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So, looks like I’ve played 19 of these games. Although not all of them were my thing and some of them I’ve barely played more than once briefly, I’ll agree that they were all pretty solidly good.
A few of the others are on my wish list (especially now that they’re available on PC) so maybe one day I’ll be able to agree or disagree.
I enjoy seeing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on these greatest games lists because back in the days when it was originally released, it seemed like it was practically ignored in my social circle. At the time, if a game wasn’t using low fidelity, standard definition polygon-based graphics (aka 3D), it had to be a fighting game or it would be completely ignored. Yet, that particular game was one of my favorites of the era and I didn’t get to enjoy it with anybody else at the time because they just saw it as a lame 2D game.
For anyone who wants this list without reading the article :)
List
50: Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)
49: Hades (2020)
48: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)
47: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992)
46: League of Legends (2009)
45: Fortnite (2017)
44: Elden Ring (2022)
43: Celeste (2018)
42: Batman: Arkham City (2011)
41: Metroid Prime (2002)
40: Chrono Trigger (1995)
39: God of War (2018)
38: Shadow of the Colossus (2005)
37: Pokémon Gold and Silver (1999)
36: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
35: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992)
34: Hollow Knight (2017)
33: NBA 2K11 (2010)
32: Ms. Pac-Man (1982)
31: Counter-Strike (1999)
30: Wii Sports (2006)
29: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009)
28: Minecraft (2011)
27: Resident Evil 4 (2005)
26: Mass Effect 2 (2010)
25: Stardew Valley (2016)
24: The Sims (2000)
23: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (1999)
22: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
21: Fallout 3 (2008)
20: Mario Kart 64 (1996)
19: Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023)
18: Madden NFL 2004 (2003)
17: Diablo II (2000)
16: Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)
15: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)
14: Street Fighter II (1991)
13: Doom (1993)
12: World of Warcraft (2004)
11: Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)
10: Super Metroid (1994)
9: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)
8: Final Fantasy VII (1997)
7: Metal Gear Solid (1998)
6: Half-Life 2 (2004)
5: The Last of Us (2013)
4: Super Mario World (1991)
3: Grand Theft Auto V (2013)
2: Tetris (1989)
1: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)Thank you!
Doing the lawd’s work, so I also thank you.
I think there’s some massive omissions here. Not a single 3d mario? Dark souls? Mortal Kombat? The 4th best selling game of all time that spawned the Battle Royale genre PUBG? StarCraft? Warcraft 3 which also spawned the MOBA genre?
Some massive Ls here. Most of the things on the list deserve to be in the conversation but wow.
The older I get the less I care about best lists.
It’s all subjective.
How else am I supposed to feel important?
I’m just some guy.
No no no NO. do. NOT fucking don’t give this any views.
This list was GPT generated. Look at the list that it gave me when I asked GPT 4o for a list…it’s 85% the fucking same:
Tap for spoiler
Creating a definitive list of the top 50 best games of all time can be subjective, as it often depends on personal preferences and experiences. However, I can provide you with a list that includes many games frequently celebrated for their impact, innovation, and popularity:
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Super Mario Bros.
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- The Last of Us
- Tetris
- Final Fantasy VII
- Halo: Combat Evolved
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Minecraft
- Super Mario 64
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- Dark Souls
- Half-Life 2
- Metal Gear Solid
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Portal 2
- World of Warcraft
- Chrono Trigger
- Bioshock
- Mass Effect 2
- Super Metroid
- Resident Evil 4
- Doom (1993)
- Street Fighter II
- Pokémon Red/Blue
- Undertale
- Shadow of the Colossus
- God of War (2018)
- Silent Hill 2
- Journey
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- Diablo II
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
- Bloodborne
- Final Fantasy VI
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Civilization V
- StarCraft
- The Sims
- League of Legends
- Pac-Man
- Assassin’s Creed II
- Fortnite
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
- Celeste
- Monster Hunter: World
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Hades
This list includes a mix of classics and modern titles across various genres and platforms. Each of these games has left a significant mark on the gaming world in its own way.
Someone has never read a Rolling Stones best of list before.
They were upsetting people over how they ranked music for decades before ChatGPT was available.
Here’s a thread where people are bitching about them in the same year ChatGPT was released. They’re talking about prior lists, so they’re not talking about AI generated ones. This has been an issue with Rolling Stone for literally decades. Everyone hates their best-of lists.
https://old.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/fol2rk/why_are_rolling_stone_lists_taken_seriously/
I’m gonna get tired real quick of this “everything is AI and you shouldn’t engage with it” take. If you can’t handle it, get off the fucking internet and go touch grass.
EDIT: Further, each section of the article, about 2-3 paragraphs per game has a human author listed.
Let’s just keep pretending that nobody gets paid for this kind of thing and make sure that nobody gets paid by lying and saying it’s all AI anyway, leading it to all eventually become AI anyway because everyone stopped fucking reading.
This will happen for every “best of” list. It’s why Giant Bomb always includes the deliberations, so you can hear how they arrived there.
Each game literally has two or three paragraphs dedicated to why it was chosen with the human authors name credited at the end of each game section.
Yeah, but how do I know they’re not AIs with human names? /s
I would need more evidence to conclude that the list was generated using AI.
