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 16 (12 votes)

In the eyes of Rain World language is a fluorescent silence - meaning and its absence coalescing into one, a series of deaths and rebirths unmastered as best we can from the frail, slippery body that is slugcat. Like two spears passing through your guts, and yet you live. I am at the center of everything that happens to me. Each cycle is more crucial than the last even when nothing happens, and our corpse lies in post-radioactive jaws, and then a second body slips on top of the first, and we find out that our little creature breathes again by a stroke of food-chained luck. Liquid punk. Play here lives and dies by this ruthless assortment of present tense mechanics, drainage systems soon giving way to megafauna and gravitational anomalies in a torrential god’s belly. There’s never enough time in Rain World, to see or touch every graffiti - sometimes to survive, even - but this urgency of the stakes serves against the workmanlike logic most videogames strive towards and instead asks a pause for thought, maybe a change of biome, to meditate on the buddhist teachings of Five Pebbles or just vibe with the vultures up above in this omnidirectional body we learn to cherish. Until the last words have been spoken. Nestle or perish. In the end the rain will wash it all away, rend us to the earth. Begin again.
(Fauxscerf)

RANK 81 (3 votes)

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 64 (4 votes)

RANK 81 (3 votes)

RANK 47 (5 votes)

When I talk about Pathologic 2 I usually mention its unique gameplay language defined by the search for a comfortable flow and convenient conservation routine, where The Best And Most Optimal Way Of Doing Things – it is nearby, yet slipping away as it is impossible to predict what shape the Plague is going to take next. But in reality, playing Pathologic 2 for me was an act of defying hubris. The savior complex, naturally nurtured by other videogames, is the cause of an inevitable downfall, as you time and time again take on battles that can’t be won and try saving lives impossible to save. It’s a play where every actor has their own relationship with pride, and by the thirteenth toll of the bell everyone will be measured by whether they could part with it.
(Cakewalking)

RANK 25 (9 votes)

It is rare to find titles in the medium that provide complete freedom to explore unbound by conventional means of progression. Rarer still are those that leave the player feeling that the world they inhabit outside of the game is a warmer, kinder place than the one they parted with at the door. These feelings have only grown stronger the more time has passed since my inaugural flight from Timber Hearth, where you inherit a rocket ship and the dreams of a space program birthed not as a military show of force, but out of a desire to understand the past and present.

The Outer Wilds is no mere puzzle game, its “solutions” betray the simplicity of the answers we expect to see when we march to GameFAQs in frustration. Nothing in the game just "is". You don't understand how to interact with something? The knowledge required simply lies somewhere else. Knowledge in this game is what items are in typical puzzle-adventure games, and the core of the gameplay is conducting science in tandem; experimenting, understanding and forming conclusions -even just tentative ones- to understand and experiment even more. There are few experiences as fulfilling in gaming to me, or in any medium for that matter.
(Nowhere)

RANK 8 (18 votes)

Waving us with "what kind of cop are you?" it's such an elegant way to ask for cynicism, correctness, frustration, respect, pride, or political bore. But there is no correct way for being a cop. I don’t mean that as a political stance necessarily but as an actual mechanic inside Disco Elysium. It’s a beaten horse, it’s a failed mystery, it’s an annoying escapade to a depressing world, it’s another serving for the machine. It’s everything astounding, resonating and thwarting about the human condition and the way we conjure ways to order that same humanity. All encompassed inside another case to resolve, through an isometric camera, furbished stereotypes and tart humor. Disco Elysium preserves a palpable dual spirit of joy and bitterness that comes with history upon the making – no one wins, everyone loses. But there is light anyway. An achievement on videogame writing and holistic experiences. A triumph on destroying expectations. How couldn’t it be? It said the words we all need in our lives: We are the miracle. How? Simple. We’re the detectives arriving on the scene.

(MalditoMur)

RANK 64 (4 votes)

RANK 47 (5 votes)

Hell is for those who committed to a great sin in their mortal lifetime. What happens when something not alive nor mortal enters the fiery jaws of Hell?

One such figure must acquire a thirst for blood, for it is something they cannot possess or shed, thus creating the want or need for it. This thing must also be designed in a particular manner, one that is mechanically dense, yet needs the capability to flow like water as it braves the depths of hell. Its prey will be forced adapt and change as it is cornered. Yet, as its prey changes, so too does the figure. The figure will clear out the layers of Hell one by one, and with that the figure changes little by little. It becomes more unpredictable. It becomes more violent. It becomes smarter.

What such thing can possess these qualities? The will of God would not dare to even think of creating such a thing so ravenous. It would have to be the will of man, as their existence reaches their climax and time of peril will create the perfect killing machine, born from their past failures.

Mankind is dead. Blood is fuel. Hell is full.
(Nightblade)

RANK 81 (3 votes)