Hotline: Miami
Beyond Good & Evil
Final Fantasy X
Celeste
Hades
Ace Combat Zero/5
Way more to choose but top of my head
Submitted 3 days ago by weirdbeardgame@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Hotline: Miami
Beyond Good & Evil
Final Fantasy X
Celeste
Hades
Ace Combat Zero/5
Way more to choose but top of my head
+1 for Beyond Good & Evil.
For those unfamiliar with this game, this was early 2000s Ubisoft when they used to be creative, celebrated, and original.
It’s so French and weird and amazing
Hades Hollow Knight Noita Super Metroid Prey (2017) DOOM (2016) Factorio Stardew Valley
I’m going to take this as “games that I never see anyone question their quality.” (I don’t even like all these games myself)
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
Kirby Planet Robobot
Doom 2016
Street Fighter III: Third Strike
Pac-Man
Balatro
Steins;Gate
The House in Fata Morgana
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Gran Turismo 4
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Mega Man X
Mega Man X4
Super Mario Bros. 3
I am here to question Elden Ring’s quality
I’d take SMW over SMB3, but I can’t really fault anything else in this list! 😅
I like SMW better myself (actually not a single franchise entry on that list is my favorite in the series) but it doesn’t have the kind of unanimous praise SMB3 does.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a good game and a worthwhile experience but you can absolutely make quite a lot of very valid critiques about it.
Yeah for a third person isometric RPG with non-linear branching storylines and deep thoughtful story, Disco Elysium positively blows BG3 out of the water.
Steins;Gate my man cultured AF
Bastion, Hades, Disco Elysium, Planescape: Torment, and Tyranny (even if the last act is rushed in the last two) come to mind for me
Bastion is amazing.
Supergiant games’ holy trinity: Bastion, Transistor and Pyre.
Also, the only Borderland games 1 and 2; don’t believe the lies there are no more true Borderlands games and no there most certainly is no movie.
There’s also one other, but you’ll need a crowbar or a gravity gun in hand for me to tell you about it.
You are wrong about borderlands as there is one more and it is pretty muc h perfect.
Tales from the Borderlands.
Shame they never made a sequel for it but the artistry, music and story are all so well crafted. Someone loved Borderlands making that.
Feels odd to include Hades over Pyre.
Bastion and Transistor, sure. Without a doubt, imoactful clever stories that were well delivered.
Pyre always felt like a buggy mess tho. I tried multiple times to get into it but it’s just not on the level of the first two.
Immersive sims: Prey, Dishonored, Deus Ex Story-driven: The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, Halo, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Uncharted, HL2, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Splinter Shock Platformer: Braid, Ori and the Blind Forest, Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Limbo Action/roguelike: Bastion, Hades RPG: Fallout: New Vegas, Mass Effect Puzzle: Lumines, Puzzle Quest, World of Goo, You Must Build a Boat, Reigns, Threes, Meteos Other: Desert Golfing
I always forget how absolutely awesome Escape From Butcher Bay is until I’m reminded of its existence and its shockingly unfair to that game.
I’d kill for a new Riddick game!
Clair Obscur has been the best game I’ve played in a long while, absolute masterpiece
Thomas Was Alone
I’ve never felt so much for quadrilateral shapes.
That’s a great game indeed. The narration is on point.
Age of Empires 2 /w The Conquers expansion pack.
Roller Coaster Tycoon 1. (2 was weaker without OpenRCT2, the real masterpiece, but idk if unfinished projects should count or not)
Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament 1999 GOTY, Worms Armageddon, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, Forza Horizon 2 / Motorsport 3, Need for Speed Underground 1, Clonk! Rage, Metal Gear Solid 1/2/3, Ace Combat 4, Okami, Tokyo Jungle, Zelda BOTW, Mario Odyssey, Sven Co-Op, Killing Floor 1, Final Fantasy 7, LISA: The Painful, Everhood 1, Deus Ex 1, Left 4 Dead 1/2, Portal 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2…
I could go on and on.
Doom
Tetris
Chrono Trigger
Wizards got all up in Commander and killed my interest in it.
UB are getting all up in my standard and pioneer formats and killing my interest for them/Magic as a whole outside of “limited” precons.
Minesweeper.
Simple, endlessly playable.
Games I haven’t seen mentioned yet:
I love that you included 1.6. I spent my all teenage years staying up all night playing this. I was thinking single player epics but this is absolutely a masterpiece.
Yeah, me too… man, I would play 16+ hours on some weekends… I was kinda good, too. Too young, but godly reflexes. I still think about those days sometimes…
I love STALKER with all my heart, and if we’re talking atmosphere and vibes and even world building it is up there. But it does not really belong in the objective masterpiece category. Flawed masterpiece, maybe.
Also I think Call of Pripyat is the better STALKER game, but it might be controversial.
Yeah, but it still popped into my mind sooner than other games, dunno why,
Good taste
Super Metroid
Psychonauts 1 and 2.
Some of the most imaginative big budget games in existence, from themes to art style to level design
Doom (93) I guess ?
Also HL and HL2
Metro 2033. Played it in the dark with good surround sound headphones on, and it’s positively claustrophobic.
Last Light is good too, but at little too optimistic IMHO. 2033 nails that endless pit of despair feeling, with just enough lucky breaks that you might make it through.
