What's the greatest videogame of all time?
What's the greatest videogame of all time?
Rules: just pick 1 and explain why.
I've been playing since the NES and despite being from a low income family I had the luck of being able to play and own many consoles over the 3 decades of my life, plus some pc.
If you ask me right now? Resident Evil 4 (2005).
A before and after in gaming, to this day still extremely fun to play even for casuals but 20 years ago it was THE masterpiece. And everyone took notice of it, everyone played it, even players that didn't cared about resident evil. The gameplay was so good that it got photocopied by everyone right after in the action genre.
Arguably the last big innovator in videogames minus Minecraft and... PUBG (Fortnite did it better I know).
Try to NOT pick your favourite game, that's a different thing.
Tetris
Just about everyone has either played or heard of it. It is easy enough for young and old people alike to pick up. But it can get so challenging that even nowadays new records are broken regularly.
It's simple. It's fun. And will remain so for all eternity.
And the poor bastard that created it never made any money off it, IIRC
Kind of. Because the game was technically owned by the USSR he was not eligible to receive any royalties until his prior contracts expired. He has received royalties on it starting around 1996.
"Life is just loke tetris, it just gets harder until you die" Or something, can't remember where i heard that.
Apparently some kid managed to "beat" it though so maybe it's wrong now.
Your failures pile up, your achievements disappear.
Yep! 13yo played it and reached the kill screen, absolutely insane accomplishment.
This is such an absurd question. I mean, it's weird in movies and books, weirder in music... but games?
I mean, Tetris. It's Tetris, isn't it?
But then you're out there going "so is Tetris better than Baldur's Gate III", which is a nonsensical sentence.
It’s kind of like asking for the best video.
It wouldn’t make sense to compare TV shows, movies, Youtube videos, TikToks, sporting events, commercials, journalistic footage, etc. all as a single category.
Idk. So do you ask for “best RPG” or something like that instead? Seems overly specific now.
Yeah, for sure. The real answer is the question is superfluous. There is no number one. I'd say you can't even put together a top 10. It's just not a thing you need to do or can do.
Is it? Minecraft is the most sold game, which to be fair Tetris held for a very long time.
You're kinda making my point, that's another absurd choice to have to make.
But no, it's Tetris.
Well, I think there are multiple potential candidates depending on how you define greatness. I think these few are certainly the most influential:
- Super Mario Bros. Possibly the system it ran on was more important, but this game was a system seller for the system that single-handedly saved not only the entire video game industry, but probably the very concept of video games at a time when it was looking like it'd just be another fad that faded away right along with bellbottoms and pet rocks, with what was left of it remaining caged in Japan. Mario 1 was most people's first platformer, I also have to think that the first damn goomba in 1-1 probably holds the crown for the highest kill count of any entity in the universe.
- Tetris. Infinitely playable and probably infinitely played, and you can get it to run on damn near everything. Everyone knows Tetris, even people who haven't played it or any other video game.
- Doom. Just, Doom. Yes, Quake was more advanced. Yes, Quake was technically the actual technological forefather to the polygonal 3D games we play today, and many game engines still include tiny bits of Quake's original code. But there would be no Quake without Doom. It certainly wasn't the first FPS, but it's the game that cemented the FPS formula for good and firmly established the x86 PC as not only a viable gaming platform, but the king of gaming platforms from that moment until this very day. Ever since Doom, outside of specialized arcade hardware the PC has been the powerhouse platform for the biggest, most technologically demanding games. After Doom game out everyone wanted their own "Doom clone" on their platform just to show that they weren't just another me-too, also-ran.
- Street Fighter 2. The genre defining 1 on 1 fighting game template. Enough said.
- Chrono Trigger. This game showed everyone not what a console RPG was up until that point, but what a console RPG could be if you put actual effort and creativity into it and didn't just crank out another grindy and soulless, swords-and-sorcery-go-kill-the-dragon yawn fest just to keep your franchise going. Its contemporary Final Fantasy games almost got there (especially 6), but Chrono went the full mile. The feats Chrono Trigger pulled off on the humble SNES as well as many of the innovations it brought forward were far ahead of its time and it took literal decades for the genre to catch up to it -- including quite a few entries from its own studio.
- Final Fantasy 7. This game is objectively crap even compared to many of its peers. But there is no doubt that it was the next stepping stone from Chrono Trigger that finally firmly launched the console RPG into mainstream territory, made the genre as a whole truly successful, and was an awful lot of people's first RPG. It probably made a significant and permanent contribution to the formation of weaboo culture, as well.
- Half Life 2. No, not the first Half Life. Not Opposing Force and not Blue Shift, either. There was never before any hype and anticipation for a video game like there was for Half Life 2. In the months leading up to its launch it was all anyone talked about. Not Doom 3, not the new Warcraft. Half Life 2. And of course with Half Life 2 came Steam, and we all know how that turned out. Sure, Steam itself started life as a patch delivery and server browsing platform for Counterstrike, but up until Half Life 2 appeared in it, nobody cared. The impact Half Life 2 had on everything is absolutely undeniable, and that doesn't just include the horde of games that came after it attempting to imitate its unbroken linear first person narrative and setpiece based game design as a cash grab, not to mention that phase in first person shooters where seemingly everything suddenly had to have physics puzzles in it...
