RANK 22 (10 votes)

Final Fantasy VII

A true collaborative effort that drew on a vast well of ideas pooled from one of the most star-studded teams in the history of the medium, Final Fantasy VII is a genuine watershed moment that blazed trails we continue to follow to this day.

Taking full advantage of the liquid nature of the medium in this crucial moment of generational transition to make stunning revolutionary leaps in style and form, Final Fantasy VII blends countless disparate influences, from film noir to cyberpunk anime to new age mysticism, to tell the timelessly resonant story of a troubled cynic fighting against imminent ecological collapse whilst confronting the unanswerable question: Who Am I?

At the dawn of the 3D age, video gaming desperately searched for an answer to the same question. And just like it did with Cloud, Final Fantasy VII offered no easy answers, no cohesive solutions. Instead, it offered something better: a vision of video games that was not devoted to emulating film or manga, to realism or abstraction, but to all of it at once, a thousand ideas sprinting down a thousand roads, leaving seeds of the future scattered wherever they went. (Woodaba)

Live A Live

If there’s a single aspect in Live A Live I could point to that signifies its draw and cult appeal, it’d be using the RPG structure and the melting pot of influences across medias and the world to weave together an incredibly powerful story of reconciliation and love. Whether its explicit about the woes of rejectment and isolation like with Sundown Kid’s western legends, unfolding a cold, bitter tale of discord and disassociation that Cube witnesses in the far future, the respect of a fight and an opponent in Masaru’s quest to become a champion in the present, or subtly using the dichotomous paths Oboromaru can follow when carrying out a stealth mission within Edo Japan, there’s numerous beats that flow back to these two themes and expressions of the tragic villain in question. No matter if it’s with the 1995 fan-translated original or the newly released and localized 2022 remake, I hope it aspires others to reapproach and better themselves for what they may face in the future, just as it has for me, my friends, a sliver of key figures like Toby Fox, and others. (BlazingWaters)

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

Every lens through which you can view Majora’s Mask reveals startling new depth. As a standalone title, as the “avant-garde” Zelda, from a purely mechanics focused view to a narrative one, all aspects of the work complement and reinforce each other. The soundtrack – equally somber, whimsical, and haunting – enhances the strange, melancholic tone. That atmosphere in turn bolsters the themes of the story that are themselves so deftly woven into the mask mechanic and three-day cycle. To say that Majora’s is more than the sum of its parts would be almost reductive – implying both that the parts themselves are anything less than brilliantly executed and that their effect on each other is merely additive rather than multiplicative. Some of the most memorable time I’ve ever spent with a work of art, filled to the brim with all sorts of small yet meaningful moments that have left a lasting impact on me. A landmark moment in game history. (Hylianhero777)

RANK 20 (11 votes)

Ico

From the setting of a misty castle lying in the water, to the sparse soundscape and unknowable, grasping monsters who emerge from shadowy puddles, few games evoke the feeling of a dream more successfully than ICO. Universal in its foreignness, ICO adopts signifiers of ancient exotic cultures, blends them with surreal abstractions, and tells a story of a boy and girl overcoming impossible odds through their trust in each other. Ueda lead the production with the concept of “subtracting design”; removing aspects of game design that created a barrier between the player and the game’s world. Unlike most similar games of its time, no on-screen HUD, health items or level transitions would be used. Weapons and items would need to be found, picked up and dropped, with sound and animation convincingly communicating the weight and physicality of each one. ICO’s timeless appeal is owed to how little it adopted from contemporaries, and its willingness to stand on its own merits. Fumito Ueda continues to build on the ideas introduced in ICO in daring and innovative ways, and the whole industry benefits from his influence. (87th)

Silent Hill 2

Cerebral, paralyzing, familiar and tantamount to everything we understand is horror gaming. Silent Hill 2 works as a disturbed study of the human condition that is ultimately more empathetic than it is terrifying. A spiraling, macabre dive into how trauma shapes us - and the mind of those who create said trauma. A perpetually enigmatically beautiful and profound piece of work that urges you play it, one that horror games have been trying to catch up to for years since. (Archagent)

RANK 16 (12 votes)

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

I’m no gun specialist but, for the sake of argument, let’s look at the first Metal Gear Solid as a revolver. Its analogue parts may appear disparate by themselves, harder to handle and lacking efficiency in comparison to more elegantly designed tools, but together they form a weapon that brims with a unique and unmistakable character. It never fails to leave an impression, even with only six bullets in the barrel.

