What are the best/highest quality Video Games ever made?

cll7793@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 92 points –

Feel free to list a few video games from different genres. Best is definitely subjective and I'm sure there are many "Best" games for various categories.

Half Life: Alyx for example is widely considered the "Best" VR game. Many would agree it's the best Action VR game, but it wouldn't be the "Best" for puzzles.

To make it easier I'll list the types of Genres for Video Games from Wikipedia. Please do give suggestions for some of the highest quality games you've played from various categories:

  • Action: Platform games, shooter, fighting, survival, etc
  • Action-Adventure: Survival horror
  • Adventure: Interactive, real time, 3d, text adventures, etc
  • Puzzle: Exploration, trial and error, breakout, logical games, etc
  • Role-playing: Action RPG, MMORPG, tactical, sandbox, etc
  • Simulation: Management, life simulation, vehicle simulation, etc
  • Strategy: Real time, turn based, wargame, grand strategy, etc
  • Sports: Racing, competitive, sports games, etc
  • MMO: Massively multiplayer online game
  • Openworld: Sandbox, creative, open world, etc

Note: Non-exhaustive category list. There are more such as card games, board games, etc. Please check the wiki link above for more categories to get ideas for the "best" games.

I personally would recommend Subnautica (Open World), Half Life: Alyx (VR Action-Adventure), The Witcher 3 (Role-playing), Black Mesa (Action), Titanfall 2 (Action), Portal 2 (Puzzle), Battlebit (MMO/Action), and Half Life 3 (Fictional Game).

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Outer Wilds

It's both a piece of art and a thoroughly enjoyable piece of playable entertainment.

The amount of attention to detail in that game is absolutely insane.

I've yet to play it, but I've only heard good things! Looking to purchase it next time it goes on sale

It truly is a masterpiece. And one that you only ever truly experience in it’s purest form once.

All the “gates” are knowledge based. So you’re exploring and learning and pulling on threads to various pieces of information and as you do you’re piecing together both the narrative but also the giant puzzle that is the solar system.

Once you know something… you know it. And so there’s always, with good reason, a dire warning to avoid spoilers because you can’t unlearn something.

There’s also a beautifully woven story and the feelings I felt playing that was something else.

I highly recommend it. It’s so masterfully done. I’ve got a list of people I plan on sharing it with when it next goes on sale it’s that good.

Yeah, the person who initially recommended me the game told me to not even watch the trailer. I watched it anyway, but the point he was making was to enjoy the game the first time, as you won't get that same experience again.

I guess you could say the same applies to every story game, but from what I've heard, it applies so much more so to Outer Wilds. Wish me luck on my adventure, I look forward to it!

Just completed this one myself - and yeah, amazing. I am sooo happy I went in not knowing anything. Figuring out what needs figuring out is half the fun.

Chrono Trigger

The story is great. The music is timeless. The replay-ability of the game is off the charts. You can change the combat style to be time-based instead of turn-based.

Hades is perfect. Every single pillar of that game supports each other.

It's one of the few games I've sunk triple-digit hours into. Such a good game.

I had to stop playing it because of the faux "British" accent. It goes right through me. Feels like such a stupid thing to be put off by but it's just so jarringly unnatural, it's horribly off-putting.

The way he says "mate".. omg

I remember looking up who did the voice for Zagreus or whatever his name is, and the dude is clearly one of the big dicks at Supergiant. Think he played some major part in the sound design for Bastion or something. Can't remember.

Anyway, I get the feeling he is senior enough when it comes to sound stuff that he was basically able to decide he would be the voice of the MC and then proceeded to go full Dick Van Dyke without people feeling able to criticize it.

Don't know if it's because I'm from the UK that I find it so uncanny and awful, or if it's just me in particular but it's probably the most random thing that's ever completely ruined a (otherwise great) game for me

Sekiro (RPG).

It's not necessarily representative of RPGs as a whole, but man, I have never played a game that felt so polished. The combat is immaculate, the levels are beautiful, and more subtly, the power scaling is really well tuned. Because it's not open world, they were able to hand tune the enemies' difficulty more closely to match your own progression, and for me, it resulted in fights that always felt challenging but fair.

Its not an rpg

Its just an action game

Amazing combat and bosses though

Seconding this. It's phenomenal.

