2010s

2016 · 1 Season · BBC · Documentary / Nature

Planet Earth II took everything that made the original a landmark and elevated it with a decade of advances in camera technology, storytelling technique, and willingness to confront environmental realities. The iguana-vs-snakes sequence alone became one of the most-watched wildlife moments in internet history, and the series is packed with footage that reaches that level of drama. David Attenborough's narration remains the gold standard. At just six episodes, it's a tighter, more focused production than its predecessor, trading breadth for depth and coming away stronger for it. This is the finest nature documentary series ever produced.

2018 · JRPG · PC / Steam

Chrono Trigger is regularly cited as one of the greatest games ever made, and its PC release, after significant patches, makes the definitive version of the original SNES classic widely accessible. The time travel narrative is still brilliantly designed, the combat system feels modern despite its 1995 origins, and the New Game Plus feature it pioneered continues to influence game design decades later. The PC port had a rocky start with mobile-derived assets, but updates have restored it to a quality worthy of the game itself. If you haven't played Chrono Trigger, you owe it to yourself.

2011 · Puzzle / First-Person · PC / Steam

Portal 2 is Valve at the peak of its creative powers, delivering a puzzle game that's also one of the funniest and best-written games ever made. The single-player campaign is a masterclass in pacing and puzzle design, the co-op campaign is one of the best cooperative experiences in gaming, and the Steam Workshop ensures you'll never run out of new chambers to solve. Puzzles occasionally prioritize spectacle over challenge, and the comedy won't land for everyone, but those are minor complaints against a game that does nearly everything right. Over a decade later, nothing has replaced it.

2015 · Action RPG · PC / Steam

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of those rare games where the story, the world, and the characters all operate at an elite level simultaneously. Combat and movement never quite reach that same tier, and the open world carries its share of forgettable filler, but those are footnotes in a game that gets the big things so right it changed what people expect from the genre. CD Projekt Red built something that still pulls in new players a decade after launch, and the two DLC expansions only cemented its reputation. If you care about narrative in games, this is the one people will measure everything else against for years to come.

2019 · Bong Joon-ho · 132 min · Thriller / Drama

Parasite earned its place as the first non-English language film to win Best Picture, and it did it by being the kind of movie that works on every level at once. It's funny until it isn't, warm until it turns cold, and so precisely constructed that every frame is doing something purposeful. A small handful of viewers find the final act too sharp a turn, but the vast majority walk away stunned. This is a film that rewards conversation, rewards rewatching, and refuses to leave your head after the credits roll.

2018 · Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman · 117 min · Animation / Action

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse took a character audiences thought they knew inside out and found something completely new to say about him. It built a visual language that no animated film had attempted before, grounded it in a coming-of-age story with real emotional weight, and delivered one of the best superhero films in a genre that was already overflowing with them. A handful of side characters deserved more screen time and the villain could have been sharper, but those are footnotes in a film that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and convinced millions of people that animation could redefine what a comic book movie looks like.

2017 · 1 Season · BBC · Documentary / Nature

Blue Planet II brought the same revolutionary approach of Planet Earth II to the world's oceans, capturing marine life with footage that frequently defies belief. The series is credited with sparking a genuine shift in public attitudes toward ocean plastic pollution, a rare instance of a television program producing measurable real-world impact. David Attenborough's narration remains the finest in the genre, and the production team spent four years filming in every ocean to deliver sequences that had never been captured before. Some segments feel familiar to viewers of previous BBC ocean documentaries, but the overall achievement is extraordinary.

2015 · 6 Seasons · AMC · Crime / Drama

Better Call Saul took a comedic side character from one of television's greatest dramas and built an entire series around the question of how he got that way. Across six seasons and 63 episodes, the answer turns out to be more heartbreaking and more layered than anyone expected. Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn deliver career-defining performances, the writing never condescends to its audience, and the visual craft matches anything on the big screen. Slow pacing in the early seasons will test some viewers, and the show asks for a level of patience that not everyone will want to give. Those who do stick with it are rewarded with one of the most complete and emotionally devastating character studies in the history of the medium.

