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.
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.
Portal 2 is THE highest rated game on Steam.
Doom or Tetris were probably the most influential ones?
Haven’t seen TIE Fighter mentioned yet.
Twisted Metal or Resident Evil
Diablo
The first multi-player lobby over battlenet. Epic lore, great gameplay, created an entire genre.
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.
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.
Civilization series.
So many hours on civ II. Never did beat deity. Such a fun game
Civ IV defined my middle school years.
Played on switch, waste of money for me lol
So many hours gone…days probably
One of the first PC games I played in 92… can’t believe I’m still playing it
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.
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?
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.
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
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 came to say Outer Wilds as well. Honestly changed my perspective on what a video game can be and I can’t find any other game that gives me that same feeling. The only bad thing about Outer Wilds is you can only really experience it once
I’m four hours in and just don’t get it
What part don’t you get? If you can be more specific, people might be able to help you out with some largely spoiler-free hints.
For example, do you not get ‘what the goal is’ (this is a legitimate concern, and someone might be able to give you a direction to pursue for example)
That’s fine. 4 hours isn’t enough to really get into the meat of the game yet. If you feel like you’re kinda stumbling around a bit without quite knowing what the goal of the game is, that’s normal. The game is specifically designed to not give you any objectives, and a big part of making the game enjoyable is to not try to judge the game by regular game design conventions. There are no win conditions, no lose conditions, no objectives, and the game becomes much more enjoyable if you just play the game in the way that you think makes the most sense. You’ll just need to have a bit of faith that there is actually an end, you just never get told how to get to the end.
If you’re struggling with not crashing, then that’s a different issue altogether, and honestly my advice is to just use autopilot. Make sure to disable autopilot if you start to see that autopilot is going to crash you into the sun.
You’re basically dropped into a huge set of mysteries.
You get to explore, at your leisure, anything you want.
There’s places and dialog and written records that contain clues and references to different threads of those interconnected mysteries.
As you play, read, explore you uncover more and more and what happened, is happening, and will happen start to make sense and you build a picture in your mind of what’s going on.
There’s no unlocks or progress except for these moments of discovery. And as you learn and discover more you can get access to new places to dig into the mystery because you have acquired the knowledge that lets you do it.
I get it might not be for everyone. Until the main thing happened the first time I wasn’t sold either, but personally, the game does an amazing job at making me naturally and fervently curious about what the heck was going on
Don’t feel bad if you don’t click with it. I love puzzle oriented games and while this was the most unique experience ever in a game (and I suggest all people try it), it was really a mental challenge getting through this game. I actually abandoned the DLC, because I honestly reached my limit. You have to really love repetition.
One of those games I’ll never understand the hype, I despise Fortnite but I get it. But this, looks just meh
Not Outer Worlds, which is a shooter, Outer Wilds is a story based… Um… I feel like anything more than that is a spoiler
Easy best game I’ve ever played.
I’m talking about that one
Looks? So you’ve never played it? Then you can’t comment. Only way to actually get it is to play it or at least watch someone play it blindly.
Not really
Yes, really. There’s an exception to literally every single rule. And this game was an exception to many people’s rules. Could be yours too. You won’t know until you experience it. You can pretend you know what it is all you want meanwhile, but that’s all it is, pretending.
Again, not really. You don’t have to agree with me but don’t try to tell me what to feel or rate.
Again, yes really. I’m sorry you’re offended, but that’s just how some things are. When you don’t understand something, it’s not because you’re stupid, it’s because you haven’t tried to understand it. And you’ve literally admitted to not trying to understand outer wilds.
And that’s that. It’s fine, you don’t have to. But every thing you think you know or feel about it is made up, since you’ve never actually experienced it. Imagine going on Google maps and rating some place you’ve never been to. Or those people that give ratings to books and movies that aren’t out yet. That’s you in this situation. And well… now THAT is something I’ll never understand.
According to YOU. Not me
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.
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!
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
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 soldier 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.
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.
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.
Halo 2
Grandia II
Runescape. It’s been around for more than 20 years and still is one of the most active online games.
