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[Friday]

So, I'm trying to put together a list of the top ten single player video games of all time! I'd like some input!

Please note the following:

1. This is my list, I'm making it because a friend asked me to, and though I'm gonna be objective as possible it still just boils down to my opinion, so, if you don't like it, make your own with hookers, etc

2. This list is for BEST games ever, not favorites. My favorite game is SotN, but it's not on this list, because I don't consider it good enough.

3. Single player only. I have to have this clause because otherwise the list would be choked with games like Starcraft and TF2 and Dota and WoW and Super Turbo and etc. If a game is both, it can be nominated, but only considering its single player aspects/campaigns or whatever.

Commonly asked questions:

Q: SO HOW DO YOU DEFINE "BEST"

A: Alright, fine. I think you know what I mean, but consider the following factors when you suggest a game:

1. How well designed is it, gameplay-wise?
2. How good is the dressing? (Art, music, etc.)
3. How good is the story?
4. How fun is it?
5. How much replay does it offer?
6. How well has it aged?
7. How good is the difficulty curve? Does it remain challenging throughout while lacking any walls or boring easy sections?

Etc.

Anyway, here's my list so far. Feel free to argue that they don't belong! This thread is basically for me to harvest ideas from your brain and to get you guys to fight about what game is the best Mario game.

THE GAMES

1. Super Metroid
2. A Link to the Past
3. Earthbound
4. Silent Hill 2
5. Portal
6. Deus Ex (iffy on this one, it's an amazing game but it has aged sort of poorly and the first level is fuckawful.)
7. (A Mario game should probably? go here. 3 maybe? I personally like Yoshi's Island the best but 3 is probably what you're all gonna scream about and World is pretty good too.)
8. (Mega Man 2? X?)
9.
10.

EDIT: to be clear, the list is not ordered.

[Mothra]

I'd say Portal 2 is just straight-up better than Portal 1, but then again, if they've never played Portal 1...

Mega Man X should probably be up there, yeah.

Also how is Homeworld not on this you D E M O N E S S

[Esperath]

I'd say Nethack and Dwarf Fortress but I don't think they have broad enough appeal.

[Joxam]

EDIT: OK I was being a bit sarcastic.

[Caithness]

Yoshi's Island is totally the best Mario game (after Wario Land).

I think you should reconsider putting Symphony of the Night on the list.

Final Fantasy Tactics is another good one.

And maybe a Tetris? I think TGM2 is objectively the best, but it's pretty obscure, so probably better go with the NES version. (Most other versions suck.)

[A²]

I think there's one or two grand overhaul mods for Deus Ex 1 - do either of them do something about that first level?

[Zaratustra]

sonic twooooo emroooohds

[Disposable Ninja]

I don't think Super Nintendo games have aged super well, personally speaking. I had a Genesis, myself, so most of the SNES games I've played have been re-releases on later generation consoles.

Chrono Trigger, though, that game is still pretty golden.

[jsnlxndrlv]

There's different ways you could go about this. Do you go with the games that are the best exemplars of their form? The games with the fewest flaws? The games that the largest number of people react to the most favorably?

In 2007, I polled people at selectbutton.net for their top 25 games, and using my favorite voting system—an unnecessarily convoluted one—I compiled the following list from their answers:

25. Tetris
23.5 Ikaruga
23.5 Sonic 3 and Knuckles
22. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
21. God Hand
20. Final Fantasy VI
19. Super Mario 64
18. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
17. Katamari Damacy
16. Cave Story
15. Planescape: Torment
14. ICO
13. Killer 7
12. Bangai-Oh
11. DOOM
10. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
9. Deus Ex
8. Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.
7. Chrono Trigger
6. Super Metroid
5. Silent Hill 2
4. Super Mario Bros. 3
3. Earthbound
2. Shadow of the Colossus
1. Half-Life 2

(Ikaruga and Sonic 3 and Knuckles were for 23rd place.)

If I were to adapt this list for these purposes, I'd remove SF3 because its greatness comes from multiplayer, so Doom makes the top ten.

I would replace Half-Life 2 with Portal.

I'd prefer Mother 3 to Earthbound, but I feel like those two games + Chrono Trigger are interchangeable exemplars of console RPGs and I'm happy with a list that includes one of those, so let's toss the other two and scooch Bangai-Oh onto the list, as well.

As much as I like Metal Gear games, the franchise is a hot mess and however deliberate it might be, I'm disinclined to include one on the top 10. I feel similarly for Killer 7: I like the game, I think it's a great game, but I feel like its merits come more from a reaction to and against other games rather than through some sense of universality.

Ico is like Chrono Trigger in that I think it's great and broadly accessible, but it occupies a similar enough space to Shadow of the Colossus that I'm comfortable including only one.

The more I think about Planescape: Torment, the more I think it's overlapping with Deus Ex. I personally like Torment better, but I think Deus Ex has more universal appeal and a more coherent approach to design. Maybe just pick the one you prefer.