Its direct sequel etches elaborate engravings into that foundation. While certainly beautiful in their own right, it’s hard to ignore the fact that they offer no tactical advantage whatsoever over its predecessor. Nevertheless, we may continue unraveling the prescience of their craftsmanship for decades still.

Metal Gear Solid 3 could have been yet another modification. Maybe a laser sight, a scope for additional accuracy, perhaps even a silencer. Konami could’ve traded in the old model for an entirely different “gun” (as they would with every Metal Gear to follow). Instead, they reached into their back pocket…and pulled out a second revolver. This time, they’ve got twelve shots.

Metal Gear Solid 3 reaps all of the rewards and consequences of this approach. In several ways, it’s even more unwieldy than either of its forebears, but it deserves to be here, because all twelve of those bullets hit their mark.

It represents more than “one of, if not the best game in the illustrious Metal Gear series”; it isn’t beholden to insular qualifiers. It’s great Cold War Spy Fiction in its own right, drawing from the best of its own legacy and responding to an array of cinematic inspirations. Its iconic and combustible cast of characters has range enough to elicit both laughter and reflection at the drop of a hat, sometimes in the same breath. It’s an endless playground of stealth mechanics whose threshold for mastery is downright ludicrous, carefully paced to coincide with the highs and lows of its story. It’s proof that cutscenes can justify their inclusion on entertainment value alone. It’s a meditation on the evils of nationalism. Its Russian jungle setting does not exist. Kojima’s maximalist design philosophy may appear scattered and disparate, but here, there is always one eye on the bigger picture. In doubling down and committing wholeheartedly to its own soul, Metal Gear Solid 3 becomes totemic. (CarbonCanine)

Rain World

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)

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

Being a series that founded its core identity on timeless, generalized depictions of caricatured combat, it’s fascinating to me that Street Fighter tried to reinvent itself with the SFIII Series, seemingly to appeal to the masses and ultimately burning bridges with a large number of their fans in the process. I think that’s a large part of why it’s so special to me though: this series of games (especially Third Strike) stands nowadays as a perfect time capsule of a bygone era laced in frivolous sass and a shared optimism for a new generation. Third Strike could easily be held up on the merits of its artistic tendencies even if it wasn’t strong mechanically, but this aesthetic isn’t just cheap set dressing - this drive for creativity and spunk is interwoven with every thread of its design. While mechanics like parrying and a brand new roster of bozos may not appeal to everyone who loved the simplicity of SFII, the confidence on display in every element to the identity of SFIII makes it a peerless monolith in one of the most colorful and creative genres in the medium. As the turn of the millennium draws near and the world resets at midnight, what’s the harm in being the most honest and playful versions of ourselves in the meantime? (LukeGirard)

Undertale

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 14 (13 votes)

Dark Souls

Dark Souls is a title that has come to carry a lot of weight with it in recent years. FromSoftware’s breakout game following the success of Demon’s Souls catapulted them into the mainstream spotlight. On top of spawning several sequels and spiritual successors from its developer, Dark Souls has created an entire genre of “soulslikes” attempting to follow in its footsteps. Despite the many games that have come after it, many still consider this the studio’s magnum opus and the best of its kind. Much of the early focus on Dark Souls was about its difficulty; how it brought an old school, hardcore approach to game design back into the limelight. I would argue, however, that the real reason behind its lasting appeal is its world. Lordran is a place unlike any other in games, and the details of its design show a mastery rarely seen. The areas the player travels through are large, dense, and dreamlike, but all connect back to each other in ways that feel simultaneously surprising and logical. Exploring the world of Dark Souls is a joy unlike anything else, and is the driving force behind many of its players pushing through to master its difficult combat. Many of its other elements are also well done but would take too long to get into here, but Dark Souls is a very important game that many players and developers have learned from, and will continue to in the years to come. (Silverhand)

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Melee is integral to me not only because it’s a game that showed me the appeal of frantically fast-paced, execution-heavy fighting games with defined sets of rules among a cast of characters to allow for player expression and creativity in a competitive space, but it also introduced me to the values of the fighting game community. Even years after I first got into the scene in my sophomore year of high school, this is a game that’s still being played and beloved by many, and fighting games such as Melee have allowed me to meet and connect with some of my dearest friends that I’m still with to this very day. There’s something genuinely beautiful about walking into a built from the ground up tournament event filled with people from around the country or even the world just to play and watch a few games everyone is passionate about. While Melee might not be my personal favorite fighting game, it undoubtably deserves its legendary status and competitive longevity, and it’s a game I will forever be grateful for. I doubt I would’ve met the people I have if YouTube didn’t put some GRsmash videos on my timeline. (DrDelicious)