I’m curious what you guys have to say about this. Are there any games you consider perfect? Can a game even be perfect?
My example of a perfect game is always Portal 1. Portal 2 has more going on, but in 1 there just isn’t anything to shave off. From start to end, there is nothing I’d change about the game. It’s short, infinitely replayable, great pacing. I like Portal 2 a lot in concept, in concept it should be a perfect sequel, but it just doesn’t keep the extreme tightness of the original game.
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Shadow of The Colossus. Archetypal hero type fights 16 giant monsters to save his dead love. There’s literally nothing else in The Forbidden Lands save for lizards and platforming puzzles. You’re playing to see what the next colossus looks like. It’s a game pared down to its barest essentials.
Also: absolutely incredible graphics, it’s actually confusing to me how the PS2 can handle it.
By deciding that dipping to 10fps at times is acceptable you can really push computer graphics on any platform to the limit.
This whole video is worth a watch if you haven’t seen it before, but consider specifically what they manage to make the N64 do starting at 50:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNbkv_DJ0f0
I’ll say it’s kind of spoiling the magic of the video somewhat to jump to its conclusion, but that’s where the custom graphics are implemented.
You should play the remake, it’s truly incredible.
I have it, I’m planning on playing it someday! Literally the only thing on my PS5 that I’m interested in playing :P
This is kind of a niche thing to praise, but I haven’t played any game before or since that “gets” riding a horse quite as well as Shadow of the Colossus does. The way that your horse has a mind of its own but mostly listens to you is tuned so perfectly that if you go from SotC to any other horse game (say RDR2) you’ll feel like you’re driving a go kart in comparison.
And the fucked up thing is that RDR2 is still better than the vast majority of games in that regard
Outer Wilds is my favorite game, it’s just so tight between the narrative and the gameplay, there’s not a second wasted and everything ties together appropriately and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome so long as you’re moderately competent at the sleuthing. Better yet is the DLC they released was equally satisfying while remaining a standalone narrative with it’s own themes and mechanics, while still managing to tie in nicely with the base game narrative. I would suggest holding off on playing it until you’ve completed the OG, but theoretically you could do it anytime during the playthrough.
I guess the only downside I can think of is re-playability, being a mystery/puzzle game once you’ve acquired the prerequisite knowledge it’s a bell that cannot be un-rung and experienced again with the same novelty. Maybe someday I’ll go back, but until then I’ll suffice with the tear-jerking OST of both game and DLC, as I’m reminded of the most humanistic and existential game I’ve ever played.
The only fault I can find are the relatively unwieldy controls. Had a friend who just got frustrated with the spaceship control and dropped it, despite my strong recommendations.
And spoiler do not click if you want to play the game ever which you should just do it stop arguing it’s fantastic:
seriously dont
i got stuck on the hourglass twin puzzle with the warp. I understood the concept of warping to the other planet right, but apparently if you miss the timing, the sandstorm just yeets you into the sky. After three attempts I gave up and hours later had to ask the internet. Was a bit sad, because I just missed it by a fraction of a second.
Ughhhhh I had the exact same experience. It made me feel so bad for having to go to a tutorial after feeling so accomplished from sussing everything else out. And then finding out it was a slight platforming error just left me frustrated with myself and the near perfection of that game
I had a friend play through it and stream it for me to watch, and it was a great experience for us both. Got a lot of that sense of wonder that I had when I first played it myself.
Lol vicariously re experiencing the game is a pastime on YouTube. Symbalily and “About Oliver” have good LPs.
Yeah but it’s gotta be someone you know personally imo, so you know how the gears are turning and can talk and just barely hint and imply without spoiling.
Agreed, that’s my perfect game too.
I just completed the main game, and doing the DLC now. Incredible game.
That’s what I came here to say. Outer Wilds is what I’d call a perfect game in that it accomplishes exactly what it set out to achieve and also managed to present a novel experience to someone like me that has been gaming for decades.
It’s ironic, because the first place my brain goes with the prompt “perfect game” is Hades. In terms of what it sets out to be, the combat, the gameplay loop, the art, the story, writing, voice acting, music, the game doesn’t miss a mark.
However, I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest game I’ve ever played. Often times the great ones have flaws, sometimes deep ones, but that’s part of the nature of pushing limits. It’s rare to do something novel and untested in a medium and also do it perfectly.
