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."

Games every gamer should try

[DrStrangeLug]

1. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Best Civ Game Ever , Dispite not being a true civ game.
2. Halflife. Enough said.
3. Deus Ex. This is how game storylines should work - smartly.
4. Hostile Waters . You can pick this up now for less than a 10 and you'd be a fool not to.
5. Spore - Hurry up and release the damn thing! And I WILL torrent it from the US while I wait for a UK release if they do that staggered release date crap.

Re:29 trusted reviews later

[Firehed]

I cheated. Clicking on the drop-down and just reading the titles is so damned easy. Well, not for copying and pasting the list in here for karma whoring, but it was interesting to see DOTT make it in there. And Jedi Knight... I wish I still knew where my discs were for that.

Oh yeah! Spectrum Chaos!

[spoco2]

Chaos page in list [trustedreviews.com]

I remember this game only after reading that... and man, yeah it was great. I think I got the whole game free on a cover cassette of Your Sinclair [wikipedia.org]!

That really brought back memories, and just for that I thank those guys for their lists. :)

Re:The Real Best Games

[jcenters]

Sounds about as good, if not better than their list. I've been a gamer for over nineteen years, and I have to say that Counter-Strike and BF2 are two of the best online shooters ever, GTA:SA is truly a revolutionary game that has more content than you can shake a stick at, and Half Life 2 has the best pacing of any game I've played.

My buddy and I spent most of the summer arguing over the best games of all time. The problem? How do you determine? Do you go by pure fun factor, or do you also consider timelessness, innovation, and/or influence? For instance, Super Mario Bros. is one of the most influential titles ever, but most would consider Mario 3 or World to be superior. Which one wins out?

Though they made an excellent point with Blade Runner, which IMHO is perhaps the best graphical adventure ever made.

My picks for the best games, based off my own personal enjoyment:

Best Single Player FPS: Doom (Close second would be HL2)
Best Online FPS: Quake
Best JRPG: Final Fantasy VII
Best Western RPG: Oblivion
Best Platformer: Super Mario World (Mario 3 is a damn close second, NSMB a somewhat distant third)
Best Sports: NBA Jam (Second place goes to the NFL2K series)
Best Arcade: Yar's Revenge
Best Strategy: Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Best Text Adventure: Zork
Best Overall: GTA: San Andreas (Say what you will, but what other game combines action, stealth, racing, rhythm, basketball, arcade games, and even a dating sim into a huge, open world? Combine with a great plot and RPG elements, and you have what is perhaps, to date, the ULTIMATE game.)

Re:Not a single mention of nethack!

[pthisis]

Seriously. It's been in constant development for decades now, game play (and balance) continues to improve, and it's the ultimate in learning curves--insanely difficuly but incredibly fun when you first start playing, excellent learning curve all the way through where you can get further and further with just exploration, and with time you can learn to win more than half the time and yet it's still fun.

1. Nethack

2. X-com UFO Defense

3. Grand Theft Auto III

4. Doom/Wolfenstein 3D (I'm undecided)

5. Starflight

Honorable mentions (unsorted): Contra, Archon, Hitman, Ultima IV, Counterstrike, Autoduel, Dune II, Tetris, Civilization, Bard's Tale, World of Warcraft, Simcity, Wing Commander

Looking Glass!

[auralrothko]

I can't believe no one mentioned System Shock II!

Re:Wolfenstein

[mgblst]

As someone who played ridiculous amounts of both games, I am not so sure. I remember people getting a bit excited at Wolf, but going crazy over Doom. I remember the hysteria that doom created, even before it release, as soon as some pictures were released - many didn't believe that they were real, but they were. This was before the web, when you had to cruise the news groups for information, or hidden ftp sites, getting into the alt+255 directories.

No Freespace, either?

[Sage Gaspar]

I think the space sim is a genre that hasn't seen much action in the last seven years because it's already been perfected by Freespace 2. Let's talk about a game where you have a little fighter flying amid literally miles-long capital ships firing giant beam weapons at each other. Where there's gameplay moments and mid-mission plot surprises that just bowl you over. Where you have complete control over three squads of wingmen and you can see (and target) every subsystem on every ship. Where you actually have to make targeted strikes on these subsystems using bombers and covering fire to take down big targets. Where you fly into the middle of really awesome nebulae that do crazy things to your ship's sensors.

And most notably, where the devs were pimp enough to put a clause allowing completely free redistribution to friends and acquaintances in the EULA, and it's now legitly open-source. Leading to the creation of beautiful graphics packages that breathe new life into it. (video [youtube.com]). Anyone who thinks they might enjoy this game and hasn't tried it yet, you owe it to yourself :P

Re:Er, random?

[Urza9814]

Just because they list a bunch of old games doesn't mean they're doing it to be cool. I dunno about you, but I much prefer the original Command and Conquer to the newer Generals. Why? Because they actually bothered to give it decent gameplay instead of just assuming people would buy it for the graphics. Most modern games are just lazy attempts to clone an older game and throw in better graphics. They decided to base their top 5 games on gameplay instead of graphics. Wish more people would do that.

Starcraft

[Shadowlore]

This game is still selling in the stores. Ten bucks, new. Patches still come out for it (it's still supported). Even if I didn't like the game I'd have to admit that it belongs in any "top X of ALL TIME" list of video games. The game has been selling for what, about ten years now? How many other video games in any genre are still selling in "ordinary" stores after that much time? You can still buy Starcraft at Walmart, Hastings, Best Buy, etc.. This fact alone makes it an objective cause for it to be listed. The fact that such considerations were not done tells me this is just a "i like these games and my opinion matters" production. Big deal.