Rules: just pick 1 and explain why.
This post right here, officer.
If we absolutely have to pick just one, I think Doom is probably the most important of the bunch.
Final Fantasy VII was my first RPG. It had a good (but sometimes difficult to follow) story, lots of quirky characters, Full Motion Video sequences, and a musical score that nears perfection. Hearing those songs today doesn't just remind me of the game, it brings me back to all the emotional moments in the story where I felt like I was actually there, feeling what those characters felt and being there fighting along beside them.
A lot of how I feel about that game may be related to the fact that I was a teenager when I experienced it, but the lasting impression of that experience is why I think it is one of the greatest games of all time.
Copy this entire comment but replace "Final Fantasy VII" with "Morrowind" and you have my story.
I never played any Final Fantasy game until I was an adult and a couple years ago I picked up FFVII to finally play it, and three extended breaks and one full restart later and I'm barely halfway through the main story by my rough estimate the last time I played it - which was probably about a year ago. I just can't get hooked into it for some reason that I couldn't tell you. I played and enjoyed FFX (twice!) and I like the newer ones, but new final fantasy is essentially Devil May Cry now so I don't really count those as the same. But I think what it is is I've just been spoiled by newer games and old school FFVII is just too crunchy for me now. Which is weird to say because see above about Morrowind, which I do still play up to the modern day, but it again makes sense because I grew up playing that one.
As someone who knows and loves the original, do you have opinions on the remake? I played a brief bit of it once at a friend's place and I liked it, it doesn't seem very turn based anymore but I like that I suppose. It felt good to play. I didn't have a reference for it story wise to the original at the time, I hadn't played it yet. I hear it doesn't contain the whole story.
Steam came out a while before hl2, but agree with everything else you said
Brilliant rundown. No notes. 👏
Outer Wilds. Any explanation that I give would be massive spoilers, but it captures a genre, aesthetic, and theme that, in my experience, has been virtually unused by any other game before and still remains extremely underutilized
I saw the question, came to post this only to see yours.
It truly is a unique experience. I jokingly say to my family that if I ever have some kind of temporary amnesia prompt me to play that.
I also occasionally watch let’s plays of streamers to vicariously experience some of those moments of realization as the story unfolds.
Seriously play it if you haven’t and avoid streams, videos, etc like the plague. The game progression is 100% knowledge based. So spoilers really do take away part of the experience.
Thanks! I have it but haven’t played it yet. This may be what finally gets me out of my video game rut!
Yep. By far the best game ever made. It's not even close. It's truly an experience. I wish I could play it again. I've watched so many streams of people playing it for the first time just trying to recapture some of the magic for myself.
I’ve heard so many friends say this. And I have the game but it’s like I forget it’s there and so I’ve never played it. I need to fucking play it…thanks for not spoiling anything and reminding me :)
Yeah not a big gamer, but I've enjoyed what I've played so far. Loved Myst and Riven when I was younger, and it scratches that itch. I think I only played like 10-15 hours before I got too busy to play anything. I should really get back on it to see it through
One of those games I'll never understand the hype, I despise Fortnite but I get it. But this, looks just meh
I got the game because of a video review that struck me with how little it gave away. Because it bent over backwards to avoid spoiling it.
I played it for 5 minutes and thought, standard tutorial level design and the models could use some work.
10 minutes after that I was on my way with a code and just headed to explore. A few minutes later something crazy happened, and I was struck thinking “what just happened”
A few hours later I was pulling on a thread of exploration when I saw some celestial event that reminded me about another thread of another mystery and made me go “ohhhh, so I need to go here and check this out at a certain point in the orbit”
One crazy weekend was over and I had felt wonder, sadness, frustration, melancholy and hope in such amazingly timed waves of intrigue and discovery that I wish I could do it again.
It may not be to everyone’s taste and I get looking at the initial style and thinking there’s cut corners but there aren’t.
I will spoil one technical detail. The entire solar system is emulated in real time. Things and events are inter connected in ways that I’m personally shocked they ever got the game to run on the Nintendo Switch. It’s a technical masterpiece even if it doesn’t look it at first glance.
It got to be Goat Simulator for sure:
- Top notch graphics.
- Full of features, even some not intended by the developers.
- You can hurt and get hurt, so it's BDSM-friendly.
- Open sandbox.
- It's more recognisable than Tetris. Tetris is easy to confuse with some Tetris knock-off, Goat Simulator is instantly "yup, this is Goat Simulator".
- It's deeper in lore and philosophy than Chrono Trigger.
- Zelda's worldbuilding pales in comparison with Goat Simulator's.
