20 Best Video Games Of The Decade

1. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

Breath of the Wild is the quintessential distillation of why we play video games.

It's Nintendo rolling all their lessons on progression, weapon sets, rewarding abilities and enemy types into one gloriously open-ended hero's quest. The plot is simple: Princess Zelda is trapped in Hyrule Castle, and you need to defeat the evil spirit, Ganon.

How you do this involves mastering a set of physics-abusing powers, and learning how to expand your own moveset through trial and error.

You'll go from roasting apples by the fire to spearing a hulking cyclops and using his eyeball for a strength potion. What starts as simple sword swings becomes elegant slow-motion backflips and chains of bow n' arrow headshots - the result seeing you and Link lock-step as an accomplished hero worthy of Hyrule.

The best part is that all these abilities were inside you from the beginning - you just didn't know it yet. Like EA's oft-overlooked Skate series, the real progression was within, and that is a masterful thing to pull off.

By the time you storm Hyrule Castle, downing powerful enemies and charging towards Ganon as that theme rises to meet you in the background, it's a feeling of accomplishment and escapism like nothing else.