Kerbal Space Program (never have I played a game that made me feel like I actually ACHIEVED something the way KSP does)
Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven (very fun ninja/stealth game, the pinnacle of the series)
Civilization series
Batman: Arkham City (a better cinematic adaptation of Batman than anything Hollywood has ever put out, and extremely tight gameplay!)
Shadow of Mordor (Batman in Middle-Earth! Nothing more satisfying than destroying 100 orcs in one swordfight)
Final Fantasy VII (most time I have ever put into a game)
Skyrim (so far the best open-world RPG, can’t wait for the followup)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Still occasionally play it to this day, almost 20 years after release)
Lemmings (the best suicide puzzler!)
Sid Meier’s Pirates! (almost 30 years old, been re-released a time or two, and still can provide a good diversion when nothing else sounds good)
Wing Commander 2
Wing Commander 4
Doom
Freespace 2: The Great War
Galactic Civilisations
Command & Conquer 3
Borderlands 2
Portal 2
IL2
Age of Empires.
My list is coming from the perspective of someone who basically quit playing video games in 1992ish.
Super Mario Brothers
Tetris
Mike Tyson’s Punch Out
Blades of Steel
Karnov
Double Dragon II
Double Dribble
Centipede
PacMan
NCAA Football 98 (college roommate’s game)
Here are mine, in no particular order:
Portal - a better game than the second one, I thought.
Civ 2 - the one I sunk most time into, and got the best at. The addition of the “resources” in later games weakened them, in my opinion.
Elite - I probably spend more time playing Elite 2: Frontier, but Elite was light years ahead of anything else at the time.
Skyrim - as a bit of a placeholder for all the Elder Scrolls games. They’ve all their own strengths and weaknesses, but if I was forced to pick a favourite, it’d be Skyrim, dodgy UI and straightline dungeons and all.
Mass Effect 2 - The best game in the trilogy, with an endgame that really put your hard work keeping the team alive and solving their problems to the test at the end, where they could really die before the next game.
Guild Wars 2 - The best MMO for me and my style of play. I love that you are always happy to see other people turning up in the open world, such a massive u-turn from previous MMOs.
Ni No Kuni -Wrath of the White Witch - There may well be better games of this style around, as I haven’t played many, but it remains one of the only games to have really grabbed me on the PS3 - I sank every weekend morning into it for months.
Tomb Raider 2 - Probably too frustrating to go back and play now, especially without a walkthrough, but the best of the early series. The Legend one is also excellent.
|Bioshock - I didn’t like the second as much, and Infinite was a good, competent game but didn’t affect me the way That Event halfway through Bioshock did. Terrible boss battle at the end though.
I’m not going to choose a tenth, because that leaves it open for all the other excellent games I’ve played to get in!
Super Mario Bros 3
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Mass Effect 2
Batman: Arkham City
Red Dead Redemption
Perfect Dark
I’m just going to mention one, and I can’t believe that no one else has yet – The 7th Guest. It was one of the first DOS games to come out on CD (as opposed to floppies) and brilliantly made use of the interactive video realism enabled by that medium – in fact the distribution consisted of two CDs. It was brilliantly executed, spookily atmospheric with great video and music score, and had enough difficult puzzles to solve in the spooky old mansion that you could play it for many days if not weeks. Bill Gates praised it as a huge leap forward in PC gaming, and it alone contributed to a spike in CD drive sales. Other than the graphics being lower-res than one would expect by modern standards, it’s a game that looks almost as fresh and entertaining today as it did in 1993. My nomination for greatest PC game ever, and certainly a distinguished milestone.
I think of this as like…what are the 10 best games of all time to show to someone who doesn’t know games and/or time capsule kind of thing. So these are all my favorites, but in different genres to show the best of the best. Also these aren’t in any real order
Super Mario World: IMO the best of the series when you account fun, characters, etc.
Madden…lets say 15: Any one can really do, but to show how real sports games have gotten, let’s go with the best and the biggest sport here. Although FIFA would work too…I just like football better
Myst: I’ve literally never played it, but it’s the best puzzler out there
Mass Effect 2: My favorite game of all time and a great way to show how immersive games can be
One of the Civ’s Better than Sim City and a good example of the build-a-world games. Although honestly Minecraft might get this, but I’ve never played.