- Requires more strategy than Diablo and FFA combined.
- You play it as a goat dammit. Everything else is just fluff.
Note
This is a joke answer. Don't take it seriously.
Despite this being a joke, I gotta try it now.
I was looking through my friends list in Steam. I found out I have a family member with 2700+ hours in Goat Simulator. I don't even know how to begin to ask about this.
For me it's between this masterpiece and Untitled Goose Game.
The unofficial sequel to Untitled Goose Game is Little Kitty, Big City.
Grand Theft Auto 3.
You had to be there to see how absolutely groundbreaking that was at the time. Gaming had suddenly grown up.
It was like all the obvious limits in other games all just got pulled away at once. Explore a full city in 3D, drive around, shoot people, steal a tank.
And the sequel only improved on it, but I've honestly never been so awed by a game before or since. It's like they were the first dev to finally figure out what the PS2 hardware was for. Everything before just felt like a slightly nicer version of what had come before. This was new.
I didn't even look in this direction but I think you're right
Goldeneye
I know we all put in an absurd amount of time in the facility but perfect dark is objectively better
Disagree, as someone who loved both. It was a fun advancement, but that doesn't replace the peak gameplay of Goldeneye.
Perfect Dark was peak multiplayer experience on the N64, but trying to go back and play now is terrible...
Split screen games run at like 15 frames a second and I wonder how I put so many hours into it.
Goldeneye suffered from trying to exceed the N64. It’s an upgrade overall but the performance really struggles, Goldeneye didn’t really see that (prox mines excepted)
License to kill : Pistols
What were your go to game settings?
Get down...!
Zelda, the entire series/franchise. The OG RPG. Many argue it isn't an RPG because the original you couldnt level up but when I think of RPG, I think you are a character and you go on an adventure. It also serves as a good gateway to fixed RPGs where everyone basically has the same story. And to strategy video game as a whole. Also, it was Nintendo's first RPG, when PlayStation and Xbox still did not exist. And the Best console is Nintendo since it lasted so long. Many of the other consoles feel like less of a game and more like your are in an interactive movie.
The entire series, are you sure about that?
Freshly picked Tingles Rosy Rupeeland is a masterpiece and the most important game in the series, I will not hear otherwise
Portal 2 is THE highest rated game on Steam.
Doom or Tetris were probably the most influential ones?
Mario bros 3 - it felt like a SNES game
I feel like the NES version was better than the SNES one actually
What is/are the difference(s) between the NES SMB3 and the Super Mario All-Stars SMB3?
God I fucking loved that game.
That was one of my front runners for a long time, but after recently playing them side by side, SM World is much better.
Other people have already said it, but it's Tetris.
Its the only game ever made that I would describe as "perfect".
It takes seconds to learn how to play, while the skill ceiling is in the stratosphere. It's endlessly replayable, the music is iconic, and it's available for basically any platform made in the last 40 years.
Doom (1993).
Why: I'm still playing it. Most people know it, and it's the grandfather of all FPS games.
Wolfenstein 3d would like a word.
Wolf was Doom's predecessor, yes, but Doom was far more influential. I remember at the time "first person shooter" didn't exist as a genre so everything was just a "Doom clone", even Duke Nukem 3D IIRC.
Doom is Wolfenstein but refined and better
Prior to August 8th, 2006: Chrono Trigger.
Post August 8th, 2006: Dwarf Fortress.
Dwarf Fortress is, mechanically, almost everything I think a game should be. And the only reason it's only almost is because it's not finished yet.
This right here; and I would offer that Cataclysm DDA is either as good or just a tiny bit below
I think of CDDA as mostly Dwarf Fortress with vehicles. Just as complex in the combat, but not as complex in world gen or with civilizations (because zombies who cares lol), but the vehicle building and sim is as far as I would expect DF to have, if it had vehicles.
I once made a giant mobile fortress that could just drive straight through most anything that wasn't made of metal.
OP asked "of all time", so what about after 2050?
Doom.
It was the first 3(well, 2.5)D shooter. Plus, I can hear E1M1.
And using the shareware license for distribution widely helped it's popularity and it had multiplayer.
Honorary mention to Carrier Command ( the first one with like a 5 polygon island and a 40 polygon volcano).
Halflife 2 + Incl Episodes
I always answer with Super Mario World. It's the best game. I won't elaborate.
Super Mario World is my answer to "If someone who never played a video game before asks you to introduce them to gaming, what will you start with?"
Possibly becasue it's a major entry point for me into gaming, but it's also colorful, specifically designed to be beginner and child friendly, it's whimsical, the controls aren't that complicated (though there is a deep end to that pool) and being a 2D platformer it's maybe not nausea inducing to people not used to 3D graphics.
Mount and Blade Warband.
So many games you start off or become something great. In Skyrim you're the dragonborn, you become great but you were always going to. The world is huge and immersive, but you're always going to be important in the world.