I've never played a game that felt so challenging while still being fair all the way to the end.

Thirding

The best way to describe it is playing a rhythm game using swords. The swordplay really made you feel like a samurai.

I both love this game and hate that I could never beat the final boss. Even after defeating the "harder" optional stuff. My Dark Souls training is punished hard by the combat system. (I love to hate it though - just so satisfying.)

For me it's Half Life 2 because I have such a specific and vivid memory of playing it the first time in my rainy London flat in 2004.

It was this exact moment when I had the experience, for the first time in my life, that:

I'm in this world, I am a part of the game.

Funny OP calls out Half Life: Alyx as one of the best VR games, when VR is all about being 'immersive'.

But for me that moment 16 years earlier will always be the moment I first experienced being 'immersed' in a video game.

Half Life is awesome! If I had to choose from all the games I've played, the half life series has to be best in my opinion. There are so many small details and world building elements in each half life game that it really does make it feel like you are in the game. And then there is Half Life: Alyx...

It was so immersive, I smashed my head against the wall trying to run away from something lol

::: spoiler Warning Half Life: Alyx Spoilers. Do not read it unless you have played this game. It is a once in a lifetime experience. I had that moment in Half Life Alyx: at Jeff. No game makes you feel genuine fear as that level did. You felt as you were there physically trying to escape from death. Best gaming experience ever!

:::

For me, it was the first dark section of the game: using the little wrist flashlight, checking out every little noise, trying to keep the headcrabs visible so I could shoot them…

And then I had to reload, and as I reached the hand holding my light behind my head to get the magazine, I suddenly realized the cruelty of them putting the flashlight on your ammo hand.

In terms of games that were so advanced they almost feel like they were made by time travellers:

  • Elite (1984) - procedural open world space sim

  • Ultima VII (1992) - full NPC schedules, open world and day/night system so you could rob stores at nights, follow people, etc. and awesome exploration. In 1992!

  • X-COM (1994) - a voxel-based LOS system, destructible environment, z-levels, natural elevation on terrain (deforming the isometric grid), reaction fire, etc.

  • Daggerfall (1996) - a faction system, procedurally generated areas and quests, a lot of options to get to different areas (climbing, levitation, etc.)

  • Thief (1998) - a full sound simulation with different materials having different properties, the ability to extinguish torches (dynamic lighting!) and cover metal surfaces, a light system for visibility too (now commonplace).

  • Baldur's Gate (1998) - a semi open-world AD&D2e implementation - with co-op multiplayer! (most modern games don't manage this)

  • Deus Ex (2000) - a branching FPS/RPG campaign where choices matter with a basic stealth system and lots of approaches to each level. It was basically a completely modern game out of nowhere in 2000.

  • Runescape (2001) - one of the first major graphical MMORPGs with a full player economy.

  • Morrowind (2002) - a fully 3D open world with a lot of options for magic (including custom magic) and exploration.

  • Hitman 2 (2002) - first stealth-focussed game with a full disguise system, map, etc.

  • Oblivion (2006) - like Morrowind but with some NPC schedules (like Ultima VII), a stealth system (based on Thief) and Havok physics based traps.

  • Red Faction: Guerrilla (2009) - fully destructible buildings and environments in an open-world campaign.

Those are the ones that really stick out (also Super Mario and Zelda on consoles, especially the SNES, N64 and recently on the Switch handheld). It's a shame that the rate of progress seems to have slowed down a lot at least in terms of ground-breaking features and simulations.

But who knows maybe Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield will both be on future lists like this.

Ultima VII really sticks out as just crazy though, that game could have released 10 years later and held up.

I would actually also put KotOR on this list. It was the first game that I can think of that had branching side quests for companions and a relationship system depending on their usage. It was basically the precursor to the Mass Effect system.

Good list. Some extra info on xcom, it is basically a remaster of an 80s 8bit game called Laser Squad.

It's more than a re-master though, Laser Squad was independent missions IIRC? No geoscope

And it also didn't have elevation, etc.? That said, Laser Squad released on the ZX Spectrum so it's incredible as is.

Half-Life was a game changer when it came out.