Call of Duty: Black Ops: I rrreeealllyyy wanted to put the first Medal of Honor here, but I think COD is a better example of the military FPS’s.
Half Life 2: As far as a linear story with great gameplay goes…this one has it.
Starcraft; Gotta have an RTS in here and it was between this and WarCraft 2.
Skyrim: The best open-world-character-creation game to date and needs to be added
Gran Turisimo: I loved these games and for realism and racing I wanted to include it.
Not much vanity on my list other than Mass Effect, but then again you could ask me what my favorite Nintendo game is…and I’ll figure out a way to nominate Mass Effect 
The Last of Us. A beautiful looking game and a beautiful, emotional story.
Rogue. I mean, come on!
Colossal Cave Adventure. Still fun. Still requires lots of paper and a pencil to keep track.
Well…Mass Effect 3 came out for the Wii U.
QFT!
Tribes the first.
Everquest on the Red servers, Sooooo much pvp fun.
SEGA GENESIS
NHL '94
PLAYSTATION/ARCADE
NFL Blitz
PLAYSTATION
Resident Evil 2
Colin McRae Rally
NHL Rock the Rink
XBOX
Manhunt
PES Soccer '08
Halo
Deathrow
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
I think a list like this has to be diverse, accounting for games from various genres and eras. I’ll try to control for my own game preferences as well by only including one game from a given genre. I’m a massive fan of the SNES and N64/PSX eras, and I could easily name 10 classics just from that, I’ll try not to, but I suspect I’ll fail. These are in no particular order.
Tetris - Best Puzzle Game - An obvious choice. It’s the best selling game of all time, it’s probably had as many or more releases and tweaks as any other game, but there’s a reason it’s STILL the best puzzle game almost 30 years after its release.
Super Mario World - Best Platformer - Mario HAS to be on any list of the greatest games of all time, and I can see an argument for Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario 64 in this slot, but I think this one just barely edges those two out. I think it beats SM64 because, while that was truly innovative as being the first truly great 3D platformer, it does suffer from bad camera work and it’s been done better since then. And it beats SMB3 as the superior 2D platformer because it has tighter controls, better level design, better gameplay, and better graphics/sound. Again, SMB3 revolutionized the platformer, but SMW perfected it, and it’s STILL used as the gold standard for the genre.
007: Golden Eye - Best First-Person Shooter - Personally, I’m not a huge fan of FPS games, so this may not be the best of the genre, but if for no other reason, it has it’s place in gaming history. This game is one of the reasons we had gaming parties, and it’s what finally made the FPS a legitimate genre on the console. Personally, I think Perfect Dark was slightly better, as it tweaked everything, and my group of friends played that once it came around, but it’s largely forgotten. I’d be open to another FPS in this slot.
Super Metroid - Best Exploration/MetroidVania Game - The whole MetroidVania genre is one of my favorites, and I consider Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to be the two finest examples. I think this is a genre that is very difficult to do right, and both of these games did it really well. This is probably the hardest call on this list for me, as I think Super Metroid is an overall tighter game that truly nailed the exploration aspect, and SotN didn’t quite do that as well, but it made up for that in sheer scale, and the leveling system. Super Metroid has a greater place in history, notably that it’s regarded as one of the greatest speed running games of all time, but SotN has more gorgeous visuals and one of the best scores of any game I’ve played. I actually was leaning toward SotN at first, but ultimately, I think the tightness of gameplay and the historical factor slightly outweigh the factors in favor of SotN, not to mention that the score for Super Metroid is also stellar and the alien atmosphere and isolation are distinct.
StarCraft - Best Strategy/Real-Time Strategy Game - Again, not a huge fan of the RTS genre, but this is the finest example of the genre. It came out closing on 20 years ago, and its still played competitively. In fact, as I understand, it’s only recently been unseated by the DotA style of game. What makes this game distinctly unique is that it has three factions that are all different and they’re exceptionally well balanced. Despite that other games have followed, it’s that level of balance from the attention of game design, that makes a truly great game.