In warband, you're a nobody. You'll always be a nobody unless you do something. Trade, fight, quest or scheme. The world will continue with or without you. Your favourite faction might get wiped out and you can do something about it or not. There's no guarantee of victory, and what you decide as a win condition is up to you.
It is the ultimate sandbox, but the original is janky. The solution; mods. An incredibly dedicated modding community elevates this game into my most played game. The lord of the rings mod is both the best way to get into the game and in my opinion the best video game adaptation of a movie (just in front of kotor).
TL:DR: Warband makes it ok to suck and makes you earn your victory. You might not think that's fun, but trust me it can be.
Dam you. Its on my wishlist and I dont need to buy more! Loved the original too
Final Fantasy Tactics. The original, not the kiddy Tactics Advance games.
Great tactical combat, great soundtrack, amazing story. Plus, abusing the job system to make broken character combos is absurdly fun.
Fallout New Vegas.
If we are just talking about replayability, I have never put as many hours into another game as that one.
That pinball game on windows xp
Them as likes this should also check out Maxis Full Tilt Pinball and its sequel, Full Tilt Pinball 2.
These are the actual commercial games with the engine upon which Space Cadet was based.
I read somewhere that back then Microsoft was looking to buy some game to include on windows and everybody was showing then games that are more "videogame-ish", with some level of violence or stuff like that, which Microsoft didn't want. Eventually some guy at Microsoft had just rejected another game and said something like: "can't someone just create a pinball game or something?" and someone overheard and created what we now know as Space Cadet Pinball.
How many levels did you get in it?
Probably Doom for being one of the first games with real mod support
And fear. Actual fear. I remember the demo scaring the shit out of us.
MP was top shit. game was revolutionary
it also went open source later!
It doesn't hold up but while it was happening I don't think there was a better gaming experience than Vanilla WoW. Obviously for some it wasn't the first MMO experience, but for many it was, and it was pure magic.
The random friends made, and mortal enemies you would drop everything you were doing to try and kill. Spending 6 hours clearing a dungeon(read wailing caverns) for the first time with random people you met in chat. Getting your first mount, walking into molten core with 39 other people and killing your first raid boss. Getting your first epic. The stupidity of barrens chat/whatever the equivalent the scumbag alliance had. The first time you had guild mates come to your rescue when some no-life higher level person was camping you and it devolving into an impromptu war between everyone in the zone and their friends. That time you pulled off an epic 1 v 2. Shit talking all the other classes in your guilds class chat during raids.
The drama ohh the drama, the e-gf/bf that became peoples husbands and wives, the guild leaders wife e-humping half the guild. Relationships destroyed because someone would rather spend their time in azeroth that just about anything else.
Drooling over the gear the best players on the server had. Battling on the front lines of alterac valley all night, going to bed and rejoining the same battle, sometimes to cheers from your fellow soldiers that you had rejoined the fight.
I don't think there will ever be anything like it again, we know too much, have access to to much info, but for that brief period in time wow was the greatest game ever.
Wow took over my life for a while there, and then again with WoTLK. The 2v2 and 3v3 arenas were so much fun. The cool thing was that it wasn't grindy in the beginning, you could just run quests at your level and level up at a reasonable pace while exploring the game. I had played Everquest before WoW and that game required so much grinding just to get a level, sometimes it would take weeks.
FFXIV is better. I like the fights better and the lore better. It's a great social platform, but I think it has jumped the shark. Still a great concept. For very similar reasons.
Super metroid
The Witcher 3.
Abe's Oddesy
It has a fart button. Need I say more?
"Hello."
"Hello."
farts
"Hahaha!"
bitchslaps
"Grr!"
"the outer ring, stupid, stand in the outer ring!"
- munch's oddesy
Half life. It revolutionized the genre and spawned a ton of games thanks to mods, ie counterstrike
Minecraft
not only does it have crazy sales, the fact that I enjoyed it when I was 8 and continue to enjoy at 18 means something
1000%. Almost nothing else has stayed as popular and as relevant for as long as Minecraft. Truly one of the GOATs.
Diablo
The first multi-player lobby over battlenet. Epic lore, great gameplay, created an entire genre.
Roguelike games are named after Rogue, not Diablo.
But Diablo took it and made it real time, creating hack and slash action rpgs. I've never heard anyone refer to Path of Exile or similar as a roguelike. Diablo's development might have started as a roguelike but making it real time turned it into something new.
Usually Diablo and Diablo-likes are called ARPGs, a term that originally just meant "Action RPG" but is now mainly used to describe games similar to Diablo. Isometric, real-time, character builder RPGs.
I would counter & say Diablo 2 is the better game for expanding on everything that the original did & making it better by adding more.
Diablo is also the first game I can think of with a paid expansion. Hellfire was a 3rd party created add-on to put more content into the game. If you want to talk about creating a "genre", that's the conversation to have.
Civilization series.
One of the first PC games I played in 92.. can't believe I'm still playing it
Civ IV defined my middle school years.