I don’t think there’s much argument over the merit of each of these games. Most “best games of all time” lists would have these games. I think it’s natural that critically acclaimed and widely beloved games show up on both the Rolling Stone’s list and in GPT 4o’s training data.
I can understand arguments regarding the order of their list however. That was my intention when submitting the link – to stir up discussion regarding the order they chose for the games.
It looks like Rolling Stone included Baulders Gate 3.
That game is recent enough that it hasn’t qualified for Wikipedia’s List of video games considered the best yet.
Wikipedia’s list requires an entry feature on 6 different publications’ “best of” lists so that implies RS may have applied some and haven’t just cribbed directly.
Edit:
For anyone else interested it looks like RS was the 6th list including these three titles so they have now been added over on Wikipedia:
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
- Celeste
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
I’m a little shocked THPS wasn’t already there.
No Disco Elysium?
I know it flopped but Titan Fall 2 is more worthy than others in that list. Also it is missing really old and influential games from the Atari 2600, 16 bit, and early PC era.
In all, it is a list put together by somebody young, that really loves Nintendo, l and with limited video game history knowledge, IMHO.
In all, it is a list put together by somebody young, that really loves Nintendo, l and with limited video game history knowledge
Half the games on this list are from the 90’s and were on Playstation??
They even correctly clocked that Ms. Pac-Man is actually a better game than Pac-Man.
Hell, there are only three Nintendo games in the to 10, as a reminder Tetris isn’t actually a strictly Nintendo property despite being #2 in the list.
There’s six fucking games in the top 10 that were all available on various generations of Playstations.
I didn’t care for Disco Elysium, and my friends list is full of people who got a few hours into it like I did and then put it down. I can’t say why they did, but maybe while it really landed for some people, it didn’t for plenty of others. In a top 50 of all time, I’m not certain Titanfall 2 would make it for me either, as much as I did enjoy that game.
This list was AI generated with recency bias. You’re not going to get that on there. I fed this into GPT 4o and It was almost identical
Well since they asked… here is my list of 50 Best Vide Games of All Time, unranked, in no particular order:
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The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time
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Steel Battalion
-
Super Mario World
-
Metroid Prime
-
Halo Combat Evolved
-
Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour
-
The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind
-
Panzer Dragoon Orta
-
Elden Ring
-
Resident Evil (1996)
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Silent Hill 2
-
Project Zomboid
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NieR Gestalt
-
Dark Souls
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Star Wars Battlefront II (2005)
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Metal Gear Solid 3
-
A Girl Who Chants Love At the Bound of This World YUNO (the 90s PC98 release or Windows releases, or the Saturn release)
-
Panzer Dragoon Saga
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Need for Speed Underground 2
-
Phantasy Star Online V2 (Dreamcast)
-
Dino Crisis
-
Brightis
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Policenauts (SEGA Saturn release)
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Yakuza 0
-
XCOM 2
-
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
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The Coma Recut
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Super Metroid
-
No Man’s Sky
-
The Forest
-
Shenmue
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Hollow Knight
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Star Wars Tie Fighter
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Crimson Skies
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Factorio
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Age of Empires II (Definitive Edition is actually better than the original for once)
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Metal Wolf Chaos
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Minecraft
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Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
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Battlefield 4
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Deep Rock Galactic
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King’s Field II (Japan, aka King’s Field globally)
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Half Life
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Quake II
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Splinter Cell
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Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Rogue Spear
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Elite Dangerous
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MechAssault
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The Operative No One Lives Forever
-
Gauntlet Dark Legacy
Thank you for reading my article, now give me ad revenue.
I really want to like elite dangerous, but it’s so boring! The flight and controls (HOTAS) are amazing and hella immersive, but God damn if there’s something to do that isn’t grindy as fuck.
Its realistic, as opposed to Star Citizen which leans more on “rule of cool, not rule of real.” Real life space is boring. 99% of all planets that arent big gas balls are just big ice rocks. Ships are big, slow, heavy objects that take time to maneuver. Elite has a simulated galactic economy, which can be directly influenced by just a single dedicated player. It contains fantasy political turf scuffles, colony expansion, and all sort of other stuff. You can be pretty much anything, a bounty hunter, a miner, a merchant, a taxi, they even added first person shooter parts with the Odyssey DLC (like what Star Citizen already had).
Personally I think what people think about Elite Dangerous is also why so many people complain about Starfield. I like Starfield. While not perfect, it does a good job of mostly “realistic” space portrayal, even if it does contain some fantasy elements. Problem is, people were disappointed with Starfield because they expected Star Wars Skyrim, but got Elite Dangerous Skyrim instead. They wanted even more fantasy where Starfield leaned more into realism. If you like Elite Dangerous, there is a pretty good chance you will like Starfield. But if you don’t like Elite, you probably won’t like Starfield.
Fuck yeah for Steel Battalion. With the rise of VR this would be an amazing game to come back to…too bad Capcom has no interest in it after Heavy Armor
Heavy Armor wasn’t FromSoftware’s fault, it was Capcom’s for forcing the Kinect as a controller. If they had made another controller for it like the first game, it definitely would have been better.
That is heartbreaking
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People still read Rolling Stone?