I don’t know if I agree that it’s perfect for one reason: the difficulty curve is weird. It does a great job of easing you in as you’re learning the game through the thoughtful upgrade systems and by slowly unfolding the stories each run. But once you win the first time, the skills you’ve learned coupled with the big Darkness payoff can make future runs much, much easier.
Obviously the Heat levels are supposed to counteract this, but if you increase by one heat per run per weapon to collect all of the boss rewards, some players might not be challenged again for dozens of runs until the Heat modifiers start making a difference.
Also the game won’t give me void fish to fill out the codex
Most roguelites are like that tbh, except some older ones like Nuclear Throne from the days before permanent progress got really integrated into the genre.
I personally don’t really consider it a flaw so much as a shift, because once you hit that point you have the tools and more freedom to branch out and try less optimized builds because they’re fun.
I thought the story and characters were ass which sort of took the rest of the experience down a peg. I’m not usually into the bad dad genre though so maybe I’m the problem
I think that’s a great way to explain my feelings on it. Portal isn’t my favorite game of all time. I actually enjoy Portal 2 quite a bit more, it’s a richer and deeper game that gave us Cave Johnson and many other things that define the series. Portal 2 does things wrong because it ultimately does more. Portal 1 is just a perfectly concise slice of that universe.
Zelda - A link to the past: Set the Zelda formula for the next two decades. Aged imho better than OoT, because it stayed within the capabilities of the SNES and the pixelart is timeless. Wonderful vibes, great pacing and just so much fun.
A link to the past is my favourite Zelda Game. I wish they would make something of that format and style again.
There are some games that fit that format I think. Four Swords Adventures. Link’s Awakening. I have that Link’s Awakening DX HD fan game downloaded and I only tested it for a a minute but it was super impressive.
You are right about Link’s Awakening. I did play the new version for switch and enjoyed that quite a bit. Mind you I did find some of the puzzles obscure and hard to get so I used a guid a couple of times. Im not sure about Four Swords ? Wasnt that the multiplayer one ? Im not sure how that one plays. Never looked deeper into it. With all that said I still think Link to the past just felt larger. A bit like the 2d version of a large open world game if that makes sense.
Four Swords is designed for multiplayer but can be played single player. But aesthetically it is extremely like LttP.
Did you play Link Between Worlds?
Dont think I did but I “think” I heard good things ?
Yes it’s very good, it’s the successor to LttP, with just a bit of new mechanics on top of it, in sections. Basically you can turn 2d to pop yourself into walls to traverse things.
It very much feels like playing LttP with new dungeons etc.
There’s so much creativity and charm to the AAA titles of the 8 and 16 bit era that later games just can’t replicate. Working within such limited technological confines really brought out the best in the designers to make the most of what was available.
Agreed. LttP is the perfect representative of the peak of 2D games, alongside later titles like Metal Slug. Nintendo was ahead of the curve on figuring out how to make peak 2D games.
Undertale. I can’t find fault with this game that i can do it with my other favourite game. Not Prey, not FO4, not stardew, not half-life 2, not darksouls 3, not monhunt 4u/world.
It just went above and beyond what a game of its size and scope should achieve. It should have been a little niche game, praised by some critics in a blog post here and there and gotten some mild success in a steam sale. But the music and the writing dragged it into the spotlight and made it unavoidable for anyone talking about games ever again, as it should be.
the writing
The efficiency of the writing really can’t be overstated either. There aren’t incredibly long diatribes and lore dumps in the game. It’s very effective in its characterizations.
The efficiency of the writing really can’t be overstated either.
I’m playing Golden Sun on GBA for the first time right now and while I love the mechanics, I want to shake the game to see if it makes the conversations go faster. ALL OF YOU STOP TALKING STOP IT
Oh man, I love Golden Sun, but I haven’t played it in forever. I’m sure all that dialogue would get old fast if I went back to it now.
Yeah, I have a lot of experience with classic RPG’s, but even some of the really great ones are rough in hindsight. I don’t have the nostalgia goggles on for this one so it’s quite grating. But the class system is great.
Same in terms of classic RPG experience. I work in a pretty nerdy company with a lot of people younger than myself. I’ve calibrated my feelings on a lot of my old favorites that when I’m recommending them, I heavily caveat that many games I like haven’t aged well. For Golden Sun, I have felt the drive to replay it recently. I also never played the sequel so I’m really curious about that.
I consider Shovel Knight to be a perfect game, in that it perfectly achieves what it sets out to, and it does so with enough flourish to push beyond being only adequate. S-tier sound track, flawless pixel art, charming characters and plot, clean controls with interesting gameplay for the genre… it’s one of those games where if you don’t like it, it’s probably because you don’t like side-scrollers, or pixel art, or whatever.