So many hours gone....days probably
Played on switch, waste of money for me lol
So many hours on civ II. Never did beat deity. Such a fun game
Tetris.
I don't think "greatest game of all time" is really a thing.
As you mention pubg for example it was a simply copy as well.
Does it take originality to the The greatest? Does it take being popular?What does it actually take to the greatest?
Agree. To add to this, I might really like RTS and say star craft is the best game of all time. And you might like action RPGs and say Diablo 2 is. Or whatever else.
Haven't seen TIE Fighter mentioned yet.
GTA San Andreas.
I mean, come on, it has to be Minecraft. One of the most influential games of all time. There really is nothing like it
Someone already said my true #1. But if I ignore that one.
EverQuest. What a crazy game. So many ideas that are just brilliant but people don't do anymore. The enchanter is my favorite power set on any character in any genre and nothing touches it. I wish the design philosophy didn't move away from systems that enable that kind of game play.
Metal Gear Solid. Every stealth game that has come out since has borrowed something from MGS. Also it is the first game I can really remember that nailed that cinematic video game feel we see so often these days.
MGS also brought us what I lovingly refer to as the "Metal Gear Solid Voice Acting Benchmark."
Is your big budget first party title not voice acted? Why the fuck not? Konami managed to make every single line of dialog in Metal Gear Solid voice acted, without exception, apparently by hiring randos off the street if they had to. So what's your excuse?
I'm lookin' at you, Nintendo.
Absolutely! The voice acting was like nothing else at the time! MGS totally raised the bar and changed the landscape for what we come to expect out of a game. It's a true masterpiece.
Earthbound. The soundtrack is supreme
It's a masterpiece of a game. I still recommend it to people and it holds up. I even bought a pirated copy of the print strategy guide for a play through.
Well, I guess my answer could change depending on you how define "best," but I think my answer has to be Dwarf Fortress. I've been playing it longer than some posters on here have been alive! The emergent narratives of your forts and your dorfs combined with the constant drip-feed of updates makes it endlessly replayable. The main game theme has been my last-call morning alarm basically since I had a cell phone that replaced an alarm clock. It's a game I come back to time and again that has yet to get old. If anything, it's getting too complex for my stupid ass lol
I second this. I only started playing it once it was in steam, it just wasn't on my radar before that. Now I wish I had found it back in the day.
Red Dead Redemption 2, no contest.
The game world is so close to feeling real… the physics and horse handling feel basically perfect. They took their time to make you feel like you were in 19th century America.
I'll disagree with that, it's sooo slow. Perhaps it's just my ADHD but man it hurts to play sometimes 🥲
Yeah I agree. The world is incredible, but the missions and gameplay not so much.
Tedious gameplay almost ruins it
That's the problem with asking such a subjective question. What you hate others love. I thought my friends raving about the slow pace of the game were insane. Who would like that. Then I played and fell in love with all of it.
Where you saw a turnoff, plenty more saw enjoyment.
I think an interesting way to define the greatest game of all time would be a game that captures your attention the longest and provides the largest variety of ways to play.
To that end, I would say StarCraft 1.
My personal reasoning is I love games that have user generated content to keep you coming back to enjoy fresh experiences. StarCraft 1 had a game mode called use map settings where you could play maps made using the built-in level editor. There was enough complexity in the level editor that basically the sky was the limit.
You want to play a tower defense? StarCraft 1. You want to play an RPG? Which franchise do you want to play, cause a lot of them are on StarCraft 1. You want to play an action adventure game? StarCraft 1. The list goes on lol
I've never personally played it, but I feel like another example of this would be Roblox and another one that I have would be Gary's mod.
Vtec paintball, sunken defense, and Sal'dun RPG maps were my jams back in the day!
My answer is SNAKE BYTE!
Just TWO keys, none of that FOUR KEY nonsense from other snake games.
It doesn't matter how old I get, I will always go back to Snake Byte and spend hours playing it when I do.
I was thinking before reading the comments and nothing came close to Tetris in my mind. This is probably the true 2nd place
the greatest, highest earning, and most influential game of all time is Clash of Clans. It earns about $5mil a day.
Titles like Elden Ring, Zelda, Bioshock, KoTOR, God of War, Skyrim and the Witcher are obscure also-ran games that titans of the game industry (people who fund video game development) consider them failures.
EDIT: I changed some stuff.
Skyrim and Zelda obscure?
Also I'm not going to challenge the earnings of Clash of Clans, but, why is it the most influential?
Because it's taught everyone that the cash cow is low effort, microtransaction laden "free" to play games loaded to the gills with slot machine and gatcha mechanics and other psychological manipulation tactics.
If you as a game publisher want to make big bucks, you have to make one of those. Which is why everything is becoming exactly that nowadays.
I've had the same clash of clans base since I was like 9 lol
DOOM(1993) : You all know why. It was First revolutionary FPS game.
