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What games do you think are unfairly snubbed when talking about the best games of all time?

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!

Wirrvogel ,

Plants vs Zombies on PC.

Great, unique, iconic, still fun to play. Its biggest achievement: I have brought a lot of people into the hobby by making them play this as their first video game and there wasn’t a single one not having fun. Tower defense is as a whole an underrated genre if we talk about the best games of all time. It also is a game that offers achievements that add a lot to the gameplay by challenging you to change your tactics.

They of course had to make the second one mobile only and on top ruin it with microtransactions. :( Greed is why we can’t have nice things.

Faydaikin ,
@Faydaikin@beehaw.org avatar

Freespace 1 & 2 deserve a mention here. Old games, so smaller in scope than modern games. But I feel they can compete still.

Sina ,

It just occurred to me that Death Really (1995) would deserve to be talked about as well, it’s just an incredible little game.

neosheo ,
@neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I think for best games of all time i think fallout new vegas. Its super well regarded amongst bethesda fans but i dont hear it listed as one of the greatest in general and i think i definitely deserves to be up there. The size of the world, the zaney humor, the amount of quests, weapons, amd your effect on the world. There’s just so much to this game

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

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.

TwilightVulpine ,

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.

DdCno1 ,

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.

Ziomster44 ,

Agreed, best RPG (perhaps best game) I ever played. So good I have to replay it at least once every few years.

Sina ,

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 )

DdCno1 ,

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.

apotheotic ,

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

neosheo ,
@neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Celeste is on my backlog and i just installed it on my laptop, i need to play it in 2024

apotheotic ,

Heartily recommend playing it on controller if you can, and enjoy the ride!

Remember: You can do this!

neosheo ,
@neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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

apotheotic ,

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!

Sina ,

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.

Sina ,

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…

TwilightVulpine ,

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.

apotheotic ,

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

Auzy ,

Trog… I played that game for days

bermuda ,

When it comes to arcade racers people seem to either forget or just don’t know about trackmania games. They aren’t perfect by any means but id certainly consider them among the best

DdCno1 ,

Trackmania Nations has to be the peak of the series. One aspect that amazes me is that it works equally well with every input method out there. I’ve played this with a keyboard, joystick, gamepad and even steering wheel (although admittedly one without force feedback).

JackGreenEarth ,

Portal, Minecraft, Stardew Valley are just some you haven’t mentioned.

Seasoned_Greetings ,

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.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Battlefield 1942. Vehicle combat, area-control mechanics, "realistic" shooter gameplay (before that term became an obscene word), and class-based team mechanics had all been invented before, but the way it brought them together and the degree to which it polished them to arrive at something fun as hell was nothing less than revolutionary at the time. It was so groundbreaking that (for better or worse) it basically spawned the "AAA WW2 game" genre that then lasted for decades.

Then, the sequels were so consistently mediocre that the original was more or less erased from history.

JillyB ,

Then, the sequels were so consistently mediocre that the original was more or less erased from history.

I will not have you slander Battlefield Vietnam like this. I spent countless hours on a “heliwars” server after school as a kid.

GrayBackgroundMusic ,

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.

jarfil ,

The best games of all time are: Go, Soccer, Chess, Poker, Tetris… they’ve stood the proof of time over and over again (respectively: 4000, 2300, 1400, 200, 40 years).

A honorable mention should go to Doom, as in the “can it run Doom?” meme, but it’s anyone’s guess whether it will stand for another 30 years.

All the likes of Zelda, Mario, Halo, Pokemon, etc. are going to get forgotten as soon as the last generation playing the last re-release as a kid, grows out of time to play it actively, and as servers for the multiplayer versions get shut down.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Chess and Go are so old, I’m surprised that the best players in the world don’t already know every possible move to the point that the games are decided after both players make a single move.

jarfil ,

They have an exponential number of valid positions, that happen to surpass human abilities to abstract, memorize, and predict.

Chess is estimated to have 10⁴⁰ valid moves, which means not even everyone playing chess throughout all of history, have explored all of them. Like, a billion people playing 1 distinct move a second for 1400 years, would only reach about 10²⁰ moves.

They still can be trained, meaning one person can be way better than another… but a computer trained even more, can be even better… and yet the games surpass even current computers abilities to explore the full possibility space. Maybe quantum computers will be able to do that.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Fun fact, mostly unrelated but something in your message reminded me: I once played against a guy at a Go club, and we had an enjoyable game but he beat me. He wanted to talk to me about the game afterwards, and he started replaying the game for me from memory so he could make commentary. He replayed a pretty decent chunk of the beginning; I honestly don't remember but I think around the first 25-30 moves of the game.

I later learned he was the visiting Go person who was just stopping by the club for social reasons but could demolish anyone. He was incredibly kind and polite.

jarfil ,

Yeah, back in chess club at school, we also got a visit from the local (future) GM as a treat on one of the last days. He took us at something like 15 simultaneous games at once… and beat us all.

Go is slightly different; it only has one piece type, the rules are much simpler than chess, the board is much larger but with 8-fold symmetry, so the first 20-30 moves are likely to fall into some “basic” patterns in some of the octants. By comparison, the patterns in chess get hard to manage after just 10 moves, while Go pros may plan even 100 moves ahead. Where Go gets really complex, is when the patterns start meeting, and the complexity tends towards the 10¹⁷⁰ possible moves, way more than the 10⁴⁰ practical ones in chess.

Seasoned_Greetings ,

All the likes of Zelda, Mario, Halo, Pokemon, etc. are going to get forgotten

I disagree. The reason being that video games and gaming of this caliber are completely unheard of in all of human history. We’ve come further in gaming tech over the last couple decades than the grand majority of all humans that have ever existed could even dream.

