Features// SPOnG's Games of the Generation

Grand Theft Auto V
GTA V will probably be considered the last major release of this generation. And this generation will be remembered for going out with a bang.
We’ve all played open world action games, I’m sure. There have been so many this generation that I have enjoyed. Crackdown, Mafia 2, Saint's Row The Third, but no one was expecting GTA V to be as good as it is.

We’d all seen the promo videos as the hype built but they never prepared us for the world that Rockstar had creating. It’s huge and filled with things to do and see. After completing it in over 30 hours I still felt the need to explore, set myself challenges or even just sit and listen to the locals.

This is the ultimate open world game and is a culmination of everything Rockstar has achieved this generation.

Braid
Braid represents something that has been about in gaming for a long time but reared its head to present a whole new world of experiences. Indie development blew up on consoles towards the end of the generation and the fuse was lit by Braid. The first Indie game to really break into the mainstream and set the path for Super Meat Boy, Fez, Hotline Miami and many more. It was a game that stepped away from clichés and had more new ideas in it than any other platformer to come out in the past five years.

As we enter the next generation of consoles the emphasis on indie games has heightened, with Sony using them as a large part of its promotional material. Had Braid not been so brilliant, I’m not sure how the future would have panned out.

Probably a bit like with Biff got that sports book.

Mark E. Johnson

inFamous
inFamous was such a leap forward for superhero games. For one, it didn't have an actual superhero in it. Sucker Punch just going ahead and inventing its very own superhero-ish IP was a real kick in the pants to complacent developers in a stagnant genre. The open world, actually-fun free running and smart build-up of powers combined to make inFamous a generous, epic game. And, of course, there was that morality system that... yes, OK, we were all fed up of those within six months, but it was interesting at the time.

Portal
While Portal 2 was a more complete game, it's got to be the first one for this list thanks to the incredible foundations it built. 3D environmental puzzling had been (and for the most part continues to be) largely about poking around levels to find things that would interact with other things, and that was about it. Portal made such a leap beyond that it might as well have been rocket-powered. The combination of complexity and intuitiveness in Portal's puzzles is jaw-dropping. I've yet to encounter a game in which it's so bloody satisfying to solve a level as it is in Portal. Well, maybe Portal 2...

Flower
By 2009 we'd already had ThatGameCompany's flOw, so when we got the follow-up, Flower, blissed-out gaming wasn't exactly brand new. Flower elevated that experience beyond the territory of mildly-distracting time-killer to full-bodied videogame status. It's a stunning piece of work that takes your gaming in an entirely direction to 99% of everything else out there. It's a shame it hasn't had a wider impact on the types of 'experience' the games landscape offers.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Yeah, another superhero game. But damn. This was the game many fans had been waiting their entire lives to play. Solid writing, great visuals and a smart meshing of the best of the comics, films and animated series all helped Arkham Asylum along, but what really made it pop was the way it made you feel like Batman. This could so easily have been an average brawler and made a modest profit. Instead, we got a highly tactical stealth game and rhythm-based combat that was all about when you respond, not what buttons you could mash together. The result was millions of gamers wandering around thinking, what would Batman do?

Wii Sports
I sold my Wii years ago, and this game looks sort of naff peering back now, but... just thinking about Wii Sports is making me want to dig through the dark recesses of the SPOnG dungeon to plug the Wii in and relive some of those long, lazy golf matches that marked the winter of 2006. It was basically a tech demo, but it sold a LOT of Wiis, helping to entrench motion-controlled gaming, open up the casual audience and get us to Kinect and PlayStation Move.