What is objectively the best video game ever made?

[Table Country]

Eighth gen: nothing, it was all shit

Excuse you, Eighth gen had Bloodborne, which was the only reason you bought a PS4 outside of the Xbone being irl spyware.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

 

[Pissmaster]

But the best game of all time and the most beginner friendly are in many cases going to lie on opposite ends of the spectrum.

If you're talking objectively the single best game, then the answer would be whichever games are the most moddable, so genuinely probably something like Minecraft, because then it can be whatever you want it to be including multiplayer and PvP (which is important since beating up people who regularly play videogames is one of the most satisfying things you can do, even in a videogame) so if you don't like it to start with it's no big deal.


For a beginner probably at least something from that era, since that was a time when games were less ubiquitous and the internet wasn't around, so they were built for total naivety.

I wouldn't count games that are moddable, because that's just a way to turn a game into a platform, and if you keep heading down that road, you'll eventually come to the conclusion that the ultimate game is a C++ compiler, because you can theoretically make any game in existence (or build countless open & leaked source ones), given enough time. Games that are mods of other games themselves would count, since they are games in and of themselves.

Plus, like, you're dealing with someone who is completely, utterly unfamiliar with games at all. Would you really want to tell them "Yeah, this is a game, but you need to install this on top of the game in order to play this other game. It's called a mod and you drag these files into this folder and config this INI and if the computer spits an error message just look it up on moddb and make sure your mod doesn't conflict with your other mods"? Dogg this is a person you could sit in front of a Pac-Man machine and they'd mash the start buttons and wiggle the joystick until noticing the "insert coin" thing, and then have to figure out how much it costs and where the coin slot is.

Deus Ex 1, Factorio

Deus Ex.

Age of Empires II: Age of Kings

Those are some great choices to scare them away from games forever.

 

[MySonDavid]

Total War: Warhammer 2

 

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

It's obviously Parappa the Rapper

 

[Elbereth]

Nethack

 

[Lathe]

In terms of time I’ve sunk into it, I’d say Fallout New Vegas. Played through all possible endings with every type of play style. My favorite was melee and explosives. Start with boom, finish with the stick of doom.

 

[The Ugly One]

If the standard is, "If you don't like this, gaming's not for you," we can immediately discard anything with lots of blood & guts, anything with a rough first hour or two, anything with a complex input scheme, and anything with a steep learning curve. Games like Fallout New Vegas, Deus Ex, and Doom all fail this test.

By the standard @Pissmaster laid out, it is hard for me to come up with any answer other than Super Mario World. The game is flawless in its mechanics, immediately accessible, timeless in its presentation, and as close to universal in its appeal as you can get. Honorable mentions go to Wii Tennis, Pac-Man, and Syphon Filter 2.

 

[Glowie Hunter Art Bell]

Probably GTA San Andreas.

Set the standard for all open world games and is still largely unmatched in terms of content and detail.

What it lacked visually it made up for with a metric fuckload of gameplay and related features

 

[Inflatable Julay]

HuniePop

 

[Sundae]

Okami- great graphics, gameplay, music, and story. It can feel like it drags on at times, especially in the cutscene heavy parts, but everything else more than makes up for it. Also has one of the most satisfying finl bosses in gaming where you take down the God of Evil/Darkness.

Rayman 2- one of the most underrated 3D platformers out there

Wario World- short, simple, but fun. Grabbing giant bosses and throwing them around and pile driving them never gets old.

Kirby: Planet Robobot- one of the best games in the series, great selection of copy abilities to mess around with

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider and Spyro The Dragon changed the PS1 in a groundbreaking way. They should absolutely be included on this list.

 

[SiccDicc]

Honestly the only game I can think of I played 24 hours through nonstop, can't even remember bathroom breaks, was Saints Row 2.

Story was the right level of fun and serious, gameplay was tight, characters irreverent... I still remember the revenge scenes in the game. It's really hard for me to think of a game that ever topped that experience. Also the first game to make me think about how much of a bummer it was to complete because it won't be a fresh experience ever again.

 

[Cyclonus]

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

If it's just "What's a good game for someone who's never played one?", I'd probably go with something like Portal. You aren't getting bombarded with narratives and cutscenes, intrusive HUD elements, constant visual noise. It's a pretty simple, straight-forward puzzle game that has a fairly intuitive mechanic. And if you're dealing with someone who's never even held a controller (and might struggle with the basics of walking and looking around simultaneously), it helps that it doesn't require a bunch of twitch-reflexes or technical skill to progress. And if they're having trouble with a section, you can provide help or hints without taking the controls and doing it for them, letting them feel like they're still solving their way through the game. I've always heard it was a good choice for getting a friend or family member to try a game if they've simply never played any before.

I don't know if I could say it's the "objective" best game ever, though. Or that if you didn't like it, then you wouldn't like any video game. The medium is just too varied, with so many genres and styles, for the average person to be turned off by the entire concept of interactive entertainment.

 

[Sundae]

Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider and Spyro The Dragon changed the PS1 in a groundbreaking way. They should absolutely be included on this list.

On that note, Crash Bandicoot 2 deserves to be on the list too, it refined the gameplay from the first entry and is legit one of the best platformers.

And since we're on the topic of best platformers, let's also add Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze to the list.

 

[Super Hans]

Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider and Spyro The Dragon changed the PS1 in a groundbreaking way. They should absolutely be included on this list.

Spyro doesn't get enough praise for its technical achievement. Having levels as large as it did by being able to by being able to upgrade and downgrade texture quality on demand was groundbreaking.

 

[Soycast Guy]

I know, I hate myself.

 

[Book Thief]

Interestingly, your question of "How would you get someone into video games when they've never played video games" has been covered by this Youtube video:

A major problem the guy addresses is that video games are conceptually very different from an outsider's perspective than from a player's perspective. For instance, we all understand that video games all have limitations and established rules. He uses Mass Effect as an example, where the whole "building relationships and exploring the galaxy" concept boils down to "dialogue trees in a linear story" in our heads, but it sounds way more epic and larger to his non-gaming wife.

Overall, he discovers that in order to take someone who never touched a video game before and put them before a video game, one needs to teach someone "video game literacy." We all know that a HUD marker on the screen means "Go here, you dumbfuck," but to someone with no prior knowledge or information, it just seems mystifying.

Knowing this, I think it would be best to get someone started on video games with simpler concepts and less distractions. Games whose ideas that could be picked up in seconds, like early arcade games such as Pac-Man and Galaga, before increasing the amount of complexity of mechanics as they become more acclimated towards playing them.

 

[Hazel Motes]

The Club