I would usually have said Earthbound or Chrono Trigger, but this year I've been playing Sea of Stars and it truly seems better. I never thought I'd say it. The writing, art, music, gameplay, movement, puzzles, characters, all are aimed in the exact same direction as what CT was trying to do and it goes farther in every way.
How could anything exceed Chrono Trigger? Gotta check this out!
They were pretty deliberate about having very similar creative aims, standing on the shoulders; they even got Yasunori Mitsuda to help with their soundtrack. The game keeps on surprising me with its self awareness, beauty, and a depth of gameplay that keeps unfolding long after you think you have the measure of it.
Left4Dead2. Infinitely replayable, multiplayer without being toxic (except Versus mode), simple enough for n00bs to not be a burden most of the time.
Castle Wolfenstein, it took 2D and made it POV 3D, really can't explain how much of a reality changer that was at the time, and since. Only had to wait an hour for the 1MB file to download over a 24.4k Modem from a pirate BBS, but then you were fucking golden.
Quake 3 arena on Dreamcast. 4 player split screen with low gravity and unlimited ammo turned on was something that controlled me and my group of friends lives for years. Not the best game ever to some but definitely to me. Also to get the low gravity and ammo unlocks you had to play a huge maze on the vmu screen. We spent hours mapping out those mazes 1 square inch at a time. They were literally enormous but you could only see 1 inch at a time on that tiny but genius vmu. We even carried our controllers everywhere just in case a game broke out at a party. Each controller was customized with sharpies and shit too. Miss those days so much.
Unreal Tournament on Dreamcast was amazing too. I played online non-stop.
Unreal was def in rotation but quake was always our preference.
SuperMaeio 64
Because
Old school mario is GOAT, but not 64. The Nes, Snes and specifically: Gameboy platformers which were the highlight of bus rides to school for me.
for me, i'd put super mario galaxy up there too. but really tetris will be around for centuries.
Gothic 2.
Maniac Mansion or Zack McKraken on the Commadore64. At the time...at that age... we were living in the future, and it was amazing.
Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary. (Chronicle is a close second)
Puyo Puyo Tsu is the greatest competitive puzzle game ever made. Such a simple set of mechanics gives way to an incredible amount of depth. I think its greatest strength relative to the rest of the genre is how much importance it places on actually paying attention to and adapting to your opponent. Some of my favorite other puzzle games are guilty of feeling more like a game I play adjacent to my opponent rather than against them, and I'll give them a pass if the core gameplay loop is fun enough, but I consider Tsu king of the genre for having the most true versus in its versus mode.
But Tsu's skill curve is terrifyingly impenetrable for beginners, it's one of the hardest competitive puzzle games to learn. Just understanding how to make chains is extremely daunting, and that is but the tip of the iceberg. Paying attention to what your opponent is up to while still being able to concentrate on what you're doing is an order of magnitude harder, and that's kind of where the real game begins.
20th shines by being the most comprehensive package full of additional content for players of all skill levels alongside the classic Tsu ruleset. There's a whopping 20 different game modes to play around in, many of which are much more immediately fun for a beginner to pick up, get hooked on, and hopefully enjoy the game enough to want to eventually learn to scale the mountain that is Tsu later.
Sadly, this game never got released in the west, and none of the games that have come anywhere close to it. And I think that's a large part of why the series is struggling to gain any kind of recognition in the west, we've never seen the best of what it has to offer.
earthbound. my first RPG that I understood, plus SNES is GOAT.
Earthbound was great!
You understood Earthbound? You understood the game that expects you to wait for like five minutes outside a waterfall without doing anything to progress?
I mean, the game is great, no lie, but understandable is not the first thing that comes to mind.
I understood the enemies actually there, not the invisible random ones from games like dragon quest. I had the guide book that came with the game :)
It has its flaws but I've never had more fun than playing halo 3 custom games back in the day. You could do and make almost anything! I haven't felt that playing any game since.
As someone who never played the games as a kid, I can be more or less impartial in saying that Mario Bros. was probably the gaming industry's big break.
Guild Wars (the original) Just so nostalgic to me. Gameplay is fun even after all these years.
Dark Souls remastered taught me how to look at life differently. I now accept failure as part of the process of growing, not something that should be avoided at all costs.
Also it taught me how to parry like a G.
Since everyone's just saying their favorite game, I'll say The Finals!
It's fuckin great! It's the first FPS in years that gets me legit excited to play. I like that the game requires decent strategy, movement, and teamwork to get wins and not just good aim/luck. Everything about it feels fresh. Best of all it's freaking free. A free AAA game in 2024 that's more than decent and has an awesome dev team? Sign me up!
It's wild to me that it's not huge compared to games that go mainstream (not gonna mention names. lol), but I'll appreciate it while it's here.
I like the finals too. It's the best arcade shooter I've played since halo. It's just dumb fun.
Ive been hooked on deadlock recently
Twisted Metal or Resident Evil
Quake 1.
The game is kinda meh, but the modability spawned an endless amount of awesome stuff to this day. Even Half-life is basically just a Quake mod.