2019 · 1 Season · HBO · Drama / History / Thriller

Five episodes is all it takes. Craig Mazin's dramatization of the 1986 nuclear disaster is carried by three lead performances that are among the best in recent television history, wrapped in a score and visual presentation that make every minute feel suffocating in the best possible way. Some scientific liberties and a handful of simplified character portrayals keep it from perfection, but the minor stumbles barely register against the weight of what this miniseries achieves. Chernobyl tells a story about the cost of institutional dishonesty with a clarity and emotional force that stays with you long after the credits roll, and years later, it remains one of the finest limited series ever produced.

2017 · RPG · PC / Steam

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the kind of RPG that rewards curiosity at every turn. Its combat system is one of the deepest and most creative in the genre, its writing trusts players to navigate moral complexity without hand-holding, and the co-op implementation transforms the experience into something few other games even attempt. The learning curve is steep, the quest journal could use serious work, and Act 1 can feel like a wall for newcomers. Get past those hurdles, though, and you'll find a game that keeps revealing new layers for hundreds of hours. Larian Studios built a modern classic here, and it set the stage for everything they did next.

2017 · Action Adventure / Metroidvania · PC / Steam

Hollow Knight is a masterclass in what a small team can accomplish with focus and ambition. Team Cherry built a world that rewards every hour you pour into it, backed by combat that stays sharp from the first swing to the last boss. Navigation frustrations and a punishing difficulty curve will drive some players away, and that's a fair response to a game that refuses to hold your hand. But for those willing to get lost in Hallownest, there's nothing else quite like it in the genre. Four free content expansions and a price tag that borders on absurd for the amount of game you get only make the case stronger.

2011 · Sandbox / Survival · PC

Minecraft is the rare game that means something different to every person who plays it. Builder, explorer, engineer, farmer, adventurer, or just someone who wants to dig a hole and see what's at the bottom. Mojang Studios created a space flexible enough to accommodate all of those players and more, and the modding community expanded that space by orders of magnitude. Updates have occasionally frustrated the community, and the vanilla experience can feel thin for players who've seen everything the base game offers. But the core promise of a world made of blocks where anything is possible has proven durable enough to outlast entire console generations. Over 200 million monthly players suggest it's going to outlast a few more.

2019 · Exploration Adventure · PC / Steam

Outer Wilds is one of those rare games that does something no other game has done, and does it so well that you'll wish you could forget it just to experience it again. The knowledge-based progression system is brilliant, the solar system is endlessly fascinating to explore, and the story it tells through environmental discovery is among the best in the medium. Some players will bounce off the time loop or the lack of direction, and the controls can frustrate in tight spaces. But for those who click with what Outer Wilds is doing, it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Games this original don't come along often.

2019 · JRPG · PC / Steam

Persona 5 Royal is one of those rare 100-hour games that earns nearly every one of those hours. The fusion of dungeon crawling, social simulation, and style-forward presentation creates something no other RPG has managed to replicate. Combat could use more teeth on default settings, and Mementos remains a slog no matter how many quality-of-life improvements get layered on top, but the highs here are extraordinary. Royal's third semester adds a story arc that many consider the best stretch in the entire game. If you have the time and patience for a JRPG that demands your full attention, this one rewards it like few others.

2016 · Farming Sim / RPG · PC / Steam

Stardew Valley is one of those rare games that gets better the longer you play it, and better still the longer its creator keeps updating it. What started as a solo developer's passion project has become one of the most content-rich, community-supported games on PC. The grind will test some players' patience, and the early hours don't always explain themselves well, but what's waiting on the other side is hundreds of hours of warm, addictive, endlessly rewarding gameplay. Over 50 million copies sold for a reason.

2011 · Action / Adventure · PC / Steam

Terraria has spent over a decade proving that a 2D sandbox can rival anything in the genre for depth, content, and sheer hours of entertainment. Re-Logic's commitment to free updates turned a modest indie release into something with a staggering amount of things to discover, fight, build, and craft. The early game can be opaque and the combat repetitive before things open up, but pushing past those initial hours reveals a game that keeps expanding in every direction. For the price of a fast-food meal, you get one of the best value propositions in all of gaming.

