Roasting my most-played games across Steam and Xbox

I bought my Xbox One around New Year’s Day of 2014, give or take. And, while I’ve certainly played some great games on the Wii U, PlayStation 4 and PS5, Nintendo Switch, and so on in the years since, the vast majority of my time spent gaming over the last 12 years has been on the Xbox and, since October 2023, PC.

This may not be pretty; this may even get uncomfortable. But how you spend your time must say something meaningful about your tastes. So, for the sake of science, I’ve taken my 10 most-played games on the Xbox One and Series X, my 10 most-played games on Steam, and accounted for any slight overlap by treating both platforms as equal. It’s been years since I really used my Xbox as more than a glorified Blu-ray player, but I probably spent more time with the original Xbox One than any other console in my lifetime.

Here, then, are my 16 most-played games over the last decade-plus.

1. Destiny (2014)

This was a really special one for me. I grew up on a fairly strict diet of Halo, Halo 2, and Star Wars games, so when this came along, I was all in. But it was also my first experience with something resembling an MMO, so it taught me a lot about the way folks had been playing games on PC and the vocabulary they used. Those first couple weeks, I played it so much I’d have dreams I was playing it—or maybe I was in the game for real, waging war against the Hive on the scarred surface of Luna. The Vault of Glass is still my favorite Destiny raid, I think, thanks to so many fond memories and the novelty of those early glory days.

2. Halo: The Master Chief Collection (2014)

This launched in a disastrous state, but 343 Industries and their partners put years into making it the dream Halo anthology it was always meant to be. To this day, you can log on, matchmake into a game of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, H2: Anniversary, or Halo 3 in seconds, with all the great modes you remember and then some. And the remastered Halo 2: Anniversary campaign is a wonder to behold, with wailing Steve Vai guitars, Hollywood-caliber Blur Studio cutscenes, and some of the all-time blockbuster moments in FPS history.

3. Halo 5: Guardians (2015)

You’re gonna laugh—you might even hate me for this one—but Halo 5 might be my favorite arena-PvP shooter ever. I feel like I’ll have so much more to say about this game some other time, but the way its launch window just missed the arrival of the Xbox Play Anywhere push was such a tragedy. You see people saying all the time that this is the one mainline Halo they never played, either because it never came to PC or because everyone was always saying how bad it is.

The campaign took risks, and the way it developed Cortana’s character post-resurrection was always going to be divisive, but it was really fun to play with a friend or two. The Breakout mode was a really neat innovation for the multiplayer; the two Warzone modes felt like Halo 2’s canceled “Warfare” gametype realized at last. Nothin’ beats H5 Ranked Arena with magnum starts.

4. Fallout 4 (2015)

I played a decent stretch of Fallout 3 when it first launched on the Xbox 360, but it didn’t win me over by any means. This was the studio that had made Morrowind, and a lot of the art direction was interesting, but it didn’t resonate like Red Dead Redemption and some of the other games from the 360 era, when I so rarely made time for games (that weren’t Halo: Reach, World at War, or Guitar Hero). All this to say that Fallout 4 was a totally unexpected thrill for me. The colorful environments, the settlement-sim stuff, the sense of exploration and discovery, the Far Harbor DLC—it blew my hair back in pretty much the same way Morrowind had done 13 years prior. I love this goofy, endlessly replayable game.

5. Friday the 13th: The Game (2017)

I didn’t think horror games were for me, despite my love of horror in prose fiction and at the movies. But something about Friday the 13th spoke to me. I knew I had to try it, so I pitched a review to Rolling Stone’s short-lived Glixel vertical, made a bunch of friends through the game, and played Friday with pretty much the same group on a semiregular basis for years.

That is, till legal drama between the licensor and the screenwriter of the original film (the one where Jason’s mom is doin’ all the killing, believing her son to be dead) caused an eventual full shutdown of the game. I’ll cherish the old memories forever, but I’m hoping IllFonic’s new Halloween game can get the gang back together for some new ones.

6. Destiny 2 (2017)

Activision really wanted regular tentpole Destiny releases from Bungie—the developer’s community manager let a comment about Destiny 3 slip while I was interviewing him before D2 had even launched. But the Destiny 2 team went out of its way to deliver something fresh with the 2017 sequel. Mark Noseworthy called it an opportunity to “break bones,” and I tend to think that most of the changes that came with D2 were ultimately for the better. The vanilla Red War campaign rivaled Halo in a way the first Destiny hadn’t, the PvP modes got a welcome shakeup for a while, and it leaned harder into the universe’s fantasy elements. I spent more time with this game than any other, and I’d say I picked a pretty good one.

7. Star Wars Battlefront II (2017)

This truly was the full package, especially after DICE got EA to let them patch out a lot of the really egregious monetization. Motive’s two single-player campaigns were full of brilliant character moments, the multiplayer component offered a rich feast of modes catering to all kinds of different players, and the post-launch support was outstanding. I always found myself wishing for more characters (for example, Padmé Amidala and the animated Rebels crew), but between the Luke Skywalker stuff, the Versio family’s tale, and Ewok Hunt, we were eatin’ good with this game for a long, long time.