I would absolutely put that game up high on the lists as it is a perfect piece of atmospheric gameplay of misery incarnate.
Someone likes a challenge. :)
Witcher 3 for me.
I had to scroll so far to find anyone mentioning W3… Absolutely insane to me that this isn’t much higher and more mentioned.
I’d say :
The first Deus Ex and its first prequel Human Revolution Mafia I Max Payne 1 and 3 GTA III Doom 1/2 Doom 3 Duke Nukem 3D Morrowind Skyrim (modded and fixed, vanilla is pure garbage) Blood Omen 1 Silent Hill 1 and 2 Resident Evil 1 and 4 (and their remakes)
MAD MAX from 2015, while not tied directly to the new movies it scratches an itch I haven’t found in any other game. It’s dark and bleak and brutal. The combat on foot and behind the wheel are both incredible. Nothing quite like being in the middle of ripping a convoy 7 new assholes and being hit with a dust storm. It can be repetitive if you want to complete everything but BY THE GODS OF VALHALLA is it a fucking blast.
It actually is directly tied to the movies. The character who first gives Furiousa a chassis to build from isn’t quite as hunchbacked as in the game but he is credited as “Chumbucket!”
No shit that’s awesome!
Red Alert 2
Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Super Mario Brothers 3
Hades. Transcends the rogue-like genre through incredible writing, art direction, and music. The gameplay is some of the most addictive I’ve ever played. I’m at over 200 hours logged and I still get lost in it.
Curious to hear what the criteria for “masterpiece” is, otherwise I think it is just peoples’ subjective opinion of what makes a great game that they also think others might agree about being a great game. Genuinely curious, interested in discussion, not saying this to shut down any of the answers here.
Historically a masterpiece has been a (or the) work that demonstrates an artist is capable of utilizing their medium to its fullest extent, i.e. it has been mastered. Per ye olde Wiki:
Historically, a “masterpiece” was a work of a very high standard produced by an apprentice to obtain full membership, as a “master”, of a guild or academy in various areas of the visual arts and crafts.
In that light, I’d say the best qualified would be games that completely utilized the capabilities of the platform they were designed for or, perhaps of interest to more people, expanded what everyone thought could be done with those systems. Games which were furthermore well polished and complete, and did not have much room for improvement taking into account the constraints they had to work with at the time. (For instance: No duh we could make Mario 64 run at a higher framerate and have better textures to look nicer on hardware now. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t arguably a masterpiece of its time, on the system it was on.) This doesn’t just have to be technical stuff – It could be the way the game used storytelling, its gameplay mechanics, or anything else.
Then Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom belong to that category - run smoothly as fuck on one of the lamest consoles there is, and are beautiful and complex.
Spyro and Crash trilogies on the PSX, as well as the Quake 2 port, would definitely merit being called technical masterpieces
On the original Xbox, Phantom Dust would fit that bill, despite being a commercial failure at the time. The tldr is that you create a collection of spells (attacks, traps, dodges, curses, buffs) and try to grab them and the “mana” during the real time duels, in order to beat your opponents. Terrain is semi destructible and you have to take into consideration the trajectory of your spells - www.xbox.com/games/store/…/9PCDNBHR11MR
In my mind a masterpiece video game can’t be copied. Or at least if someone tried it would just be called a cheap clone of the original.
Then again everything can be copied but the more difficult it is to copy the closer it is to a masterpiece IMO.
I’m taking this to mean games that stand out in or define their genre, are widely considered to be excellent, are timeless, and there’s very little if any fat to trim.
These aren’t necessarily my favorite games, but games I think are well respected. I probably missed a bunch.
Honestly, many of them you know full well, but that’s because yes, they are that good:
Completely deserve their legendary status
Factorio.
I’d say games that have set the standard for their genre, and have not been surpassed, would be the only ones that count.
Heres a list of some favorites:
Imperfect perfection: Morrowind
Perfect perfection: Starcraft Brood War
Objective perfection: Plants vs Zombies
Subjective perfection: Knights of the Old Republic
Perfect for its time: Gauntlet IV
Perfect timeless: Sonic 2
Perfect for its genre: LOZ Minish Cap
Perfect All-in-one: Shenmue II
Minish Cap seems such an underrated gem
Glad to see some love for Shenmue
The Witness
essell@lemmy.world 3 days ago
My Picks…
Deus Ex (So many games try to be this and fail) Cyberpunk (This one eventually measured up) Alpha Centauri (Innovation mixed with familiarity and setting) Fallout 2 (they’re all good. Fallout 2 is special) Kotor (Star Wars story telling in a beautiful way) Baldur’s Gate 2 and 3 (I’m stunned that 3 was a worthy successor) Homeworld (One of the World’s truly beautiful games)
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 days ago
Phantom Liberty is where Cyberpunk becomes a masterpiece.
cletuspolybius@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I remember trying the demo to Homeworld when I was a kid, it came with one of those old school PC GAMER demo CDs. I think I was too young to understand how to play it effectively, but still loved it because I found the ambience of the experience so memorizing while hyper-cozy. Would you say it she’s well as something worth going back and playing now, and what of the sequel(s)?
essell@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I still repplay now and then, there’s no game like it.
Sadly the sequals failed to capture the grace of the original, though I’ve not tried 3 yet.