2017 · Jordan Peele · 104 min · Horror / Thriller

Get Out turned a $4.5 million budget into a cultural event, an Oscar-winning screenplay, and one of the most talked-about horror films in years. Jordan Peele's debut is sharp, unsettling, and funny in ways that feel completely natural rather than forced. The third act trades some of the earlier precision for more conventional thrills, but by then the film has already done something rare: it made audiences think and squirm in equal measure. This is the kind of movie that gets better on a second viewing, because every scene is doing more than you realized the first time around.

2015 · Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen · 95 min · Animation / Comedy

Inside Out is Pixar firing on all cylinders, taking a high-concept premise about the emotions inside a child's head and turning it into something that hits harder than most live-action dramas. The world-building is endlessly inventive, the voice cast is perfectly matched to their roles, and the central message about the necessity of sadness lands with a force that catches most viewers off guard. A few criticisms stick, mainly that Riley herself feels underwritten and that the adventure plot follows a familiar path, but those feel like small complaints against a film that won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and left entire theater audiences in tears. It's one of those rare animated films that earns its emotional payoff honestly.

2015 · George Miller · 120 min · Action / Sci-Fi

Mad Max: Fury Road is a film that treats action filmmaking as an art form and executes at a level most directors never reach. George Miller built a two-hour chase sequence that somehow contains more world-building, character work, and thematic weight than movies with three times the dialogue. The plot is simple and the pacing is relentless, which will alienate anyone who needs conventional narrative structure to stay engaged. For everyone else, this is what happens when a veteran filmmaker spends over a decade refining a vision and then commits to it completely. Six Academy Awards and a permanent seat in the action canon aren't accidents.

2010 · David Fincher · 120 min · Drama / Biography

David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin turned the story of Facebook's founding into a film that works as a character study about ambition, betrayal, and the cost of building something enormous. Every line of dialogue lands with purpose, the performances are sharp across the board, and Trent Reznor's score gives the whole thing a tension it has no business having given the subject matter. Its treatment of female characters remains a valid sticking point, and anyone looking for a factual account of what actually happened should look elsewhere. None of that changes the fact that this is one of the most precisely constructed dramas of its decade, and its relevance has only grown as the company at its center became more controversial.

2014 · Damien Chazelle · 106 min · Drama / Music

Whiplash takes the unlikely subject of a young jazz drummer's education and turns it into one of the most tense, visceral films of its decade. J.K. Simmons delivers a performance that won every major award for a reason, and Miles Teller matches him with raw physical commitment that makes every practice scene feel like a fight for survival. The moral questions it raises about ambition, abuse, and greatness are left deliberately unresolved, which is either its most brilliant quality or its most frustrating one. It's a film people argue about long after the credits roll, and that alone tells you it's doing something right.

2015 · Pierce Brown · 464 pages · Fiction / Science Fiction

Golden Son is the middle book that broke the middle-book curse, taking Red Rising's academy survivor into the Society's actual war rooms and turning the trilogy's stakes from schoolyard to solar system. Darrow's infiltration of Gold's ruling class escalates through fleet battles, dinner-party knife fights, and betrayals stacked with a card sharp's timing, and the pacing never once touches the brakes across four hundred pages. The ending remains one of modern science fiction's most infamous cliffhangers, a final chapter readers describe with the specific trauma of people who didn't have the sequel on hand. Relentless is the compliment and the caution. The trilogy's consensus peak.

2014 · 3 Seasons · BBC One · Crime Drama

Happy Valley is one of the greatest crime dramas ever made, a show that earned that status through Sarah Lancashire's ferocious performance and Sally Wainwright's writing, which treats every character as deserving of complexity regardless of their moral position. The Yorkshire setting is integral to the storytelling, the tension is almost unbearable at times, and the final season delivers a conclusion so satisfying it should be studied by every show struggling to stick its landing. This is essential television.

