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).
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
I’m old enough to have played both on release :)
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.