Games are so diverse it’s hard to pick just 1. Dark Souls is one of the more modern games that’s reached Goat status. Halo 3, Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, Skyrim, The Witcher 3 and so many others. For me personally though Metao Gear Solid is the Goat.
Started talking out this list with my wife and she bought this up.
" So many games are the best but so few meet the criteria across the board if you were to evaluate, So I would name the best story, best gameplay, best character, best world building, best online and that would narrow down the options "
So after that, I’ve got a few catagories that are easy to follow, Along with best Cathartic game. This is cause a close friend and I came to the agreement that a lot of games stand on three pillars that can make a game great. Story, Gameplay and Catharsis (incase you don’t follow, Cathartic games are just titles that let you go nuts and have fun in whatever way you want )
Best Story - Spec ops The Line - Hands down, greatest story told in video game media. It utilized the medium to great impact and made the actions feel greater on your shoulders by placing the questions of your actions on a slowly crumbling Soldier who has his physical, mental and emotional stresses show most during the moment to moment gameplay as apposed to having this show only in cinematics.
Best Gameplay - Dying Light - This game just feels good to play. The parkour as a Zombie navigation method along with main mode of transport combined with a meaty, visceral close combat system that made zombie eradication a threat at level 1 as much as it was at level 50. I finished the game and DLC and spent time just grinding legend levels just so i could spend more time playing.
Best World Building - Tom Clancy’s The Division 1 & 2 - While i agonized between this and the mass effect games, The post virus world of both New York City and Washington DC were filled with so many little indirect story moments that could tell what happend there. The phones, cards, documents and ECHO’s added very real story moments that showed a understanding of humanity under stress.
Best Sound - Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice - Playing this with headphones was a experience that made sit up and pay attention when they were announced as being aquired by Xbox Game Studios. The feeling of discomfort at the beginning ended up being a emotional guide that helped me live this story through her eyes (and ears)
Best Online - Phantasy Star Online - When the dreamcast was announced, I spent the two weeks of school holidays helping out at my dad’s workplace. The agreement was $5 a hour (Criminal underpayment for my age but I didn’t care) and I made enough to buy the console at launch. we didn’t have access to the internet and the console allowned are to play online for the first time. to this day, One of my closest friends is Someone I met while playing.
Best Cathartic Game - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - I can just spend hours walking between cities and seeing what I find along the way.
Also came up with more Catagories for people to fill out if they want. I love to read what about a game makes it so special to you.
Best Soundtrack.
Best Venn Diagram Game ( The game that does a good job at several things but doesn’t excel at any of them )
Best Exclusive
Best Co-op
Best Multi player
Best Game to watch Someone play
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I agree with this so so much!! The good ol days. I had to quit playing wow due to it affecting family life. Haha awesome DP too, one of my fav skits on that show.
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The game that gave me the most enjoyment, fun, long life friends and amazing memories that will stick to me forever is Halo 3 and the custom games. I remember getting home from school jumping on my 360 and joining lobbies with friends playing shit like fatboy zombies with everyone on mics and in game chat screaming and strategizing.
Some other honourable mentions would be COD. COD4/WaW/MW2/Ghosts mainly, used to do clan wars stuff which was really fun. Again playing with friends try harding doing clan stuff was such a good time for me. People probably lose their shit that I’m only speaking about MP games and not SP experience but I’ve just been a MP person.
Some other games that have a special place in my heart;
- Command and Conquer
- Age of Empires
- Diablo
- Theme Hospital
- Golden Eye
- Lemmings (would play this on a old PC when visting my grandparents)
- Battlefield
- Runescape
- Fable
- Dungeon Defenders
- Halo Wars
- Sims
- Pokemon
- Super Mario World
- GTA Vice City / SA
- Gears
So that’s a little more than you asked haha.
A man of great taste.
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my top 3:
1- TLOU2 2- God of War 2018 3- BOTW
i go back and forth but are pretty much these 3 on the podium. runner ups would be Witcher 3, Mass Effect 2…
Ah yes, this is a great game. Tried it thanks to Xbox Game Pass, took a chance since it’s out of my normal comfort zone and wow… turned out to be one of the best games I’ve played.
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Mine will always be Morrowind. I doubt that will ever change. If anything replaces Morrowind it’ll have to be another RPG. I mean, my top 5 are all RPGs besides one (OoT) after all.
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So many games… But GTA Vice City is probably my favorite all time game.
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Halo CE. Followed by Zelda Ocarina of Time.