That being said, as long as emulation exists, there will be fans of big ips. The problem with saying “it’ll get forgotten as soon as the last person stops playing” is that the specific circumstance of modern gaming is unprecedented. People are still out there emulating games that came out in the 80’s. There’s really no rule saying this kind of technology won’t last hundreds or thousands of years like more classical games do.

tigeruppercut ,

Doom will last at least until people born in the 80s die

Thelsim ,

One title that comes to mind is Anachronox. A western rpg with a really good story, interesting characters (one of your companions is an entire planet shrinked down to human size), fun humor and a cliffhanger that never got resolved.

I really wish they made a part 2 but I know it will never happen.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

It's an RPG made in the west, but I've always heard that it was notable for being a JRPG.

Thelsim ,

It was a mix of both, the battle system was definitely like a JRPG that’s true.
Come to think of it, I’m not an expert on JRPG’s, so maybe it is? :) What else defines a JRPG?

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

Definitions will vary from person to person, and plenty of games in each camp will represent some but not all of their defining characteristics, but you'll see some common themes. Historically, I've also preferred western RPGs by a wide margin, so that might color some of my definitions below. Also, both of these branches in RPGs had the same starting reference of D&D, and then a multi-decade game of whisper down the lane led to them diverging more and more.

Western RPGs:

  • character creation, choosing from classes that you'll often see represented by other NPCs
  • allocating attribute points, both at character creation and as you level up, that govern other things about your character
  • generally flatter power progression (you might do hundreds more damage at the end of the game than you do at the beginning, but not hundreds of thousands more damage)
  • in attempts to recreate the tabletop experience, will often times allow for outside-the-box solutions to problems besides combat as well as choices that affect the world state

JRPGs:

  • usually a finite cast of characters that level up more or less only in one way, but you might have a secondary system for them to customize with equipment beyond weapons and armor
  • combat usually doesn't involve positioning on something like a tactical map but rather a line of combatants on each side of the screen
  • magic and abilities are more often limited by a magic points resource instead of a rest system
  • dialogue with NPCs tends to be more limited in choices, telling a more linear narrative

I'll be honest, trying to differentiate these two with a list of bullet points was harder than I thought it would be to articulate. I'm almost more inclined to just say "I know it when I see it", haha. But for some points of reference, I'd say Baldur's Gate 3, Pillars of Eternity, and The Witcher 3 are western RPGs; Final Fantasy VII, Persona 5, and Pokemon are JRPGs; Sea of Stars is a JRPG that isn't made by a Japanese developer; and while also an action game, Dark Souls is closer to being a western RPG than a JRPG.

Thelsim ,

When you put it like that I suppose Anachronox is definitely more of a JRPG. Either way, it’s a really good game :)

Thank you for your thorough explanation!

Kwakigra ,

I think of it as a branching development becoming different design sensibilities. CRPGs influenced the game Dragon Quest, but JRPGS after DQ were influenced specifically by DQ and the games inspired from it such as the original Final Fantasy. CRPGS, MUDS, Dnd games, and Ultima became the basis for the Western sensibility which initially developed separately from the Dragon Quest branch (although there is still some crossover). This being the case, nowadays each region can make either Western RPGS or JRPGS because we all have pretty easy access to a lot of each others’ games and developers can make the games they prefer to make influenced by what they like regardless of its origin.

Undertale is a JRPG from the West. The maker of the game began making Rom hacks for Earthbound, a JRPG, and used the skills they learned doing that do create their own game. Dragon Quest>Earthbound>Undertale is pure JRPG. Other examples I can think of are messier, but that’s kind of the point.

bonegakrejg ,

Morrowind and Oblivion both have a massive fan following but I think always get unfairly overlooked for Skyrim.

trustnoone ,

I would return 5 Skyrim remakes for just 1 remake of oblivion or Morrowing. Does a great disservice that those games a regulated to past consoles.

Malgas ,

I’m not sure I would trust modern Bethesda to remake Morrowind.

Good_morning ,

Gotta agree, they haven’t inspired confidence lately, I was expecting redfall & starfield to be groundbreaking games that I would want to play for years, sadly no. It makes me concerned for elder scrolls 6

soulsource ,
@soulsource@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

There are some amazing fan projects though:

  • While it isn’t a remake, OpenMW improves upon the original game’s graphics - it does not change textures or models though, just rendering features.
  • Skywind is a remake though - it uses the engine of Skyrim to recreate Morrowind.
  • Skyblivion is the same idea, but with Oblivion.
bonegakrejg ,

OpenMW may as well be a remake, it runs very well and updates everything for modern hardware. Thats probably the way to go if you want to play Morrowind today.

Sina ,

I agree, Skyrim was a huge disappointment for me.

Kwakigra , (edited )

After Fallout 3, each Bethesda release was less ambitious than the last. Oblivion tried to do tons of stuff and ended up as a beautiful and memorable total mess (It’s my personal favorite). Fallout 3 was a bold new direction and a more stable but fudamentally compromised experience. Skyrim established the trend of scaling back and making what’s left more consistent, simple, and flashy. Fallout 4 was the last major fan outcry from those who believed Bethesda could have done better while Starfield is a confirmation that everyone’s worst fears about Bethesda are true.

saigot ,

I can tell dozens of stories of buggy hilarious moments in oblivion stories that are memorable and unique. All I remember from vanilla skyrim are the official plots everyone went through. It was just as buggy just charmless.

Kwakigra ,

Too true. Being able to jump over buildings was the basis for many of my old Oblivion shenanigans. You can’t really get weird with the Skyrim options without modding.

massive_bereavement ,
@massive_bereavement@kbin.social avatar

It's truly you! The hero of Kvatch!

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