RANK 39 (6 votes)

"Hopefully it would have been worth the wait. Thanks, and have fun."

It is no exaggeration to say Team Fortress 2 has forever altered the gaming landscape in innumerable ways. Its strong visual identity has put its competitors and progeny to shame for over fifteen years. The first non-MMO live service commercial game, Valve's iteration and innovation is responsible for that which we have come to love and loathe in contemporary titles. Over time, TF2 gave us random weapon and cosmetic drops, promotional tie-ins, community contributions (and later, their monetisation), a real-money shop, evolving items, obtuse crafting systems, time-value propositions, digital economies, loot boxes, a community market, in-game content sharing, tie-in comics, a free-to-play revival, countless imitators and knock-offs. With no TF2, there would be no Dota 2 battle pass and thus, no Fortnite battle pass. No TF2, no Jerma985. Without TF2's brand of humour, we'd be spared the likes of Rick and Morty.

What Team Fortress 2 has given us is greater than all that combined. It has given us identity.

You might be Pyro or Scout, RED or BLU, F2P or veteran, cracked or bad, disabled or abled, queer or straight, cis or trans, furry or weeaboo, Christian or Atheist, /v/irgin or ledditor; TF2 has a place for you. It has changed so much over the years, but so have we.
(Detchibe)

RANK 35 (7 votes)

Fallout New Vegas is a game about choices, their consequences, and learning to accept them and move forward rather than remaining trapped in the past. The game echoes this theme through the lenses of its many characters and storylines, be it a war veteran dealing with PTSD and the loss of his wife or a Super-Mutant suffering dementia but desperately trying to hold on to the memories of her grandchildren. Your actions throughout the game have genuine impact on the world around you, allowing you to choose whether the desert of the Mojave Wasteland will move into a new future or stay rooted within beliefs of the past. It is New Vegas’ writing that makes it so impactful to me personally. The progressive theme of moving on from your past and facing tomorrow is just such a positive message that speaks both emotionally to our progress as human beings but also of gaming in general. War may never change, but we always can.
(Cab)

RANK 64 (4 votes)

RANK 47 (5 votes)

Decades after its release, Super Mario World may be found by some players to be somewhat “basic”. Compared to Super Mario Bros 3, World feels smaller and more restrained, taking place entirely in Dinosaur World and cutting out all of 3’s new power-ups. There are a variety of stage themes, but all more reserved as it all takes place on the same island. This restraint was done in order to focus on refining and polishing Mario’s movement over anything else in the game, resulting in the best-feeling Mario in any 2D Mario game. This is the game where they nail Mario’s acceleration and movement, no-longer requiring an on screen indicator of his speed since now it comes naturally to the player. He’s snappy, responsive, and allows for precise in-air movement, which is complemented by the two incredibly versatile power-ups of the cape and Yoshi. With secret exits, the game rewards forging your own path and experimenting with the tools given to you. It’s no wonder Mario World romhacks became so prevalent, the toolkit is so full of possibilities that fans feel the urge to go even further than the devs did. This is where the Mario series emphasized its main philosophy, the joy of movement and momentum over everything, and this philosophy would go on to inspire Mario 64 as well as every platformer to come since.
(BansheeNeet)

RANK 28 (8 votes)

Shigeru Miyamoto and his team at Nintendo EAD used the unprecedented artistic license and technical ability offered to them by the Nintendo 64 to create a new interpretation of a NES and SNES classic: the player must defend their home against demonic forces by using a magic flute to travel through the ages; the protagonist, Link, travels back and forth through time and 3D space to set things right again. This five-director effort for Nintendo’s third home console tells a classic tale of time’s corrupting influence upon all things.

The use of context-sensitive actions, open-world exploration and revolutionary Z-targeting system were just some of the myriad formal innovations that Ocarina of Time brought together for this groundbreaking entry in the Zelda canon - and the action-adventure genre as a whole. Ocarina still amazes for its formal bravado, a barrage of game design strategies that have retained their innovative resonances over 20 years later.