2014 · Roguelike / Strategy

FTL: Faster Than Light on iPad is one of the greatest mobile games ever released, delivering the complete roguelike space combat experience with touch controls that arguably improve on the PC original. Managing your ship's crew, weapons, and systems during desperate battles against the rebel fleet creates tension that few games match. The difficulty is brutal, the randomness can be cruel, and it's iPad-only. But the depth of its systems, the variety of its encounters, and the stories it generates through emergent gameplay make it an essential game for anyone with a compatible device.

2018 · Precision Platformer · PC / Steam

Celeste is a precision platformer that manages to be both punishingly hard and deeply compassionate. The controls are some of the tightest in the genre, the level design introduces and discards mechanics at a pace that keeps every chapter feeling fresh, and the story about Madeline's climb hits harder than most people expect from a game about jumping. Assist Mode ensures nobody gets locked out, even if the intended experience involves dying thousands of times. It's a short game that leaves a long impression, and the B-side and C-side chapters ensure that players looking for a real challenge will find one waiting.

2018 · Action-Adventure · PC / Steam

Red Dead Redemption 2 is Rockstar's most ambitious game and a towering achievement in world-building, atmosphere, and narrative storytelling. Arthur Morgan's arc is one of the best character studies in gaming, and the world of 1899 America is realized with a level of detail that still hasn't been matched. Sluggish controls, heavily scripted missions, and a deliberate pace that borders on tedious will test your patience, and the PC version adds a mandatory third-party launcher to that list. But the story and the world it inhabits are good enough to justify every slow animation and clunky menu. Play it for Arthur. Stay for the sunsets.

2018 · Simulation / Strategy · PC / Steam

RimWorld is one of those rare games that generates stories worth telling long after you've closed it. The AI storyteller system creates drama, tragedy, and comedy with a consistency that makes every colony feel like a narrative you're co-authoring. Some rough edges in combat accuracy and social systems show their age, and the base game leans on modding to reach its full potential, but the foundation is so strong that thousands of hours barely scratch what's possible. Ludeon Studios built a colony sim that doubles as a story machine, and the community has spent years proving just how deep it goes.

2015 · Survival / Strategy

This War of Mine on mobile is one of the most emotionally powerful games available on any platform, putting you in charge of civilians trapped in a besieged city and forcing you to make impossible choices about survival. The resource management is deep, the moral dilemmas are genuinely affecting, and the procedural narrative creates stories that stick with you. It's a deliberately uncomfortable experience that doesn't provide fun in the traditional sense, choosing instead to create understanding through gameplay. For players willing to engage with something serious, it's an unforgettable mobile game.

2016 · Simulation

RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is one of the finest mobile ports ever made. It delivers the full original game with controls that feel native to touchscreens, preserving everything that made the PC version a landmark while making it genuinely comfortable to play on a phone. The isometric pixel art holds up beautifully, the management depth is uncompromised, and the scenario variety provides dozens of hours of content. If you've ever had even a passing interest in theme park management, this belongs on your phone.

2019 · 2 Seasons · Netflix · Documentary / Nature

Our Planet brought BBC Natural History Unit-level filmmaking to Netflix's global platform, and the combination of Alastair Fothergill's production expertise with David Attenborough's narration delivered footage that rivals anything in the Planet Earth series. What sets it apart is the integration of environmental messaging into every episode rather than saving it for a closing segment. The walrus sequence from season one became one of the most discussed moments in documentary history for its raw emotional power. Some viewers find the constant environmental framing heavy-handed, and the Netflix release model undercuts the event-television quality that BBC broadcasts created. The footage and the message are both extraordinary.

2019 · Simulation / Colony Management · PC / Steam

Oxygen Not Included is one of the deepest and most rewarding colony management games ever made. The physics simulation creates genuine engineering puzzles that feel closer to real problem-solving than anything else in the genre. Every system connects to every other system, and mastering those connections is profoundly satisfying. The learning curve is enormous and the visual style doesn't communicate the game's complexity, but for players willing to invest the time, this is Klei Entertainment at the height of their craft.

