a waste.
Apex Legends - I’ve loved seeing the growth of Respawn from Titanfall to Apex to Fallen Order. Apex is easily my most played and favorite multiplayer shooter of the generation. The gameplay loop is excellent with some of the tightest shooting within the industry. Nothing out of the FPS space has felt quite as satisfying.
I’ll update this further as I give it some thought.
On an unrelated note: SoT is quite high in the rankings it seems. For some reason every time I play it, no one else joins my crew and I end up sailing alone doing nothing. Is there a setting to fix this, or is the game just dead now?
Overwatch - A game that just came along and was perfection - utter perfection.
Destiny - Is it an objectively amazing game? Probably not. But I spent more time playing it than anything else and had more fun playing it than any other game
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild - Stunning game that was absolutely perfect for the switch launch
Titanfall - Redefined MP in a big way - shame the sequel wasn’t nearly as good.
Sunset Overdrive - Absolutely loved this it was for a while my favourite SP title this gen. Got so much right.
Rise of the Tomb Raider - loved this game I just can’t put into words how I had a week off back close to when it released (coincidentally) and just couldn’t put it down. Which is unusual for me with a SP game.
Halo 5 - Just for the MP (though the campaign is fun to play) but the MP was outstanding I loved it.
Horizon Zero Dawn - Think this was an absolutely great release and my favourite PS4 title.
Battlefield V - Ok this is controversial but this is my favourite BF game this gen. As a big BF player I’ve sunk hundreds and hundreds of hours into the 3 games. 4 Would be in here but it was just so broken, so buggy and virtually unplayable for months on XB1 that I’m marking it down (and the levolution stuff was too gimmicky for me). 1 was obviously popular but the gunplay was terrible, and I mean terrible. So yeah need one in there - V for me - purely for the gunplay which is the best gunplay in any MP game ever.
Destiny 2 - Have to put it in because like the original I played a lot of it. I don’t think it is AS good - it suffers from trying to be something for everyone and the loop of getting exotics was too easy at release meaning the game just felt a bit less special. The inevitable result of that was everything being made really difficult and of course the balance was lost a bit. It was probably a better game than the OG but for me personally a little magic was lost.
Notable mentions: FH3 and FH4 loved both these games but I’m not sure which I’d sub for them out of my 10. Quantum Break - hughely underrated. AC origins - best AC game I’ve played. Wolfenstein TNO and TNC both absolutely brilliant games. Doom 2016 too. Borderlands 3. Probably loads others I can’t remember…EDIT: I overlooked RDR2 which almost certainly belongs in a top 10 - its just I’ve never finished it - so an honorable mention here for what is easily the best world any game has ever created - I’m just not so sure the gameplay was 2018…but still it would be top 10 IF I’d finished it.
Honourable mentions:
Gears 4
Ori & the blind forest
Guilty gear Xrd Rev
Blazblue Central fiction
Sea Of Thieves
Dark souls 3
Mario Odyssey
Ni no Kuni
Assassins Creed Origins
Batman arkham knight
Titanfall 1
Kingdom hearts 3
Thps 1+2 remake
Phantasty Star online 2
DBFZ
Yakuza 0
Crimsom Clover
Quantum break
Rayman Legends
I haven’t joined a public crew since like… a month after launch. Your best bet is finding a crew in LFG or the Sea of Thieves Discord. The game is far from dead, but not sure how many people play open crew.
Forza Horizon 4 - my most played game this gen and one of if not the best racing games of all time
Unavowed - if Bioware and Lucas Arts had a P&C adventure baby. Things quickly escalate in the first 10 minutes and it only gets better. Also best voice acting of the gen.
The Witness - the best puzzle game of the gen, no contest
Thimbleweed Park - Ron Gilberts comeback with an awesome P&C-adventure, was my goty 2014
XCOM 2 - die alien scum!
Breath of the Wild - when others do their boring ubisoft open world clones Nintendo breaths a freash air into the genre
Halo MCC - Halo in 60fps is like chocolate
Rayman Legends - if i want to play a 2D plattforming game i always come back to Rayman Legends
Ori and the Blind Forest - one of the most beautiful games ever made and it also plays great
Wolfenstein The New Order - never was shooting Nazis in the face as satisfying and deep as in Wolfenstein
This is really hard. Honorable mentions go to Flight Simulator, Inside, Gorogoa, Outer Worlds, Witcher 3, Nier A, Return of the Obra Dinn and RDR2.
Halo Wars 2 - I loved this game so much, co-oping it with a friend and playing duo online together we would stay up all night playing and holy shit those cutscenes are NUTS.
Forza Horizon 4 - This game was so high up there for me, the game looks insane on the XB1X and I had so much fun completing everything and the LEGO DLC was 10/10
Surviving Mars - This game I spent too many hours in that I’d like to admit, this game is so relaxing and chill to play that the hours go past so damn fast.