The game’s reputation as representing the apogee of an ossified ‘canon’ should not minimise its qualities – it deserves to be so recognised for all achieved, combining the restless energy of its subject with formal experimentations that demonstrate the artistry of game-making as a collaborative enterprise at a time when countless new approaches were being explored at the forefront of the three-dimensional revolution.
(letshugbro)

RANK 47 (5 votes)

There’s only one shield in Bloodborne: a rusty, wooden shield that says in its description “Shields are nice, but not if they engender passivity.” and this is Bloodborne’s combat approach: don’t be a coward, transfuse your blood with the beasts, ripping their organs off. It’s a very violent game but made in a very elegant way: most of the enemies are battled in cities with gothic architecture or woods that looks like a hand-made scenery from a horror movie, and all of this beautifully interconnected in the same elegancy – and dare I say, even more – as the first Dark Souls. The moon illuminates the floor of those architectures, getting more bloody as the game goes, reflecting the player itself, getting more violent with each fight. Don’t confuse being brave with not being afraid, though. As Eileen, a NPC of the game, says: “Without fear in our hearts, we're little different from the beasts themselves.” We are not supposed to be fearless – this is what makes us humans – but we can’t let it control us. Fight your nightmare and search for the truth, enriching yourself with the frenesi of the battle. Just be careful with all the knowledge you get, the truth may set you free, but if you can't stand it, you will turn into a madman, not so different from the beasts you killed.
(heatten)

RANK 7 (19 votes)

In Super Mario 64 your move-set is so expressive that moving around feels downright joyful and so varied that you’ll find yourself with multiple different ways to understand and approach individual platforming challenges. Meanwhile, the levels themselves take advantage of this move-set with so many criss-crossing routes that new players and seasoned veterans alike will find themselves traversing via sizably different yet equally valid, intended and rewarding approaches.

If contrasted with any other 3D platformer of its generation Super Mario 64 starts to look at least a decade ahead of its time in all those ways. Is it any wonder then that for people of a certain age loading up this game for the first time felt almost like they were peeking into the future, seeing the potential of video games and the wonder of being allowed to truly frolic in 3D digital spaces that are so deeply built for that?
(AutumnLily)

RANK 39 (6 votes)

Whilst it might be known for its wonderful aesthetics, gameplay that is challenging and yet wants you to succeed, creative level mechanics, and a sweet-hearted narrative about not giving up in the face of depression and anxiety, what really sets Celeste apart from other platformers is its movement. The controls are elegant in their simplicity - a dash, a jump and directional movement - making the game very approachable, yet the Farewell expansion teaches wavedashing and wall-bouncing as ways of using these basic controls to both further the challenges it can present whilst redefining those earlier levels by showing you the ways to zoom through them that you didn’t realise were there all along; truly the perfect speed-game.

The rabbit-hole goes so deep on how these basic controls emergently interact with each other though to make a list of increasingly silly sounding techniques - five jumps, demodashes, dream hypers, jellyvators, neutral reverse cornerboosts(?!) - which make Celeste rank alongside Super Mario World hacks in terms of being a kaizo designer’s dream; the custom level community surrounding Celeste is so vibrant and talented that you’ll never run out of new levels to play as long as you still have that drive to keep climbing ever-taller mountains.
(AutumnLily)

RANK 64 (4 votes)

RANK 16 (12 votes)

Undertale took game culture by storm in 2015, becoming the source of song parodies and fanfiction for the next three years. This should come as no surprise, because the creator Toby Fox was involved in the similarly gargantuan touchstone of Homestuck prior working primarily on the music.

Undertale itself stands tall to the hype and acclaim garnered towards it, showing nary a crack in its pristine presentation. Undertale is a story to game devs everywhere about budgeting out the assets on your title as far as possible. Its short length is made up for by telling a story through the act of restarting, so you can meet the world in a whole different way. There is something similar in the music design with leitmotifs and borderline remixes of tunes for other spaces in the game. Far from being a detriment though, this reuse is seamless in form and presentation. That's not to say there isn't a wide cast of characters, everything from boisterous skeletons to dog knights lay ahead in your journey through the caves and ruins of Undertale. Every character, even the enemies, is excited to tell you their story.