2014 · 9 Seasons · BBC Two · Anthology

Inside No. 9 is the finest anthology series Britain has produced, a show where every episode is a self-contained thirty-minute masterclass in twist endings, genre subversion, and the kind of writing that makes you immediately want to rewatch what you just saw. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton create worlds that are by turns hilarious, horrifying, and heartbreaking, often within the same episode. Over nine seasons, the hit rate is staggeringly high for a show that reinvents itself every single week.

2015 · Puzzle / Adventure

Lara Croft GO is one of the finest puzzle games ever made for mobile, distilling the Tomb Raider franchise into elegant turn-based challenges on beautifully designed dioramic boards. Every level feels like a miniature puzzle box where environment, enemies, and movement mechanics interlock precisely. The game is relatively short and offers limited replay value once puzzles are solved, but the quality of every minute spent with it is exceptional. It proves that adapting a major franchise for mobile doesn't require compromising on design intelligence or artistic ambition.

2019 · 2 Seasons · Netflix · Crime / Drama

Delhi Crime is a taut, procedural drama that earned India its first International Emmy and deserved every bit of the recognition. Season one follows the police investigation after the horrific 2012 Delhi gang rape case with a restraint and focus that sets it apart from typical true crime adaptations. It treats its subject with the gravity it demands, never sensationalizing the violence, and Shefali Shah's performance as DCP Vartika Chaturvedi anchors the entire series with quiet authority. Season two shifts to a fictional case and doesn't hit with the same force, but the first season alone is essential viewing.

2018 · FPS · PC / Steam

Dusk is the gold standard of the retro FPS revival, a game that understands what made classic shooters great and executes with a confidence that borders on cocky. The three-episode structure provides a journey from rural horror through industrial nightmare to cosmic dread, with level design that only gets better as it goes. The movement is sublime, the weapons are punchy, and the atmosphere achieves a rare balance between horror and empowerment. It's one of the best FPS games of its decade, retro-styled or otherwise.

2019 · Action · PC / Steam

Devil May Cry 5 is the peak of the character action genre, delivering three distinct playable characters whose combat systems are each deep enough to carry a standalone game. Nero's mechanical arm, Dante's style switching, and V's summoner gameplay offer vastly different approaches to combat that all feel equally polished. The RE Engine delivers stunning visuals, the boss fights are exceptional, and the style ranking system rewards creative play in ways that make replaying missions genuinely exciting. The story serves its purpose without standing out, and the level design takes a back seat to the combat. But when the combat is this good, that trade-off is easy to accept.

2019 · Rhythm · PC / Steam (VR Required)

Beat Saber is the definitive VR rhythm game and one of the strongest arguments for owning a VR headset. Slashing through blocks with lightsaber-like controllers feels incredible, the difficulty progression from Easy to Expert+ provides a skill ceiling that keeps players engaged for years, and the modding community has expanded the song library far beyond the official offerings. The base game's track list draws mixed reactions, and DLC costs add up quickly, but the core experience of cutting to the beat is unmatched in any medium.

2013 · Steve McQueen · 134 min · Historical Drama

12 Years a Slave accomplishes something that most American films about slavery have avoided: it shows the institution as it actually was, with an unflinching directness that refuses to offer the audience comfortable distance or redemptive shortcuts. Chiwetel Ejiofor carries the film with a performance that communicates volumes through restraint, and Steve McQueen's direction finds a visual language for suffering that is both beautiful and unbearable. Michael Fassbender's Epps is one of the most terrifying villains in recent cinema precisely because he's recognizably human. The film is difficult by design, and that difficulty is its greatest virtue.

2014 · 4 Seasons · MBS · Sports / Comedy / Drama

Haikyuu!! is the gold standard of modern sports anime, turning high school volleyball into one of the most thrilling and emotionally resonant experiences in the medium. Production I.G delivers consistently excellent animation, every character from star players to opponents receives meaningful development, and the show contains zero filler across its entire run. It makes you care about volleyball with an intensity that borders on unreasonable, and that's exactly why it works.