8. Apex Legends (2019)

I used to really gush about this game. It popularized the use of in-game “ping” systems, to allow for quick, efficient communication between strangers (who may or may not want to chat on the mic); it had most of the exciting speed and traversal I’d loved in Respawn’s two Titanfall games; it made winning feel like a serious achievement.

The day Apex launched, I jumped on it with some Halo buddies “for a few games” and ended up playing for about 12 hours straight. It was my most-played game of 2020, so it’s a game I now associate with the isolation of the early Covid era. But I still think it’s among the best shooters on the market all these years later.

9. Call of Duty (2022)

Why did I subject myself to so much of this? They reeled me back in with the elimination-style Gunfight mode in Modern Warfare (2019), Cold War, MW2, and so on. Some good times were had. But I’ve grown really sick of this series in the past couple years; the back-to-back Black Ops titles, with their dizzyingly fast multiplayer, drained the last of the fun out of CoD, as far as I’m concerned. Bring back the Desert Eagle, the riot shields. Ditch the godawful generative-A.I. cosmetics. Then maybe we’ll talk.

10. Halo Infinite (2021)

The multiplayer isn’t as inspired as Halo 5’s, but there is some real magic in the open-world campaign design, the grappleshot, and the very Breath of the Wild narrative structure, where most of the action seems to have happened off-screen before the story truly started. I like that Cortana’s big war with the Created taking on their makers wasn’t dropped altogether, and how Infinite manages to recapture some of the mythic vastness and wonder of the classic Bungie trilogy. The Weapon, a.k.a. Joyeuse, is another fascinating spin on the Chief’s ancilla in the wake of Halo 4’s big ending. I hope one day Microsoft decides to make a real Halo game again; I’d like to know where Atriox, the Endless, and our heroes end up.

11. Red Dead Redemption II (2018)

Arthur Morgan’s a complicated man, but I loved spending time with him. I wish he and Mary Linton could have found a way to run off together and settle down. Maybe a cottage beside the lake somewhere—a quiet little place out of the way, with good fishing. This was the first game I played properly all the way through when I got my first gaming PC: a true Western epic filled with unforgettable performances.

12. Magic: The Gathering Arena (2018)

I started playing Magic: The Gathering around September 2013, with the launch of the Theros block, and Arena has become my preferred way to play. The “Jump In” event modes that announce the arrival of each new set suit me just fine, really, as someone who first learned the game by playing Booster Drafts. The Final Fantasy set was a damn good time.

13. Slay the Spire (2019)

After my first layoff in late 2024, I decided that it was time to lock in and complete a run of Slay the Spire. I think Tetris Effect may have been to blame; I’d beaten one challenging game at a time when my ego really needed the boon, and I thought maybe I could finally conquer the third act of Slay the Spire for good measure. It took me at least a couple weeks of obsessively refining my deck-building strategy, learning what cards I truly liked and which ones I could simply refuse, but I finally did it. My son and I cheered as that final boss went down.

14. Balatro (2024)

Balatro is fun for many of the same reasons as Slay the Spire, though it’s far less intellectually stimulating. It’s a great vibe, though, with a killer soundtrack and old-school visuals that recall the Windows card games of the early ’90s. I prefer Forbidden Solitaire, if I’m being honest, but—like Vegas after midnight or a Krispy Kreme shop—Balatro has its charms.

15. Fortnite Battle Royale (2017)

I have a nine-year-old son who became incredibly hyperfixated on Fortnite around the time they put Godzilla in the game, which was a perfect time to jump in and play Zero Build for about a year. That whole chapter was solid, and what started out as me trying to be a fun dad who could enjoy some Fortnite with the kiddo quickly turned into me watching pro players stream the game all the time. (The streamer Prospering might be partly to blame for my own return to Twitch.) I wanted to learn everything I could about a given season, and play just well enough to carry my son to victory now and then. Unfortunately, I spent way too much money on V-Bucks. Harmless fun can get expensive.

16. Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011)

Once I got my PC and began to dabble in the dark arts of keyboard-and-mouse controls, I knew it was a matter of time before I went sicko mode on The Old Republic. After all, I’d spent years writing a book about BioWare’s 2003 RPG, Knights of the Old Republic, and part of me was always curious to experience some of the MMO’s storylines firsthand. Watching the scenes with Revan on YouTube simply isn’t the same as spending dozens (or hundreds) of hours with the game yourself.

With Destiny 2 winding down, now seemed like the right time, and I’ve been having a blast—clearly, since this rocketed into my top six most-played Steam games in no time at all. It’s a perfect option for Destiny folks who aren’t sold on The Division 2 or Warframe.