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.
“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.
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.
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.
That’s a good question. Tetris has more levels but then again BG3 has better character customisation.
Weirdly, better sex scenes in Tetris.
When you rotate the T like one just right. 🥵 💦💦💦
Unironically true
I wanted to post a DOS game here I remembered called Sextris where the pieces were cartoony naked men and women in positions representing the shapes of the tetris pieces. But all I could find when I searched were versions of the regular game where nudie photos were slowly revealed as you cleared lines.
Hah. I remember Sextris. The great thing about it is that it was entirely unsexy, mostly just for laughs and actually not a bad version to play, for the standards of the time.
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.
I feel like this is just a question to learn more about other people. I don’t care if someone’s favourite is tetris when mine is sonic. I just wanna be reminded of fun games and hear a passionate argument as to why they think it should be top of my list :)
Yeah no, it’s a totally fair question and I get the spirit of it, but it’s still interesting to reflect on the way that video games have a pretty strange concept of genre or “format” vs. other media like video or print.
Maybe it’s cuz games are so heavily influenced by their associated hardware.
I mean, I guess everything is, right? Early printing press is mostly pamphlets not books (aside from the bible), and you don’t get TV shows without TVs.
Yeah it’s a good point. Wonder if we’ll ever see a tik tok video go up against a short film at the oscars ;)
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.
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
Portal 2 is THE highest rated game on Steam.
Doom or Tetris were probably the most influential ones?
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
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.
As someone who liked FF7 a lot as a kid,and a bunch of other FF games, I really like remake.
I think 1 thing you have to know going in, is it isn’t FF7 just in a new engine with updated combat, and I think remake is a bit of a bad name for it.
Reimagining might be better.
You are correct that it isn’t the whole game, but it takes Midgard and makes a handful of setup hours from the first game, a good 40 hours of compelling story and world building(with some side stuff as well). It is very clearly a different story with changes that are interesting, but could very easily go off the rails if it isn’t properly managed.
It also has some incredible improvements to certain characters and even to areas of Midgard expanding on what was a very small part of the original games.
Combat is very good at mixing turn based actions(skills and spells and items), with action based combos. Dodging is a bit of a bait and is more positioning because you don’t get i-frames to actually dodge, blocking is important but doesn’t feel great(I heard it is improved in rebirth). The ability to switch characters and how unique they all feel is really enjoyable to me as well.
I am eagerly looking forward to Rebirth on PC cause I ain’t buying a PS5.
Remake in my opinion is significantly better than 16 which I think is pretty mid, and I would recommend it as long as you don’t expect a 1 to 1 of the original.
FFVII Remake and Rebirth I think are really good games overall. The [nearly] completely different combat system from the original is fresh and engaging.
The story starts to deviate from the original near the end of Remake, and continues into Rebirth. I also think this is a welcome change (as long as it doesn’t stray too far from the original). But for everyone who never made it through the original, I imagine it can feel slow, confusing, and lacking, so I would actually encourage those players (unless you really hate spoilers) to watch a story synopsis youtube video of the original Final Fantasy VII. It will help.
Oh, and for the most part the new games still nail the music. Love love love it.
7 always felt dated and ugly for me, even back then, 8 was the real deal.
Steam came out a while before hl2, but agree with everything else you said
There is no doom without Wolfenstein…
And there is no Wolfenstein 3D without Catacomb Abyss.
Most games iterated on a previous entry. But without the stepping stone of Doom, it is unlikely that Wolfenstein alone would have catapulted the FPS genre as far as it’s gone nearly as quickly.
John Carmack’s lighting and raytracing code is what catapulted the FPS genre forward; without Doom/id there is no Quake engine and with no Quake engine (or the iterations thereof) you’re missing the core component of 90% of shooters for the next decade.
Someone else could have built it eventually, but Carmack just laying down this crisp and functional framework and licensing it out to everyone to use in their own games was a huge step in comparison to what would have otherwise been a hundred isolated game devs trying to implement good lighting engines on their own.
It’s funny how the games that shaped our personal childhood shaped that belief… Holy shit the first catacomb game was a shitty gauntlet game. Cool history buddy down the rabbit hole.
I’ll still play doom from time to time - so it’s not history for me (similar status to pacman , tetris a few other old games)
I haven’t played cat abyss or wolfenstein since, well, since about 1993.
I dont play quake or duke nukem3d either.
What you are telling me is you still talk to you mom from time to time but you haven’t seen you grandma since 93 and never talk to you aunt. I haven’t talked to you mom since that night… Oh shit how old are you again?
Brilliant rundown. No notes. 👏
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.
Portal
My pick was portal 2. Only game that made me cry when I beat it.
Man the last boss fight it’s just chef kiss
The Opera bit man…
I keep meaning to finish the sequel…
YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE SEQUEL?!?!
No but seriously Portal 2 might be the only game to beat out Portal as the best story/puzzle game ever made.
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.
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?
100% agree. SMB3 on NES just had so much more stuff going on compared to SMW on the SNES. Mini games galore, secrets up the wazoo, and the muthafuckin’ SHOE. For reals using that bad boy was like stepping into a goddamn Gundam.
I think they meant smb3 that was included in super mario all stars, not smw :p
Yup
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That was one of my front runners for a long time, but after recently playing them side by side, SM World is much better.
God I fucking loved that game.
Halflife 2 + Incl Episodes
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.
Hells yeah; I’m on a boat kick right now and it’s been super fun. Both games are fantastic.
I mean, come on, it has to be Minecraft. One of the most influential games of all time. There really is nothing like it
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.
