Portal at #1? Sounds about right.
– November 5, 2009
Man, this is fun: The 20 Best Video Games of the Decade (2000-2009) – I’ve played 11, and beat seven. You?
About the Author
Richard Clark (Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief) has spent his entire life writing, reading, listening, and playing. He has a Bachelors in Theology from the Baptist College of Florida and has a Master of Arts in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY where he is the classroom technology manager at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to writing at Christ and Pop Culture, he is also a staff writer for Kill Screen Magazine's website and has written for various other outlets such as Paste, Gamasutra, and Collide.
Email: deadyetliving [at] gmail [dot] com. Twitter: @deadyetliving. Xbox Live: deadyetliving 
Somehow, I think this list is about right; I dispute the order though, but having never played Portal… I can’t really say. This might make me do it though.
A good balance between innovators, and what amounts to gaming perfection.
I’ve played fourteen of the Top 20 and nine of the Top 10. The ones I haven’t played are:
• Mass Effect (which I may pick up on Steam for 10 bux this weekend)
• Metal Gear Solid 2
• Burnout 3
• Super Mario Galaxy
• Gears of War 2
• Call of Duty 4 (I actually played two minutes of this at a friends house)
Also, one of the one’s I counted, Resident Evil 4 kept startling the poop outta me, so I only played it for about an hour. My heart hurting wasn’t exactly what I’d consider fun.
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Critiquing the list, there are some solid choices, but some others are head-scratchers. Of the two Elder Scrolls games of the last decade, Morrowind (2002) was vastly superior to Oblivion (2006) in nearly every way except graphical fidelity. The storyline and explorable world of Morrowind was far beyond the scope of its sequel.
As well, I definitely prefer Guitar Hero 2 to Guitar Hero 3. Some of 3′s songs are cool, but it just kind of lost its heart (plus: the guitar battling is just plain stupid). Also, Beatles Rock Band = way cooler than vanilla Rock Band. And I’m not even a Beatles fan.
Halo seems a stretch for me. I’m certain it’s only their for pedigree purposes. It wasn’t a particularly engaging game, didn’t present a particularly engaging story, and, well, just reused a bunch of conventions from other games. Zero innovation. Well, I did like the big Halo world.
Portal strikes me as a bit odd. Like the best puzzle games, it presented a fun mechanic in a way that forced you to think different (since Apple wasn’t really able to make good on that claim…), but also like the best puzzle games, after you finished it (and it was so short and unchallenging that nobody didn’t finish it), there was nothing left to do and no replay value. I tried it out again a couple months ago and I felt nothing. Shadow of the Colossus was a much better choice here if you were mostly interested in giving the spot to a “fresh concept” game.
If I were to order their games via my preference, I’d do it like this:
1. Shadow of the Colossus
2. World of Warcraft
3. GTA: San Andreas
4. Half-Life 2
5. Bioshock
6. Fallout 3
7. God of War
8. Portal
9. Rock Band
10. Oblivion (if this were Morrowind, I’d bump up to #5)
11. Guitar Hero III
12. Final Fantasy XII
13. Halo
14. Resident Evil 4
Guitar Hero 3 on that list at all just confounds me. I just don’t get it.
Okay, so here’s my order amongst those I’ve played:
1. Bioshock
2. Portal
3. Half Life 2
4. Rock Band
5. Super Mario Galaxy
6. Fallout 3
7. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
8. Halo
9. Mass Effect
10. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
11. Guitar Hero 3
Though the gap between Call of Duty 4 and Halo is pretty huge. The bottom four probably would never make my list.
Our ordering (for the games we’ve both played) is pretty similar. You definitely boost Portal more than I’m comfortable with doing. I thought the game was awesome for the three hours I played it, but there wasn’t much to it. I hope they’ll add the portal gun to Gordon Freeman’s repertoire in HL2: Ep3, since Aperture Science exists in the same universe as Gordon and Black Mesa Labs. Portal struck me as an awesome idea in search of a game.
It’s too bad you haven’t played the top three on my list. Shadow of the Colossus kind of does what Portal,/i> should have. It took an awesome idea and found a game to use it in. Simply breathtaking. It’s also the game that sold me on a PS3 when everyone I know has Xboxs—so that’s a pretty powerful gaming experience.
Closing <i> tag!!!! I shake my fist at thee!
So Rich, what didn’t you like about Mass Effect. It’s on sale for nine buck and I wonder if it’s worth it.
Alan, you played it (and wrote an article inspired by it). What do you think?
To be fair, I barely gave it a chance, and just felt like it wasn’t the game for me. The combat is basically a drudgery, and from what I’ve heard the various planets start to feel uninspired. But Alan REALLY likes it. It very well may be worth 9 bucks. There were moments from what I played where I really started to recognize the good elements, but mostly it felt like work.