Chrono Trigger - Best Role-Playing Game - RPGs are one of my favorite genres as well, and this is a tough call, as from my personal experience, I’d put FF6 as the greatest and FF4 as my favorite from a story perspective, but this is right up there with those. First, I don’t put FF7 because, frankly, I don’t think the story holds up to those other three, I think the overall battle mechanics, including the materia system are too simplistic, making it so you can make any character do anything well, and the graphics just don’t age well at all; I love that game, it’s just not on the level of the others. FF4 has the best story, IMO, but that’s too subjective, and in almost every other way FF6 is superior, and also has an amazing story. Chrono Trigger is a special game that experiments a lot with the genre and does all of it right. It doesn’t quite have the depth in story or challenge that FF6 does, but it has a distinct aesthetic, unique gameplay, and probably the highest replay value of any RPG.
World of Warcraft - Best Massively-Multiplayer Online Game - The MMO is one of the oldest genres dating back to the 70s, and WoW is the granddaddy of them all, it’s been the most popular one for about 11 years now, and it’s had a cultural impact that others just haven’t. Now, it’s a game with 5 expansions, so to a certain extent that’s like saying ALL Mario games, so if I HAD to pick one expansion, I’d go with Wrath of the Lich King, which was not only when it was most popular, but also with the culmination of the story that started in WC3. But so many other MMOs have been trying, and failing, to emulate it for years now, and they just can’t replicate the success. Sure, it’s waning now, but it seems the MMO genre as a whole is shifting away from the massive worlds to the mobile type, like Clash of Clans, as development costs for the WoW-like games goes up, but players are less and less interested in pay subscriptions. Nonetheless, WoW is the obvious choice for the MMO.
Mario Kart 64 - Best Racing/Cart Game - Racing games are another staple, and while some will argue that cart games are different enough to be their own genre, that’s BECAUSE of the original Mario Kart. The reason I pick this one is because while the first one was innovative, the SNES just didn’t have the hardware to make the idea shine. This type of game needs true 3D graphics to really work. And, really, between this and Golden Eye, kids could having gaming parties for HOURS in the late 90s, probably throw a few punches somewhere in there from a cheap headshot or perfect timing on a Blue Shell, but still come out afterward with a great time. There’s been many iterations since this game, but it seems like most are just tweaks on the formula that this game really perfected.
Street Fighter II - Best Fighting/Brawler/Arcade Style Game - Fighting games are another staple in video games, and everyone knows the long standing Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat feud. Personally, I think I slightly prefer MK, and above both I preferred Killer Instinct, but I would still call SFII the best game of the genre. The reason is that is CREATED the genre as we know it now. Yeah, there were fighting games before, but so many critical design decisions that still exist in the genre were created in this game. I’m talking stuff we take for granted now, like the health bar design, special attacks, combos, selectable characters with different move sets. I think MK took the idea, made a slightly better story and a more gruesome aesthetic for it. Fighting games were also massive staples in the Arcade, which is something that hasn’t shown up in my list yet.
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Best Adventure Game - Any list would also be worthless without a mention of the Zelda franchise. Frankly, I have a preference for Majora’s Mask, as it was a finetuning of the OoT formula, but I don’t think a lot of people played it, and the aesthetic, while I loved it, didn’t work for some people. And as for Zelda games, I also think Link to the Past is the greatest 2D version, and I probably ALSO have a slight preference for that. However, OoT is just beloved by gamers everywhere. I’ve seen TONS of lists that have it either as the greatest game of all time, or close to it. One thing it did was prove that the transition into 3D gaming wasn’t just a gimmick, that great game design would use it to expand the game, as it did here with great puzzles taking advantage of the 3D environment, and creating an expansive and immersive world.
Some genres I didn’t include that I think could replace some of my nominations would be Best Sandbox game, Best Cinematic game, Best Sports Game. I don’t know too many Sandbox games, so I don’t feel informed enough for that. I feel like the Cinematic games are just too much of a hybrid between film and videogames to really be seen as a true contender for one of the best videogames. And for Sports, there’s been some good ones, and could maybe go for innovative types, like NFL Blitz or NBA Jam, but there’s just too many with too fine of a progression across too many sports, I think, to actually realistically name any one of them as potentially the best of all time.
Some of the games share genres, but I tried to pick different types of games. Many of the games I chose are fairly old, but I still enjoy newer games a lot. I’m probably a bit biased toward the games I played when I was younger. In no particular order:
Civilization IV - The best game of the best strategy series narrowly beating Civ II. Fall from Heaven II gets an honorable mention for being the best mod of all time.
