When talking about the best games of all time people generally mention Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario 64, Halo 3, The Last of Us, Nier Automata, etc. , but dismiss other great games.
What games do you think are unfairly forgotten from this conversation?
Personally I think the original Dead Rising, Fable: The Lost Chapters, Dragon’s Dogma: The Dark Arisen and Lunar: Eternal Blue should be talked as some of the best games of all time. They’re such great and unique games!
Pirate Trainer & Uru: Ages Beyond Myst
I remember trying Pirate Trainer in a Nvidia game booth when VR was new. It was incredible, years later I get a VR headset and its the free game. I don’t understand how no one has improved upon it.
Uru was the first puzzle game I thought struck a good balance between physical and mental puzzles. They were set at a level that felt challenging but not impossible and laid out so you alternated really nicely. Myst Online actually went backwards in this
I tried pirate trainer in a VR demo booth at a con and lost 2 hours thinking it has been 20 minutes!
Portal, Minecraft, Stardew Valley are just some you haven’t mentioned.
SDV hardly gets snubbed as one of the best games of all time. It’s constantly in the top sellers. I say this as a loving fan.
Trog… I played that game for days
I searched this thread for Gothic II and it was nowhere to be found. This brilliant masterpiece is even getting snubbed from lists of games getting snubbed. It really should be more known. This is a game that makes (no offense) OP’s Fable look like baby’s first RPG. Incredible world building, expert progression, meaningful choices, an entirely skill-based combat system that is basically a proto Dark Souls, so many clever touches everywhere. It’s so well designed, it’s one of few RPGs that credibly crosses into immersive sim territory - that’s how well its systems are connected.
Agreed, best RPG (perhaps best game) I ever played. So good I have to replay it at least once every few years.
I think Gothic 1 is much better. :p (it would totally deserve a spot in this conversation, but it’s a very highly regarded game )
I’m admittedly a bit biased, because I played Gothic II first, but I’m still curious as to why you prefer it over its sequel. In my opinion at least, the second game is a considerable step up.
Marathon Infinity - The whole Marathon trilogy did a lot for defining the story-driven FPS (as did System Shock), but since the first and last title were Mac only for years, they didn’t get the credit they deserved among the pantheon of FPS greats.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP - For years, whenever someone asked me what the must-have game was for iOS, this was always my answer. It shows up on a fair number of iOS lists, but doesn’t get the same level of recognition on PC. One of the most well-crafted experiences ever.
Clash at Demonhead - Despite having an Easter egg in Scott Pilgrim, this NES game is largely forgotten. It was one of my favorites in my youth and I am always surprised by how few people have played it, let alone finished it.
MS Solitaire, Space Pinball, and Minesweeper come to mind. They were not my favorites, but I know a few people who have a few hundred hours on one or more of those.
For me it’s C&C Generals Zero Hour. I have had a copy since it released in 2003, it still works, and I still play it in single player mode at least once a week. It’s great because it does not require a huge time commitment and campaign missions take about an hour or less to complete. To me it’s one of the best RTS style games out there. My second favorite? C&C Red Alert 2 and Yuri’s Revenge.
I have also very much enjoyed the Assassin’s Creed series up to AC Odyssey.
Adding my Voice for Zero Hour. Excellent game. the multiplayer, skirmish and campaign modes all have something to offer.
It’s crying out for a proper remake. Just a modern patch. Don’t change anything, just make it work easier, especially the networking
I’m assuming you are already familiar with GenPatcher?
Seconding the other response. This page should have everything you need to get the game into an optimal, playable state. Like a breath of fresh air when I launched it again. Brilliant work by those involved in the fixes.
Toribash is quite possibly the best competitive fighting game I have ever played due to it’s unique method of controlling your actions. It’s almost entirely unheard of tho.
Toribash is an indie classic. It was mentioned fairly often among indie fans around the time of Cave Story’s rise. But back then there weren’t so many indie fans.
Where are my Outer Wilds boys at?
Not a boy but I’m fucking HERE for Outer Wilds. And TUNIC, in the same vein.