Since gaming is such a diverse artform, and since technical progress has such an outsized impact on the end result, this is a really difficult question. Compare it to film, where even some of the earliest masterpieces has more in common with modern films than the equivalent computer games do.
A movie like Citizen Kane can still stand shoulder to shoulder with The Godfather, despite being separated by 30 years. The same just cannot be said for Pong and Top Spin, despite being separated by the same amount of time.
Which brings me to genres. Sure, films cover a diverse range of genres too, but they still share common DNA in terms of story telling, dramatic tension, the three act structure, etc. So the experience of watching a sports film will share more similarities with a relationship drama, than the gaming equivalents. For example, Bull Durham and Revolutionary Road vs. MLB The Show and It Takes Two.
And I haven’t even brought up single player vs multiplayer, co-op vs. competitive, online vs offline, etc. All aspects of gaming which further complicates the question.
Point is, comparing games is not even apples and oranges, it’s apples and accordions.
Anyway, with all that said, it’s still an interesting topic for conversation, and I guess for me it would just boil down to the question:
What games do I have the fondest memories of playing?
In order of release, going back to when I first started playing videogames, I think a starting point for me would look something like this:
- The Legend of Zelda (1986)
- Tetris (1987)
- Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! (1987)
- Street Rod (1989)
- Conquests of the Longbow (1991)
- The Secret of Monkey Island 2 (1991)
- Day of the Tentacle (1993)
- Syndicate (1993)
- NHL Hockey (1994) (aka NHL '94 for PC)
- Diablo (1996)
- The Sims (2000)
- Fable (2001)
- Knights of the Old Republic (2003)
- Rainbow Six 3 (2003)
- Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (2006)
- Oblivion (2006)
- Gears of War (2006)
- Red Dead Redemption (2010)
- Skyrim (2011)
- Red Dead Redemption II (2018)
Looking over the list, I feel like there’s only really a couple of contenders for GOAT for me. It’s really between Tetris, and Day of the Tentacle. I say that because those are two games I’ve come back to several times over the years and they have never failed to entertain me. Whereas with most other games, if I choose to give them another go years down the road, it tends to be for a quick nostalgia fix, but I don’t spend any quality time with them. This is not true for either Tetris or DoTT.
I’m tempted to pick Tetris due to its near infinite replayability, and its simple-but-hard-to-master gameplay. But the story, art, and humour of Day of the Tentacle is just so perfect, and it’s what’s brought me back to it probably 5-6 times over the years, and each time I’ve played through it from start to finish.
So, yeah, my pick for GOAT is gonna have to go to Day of the Tentacle. And as luck would have it, the remastered version is available on Game Pass. That’s the last one I played, and it’s a great way to experience the game. I had the commentary track turned on, and I highly recommend doing that for any fan of the game.
Sorry for the novella. And kudos if you made it this far.
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Mass Effect 2
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If you held a gun to my head and asked, I would probably blurt out Baldur’s gate 2 Shadows of Amn or Mass Effect as a series. Other contenders are Persona 4 Golden, Red Alert 2 and a bunch of other games I can’t be arsed to list.
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Shadow of the Colossus.
I haven’t experienced anything like it in any other form of art and entertainment.
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Metal Gear Solid
MGS2 is very close though and ages better everyday with its story and themes but getting a game like MGS1 in 1998, nothing else comes close to it outside of its sequel which was almost as equally mind blowing for its time
Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
Addictive, beautiful, satisfying, endlessly repayable, killer soundtrack.
90s and early 00’s PC games are better than just about anything released since.
Lemmings, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, BF1942, Prince of Persia (original), Flashback, Wing Commander 1-3, Descent, Theme park, Unreal Tournament, Half Life.
I could list more. But these games were literally groundbreaking and foundational. Yes games existed before but not 3D games or games that really broke through the public consciousness. These games for me are where you can trace modern games back to. Not to arcades or Atari but PC games in the 90s.
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My goat Zelda is Majora’s Mask, between a really good story that had nothing to do with the triforce, a large amount of NPC with their own stories and schedules, the time mechanics which made me feel like Link really was the hero of time.
Playing as a Deku, Gordon and a Zora was super fun and the each dungeon and area being designed to maximize the use of each race, the powers that each mask had where also unique and it opened up a new game play even if you didn’t transform.
Maybe if I ever get around to getting a switch playing through Breath Of The Wild may change my mind. But for now Majora’s Mask is my goat Zelda game.
Toss up between Breath of the wild and Metroid prime for me
It’s gotta be Skyrim.