First-person shooters in those days were basically just spawning in a level, shooting generic bad guys and picking up loot. Half-Life had this insane story and they didn’t use any cutscenes or take away control from the player except to load the map, the whole story was told through the environment you explored and the characters you interacted with.

Even 20 years later, people are still having discussions about who the G-Man works for, or whether Dr. Breen (HL2) was a good guy.

I know right? Valve keeps raising the bar so high you wonder how it can be topped. I can't wait for Half Life 3!

What passed for AI was amazing as well. Found a sweet spot in an elevator shaft where I could patiently pick off soldiers.

"Got you dumb bots now!"

(incoming grenades)

"Well. Shit."

They realized they were stuck, so they flushed me out! Up till then, enemies engaged on sight, suicidal, wouldn't stop. These animals would hang back, wait for you to return.

There's a great map, very small, like a small 2-story office building. Just you vs. the soldiers. The enemy "smarts" makes it infinitely replayable. Sometimes they really get you sweating as they coordinate against you.

All old news now, but that was amazing in the day. Also, you could play HL on about any old crap computer. Used to LAN party with my kids and his friends using junkers I'd cobbled out of spare parts. HL2 was famous for that as well. About any hardware specs at the time would at least get you in the game.

Absolutely was.

At day 1 of release on a celery 300A overclocked to 450Mhz with SBLive EAX 3D audio played in the dark.

Remember being very impressed with the story, sound, atmosphere and AI brains increase.

I’m going to take it back to the SNES days

Chrono Trigger

Earthbound

Super Mario World

Super Metroid

Megaman X

Super Mario RPG

Zelda: A Link to the Past

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

Best modern games I have played:
Action: Risk of Rain 2 (Roguelite), Hades (Roguelite), Cuphead
Action-Adventure: Alien: Isolation (Stealth/Horror)
Adventure: Subnautica
FPS: Halo 1-Reach (Story), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Competitive)
Puzzle: Portal 2
Role-playing: Divinity: Original Sin 2
Simulation: Rimworld (Colony), Stardew Valley (Farm/Life), Squad (Military), Cities: Skylines (Builder)
Strategy: Civilization 5 (4X), FTL: Faster Than Light (Roguelite), Stellaris (4X)
Sports: Forza Horizon 4
MMO: Old School RuneScape
Openworld: Minecraft
VR: Half-Life: Alyx

Some random games I enjoyed and would recommend:
Prodeus - a retro DOOM-like FPS, really captures the DOOM essence
Tomb Raider reboot: casual action-adventure games, just chill to play through
PlateUp! - a cooking roguelite management game, kinda like Overcooked (which is also a blast)
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes - one person has a bomb, the other the manual to defuse, lots of fun
Planet Coaster - a really good modernisation of the classic Roller Coaster Tycoon games
Sea of Thieves - open world PvPvE pirate adventure game, great fun with friends, wish they had progression though
Satisfactory - a factory building game, like a 3D Factorio (also good), it just needs an ending
Until You Fall - a VR sword fighting roguelite, wish they would expand on it, good fun while your arms dont hurt

This is a good list! I wish we had a Reddit-like save feature so I could never see this comment against.

There is a save feature, at least on the instance I'm using. Press the three dots next to the comment, and then hit the star icon :)

How do you classify best? Could a 16 bit be considered best if the mechanics and graphics are spot on? I’m thinking of Zelda ALTTP for instance. The game is just flawless in my opinion.

The Hitman trilogy has immersive world design and great replayability! One of my favourites.

Dishonored 2 is fantastic! I absolutely love everything about it. The graphics, world design, sounds, music, stealth gameplay, perks, story and etc. I'd live in Carnaca if it was possible! (I have to mention the world design again bc it is so good!!)

The level design of Dishonored 2 is also so good. So many memorable levels like the clockwork mansion. That shit was so cool and creative.

The Clockwork Mansion and A Crack in the Slab might be the coolest levels in any game I've ever played.

XCOM, XCOM 2 (Strategy)

The balancing of risk/reward, tactics, and roster management spawned a whole genre. The newer XCOMs (Enemy Unknown/Within and War of the Chosen) are still so much fun.

Also, plugging /c/XCOM while I'm here.

Also the original X-COM was so far ahead of its time - a voxel-based LOS system, destructible environment, z-levels, natural elevation on terrain (deforming the isometric grid), reaction fire, etc.