Thief the Dark Project - The best stealth/FPS style game. Some of the monster missions were a waste, but I still preferred the mood of the first game to the mechanical theme of Metal Age.
Star Control 2 - A great mixture of space exploration and adventure, and also one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. I wish they made more games like this. I can’t think of any other games that succeeded.
Planescape Torment - The story is genuinely thought provoking, and the world building is great.
World of Warcraft - It’s the first game where I felt like I was exploring a vast world with something always left to discover. Raiding with a team of 25 other people to beat difficult encounters was also a unique experience I’ve never experienced anywhere else. I don’t play anymore, but I’ll never forget the sheer adrenaline rush of finally beating an encounter you’ve spent two months progressing on as screams of joy fill Ventrilo. It’s nice to have 3 extra nights per week to spend on other things, though.
Deus Ex - Too many games divide the game strictly into gameplay sections and story sections. In many ways Deus Ex told a story through gameplay elements. It gave you a lot of choices in how to approach the game, and built a strong illusion of freedom of choice that you can choose to do something that is not immediately obvious.
Bastion - It’s on the list largely due to a particular moment late in the game. Like Deus Ex it manages to use the medium as a strength for storytelling, instead of treating it like a movie with gameplay segments.
Tie Fighter - You can fly as Darth Vader’s wingman. Does anything else need to be said?
Monkey Island 2 : LeChuck’s Revenge - The best adventure game.
Chrono Trigger - I’m not that fond of JRPGs but this one deserves an exception.
My top 5 off the top of my head.
- Zelda: A Link to the Past
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Battletoads
- The Legend of Zelda
- Halo
Was Rock the Rink the one that, when you hit a certain something, the announcer yelled BONUS!!! and you were powerful for a while?
Elite (BBC Micro, other ancient computers): way before its time. To my mind, the first true sandbox game; the galaxy felt more or less limitless. Iffy keyboard ship-flying mechanics were the only thing that held it back, really.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2): I’m a little shocked that GTA has only received one mention so far as a series. GTAIII was the daddy, but SA was the game that fully implemented its promise. I didn’t care much for IV and haven’t played V, for the record. The only sandbox game where I ever bothered to go back and explore properly after completing it. My only real complaint is the “gang warfare” mode, which was quite buggy and had some really awful map design (there was one sliver at the north extreme of the gang areas that you could never complete because it was basically one sidewalk that never spawned enemy gangs). *Mafia *had a much better storyline, too, but it didn’t really have the same sort of open world.
F-Zero (SNES): It’s the best driving game ever made. Nothing had ever really captured the feeling that you were in a vehicle on a track before (instead of a mock-up cockpit in front of a green screen). And the speed of the game was unbelievable, yet truly controllable (unlike games like Sonic that had “fast” segments where you were basically at the mercy of the level design). Lack of a proper two player mode was the only thing letting it down. The sequels had some neat touches but the gameplay just wasn’t as good as the original.
Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii): It’s just the perfect Zelda game. The difficulty curve was spot-on, the puzzles were hard but never ridiculous (like lots of other RPGs that basically require you go to look up the solution to one or two). Skyward Sword was a huge let-down after this, though I appreciated the fully-realized swordfighting mechanics.
Half Life 2 (PC): A truly unique game. Seamless levels, fantastic puzzle implementation, true atmosphere. The only time I’ve ever been truly scared while playing a game was when the lights went out in the mine shaft (near the end of Ravenholm, maybe? Alyx was with you for that sequence).
Metroid: Prime (Gamecube): So good I spent days sober in my fraternity house because I was obsessed with beating it on the community Gamecube. I’ve tried the sequels but they didn’t draw me in the way this one did (and my Corruption used game disc was scratched so I could never progress much beyond the early stages).
Civilization II (PC): It’s the only game from 1996 (or any era) that I’ve literally never stopped playing. I even enjoyed building farmland and stuff around my cities. And building hundreds of armor units to crush Hitler in the WWII scenario mode was great fun.
Championship Manager 3 (PC): I’m still playing this one, too. I don’t know why, since it has no graphics or sound to speak of, the matches are just repetitive commentary flashing on the screen, and the player desires are extremely predictable and frustrating. Winning the quintuple (league, league cup, cup, Champions’ League, World Club Championship) with Rangers with a team of youthful unknowns was perhaps the most satisfying gaming achievement ever.