Cave Story's pretty good but it overlaps Super Metroid, Bangai-Oh, and Zelda games enough that I'm starting to doubt how best to represent this constellation of gametypes. Bangai-Oh is mechanically excellent, but I'm starting to feel like single-player games really should use your mechanical interactions to say something or tell a story, so my preference is to leave in Super Metroid, leave out Bangai-Oh and Cave Story, include a Zelda game for its mechanical distance from Metroid and its melodrama—while I'd accept Majora's Mask or Adventures of Link, I actually think Link's Awakening is the strongest candidate here.

Finally, I feel like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Katamari Damacy are perfectly fine right where they are.

So, at this moment at least, my final list probably looks something like this:

10. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
9. Katamari Damacy
8. Planescape: Torment
7. DOOM
6. Super Metroid
5. Silent Hill 2
4. Super Mario Brothers 3
3. Mother 3
2. Shadow of the Colossus
1. Portal




(I really should just play Doom already.)

[Niku]

any list that like this that doesn't have mega man 2 on it is not a list at all

it is a liest

[TA]

I think Snake Eater deserves reexamination.  Yeah, the Metal Gear franchise as a whole is a goofy nonsense pile, but Snake Eater is kind of ... perfect.  There aren't many perfect games out there!  But that one 100% achieves what it was trying to do, it is the creator's vision fully realized.  It's a better Bond story than any actual Bond stories.

[Smiler]

Deus Ex's first level is both terrible and great. It highlights all of the best parts of the game, but its also too early in the game to really do that and make the game friendly to new players or really to anyone.

[Thad]

Moved here; hope you don't mind & assume this is where you meant the thread to go anyway.

I don't think Super Nintendo games have aged super well, personally speaking.

If we're talking about RPG's, I'll agree.

If we're talking about 2D platformers, I couldn't disagree more; the 16-bit era is full of absolutely exceptional examples of the genre.

If we're going to pick one Mario game to go on the list, I'll go World (though I think 64 is a different enough game that it would be reasonable to put both on the list -- same goes for Metroid Prime as qualitatively different from Super Metroid, and Mega Man Legends 2 as completely different from the 2D platformer series).  If we're going to pick one Mega Man game, I'll go X (I love 2 but X has fewer cheap deaths).

Switching to Genesis, my favorite Sonic game was S3&K (and yeah I'll count it as one game here despite wishing they'd included one level from each portion of it in Generations).

As far as more recent stuff, I loved the hell out of Knights of the Old Republic (which is still not that recent), and Mass Effect 2 is pretty close to perfection.  Arkham Asylum or City probably deserves a place on the list; Asylum, after all, set the Guinness World Record for best-reviewed game of all time.  City is the better and more varied game, but it's also completely fucking ridiculous; Asylum has the more focused and coherent story.

I think there should be a SimCity or Civilization in there somewhere too.  And a GTA.

[Rico]

Initial thoughts:
I would toss in a vote for Ogre Battle 64. Really solid story through most of it (until hijacked by MAGIC, like a lot of other RPGs). Good art direction and music. Pretty much is its own genre as far as gameplay goes, and fixes most of the problems about the original Ogre Battle.

Even as a huge Dragon Quest fan, I feel pretty comfortable with Earthbound or Mother 3 taking that slot, leaning slightly towards Mother 3 for gameplay even though Earthbound is probably the better all-around package.

Deus Ex is a textbook example of mechanics and interface conflicting with each other to create user frustration: It'd be irritating to have the low accuracy at the beginning if your crosshair reflected it, but it's twice as bad to have the low accuracy and no representation at all.

[Bongo Bill]

The best game ever made is still The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. There are more perfect games, ones which lack even a single inconvenient sidequest, ones composed of deeper subgames, ones whose nonverbal indicators are not compromised by smeary-ass N64 textures, ones that are more exciting and feel better under the thumbs. With respect to the parts of games that make games games, it has been greatly exceeded since its release by titles we'd now call pedestrian, and arguably even by its own predecessor. But it comes to a richer whole than anything else, on the strength of its storytelling and of its story.

Game stories don't have to be shitty. They don't even have to be humdrum. They don't have to be facile, crude, exploitative, derivative, cloying, dissociated, or cliched. Nor do they have to be twee, gonzo, minimalistic, metafictional, or "something that can only be told as a game." But if it weren't for Majora's Mask, we wouldn't have any proof of that.

Or maybe I just think that because I was twelve when I first played it.

[François]

I completed it for the first time a year ago (though I had played about an hour of it several years before that) and I would agree.

[Roger]

Majora's Mask is a great little bunch of a text, but an awful game.  If any Zelda gets on the list, it'd have to be the Original.

[Bal]

The original has held up poorly. Not as terribly as Metroid, but pretty bad. If you must play a 2d Zelda, and you must, it should be Link to the Past or Link's Awakening. I also think Zero Mission might be a slightly better intro to the series than Super Metroid, though not a better game.