Right Doom was + but Quake so +++
Not a single game but a series. Legacy of Kain is still my absolute favorite not because of replay ability or anything like that but because of the story.
"What madness is this?" 😉
Just cause three. blow shit up, kill bad guys, just enough story to explain it all. even better, it strikes a good balance of minimal story and compelling story, which a lot of games like that kinda suck at.
And everything that you are supposed to target is red, as it should be.
I remember "learning" many years ago that all barrels that are red are obviously explosive. Just Cause dialed that up several notches.
even better, about 67% of the game was red.
Final Fantasy 1 - It wasn’t the first RPG, but it pretty much defined the series. It still has tons of playability, I revisit it more or less every 5 years. I still have yet to beat Warmech, and only have encountered him a handful of times.
But most of all, it’s the game that saved Squaresoft. If it had failed, we would have missed out on so many great games, including ones also mentioned in this post.
Runners up have to be Donkey Kong, which brought us Mario, which in turn restored vitality into the at home console game industry, and Double Dragon, which brought us PVP and Co-op combat.
Honorable mention would have to be that Simpsons arcade game where Marge can fight with the vacuum cleaner and TMNT 2 - Two classic, very difficult, drain your change jar games. I’d throw Mega man 2 into that mix as well.
Marathon, by Bungie. From the box it came in, to the hugeness of the spaceship, the coolness of the story, all the secrets, and the fan community that sprang up to research and theorize.
And then they made it open source so anybody could play it on any computer.
It's not favorite game to play any more, but it was the greatest game to me.
Ocarina of time. All Zelda games since are to some degree compared to it in terms of how successful it is monetarily, gameplay and story-wise. So many modern adventure games are based on this one game. It’s the game that finally made target tracking in 3D work. It’s so well thought out, that a blind streamer is able to play the game probably better than I ever will. If most common people know of “zelda” it’s because of this game. There are so many memes from Zelda in general. It’s one of the few games from my childhood that I will replay for the rest of my life.
ET for Atari, classic.
Ultima IV. All the JRPG stuff started here.
I think it's time to dust off my Ultima playthroughs. I'm coming for you Iolo you bitch.
Anyone else play Shephard because it's weak AF but then you can get that sweet ass Dupre instead of having to carry those fuckers as a paladin?
Make the codex my bitch
Seriously fuck you Iolo.
For me it'd have to be Ultima II, aka Time Bandits: The Videogame. Although back then, both had those cool cloth maps.
Command and conquer generals zero hour
I'm tempted to say either The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto V, or Metal Gear Solid 5 (if you can look past the fact it's unfinished).
All three are exceptionally polished, have huge, highly detailed world's to explore, cinematic moments with blockbuster action scenes, smooth and balanced gameplay, are suitable for gaming noobs and veterans, and has moments to goof off and dick around.
It's hard not to be biased, though I'll state I don't personally like GTAV, I think it's perhaps too ordinary for my tastes and feels too restrictive in its mission structure.
I don't even play GTA V for the main game anymore. I just get high and go for long walks in first person mode.
Asteroids
The next soulslike from FromSoft that doesn’t molest you with the camera. They proved it’s possible with shadow of the Erdtree.
Jokes aside, Slay is absolutely incredible. How a developer managed to make a strategy game as replayable as this before 2000, I don’t know.
There are to many genres in gaming so if we reduce the scope to only card games (which is obviously the only relevant genre), It's slay the spire obviously.
Runescape. It's been around for more than 20 years and still is one of the most active online games.
Mario Galaxy for me. Idk I just like it, especially the music
Come on, Nintendo. Release some of those old games on PC......
Thatll never happen, but thankfully it doesnt need to. They run flawlessly on an emulator.
Mass Effect 2
Masterpiece and my actual favourite game.
At 152GB: hitman 2
Really tho, tetris has been at the top for a while
Wait, you do by install size? What's the best game in the range 20-23GB, about what I have left on my SSD?
Hitman Absolution @ 23.38GB
Tetris, many times
Obligatory Dark Souls nomination. It is an almost perfect depiction of the hero's journey with a captivating world filled with little moments of environmental story telling.
Runner up would be Metroid Prime 1 which similarly creates a very believable world you inhabit while playing.
Flashback A plateform game with a nice story telling. Graphics and music was unbelievable
Halo 2
Never understood people's obsession with RE4. It completely changed the series from survival horror to action shooter, as if we didn't have enough of those already. One zombie used to be terrifying. Now there's hundreds coming at you at once and they go down easily. They removed most of the puzzles too and dumbed down the ones they left. Somebody please tell me why everyone loves this game!?
Give me the first two Resident Evils over the 4th one any day. Hell, I rather play RE3 than RE4.
What's more relevant to the world? What felt like an evolution? I love almost every RE but 4 did history for the entire gaming universe, not just horror.
unfortunately people won't answer past "what game did you grow up with?"
