The Top 5 Games of All Time

An anonymous reader writes "The guys over at trusted reviews have come up with lists of their top five games of all time. There are some obvious choices and some very obscure ones, but on the whole its interesting reading. See how their lists compare to yours."

Lists Lists Lists

[Freaky Spook]

Have all of these news/blog sites run out of things to write about because it seems this year everywhere has been inundated with dam lists.

No RTS games in the lineup?

[EmperorKagato]

Starcraft isn't that good of a game worth mentioning? Knights and Merchants?! Age of Empires?

Re:Online Scrabble & Chess..

[SharpFang]

If the title meant ALL TIMES, then yes, chess or some card game would likely win. Same as Bible is the ultimate bestseller of all times.

of all time?

[Anonymous Coward]

This certainly isn't an "of all time" list. The vast majority of the games are from the last 15 years and it's very heavy on console games (No Zork? Or Pac Man?). As a gamer (tabletop, arcade, PC, and even consoles) I have NEVER understood the appeal of gaming consoles. 20 years ago consoles were a worthwhile investment since they could smash computers in every area except input (mouse/joystick/keyboard vs. crummy gamepad). At this point computers smash consoles in every area, and two genres (FPS and RPG) are literally impossible to realize with the crippled input devices provided with your typical console.

Trusted Reviews?

[The Bungi]

OK, so we have 29 pages, each with ~6 paragaphs of text and at least four large animated banner ads.

Quality of layout and choice of graphics aside, this is really a pointless review. But who exactly are these people at TrustedReviews.com? Since when do they exist, and why are we supposed to trust them?

And why does Slashdot keep posting what they write [slashdot.org] again and again?

My own list

[nsayer]

Not that my opinion is worth a damn, but it's free.

bzflag, because it remains the premiere open-source 3d multiplayer game, in my view.

Doom, because it practically reinvented the FPS, both in terms of originality of gameplay and graphics quality.

Tempest, because it represents the pinacle of the vector game. No, it wasn't the most advanced one, but best in terms of gameplay, look, adictiveness, and quite frankly, unit sales.

Robotron, because it is the best adrenaline pumping game ever made. Retire the cup.

Pac-Man, because of its sheer iconic status. There were games before Pac-Man, and games after Pac-Man. But anyone can look at any game and immediately be able to say with certainty which group it belongs in. No other game of its time can say that.

Honorable mention goes to Myst, which, like Doom to the FPS, represented a redefinition of the adventure game.

You're welcome.

How can these guys call themselves gamers?

[lewp]

Mario 64 instead of Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World?
Ocarina of Time instead of Zelda or A Link to the Past?
Jedi Knight instead of KotOR?
Formula 1 GP instead of Gran Turismo?
Unreal Tournament instead of Quake?
No Starcraft?
No Final Fantasy (take your pick) or, at the very least, Chrono Trigger?
No Grand Theft Auto?

I'm missing a bunch I know, but I've only been thinking about this for a few minutes.

Nobody even went oldschool and mentioned a true classic like Donkey Kong, Pit Fall, Pac Man, or Space Invaders.

Which video games are the "best" is ultimately pretty subjective, but they've picked sequels that undeniably weren't the best in their series even. Everyone's got their "out there" pick for an obscure game that they happened to get hooked on, but how can you put those in a "top 5 games of all time" list when there are absolute masterpieces that are basically the same game done better?

Glad I didn't bother to RTF this A and just skimmed the list of games.

top 5... hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Lands of Lore: The Throne Of Chaos
2. System Shock
3. Deus Ex
4. Unreal Tournament
5. Half-Life

damn it run out of numbers, there's just too many ... DOOM, Transport Tycoon, ...

My top 5...

[Loligo]

Ok, I've been a gamer of various sorts for approaching 30 years, and the only game on their list that I think belongs in a top TWENTY is Doom.

Top 5, in no particular order.

Zork
Adventure for the Atari 2600 (Warren Robbinett forever)
Civilization II (sorry, Civ fans, Civ 2 is the definitive version)
Utopia for the Intellivision (the FIRST widespread RTS)
Asteroids arcade version

These aren't even my top five favorites of all time, but the ones I feel deserve even more recognition than they got (ESPECIALLY Utopia, we wouldn't have Starcraft without it). They pioneered generations of games, and their influence is still felt today.

  -l

No Elite!?

[Hylander]

The complete lack of "Elite" on these lists must be a conspiracy! I thought maybe they were all kids, but one of them at least names Lords of Midnight, which was pretty awesome. Nowhere near as good as elite though.

Star Control II, Half-Life, X-Com UFO, Evil Genius

[sir_montag]

No contest as to the top five -

1. Star Control II
2. Half-Life
3. X-Com UFO
4. Master of Orion
5. Evil Genius

These are all games you could play for months and not get bored - that's how I tend to determine what is a good game. *Especially* if I come back to it a decade later.