Quantum Break - Many people probably forgot about this game but the gameplay and tv sections were some of my fav gaming moments this entire gen. I feel like this game suffered from the awful XB1 launch and if it launched today it would receive much better praise.
The Witcher 3 - I have a confession, I still haven’t completed this game yet the amount I have already played I LOVED. The side quests were fun to do and the combat imo was fun!
The Outer Worlds - Holy shit I loved this game and wish I could’ve had more, I smashed this game out so damn fast I couldn’t put it down. I know most people thought it was rough but I’m rather easy to please so if its fun gameplay to me it gets a big win. All the dialog options and stealthy bits were my fav, I can’t wait for the second game.
RDR2 - This damn game is so good also haha loved smashing through the story mode, I didn’t play the first game so didn’t really know much but just 1 damn more hiest.
State of Decay 2 - This game is just dumb fun, co-op’d this with a friend and the bugs were just amusing to us flying around the map in the car had us laughing till the wee hours of the morning. I really loved the whole base building aspect to this game and it’s what keeps me coming back to the series every time.
Diablo 3 - Another amazing co-op game, despite being there during the awful error messages at launch and the awful loot system this game was amazing fun. We’d spending hours grinding away and it was just endless fun for both of us.
Call of Duty: Ghosts - This was one of the best cods for me fun wise because of the clan battle system, I met a group of new people and joined their clan and holy shit was it fun grouping up in 3 teams to do clan battles with the cool app thing where you take terratories by winning matches. We got to the point people would see our clan tag and back out and say “oh shit it’s them again quickly back out” lmao it was so good.
People gonna think my list is super weird but this is my honest list based on how much fun I had with each game not me thinking they’re GOTG/GOTY material.
Red Dead Redemption 2 - The best game this generation, and one of the best games I’ve ever played. It just clicked with me immediately, and for months it was all I played, talked about with others on forums, thought about at work. That doesn’t happen very often anymore… What others found off-putting like the slow, methodical controls and deliberate gameplay I found awesome. I lived in that world; hunted, took care of my horse, explored, laughed and cried my way through the story and it was one of the best adventures I’ve had in my gaming life.
Forza Horizon 4 - I’m not a “car guy” by any means, in fact I hate driving irl. But this game… it’s just brilliant fun. The driving is great, the world is great, the expansions are great and it looks absolutely stunning. I would never have thought I’d put hundreds of hours into a racing game, but there you go.
The Witcher 3 - Another masterpiece this generation, with a great world and great characters. One of few games I’ve replayed more than one time, most of it on PC. I do have a Death March playthrough going on Xbox, but it’s paused in anticipation of the Series X-patch. A game I look forward to play again, 5-6 years after release is a damn good game for me.
Nier: Automata - Thanks to Xbox Game Pass I discovered the beutiful (and weird) world of japanese games. I was sceptic at first but this game is awesome, it’s hard to grasp without playing it but there is a beutiful sadness over this game that stays with me. Loved it!
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice - This game is so damn good, and it is one of the most creepy experiences I’ve had in gaming. It’s a different level of horror, it made me feel so…wrong in ways I didn’t know I could be creeped out in. I can only imagine the pain of living with this kind of illness. Looking forward to the sequel which I’m pretty sure will be an epic masterpiece.
Gears 5 - Well haters gonna hate, but this is the best Gears game in my opinion. The story campaign was great, the gameplay as well. Loved all the new additions like Jack and the openess. PvE was great fun, with Horde and Escape being awesome. Hundreds of hours put into it is a first for me in this series.
Battlefield 1 - All the historical inaccuracies aside, this was a great game in an often overlooked setting. The modes and maps where great, I even enjoyed the singleplayer campaign. The support of the game was also good, compare that to the shitshow that was BFV…
Horizon Zero Dawn - A Ubisoft game disguised as a PS4-exclusive is the best thing I’ve played on that console this gen. It was great fun to explore the Ubimap, it even had the patented Ubi-towers to unlock the map! Skill tree and crafting straight from Far Cry… But all packaged with a good story and a great protagonist made this a really fun game that stood out from it’s inspiration. The Frozen Wilds is much better than the main game also.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Was it a great game? Maybe, maybe not. But it was a singleplayer Star Wars game with fun combat, excellent exploration and I enjoyed it a lot.
Titanfall 2 - This was seriously good! I only played it recently but I enjoyed it a lot and it deserves a top 10 spot. Good story and great gameplay.
This sounds like fun! Here’s my top 10:
1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2. Ori and the Will of the Wisps
3. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
4. Gears 5
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
6. Fallout 4
7. Forza Horizon 4
8. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
9. Ori and the Blind Forest
10. Gears 4