I think the most recognizable game was the most culturally impactful so my vote is for SMB, even SM64 completely changed gaming
(not a Nintendo or Mario fan btw)
Doom, obviously.
Maybe Halo 3? The amount of content, the custom games, the competitive gaming, all of it was just so good and loved by so many people.
I guess Guild Wars 2 because is tha game I’ve spent more hours playing, a few thousand.
RuneScape
I don't personally play it anymore but it having still players to this day and thriving proves it.
Edit: On second thought it's probably Java Edition Minecraft. Thing spawn an industry around it. Now people's livelyhood depend on it. A generation learning java programming just to make plugins or mods. I bet this also what increase the number of java developers. Probably inadvertently also introduced to Blender. Being accessable and sandbox made that possible.
Grandia II
Original x-com was great you had lots of research to do, bases to set up with defenses, manufacturing, storage, radars etc. Could make money from both loot and manufacturing your own products.
Then there was intercepting UFOs with your fighters followed by the actual missions were you could use all your researched gear, get loot, capture Aliens to interrogate for more research and level up your soldiers.
I still play the openxcom version now and again with various mods but yeah as a kid I used to play the original on the original PlayStation with its mouse and it's without a doubt the game I've probably spent more time on than any other.
Wasn't a huge fan of the remade ones to me the original is the best one.
GTA 5 is the most high quality game ever made I think, story graphics gameplay it's truly number 1
Space station 13 is peak gameplay though, completely organic with amazing depth
I know exactly one person who plays SS13, and nothing they have ever said about it makes it sound appealing.
That said, it's usually because they're complaining about getting banned for some mean spirited thing they did. And I have been very impressed with how deep those mean spirited things can go.
The first six weeks of GTA Online are my favorite gaming memories. I was working 8 hours, gaming 12 and sleeping 4. I'm still friends with people i met in the racing lobbies...
Concord.
...what? I liked it. 😉
It's hard to say since it's like comparing apples to oranges when comparing different genres.
- Action Adventure: Dark Souls 3
- Survival crafting: Subnautica
- Base building: Factorio (Subnautica strong second)
- RTS: StarCraft 2
- City builder: Cities Skylines w mods, otherwise Cities Skylines 2 probably
- Card game: Slay the spire
- Rougelike: Enter the Gungeon (Hades strong second)
- Turn based strategy: Chess probably, never gets old
- RPG: Skyrim probably, haven't played Baldurs Gate and don't remember enough about Dragon Age Origins though.
- JRPG: Chrono Trigger
- AFK/cookie clicker: Magic Archery (1-2 hours to complete and fun throughout), Leaf blower revolution is strong second
Strong disagree with Gungeon. It's hard skill capped, pickups mostly offer very limited benefits, and there's very little in the way of permanent upgrades. Normally, in a roguelike, subsequent runs get easier because of your unlocks, and getting a good drop really helps. I didn't really feel that in Gungeon. No matter what, it's still extremely difficult. There's very little progression other than "git gud", and at this point it's just a shooter.
I bashed my head on the first biome until I managed to unlock starting from the second biome, until I realized doing that would just leave you too weak to deal with the second biome, as if you didn't find anything useful at all in the first section.
It might be a good top-down shooter, but as someone who loves roguelikes but isn't the biggest fan of shooters, I really wouldn't say it's doing a great job as a roguelike.
Yeah it's very skill based but unlocking guns really helps out by helping with the RNG and unlocking characters also like the health tent. Finding the bonus levels is also really good since it'll get you more supplies while making the run longer.
For sure it's not for everyone but this thread is a lot about opinions anyway so I'm leaving this one as mine since I love the feeling of overcoming seemingly impossible challenges with skill like Dark Souls, Hollow Knight and Celeste.
I did experience the same feelings as you did and I so many times I thought "This is bullshit" but I put faith in my brain to figure it out and there was a small but noticeable difference in every 1h session. More health, more chance of beating bosses without getting hit and such. In the end I beat the high dragun which made everything worth it and somehow it's still fun and challenging to play. That's why I put it as my pick as the GOAT.
The hallmark of roguelikes is procedural generation, permanent death and no overarching progression, like the titular game Rogue. Roguelites (I know, one letter difference who cares) have overarching progression lines that make the game easier as you play it. Extreme difficulty as part of the roguelike formula is expected, since runs where you don't become very powerful very quickly happen, and the games are often balanced against some of the better possible runs.
Gungeon is punishing, but I regret to inform you you are FAR from too weak to finish floor 2 with the default kit of any character. Bashing your head against a challenge is fine as long as you're learning something every time you don't make it through, gungeon is simply a game where getting hit at all is really bad.
All that said, gungeon isn't the highest quality roguelike or roguelite. That's probably SLASH'EM (roguelike) or Elona (Roguelike(?)), and Hades (roguelite) or Windblown (roguelite, still in development). I won't even recommend roguelikes without graphics because the average age in this thread seems mighty low.
You know your JRPG's.