Where is Total Annihilation

[ThomasHoward]

WHy is Total Annihilation not on any of those lists, it is still the best RTS ever made, well, as far as I am concerned, anyhow.

Re:Er, random?

[skam240]

This list looks much more like a bunch of people trying to prove their gaming 133TN355 by claiming obscure favorites. I'll site as an example Dungeon Explorer. For starters the author of the article refers to the system it came out on by its Japanese name "PC Engine" rather than what it was marketed as in the US, "TurboGrafx-16", which is what most American gamers would know it as (I myself was confused for a few minutes until I remembered this fact). Then there's the very fact that this person is naming it one of their top 5 games ever. I've played Dungeon Explorer. Allot. Me and my older brother played the hell out of it when I was younger. It was great. But to call a slightly more advanced Gauntlet one of the best games of all time is absurd.

There's plenty of other examples to go from on the list (like naming civilization instead of civ2), most of which is comprised of good games that didn't sell well, are really old, came from systems most people didn't own or some combination of the previous three. "Good games" is the key phrase here too. Most of the games on the list are in fact good games, they're just not, for the most part, top 5 list worthy.

So in summary, I felt like I was reading an article written by those kids we all knew in school who wouldn't listen to anything that sold over 10,000 albums just so they could look cool.

Well, you do have to consider the audience...

[sir_montag]

Given the sparkling coversational gems I hear on the internet on a regular basis; 'lol wut' or 'OMG, LIEK, U KNOW!?', I'd say a paragraph per page is about all the average internet reader is capable of, given that they seem to find 'Dick and Jane' challenging reading material.

Re:Something to be said for Counter-Strike

[sir_montag]

Every time I hear 'realistic' and 'counter-strike' in the same sentence, I tend to laugh.

What maps did they remove that you liked?

Re:Doom and not Quake??

[telbij]

Let's get this straight.

Wolf3d invented the FPS genre.
Doom perfected single player FPS and invented multiplayer FPS.
QuakeWorld perfected multiplayer FPS.

Both Doom and Quake were so good they both deserve to make the top 5. As good as Quake is, the single player can't hold a candle to Doom. In fact, I've never seen another game that packs the visceral punch of Doom single player. The sheer quantities of enemies and satisfying weapons (especially the double-barrell shotgun in Doom 2). In Quake it was like, okay, now fight 3 guys, now fight 4 guys. Whatever happened to pick up a chainsaw, lights start strobing, and a wall drops behind you with 100 zombies behind it?

Re:UT Quake

[lendude]

Exactly, and to further illustrate the impact of the game hardware-wise, Quake primarily drove the demand for 3Dfx Voodoo cards via the development/availability of the minigl driver for the game, hence kickstarting what now is today the multi-billion dollar GPU industry.

Re:UT Quake

[teslar]

Quake 3? That the game where they make you jump around in space using big jump pads as if you were in some kind of friggin' Super Mario jump'n'run just so that your mate who's been perfecting his Railgun skills all month can just pluck you from the sky before you even make it to the yellow armour? You must have been the one with the Railgun if you call that perfect and balanced :)

Short memory! the reviewers were too young!

[master_p]

The top 5 games of all times, in no particular order:

1. Ms Pac Man : the best Pac Man game and the most successful coin-op ever.

2. World Of Warcraft : best multiplayer game ever.

3. Half Life : best FPS single-player game ever.

4. Civilization : best strategy game ever.

5. Tetris : best action puzzle game ever.

Top 5 Omissions:

[kahei]

1 -- Angband, and the Roguelike genre in general
2 -- The great 8 and 16 bit console RPGS -- no Phantasy Star, no 2D Final Fantasy, no Secret of Mana?
3 -- MMORPGs. I hate them, I don't play them, but to have none at all is strange.
4 -- Alpha Centauri, greatest Civ game.
5 -- Planescape: Torment.

I'm also surprised a bit by the absence of both the X-Com and Total War series.

I can understand omitting 2 and 5 if you don't have a soul. But the others are inexplicable!

Re:Er, random?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to this little thing called "the rest of the world". Once you've come to terms with the shocking realisation that there are places that are not part of America, and that there are humans living in those places, and that some of those humans even speak English, you will be ready to begin discovering all sorts of other interesting facts -- for example, that certain console systems had different names outside America, that certain computer systems that were practically unknown in America were very common in other places, and that many games you consider obscure are extremely well-known in other parts of the world.

Have a nice day, as you Americans say.

29 pages for top 5 !?!

[alcmaeon]

Sorry, I'm not reading an article that gives someone's opinion of the top 5 games but runs 29 pages. They can scam their advertisers some other way. How does this crap even make it to slashdot. Don't we have admins or something who exercise some discretion over the selections?