I started playing the Outer Worlds thinking I had simply misheard the name Outer Wilds and found myself very confused but still kept trudging on. Thank you for bringing some sanity into my life; Wilds seems like the game I wanted to play the whole time, not Worlds. I’ll see how chaotic I can fuck out Worlds before I ditch it for Wilds.
Always ready to bump my favorite game of all time, but honestly I feel this is quite a popular opinion (compared to some of the games in OP’s list that are really overlooked on these discussions of best games ever).
But still, what an incredible experience, the OST for outer Wilds was my fourth most listened to on last year’s Spotify Wrapped :)
Thanks for reminding me!
I’m not sure how this compares to Spotify but I still feel pretty good about this one
Yeah, it may not be as popular as Mario or Zelda, but I wouldn’t say it’s “unfairly forgotten”. People who have played the game tend to be pretty vocal about it. And justifiably so, I’ve never had a comparable experience in another game. I wish I could forget about it and play it again.
For the people who do find out about it and it hooks them enough sure, it’s not really forgotten or underrated. But I still think it’s kinda obscure / not well known?
ooblets and fire watch are not difficult or lengthy games, but both were so enjoyable. i think casual games often get the short end of the stick unless there’s some online element a la animal crossing.
Basically everything old. There’s such massive recency bias in game discussions. It’s very much an explicit marketing strategy to promote the new thing as more everything but somehow it’s infected almost all discussions.
Sure ok, playing an old game requires a bit more investment and effort than watching an old film or even reading an old book but mostly it’s just about lack of familiarity. Especially outside of fps style games where I’ll admit prior to halo 1 things were pretty all over the shop many older games are still approachable.
Coupled with the general dismissal of strategy and simulation genres (which were comparatively bigger in the past) and many things get forgotten outside of cult classic status.
If I’m rattling down a list of my favorite games ever, they’re heavily concentrated in the last decade, with a couple of stragglers from earlier than that. I don’t think that’s recency bias; I think developers have just, in general, gotten better at honing in on what people like, especially in the age of rapid patching. There’s plenty of negative that comes along with this too, but for every game like Diablo IV that patches out builds because they were too much fun and impacted their live service retention rate, there are plenty of games coming out of early access after learning what worked and didn’t work with their players, much more rapidly than the old days of iterating on yearly sequels.
Old is relative though. Age doesn’t hit movies or books nearly as hard as it does to games and gameplay mechanics, and where exactly that acceptable limit happens to be differ for each individual - with no doubt a large correlation based on your age.
It’s just really hard to imagine yourself in the shoes of someone who didn’t grow up with them and doesn’t have the appreciation and nostalgia of those times. Heck, back when I was a kid with my PSX, anything on the NES felt like an ancient unplayable relic.Idk, it’s pretty difficult to get my peers to check out black and white film, let alone silent, and yet most enjoy what they see.
I came to gaming after the NES (although I was alive at the time) and have recently been emulating games and have been surprised by how good some are.
There are still modern games that expect you to read a manual before playing, there are still modern games where it takes about 2 hours to learn the UI. There are older games with 3 page manuals and simple controls too.
You’ve got to remember you’re not immune to marketing tactics either. Like part of the resistance to checking out older stuff has been placed in us all by gaming companies training us to interpret stuff like low framerate as bad, or controls that aren’t fluid as bad.
Best game doesn’t necessarily mean most enjoyable now, or even an enjoyable experience at all. Some of the greatest art is difficult, unpleasant, and challenging. Some of the greatest video games are those that set trends, or do something unique despite rough edges, or are even straight up hostile to their player.
There’s a whole generation of players now who never got to experience Soul Reaver. Brilliant writing by Amy Henning, amazing voice cast.
People lauding Lords of the Fallen dual world forgot that Soul Reaver did it first.
At this point the closest thing would be a Zelda/ Dark Souls hybrid which we haven’t seen?