2016 · 3 Seasons · Crunchyroll · Animation / Action / Comedy / Supernatural

Mob Psycho 100 is one of the rare anime that gets better with every season and sticks the landing when it matters most. It wraps profound messages about self-acceptance and emotional growth inside some of the most inventive animation the medium has produced, and it does it without ever feeling like it's lecturing you. The humor is sharp, the action is spectacular, and the heart underneath it all is completely genuine. Three seasons wasn't many, but the show used every one of those 37 episodes to say exactly what it wanted to say.

2017 · James Mangold · 137 min · Action / Drama

Logan stripped away everything audiences expected from a superhero movie and replaced it with something raw, personal, and deeply felt. Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and newcomer Dafne Keen deliver performances that transcend the genre, anchoring a story about mortality, failure, and reluctant fatherhood. The villains can't match the weight of those central performances, but that barely matters when the emotional core hits this hard. It's a film that earned its ending and left audiences wrecked in the best possible way.

2010 · Real-Time Strategy · PC / Battle.net

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the gold standard for real-time strategy on PC. The campaign is long, varied, and packed with missions that would be the highlight of any other RTS. The competitive multiplayer defined esports for a generation and still supports one of the most skill-intensive ladders in gaming. Going free-to-play removed the last barrier to entry, making this the easiest recommendation in the genre. Blizzard has moved on, but StarCraft II hasn't needed them. The community keeps it alive because nothing else plays like this.

2017 · Puzzle Platformer

Inside on iOS is a masterclass in atmospheric game design that loses almost nothing in the transition from console to phone. The visual storytelling is extraordinary, the puzzles build with precision, and the final act delivers one of the most unforgettable sequences in gaming. Touch controls occasionally create friction in timing-heavy sections, and the four-hour runtime means it's over quickly. But those four hours contain more memorable moments than most games manage in forty. It's one of the best games on mobile, period.

2012 · Action · PC / Steam

Hotline Miami is a game that gets under your skin. The violence is extreme, the gameplay is addictive, and the story it tells about both is more thoughtful than the neon-soaked carnage initially suggests. Each floor is a deadly puzzle that rewards aggression, adaptation, and split-second decisions, and the instant restart cycle makes failure feel like part of the process rather than the end of it. It's short, it's brutal, and it's not for everyone. But for those who click with its rhythm, nothing else feels quite like it.

2019 · Action Platformer · PC / Steam

Katana Zero is a near-perfect fusion of lightning-fast action and surprisingly deep storytelling. Every level is a violent puzzle solved in seconds, and the narrative that ties them together has more ambition and emotional weight than most indie action games attempt. The difficulty can be brutal, and the story ends on an unresolved note that has left fans waiting for years. But what's here is one of the tightest, most stylish action games on PC. It does everything right except end.

2019 · Puzzle

Grindstone is one of the best puzzle games released in the last decade, on any platform. Its color-matching combat is immediately satisfying and stays compelling across hundreds of levels, backed by art and music that drip with personality. Late-game grinding for crafting resources and occasional difficulty spikes that lean on luck will test patience, and not everyone will push through the back half. But the core loop of carving long chains through a board of angry creatures is so good that it carries the game past its rougher stretches. Capybara Games built something addictive, beautiful, and surprisingly deep, and it deserves every bit of the praise it's received.

2013 · Spike Jonze · 126 min · Sci-Fi / Romance / Drama

Her is a love story that shouldn't work on paper and works completely on screen. Joaquin Phoenix makes you believe a man can fall deeply in love with a voice, and Spike Jonze builds a near-future world that feels like it's about five years away rather than fifty. The pacing demands patience, and the premise will test anyone who can't get past its central conceit. But what it has to say about loneliness, connection, and what we actually want from the people we love is more relevant now than it was on release. Few films about technology feel this warm, and fewer still manage to be this honest about the human heart.

2018 · Platformer

Oddmar is one of the best platformers available on any mobile device. Its hand-drawn animation, tight controls, and inventive level design put it in rare company for the genre on phones and tablets. The 24 levels can be cleared in a few hours, and players hungry for more content will hit the ceiling fast. But every one of those hours is packed with quality that rivals big-budget console platformers, and the free opening chapter makes it easy to find out if the game clicks before spending a dime. Few mobile games feel this polished, and even fewer play this well with touch controls.