Undertale is also a tour de force in keeping the player involved. For one, it's a RPG game for people don't like RPGs. The most novel mechanical inclusion is various SHMUP styled dodging minigames to avoid taking extra damage meaning that you always feel involved in the stakes of a fight rather than mechanically hitting the same buttons without worry. Of course it need not be said how such minigames add even further to the lush character portraits of the enemies you fight. Also, Undertale is constantly out to switch things up to keep players that much more engaged, using punchy humor and reasonable puzzles to keep the player immersed that much more. Even if you removed the metacommentary and stellar 3rd act finale boss fight from the picture, you would still be left with one of the best computer games of its year, if not of its decade.
(Erato_Heti)

RANK 25 (9 votes)

I wake up in a claustrophobic transparent box. I see nothing but a toilet, a bed and a radio inside - is that a camera watching me through the walls, what sort of prison is this? Wait, what is that door with a timer going down and what about that smaller room above floor level with a window and chairs, who's supposed to be watching me? As the timer is ending, I hear a feminine robotic voice - let's call her Kim - and I go through an orange portal to come out of a blue portal and continue to the only door in the room.

Kim explains to me that I'm going to begin a test. I proceed to solve what seems to be chamber #1 out of 19 and quickly understand what is expected from me, there was a similar room above ground floor in this chamber but still no signs of life in them. As I progress through the chambers Kim explains to me that, after I finish the test, I'm going to be rewarded with a cake so I got a little hungry but I'm going to pass this test with flying colors to enjoy that cake! As I progress through the rooms the lack of people is still evident.

I just entered a room that I don't think I'm supposed to be in. I see erratically written on the wall "the cake is a lie"...
(mutyumu)

RANK 39 (6 votes)

A game that absolutely raised the bar of standards for open world game design, maybe to an unfair degree. BOTW to me isn’t about the destinations you travel to but about how you journey around Hyrule. Thanks to its free-form mechanical structure, physics and chemistry systems, combined with the tools given to the player, there’s a real sense of constant decision making and flexibility for those decisions to allow for player expression across the world like no other. I see it sometimes jokingly called “babies first Immersive Sim”, but it’s telling to me that even years after its release, with notably a lot of the open world game industry trying to copy BOTWs homework, that many fail to capture the small moment-to-moment player experimentation elements that truly made Hyrule a joy to explore and a breath of fresh air.
(DrDelicious)

RANK 10 (17 votes)

Everybody knows what this game is, if you haven't played it then your 8 year old cousin has.

Takes influence from simulationist PC games and infuses it with tactility. You can build anything from a humble dirt hut to a massive fortress, but the simple feeling of placing and breaking blocks is not to be overlooked. And even for my fellow arcade fiends, quickly traversing terrain is an interesting and challenging task: do some Nether runs if you don't believe me!

The wide variety of appeals (combat, exploration, building, messing with your friends) make this an ideal multiplayer game. And like Doom/Quake/etc. before it, there is a staggering breadth of user-made content to explore as well. Minigames, art works, PvP, an extensive modding scene (which gave birth to Factorio!), you name it and it's probably there.

In particular, I've always had a soft spot for the CTM genre of maps. Your only goal is to Complete The Monument by gathering all 16 (or less in shorter maps) colors of wool pieces scattered across a hostile world. Other than not crafting wool, there are no rules: you can build and break whatever and wherever the game systems allow. Traverse and survive a connected web of dark dungeons and huge vistas! Seriously, if you like the exploration aspect of Souls, check these out. https://ctmrepository.com/

Minecraft is a massively popular, social, all-ages game that appeals to the better drives of human nature. What more can you ask these days?
(HotPocketHPE)