I think Soul Reaver 2 was the peak of the series for me. When Kain had his monologue during the climax about flipping a coin enough times that one day it lands on its side, jesus. I get goosebumps just remembering it.
flipping a coin enough times that one day it lands on its side
There was a twilight zone episode based on this premise too!
Soul reaver is on my short list of potential games to start next. (It’s up against Half Life and Silent Hill). I went through the first blood omen about a year ago and loved it.
I was thinking Soul Reaver too! I think the problem is that it had a handful of mediocre sequels that made people eventually lose interest in the series. But the original game was one of the best on the PS1. I loved the whole improvised combat mechanic where you have to use anything around you in the environment that could hit the vampires’ weakneses.
Journey redefined how I look at video games and the world, and honestly changed the course of my life for the better.
TUNIC may truly be the best game of all time
Outer Wilds shares the top spot with TUNIC
Celeste is the best precision platformer, and easily in the top 5 games of all time, though I suppose it is, much like Outer Wilds, quite highly regarded game among people who know it exists
Citizen Sleeper is unparalleled, I can wholeheartedly say more people need to know about this gem
Tunic has such an unique vision and it executes it expertly. On the surface it’s a zelda-like but it’s so much more than that, and it’s best experienced blind. In fact, that’s the whole idea. The developer wanted to replicate the experience of being a kid picking up a game in a different language that you had to figure out little by little.
Agreed! I don’t know if I will ever again experience as much enjoyment from a game as I did from tunic, but that’s okay, for having experienced tunic
Celeste is on my backlog and i just installed it on my laptop, i need to play it in 2024
Celeste is the best of all time in its genre. i have put more than 100 hours in it and yet i’m still shit, but it’s just so gratifying to complete a harder screen…
Heartily recommend playing it on controller if you can, and enjoy the ride!
Remember: You can do this!
Yeah i’m mostly a controller player so that works for me. Is it that hard? I’ve played stone hard games like dmc/dark souls but this seems very different
You will die thousands of times, but until you reach your limit as a gamer it will never feel like banging your head against an unbreakable wall. Just moving around is so much fun in Celeste.
It is an incredibly challenging game, but unlike dark souls it’s an incredibly challenging game that wants you to succeed. If you had the coordination for things like dmc or dark souls I have no doubt you’ll be able to play all the content celeste has, with some perseverance!
Master of Magic. I know strategy isn’t everyone’s thing and turn based isn’t either and high fantasy isn’t usually strategy staple, but it’s damn near perfect in execution. There are some minor nitpicks, but the game is definitely a 9/10*s. None of the spiritual successors have ever been so well executed. They always fall flat somewhere.
It’s kinda insane how much people dismiss “System Shock.” It’s a serious bedrock of a title, so much of what we take as a given of games was really pioneered by LookingGlass. I think a big chunk of that was due to the gameplay not really holding up to modern times, but hopefully now that Nightdive’s remaster is out, more people can experience it and realize just how much of the game holds up.
Probably a close second is the original “Half-Life”, in terms of really cementing the story-based first person shooter, but I don’t think anyone is going to call Half-Life snubbed.
I loved the first level of System Shock, now that it’s been modernized. Then I got to the second level, and resources were no longer scarce, and it didn’t appear to be shaking up the formula from level to level, so now it feels like Doom with an inventory system rather than the games that took inspiration from System Shock.
Half-Life is still pretty great, but as far as organically teaching the player, it’s far behind even its own sequel. There are a lot of cheap deaths that you just have to save scum your way through. My go-to example is that when Half-Life 1 introduces a sniper enemy, you see a hole in the wall that could look like a sniper’s nest if I told you that they existed in the game and if you squint at it a little bit, so you just get shot in the back. In Half-Life 2, you emerge from Ravenholm, and a combine sniper with a laser sight is clearly trained on some escaping zombies, so that you know that snipers in sniper’s nests are now a thing you’ll have to contend with, and you get to observe it safely once before dealing with them in the game. That kind of thing. 90s PC games seemed to be worse at this than their successors and console games at the time.
Freespace 1 & 2 deserve a mention here. Old games, so smaller in scope than modern games. But I feel they can compete still.