It’s too hard and boring
take it to the fake news comm
skill issue!It really is a bit too hard. But I genuinely struggle with any platformers not called Mario or Kirby.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is a game that has incredible gameplay, perfect controls, tons of content, and stellar graphics (that got even better in the SNES remake).
Ohhhhhh holy shit
I grew up playing the shit out of Super Mario All Stars and I COMPLETELY forgot about the updated graphics. I remember seeing Mario 3 many years later and thinking I must have misremembered how good it looked due to me being used to the original Mario game… But no, I had been playing the remake as a kid…wow!
Huh I had the same experience as you. Snes version is really pretty https://youtu.be/JWhpGuQn53o
HADES
HADES YOU HAVE TO PLAY HADES.
It’s the closest a game ever got to perfection without being some barebones abstraction like Tetris or something.
So leftist Twitch streamer said something like “it’s like weebs, but for Greece” and that always stuck with me. But ya, it’s been me favourite game in the last maybe ten years.
I really enjoyed Bastion and have been meaning to get around to Transistor which has been sitting in my library for years now. Is Hades much better than Transistor or Bastion?
Ocarina Of Time because I’m old and I still think it holds up. Dark Souls 1 probably for the same reason even though it is janky.
A friend of mine played Ocarina of Time for the first time a couple of years ago, and did confirm that it’s legitimately great and not just nostalgia glasses.
I loved Link to the Past so much that Orcarina was a let down to me at the time.
DS1 is many wonderful things, but far from perfect. Iconic, visionary, genre defining - yes. Perfect? Only if you stop at Ornstein and Smough.
Perfect? Only if you stop at Ornstein and Smough.
I really feel that one. In fact the first time through i did basically stop after Ornstein and Smough. Everything thats great about the game kind of unravels a bit after that point. If the game stopped there, it would be a lot closer to perfect. Still love DS1 though obviously
Maybe, you’re right but when I think of the later games which are clearly better I just feel like they’re… missing some puzzle piece from the first game.
Edit. If you stop at O&S you don’t get to fight Gwyn and hear that banging music.
You also get to wade through eye cancer inducing lava with copypasted dragon butts for minutes and fight a gimmicky platforming boss that can just randomly kill you if it feels like it.
They just didn’t finish the game properly. It doesn’t take away from what that game means to me and to the medium as whole, but it is undoubtedly a flawed product.
Oh yeah… I always forget about the dragon butts…
Eh, Blighttown is before O&S. Regardless of whether you like the area or not, the FPS hit was massive.
Yeah but in the remastered version it’s completely fixed and honestly, I kind of like it.
I agree, but I still like Majora’s Mask more. Don’t ask me to elaborate, i’m not sure i can put it into words.
Nah, I get it. Majora’s Mask is also a masterpiece. I didn’t get to play it for a while because of not having the damn expansion pack so I’ve definitely got more attachment to OOT.
The first thing i think of in terms of a perfect game is Link to the Past. Its a perfect excecution that still holds up like over 30 years later
Yes!! How many other games from 1991 and earlier are still just fucking jams today… The Mario games, Link to the Past, and only a handful of others. It could have been launched as a retro indie title today and been absolutely beloved.
- Half-Life (the original). First game that legit made me jump back from my PC, screaming, “Ahh!” It was a very tense moment–I was out of ammo so that meant my only weapon was the crowbar… Others that have played the game will know what I’m talking about. I was playing that moment in the middle of the night–probably 2AM-ish–with my headphones on in a basement room lit only by the light of my (1024x768) CRT monitor.
- Final Fantasy 7. The first and only game that made me cry actual tears (of sadness; not like that time the house lost power in grade school after a long and eventually successful boss battle which is another gaming moment I’ll never forget).
- Minecraft. Well, it’s not perfect on it’s own but here I am playing modded Minecraft with my kids again. We’ve been playing this game together like this for almost ten years! We’ll play until we’ve learned every major/popular mod that exists for any given version then stop playing for a while then a year or so later we’ll be at it again for a month or two 😁. Aside: Myself and my kids are like absurdist experts in cross-mod overpowered combos and nonsensical things like how to combine nuclear power with mana generation and all the steps/progression necessary to get there (LOL).
