Have spent the last few days reading top 10 games of the decade.  A majority are personal lists and usually contain a few obscure items and seem to neglect some of the more obvious games.  Well this is my list of top 10 games I actually played and owned.  At the end you can see a full list of the games I purchased with a little blurb on my opinion of it.

The gaming industry saw an interesting turn with the release of Wii fit, rated number one 2009 in sales (around 2.5 million) which highlighted that the mid thirty to mid forty year olds where the biggest purchaser of games, myself being in the middle of that demographic.  I have neither a Wii or Wii fit, so it will not make my list, along with many other popular games, such as Halo (Xbox), so do not expect a list that reflects market sales or popularity, in fact some games may be a surprise for some as there are no sales figures due to them being free, so enjoy and read on.

If you would like to make a comment, it will take some time, as I manually authorise registrations and comments .... and yes, if the comment is rude, raciest or plain stupid, it does not get posted.  If it is highly critical ... but funny, it might make it.  But pleas remember, this is my personal list of games played.  Some games where released before 2000 but I bought/discovered them post 2000 and played this decade, so don't get to wound up about that either.

Number 10

Freeciv

Genre:       Turn base strategy

Platform:    Linux (Multi PC Platform)

Popularity: GPL license, not available

Awards:

Release Date:   1996 - Still active

Although released in 1996, it is still under active development and version 2 was released this decade, around 2004 to memory, when I started to play.  Over time it has been tweaked and more rules added making for good turned based play and one of the appealing things is that it is multiplayer which was part of the original design by some uni students back in 1996.  I mainly play as it runs on Linux, and allows big worlds, one of my main criticisms of the Civ games, and even Civilisation 4, although good, does not make it onto this list as the worlds are just too small for my gaming tastes, and so Freeciv does.

Graphically, it is still early century as opposed to modern games today, but this is more about the game than graphics.  It is available for Free, and if you have not checked it out, do so.  It might be a nice little occasional time waster for you.

Number 9

Unreal Tournament 2004

Genre:  First Person Shooter

Platform:  Linux (Windows)

Release date:

I originally got this because there was a Linux client of the game.  I am not much into FPS much due to a dull game play and my suffering motion sickness while playing, but I did like the tournament and online play.  Not many servers left,  and the game has been played to death, but I did have to get UT3 for the PS3 for the next decade of FPS fun.

Number 8

The Sims 3

Genre:   People Simulator

Platform: Windows

Popularity: 5.9 Million copies sold so far.

Release Date:

This is a very cool game, and following my other favourite, Sims 2, this will most likely be my number one game for 2010 to 2019.  At this point we have only one expansion released, and it still lacks the depth of Sims 2 with its last EP (Apartment Life), but as long as I get weather, businesses and some more witch craft, I will be a happy man.

Not withstanding, I love the dynamic neighbourhood and being able to visit friends.

Number 7

Hitman 2: Silent Assasin

Genre:  Third person shooter

Platform: PS2 (Xbox, Game Cube, Windows)

Popularity: 3.7 million copies sold (wiki)

Release Date:

Once again, not much into shooters, but this game allowed more malevolence than most shooters, which had appeal for me ...

I would rate the game R as it is quite specific about killing people in very cold blood, but here in Australia no such rating so it gets an M.  My boys will definitely be over 18 before I let them play this game or anything like it.  Other game similar I played was James Bond, but because I did not buy it (borrowed it from my sister in law) it does not qualify for this list.

Number 6

Medieval II

Genre:   Real time strategy/Turn based strategy

Platform: Linux (Windows)

Popularity:

Release Date:

I played Medieval a fair bit but discovered it late and Medieval 2 came out shortly afterward.  I got Medieval 2 because it could play well on Linux with Wine and Cedega.  I had it running very well and even submitted some screen shots to Cedega for their web site.

I enjoyed the strategy of this game and although challenging, it did let me win enough to keep playing (I am not a very good loser).  It has a great turned based side to it as well.  When you start, you do want to be German or English as the others are very hard to expand with.  If you want to play the Moors though, straight off the top, you need to cheat, and they are hard to keep alive.

Anyway, I have wasted, and still waste time with this game.  It is still loaded on the system and if I don't want to muck around with Wine, I still have it on my Windows partition.