Not to be confused with X.COM, a different series where an inept alien attempts to take over the world via shite grifting.

In almost 30 years I've yet to come across another game that captures the feeling of turning a corner and coming face to face with an alien when you've few movement points left

The Talos Principle is one of my favorite puzzle games of all time because it actually got me to stop, read, and consider the message

Hades, RoR, and RoR 2 are contenders for best roguelike for me. Not my favorite genre but these hooked me with great replayability

Valheim, while unfinished and full of bugs, was my favorite open world experience with friends but I think Astroneer is a more perfect game. It's simple and does a great job "directing" you while you make your own choices. The sound design is unmatched for relaxing

I love strategy games but I'm a basic bitch here without a variety of them so Civ6, Cities Skylines, Advanced Wars, FTL, and Into The Breach are my favs

I'd split action into two separate categories: Action and multiplayer FPS.

Tomb Raider (2013) was a pretty perfect action game for me. Probably not flawless but I look back on it fondly

Overwatch remains my favorite FPS even though I stopped playing awhile ago. There's just no objective-based team shooter with unique roles besides....TF2, my previous favorite FPS

+1 for The Talos Principle.

If you like puzzles, you'll love Talos.

Great story, too.

I tried out Obduction based on a review that compared it to Talos but...I dunno if I would recommend it. I found the "puzzles" to be unintuitive and had to look up a guide multiple times. Then I'd see the solution and wonder how the hell the game expected me to know i needed an item from across the map.

So if you have any recommendations that are ACTUALLY like Talos, I'd love to hear them.

Yes, Talos II is inbound!

AHHHH WHAT I HAVEN'T BEEN THIS EXCITED ABOUT VIDEO GAME NEWS SINCE....Ok, Cities: Skylines 2. BUT BEFORE THAT...A LONG TIME

It's been a good month of game announcements for me

I have to go way back and vote for the Shenmu trilogy. Open world and RPG.

I agree that Half Life for action adventure.

Definitely Portal 2 and the Talos Principal for puzzle.

Rocket League is awesome and so are the Skate games.

Crazy Taxi and Paradise City belong somewhere too

OG Half Life. I should load that up again!

I recently beat Half-Life MMod and really enjoyed it. I was worried it would be too over the top, but I found it just right as something between the original and Black Mesa.

Chaos is a brilliant multiplayer turn-based strategy game.
Lemmings is the perfect puzzle game (also shameless plug for !lemmings)

From my own Steam stats: Portal 2 (276 h), The Talos Principle (161 h), Skyrim (158 h) and Torchlight (139 h).

But I bet I invested much more time in Doom, Doom II and all the expansions and mods.

And before that in Elite (for the 128K ZX Spectrum).

I'm surprised to not see any love for The Witness. I'm not usually a puzzle guy, but the way they teach you how to play without dialog is incredible and the environment is gorgeous.

Yes, finally. No one I know has played it, and there seems to be little interest in trying. The game consists of perfect mind-bending puzzles, with no duplicate "tricks" - just a steady growth of what is considered outside-the-box thinking.

This is a VERY BIG question. Should be broken down into smaller categories of gamez.

Nobody putting Left 4 Dead or L4D2 out there? I got 2,000 hours across both. Never had that much fun gaming before or since.

I really enjoyed both the Ori games, Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. The dev studio more or less got scrapped, but the two games they put out are honestly my favourite platformer games ever made. The music, combat, platforming, story and artwork are all so well done!

It's weird, but the answer I came up with for ALL those categories... was Dark Souls. Even Sports.

One of the best I have ever played which falls into adventure, puzzle, RPG, strategy , and open world is probably star control 2, the urquan masters. It has an amazingly well crafted story, the music is great, and a bunch of different aspects to the game play. This still is one of my favorite games of all time

I will not give you titles because the list can be long and hardly I can find a total winner. The best games even made are the one shipped completed without pretending of expansions to fill it, or DLC, or micro translation, season pass, and shit like this. So we need to jump back to 5 or 10 years to find something. I'm still waiting a new generation game that I like and that can achieve this.

There are plenty of games like this from the last few years. Elden Ring, Zelda, TLOU2, GoW2 just to name some AAA titles. Many indie games too. It just got a bit more annoying to filter out the cash grabs.

