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).
Outer Wilds
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.
Witcher 3
For RTS, I like Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.
Chaos is a brilliant multiplayer turn-based strategy game.
Lemmings is the perfect puzzle game (also shameless plug for !lemmings)Bioshock is the answer.
System Shock 2.
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.
Rdr2 deserves a mention
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.
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
Easy.
Disco Elysium for all categories.
I hear that’s amazing but I don’t want to buy it because I heard the current owners screwed over the devs or something
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.
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
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?