- Baldur’s Gate 3: It won GOTY in so many places for a reason. Absolutely fantastic and one of the big reasons why is because it doesn’t dumb things down for laymen or children (or child-like people aka game reviewers hehe). It’s a game made for geeks that are adults and can understand and appreciate adult themes and scenarios where it’s impossible to save everyone (and having to play the rest of the game living with the consequences of your actions). Aside: You could say it’s a game that teaches consequence culture! Haha. BTW: If you haven’t tried modding BG3 yet it’s totally worth it. Even if just for some of the QOL improvements and cosmetic stuff 👍
- Before EPIC bought Psyonix, Rocket League. Oh man I spent like 3,000 hours in that game and never got bored. I was happy to pay for Rocket Pass every time it came up for renewal because I was just having way too much fun and wanted the game to do well. Then EPIC bought Psyonix and they ended support for Linux (I got a temp ban from the Rocket League subreddit and the associated Discord for saying that was going to happen!) and at that point I stopped playing. Then they made it free to play and way too quick and easy to get a new account and that’s when my friends stopped playing too (because it ruined ranked play which was the only way to play people that were near your skill level).
- Beat Saber. Truly the perfect VR game. You burn loads of calories while listening to awesome music (your choice of music if modded) and having fun. Mod it to make it truly next level. I mean, the BeatLeader mod saves the entire replay of you beating any given map and posts it online where you can re-watch and share your amazing speed/accuracy and cool dance moves! Example: https://replay.beatleader.xyz/?scoreId=7668607 (watch it, you’ll smile… That’s one of my replays and it’s “replay of the year” 2023 👍)
If I think of more later I’ll try to remember to come back to this thread and edit my post.
Aside: There needs to be more high speed competitive games like Rocket League that use 120HZ event loops (that aren’t just twitch reflex FPSes). I miss playing a game with the controller where careful and precise control would make you feel like you had a superpower compared to the average player. Like, if you practiced enough you could keep the ball on your car (aka dribbling) and flip it up in the air just before an opponent tried to take it from you (making them feel sooooooo inadequate haha). Also, expert mid-air maneuvering could have you completely crushing your opponents with them feeling like they didn’t stand a chance… Not because you got lucky and/or bought the best equipment but because of your sheer skill at the game.
I also miss the feeling of being an impenetrable goalie, haha. Even facing off against pros I could lock them out of scoring unless they coordinated their attacks. It felt sooooo good to block a well-executed, amazing double touch ceiling shot and then… “Calculated” followed by another block within a second from their teammate, “Calculated”. Ahahaha. Good times.
The only game that has truly achieved perfection is Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque
StarCraft brood war is the perfect convergence of bugs and intentionally difficult mechanics that kicked off the entire e sports industry and it consumed my entire teenage years.
Diablo 2 similarly was a perfect accident by Blizzard. I can go back and play it or the remaster any time and have a good time, even if the remaster has new questionable content
I definitely prefer the diablo remaster just because the original does have one flaw. It hurts my fucking eyes! Actually painful, not even sure why
And yeah Brood War is so good… I spent a few months actually becoming competent at that game when the HD version came out, and it was so fucking cool how the battles would sort of roll continuously in this big back and forth, very unlike SC2 and especially pre-Void SC2 which was just sudden istawins and instalosses from intersecting death balls.
I hate how everything clumps up into a deathball in SC2, and then battles are over after a few seconds of incomprehensible fireworks. Brood War had so much geometry to it’s battles.
The real shame is all they needed to do, in my opinion, was balance the game around one different setting - making clumping optional, the way magic boxing worked. Click between, they clump, click adjacent, they stay pretty much in formation. You can literally go into the map editor and change this with some kind of checkbox, apparently.
whywhywhywhy
Brood War is still the only eSport I can bear to watch (well, that and certain fighters). And players are still coming up with wacky shit like remote mining gas in ZvZ to rush to hive tech.
Diablo 2 similarly was a perfect accident by Blizzard. I can go back and play it or the remaster any time and have a good time, even if the remaster has new questionable content
D2 was a balance disaster, but the game itself was perfectly playable with each class. You just couldn’t compete on the ladders against the CCB WW babas and the Burritozons and the FW sasas sojsojsojsojsoj.
Half life Alyx for me. I’ve played hundreds of games in every genre and nothing has ever given me such a visceral emotional reaction as that game. From beginning to end I was drawn into the experience so much I forgot how to use my hands in real life.
Genuinely felt like the guy at the end of The Witness. Kept trying to reload my fork at dinner.