Mount and Blade: Warband (PC): Another one that shows that graphics and sound don’t matter that much if the gameplay is right. I’m actually a little disappointed by this game because there’s much less depth to it than there could be, and managing a kingdom of your own is basically impossible, but I’ve never stopped playing it.
My head tells me I need to nominate a Mario game here… but fuck that. 007: Goldeneye (N64): Might be my favorite game on this list. It was unquestionably the best multiplayer shooter ever, and I spent countless hours shooting the corpses of my high school friends to annoy them after blowing them up with proximity mines. So very disappointed with the Wii remake, though it’s a good game in its own right.
Honorable mentions
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (N64): Purely because it’s the first game I know of that allowed you to play the snowspeeder battle on Hoth properly.
Super Mario 64 (N64): Because there has to be a Mario game in here somewhere.
WCW/NWO World Tour (N64): It’s really, really hard to do a pro wrestling game properly, but AKI managed it and made about a dozen sequels for THQ with basically cosmetic updates… and they were all great.
I am going to limit myself to one per Franchise and pick the one I think is best or most historically relevant. These are not in order, just my ten best/most historically important/most fun etc.:
- Fallout 3
- Secret of the Silver Blades.
- Portal
- Civilization
- Master of Magic
- Master of Orion
- The Sims 2
- Oblivion
- Mass Effect 2
- Sim City 2000
If I could cheat and combine the two Master Games, I would add Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
I’ll leave myself three spares for if I think of anything later.
Pong: way more fun than Tetris. I played this so much as a kid.
Super Mario Bros.: as fun to play now as it was three decades ago. Fun, simple environments, movement that feels just right, and a nice difficulty curve. I never managed to beat the final level, though.
GTA: San Andreas: I’ll second RNATB on this one. I’ve never played another sandbox game so good at making you explore and have fun. And isn’t that what sandbox games are for, really?
Half Life 2: easily my favourite FPS of all time. I always thought the environments in this game were prettier and more interesting than post-apocalyptic sewers, prisons, ruins, etc., have any right to be. It’s not exceptionally unusual in any way, other than maybe the physics puzzles —it’s just better than everything else.
Portal: just the right level of difficulty, and great characters. (Well, one great character, anyway.) An exercise in producing just the right amount of game to be perfect.
Bastion: lots video games have a “good”, “good” storytelling, and “good” music and visuals… as long as you add the caveat, “for a video game”. Bastion is the only game I have played that needs no caveats. Its narration is the best implementation of giving-you-backstory-in-bits-and-pieces that I have ever experienced. The backstory is crushingly believable, and the main story is nearly as poignant. Although the combat mechanics aren’t revolutionary, they fit well with everything else — and the story, style, and music all match perfectly. Also, I agree with sohvan — there is a moment near the end of the game that is worth the price of admission all on its own.
Kerbal Space Program: caveat: I have never tried Minecraft, nor been tempted to. But for me, this is the ultimate building game. Get a rover on the Mun for the first time, and you feel like you have accomplished something major (like krondys said!) You also learn some real physics along the way.
Near the list but not quite there for me: Half-Life 1 (excellent, but too old for me to ever have connected to it fully); Mass Effect 2 (a little too linear for my tastes, and I hate the relationship-building, but excellent at what it does); Rome: Total War (so epic, but such bad AI); Fallout 3 (I need to play it more, TBH); and Borderlands 2 (a lot of fun, except for the grind and obnoxious save system.) I couldn’t think of any racing game so exceptional that it should make this list, but that’s a pity, given how much I like racing games.
Great thread, by the way!
I think maybe that was ‘Speedball 2’ (on the Amiga, for instance)?
Lode Runner - A level editor in 1983!
M.U.L.E. - If playing with other humans there is little that is more fun (collusion!)
Elite
Impossible Mission
Civilization - I’ve played and enjoyed all of them
Bastion - with narration by the lovechild of Sam Elliot and James Earl Jones
Portal
Osmos - strangely addictive and probably the most time I’ve spent with an indie title
Transport Tycoon Deluxe
Batman: Arkham Asylum