I bought all the games featured below with my own cash, and was not asked by any of the companies who made them to put their title on this list.
10. Starfield
If you had asked me a couple of months ago, this would have been near the very top of my game of the year list. But then I played around with its new game plus mode, which while thematically interesting and theoretically connected to its narrative in new ways, also runs out of gas really quickly. I started to notice the many inconsistencies in its skill system compared to earlier Bethesda efforts. Why does fighting a bunch of guys on a random planet earn me points that can make me potentially better at unrelated ship or barter tasks? The final nail in Starfield’s top ten list coffin is the embarrasing behavior of Bethesda as a company in recent days, telling fans that their opinions are wrong and pushing hated monetization changes back into Skyrim without any shame.
Still, there’s a ton of awesome game here. The graphics are remarkable, with a particularly stunning HDR implementation that bafflingly didn’t ship until several weeks after the game launched. The core gameplay is solid. The procedural generation tech produces amazing scope at times, at well beyond the fidelity level of something like No…