True but let's take for example elder ring, even if updated for free it something keep in mutating by updates bigger that dlcs, it didn't come out from the box ready. This annoys me, not having a production finished when I buy, also the dependecy of the net to keep downloading and fix this games. I can't recall something similar in the past when physically buying the cd without even internet I was used to play mine PS1/2.

So, an interesting point of detail, is a game "gooder" when it perfectly executes its formula after countless iterations, like FF6 did, or is it better when it innovates in a new way, bringing together new ideas into a magical, if occasionally rough-around-the-edges, novel new approach that others start copying, as Doom did?

Also, are we looking at them from the perspective of their time, where Pac Man was once the pinnacle of gaming itself, or from a modern, more objective perspective, where Pac Man struggles to provide the same value as BotW does almost half a century later?

Exactly. Portal 2 is no doubt a fantastic puzzle game. But so is Myst, and Myst did a lot more with a lot less technology.

Myst in fact did a lot with very little technology. The original Myst, the Macintosh version before it came to PC, was made entirely in HyperCard (with some extensions). Once you know this, each scene being its own largely static "page" suddenly makes sense.

If you haven't played Riven yet, that game was a huge improvement on every aspect of Myst IMO. Still completely holds up

Calling Doom a novel approach is a bit of an understatement, don't you think? Doom is easily one of the most influential milestones in the history of video games, period. Despite the roughness around the edges -- most or all of which was necessary to get it to even work on PC hardware of the time, as it was certainly well understood by hyper dimensional time traveling space wizard, John Carmack. Nowadays we all know how the engine cheated, wasn't truly 3d, and where all the jank and bugs can be found. But from the perspective if someone in 1993 playing on their 486-DX, Doom really felt like a highly polished and complete experience.

Doom's impact in the scene in 1993 was so vast that you can still see it to this very day if you know where to look. There was so much that it either invented or perfected: Network multiplayer, both deathmatch and co-op; the now standard FPS loadout of melee-pistol-shotgun-rocket-launcher; the entire modern concept of the "violent video game" controversy; the notion of rock star game developers (John Romero...); the capability of generating distinct and recognizable 3D environments with a sense place. That's really just the start. Doom made the entire video game industry at the time do an about-face. It changed the landscape forever despite how quaint it might look today.

Openworld\sandbox: Minecraft.

It didn't invent things, but it made the most of it's raw components like proc. generation, crafting, impacting world by just placing a block, implementing basic algorythms into the game by redstone and modblock (?). And it bssically created the indie market.

Old role-playing: BG \ NWN (IDK what defines RPGs now)

Adapted tapletop systems, created an environment for your own modules, a big inspiration in this genre.

Sports: Unreal Tournament \ Quake 3 \ Counter Strike 1.6

That's when cybersports start to be known by masses and whole games begin to be made exclusively for it. Not ideal, but highly refined competitive games that made a huge impact on how games are made.

Nothing and I mean nothing ever comes close to Return of the Obra Dinn when it comes to puzzles. All the info is provided and it's all on you to finish the game (or not). It's a really unique experience. Less action and more wracking your brains out.

For me it's Witcher 3 (open world RPG), Life is Strange (the first one and the prequel, basically interactive story, not that much gameplay), The Walking Dead by Telltale (I like them all, but Season 1 is especially great), Heroes of Might & Magic V (turn-based strategy, really great).

Edit: As a bonus, all of them are available on GOG, if you care about game ownership.

Action platform: Portal 2. It is polished to a mirror shine. I can't think of a higher "quality" game in the genre.

Mazewars on Mac as an early multiplayer FPS.

Black Tiger in the arcades was an excellent fantasy platformer.

Another World on the Amiga was a fantastically immersive cinematic platformer.

Wipeout 2097 on PSX was a futuristic anti-grav racer with a 10/10 for music, SFX, gameplay, lore, theme and graphics. Just exceptional.

...

In the current day, gaming is all about FLOSS games such as Cube2:Sauerbraten(FPS), 0AD(RTS), The Dark Place(stealth Thief remke) and Shattered Pixel Dungeon(roguelike) which are free forever and community driven, providing a much richer gaming experience.