From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
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Maybe Tetris? Such a simple concept, and it's one of the most popular games of all time.
Minecraft for similar reasons. Even if it has become more complex in recent years, the core of it is just...you can break everything and build anything. It's hard to say that isn't a perfect sandbox.
More personal opinion though, maybe Super Mario Odyssey.
Tetris is a game that just doesn't get old.
It's really you against your previous self, rather than you against the game.
It's the same reason why I enjoy Mini Motorways so much!
Outer Wilds. I consider it the best video game ever made and I've spent quite some time thinking about if there's something I could add, change or remove that would improve it and so far I've yet to come up with anything of substance (beyond tiny QoL changes or reeeally nitpicky stuff).
I've just joined beehaw, this is my first browse, and one of the first comments I see is for Outer Wilds... Feels good. One of my favourite games / stories / media / art pieces ever. I love it and all of the brilliant minds behind it, I've never thought so about a game once finished anywhere near as much as this one.
I still need to get around playing the DLC but I feel like I'd need to watch a video to get caught up on the story. That said, yeah, the gameplay and story is absolutely incredible. Perfectly-executed mystery box.
You could always add the DLC :D (I'm half joking of course, but it's soooo good. I think it's on par, if not a little bit better, than the main game.)
Outer Wilds is one of the more interesting games to come out in recent memory, but personally I just didn't like the
spoiler
fairly tight (for me) time limit. I like to do things at a slower pace for a variety of reasons, and I'd love to have a way to change the time scale so that things don't happen in just 20-something minutes.
I know it theoretically gives you infinite time to explore and do stuff, but that one cycle is always ~20 minutes, and that's what I'd love to be able to slow down.
Chrono Trigger. It's basically the evolutionary peak of the NES-era console RPG. Every aspect, including the story, art, game mechanics, and music, are best-in-class, with no obvious room for improvement given the technical constraints of the time.
I have great expectation in Sea of Stars exactly because I loved Chrono Trigger suo much.
Holy shit Chrono Trigger rocked my world so fucking hard. I played it on an emulator in like 2000. I've forgotten a lot of stuff yet I still remember the impression this game left on me. It was like holding my breath at the end there goddamn.
Gotta be Portal 2. The puzzles are fun, the difficultly curve is reasonable, and the writing is fantastic. Truly the only complaint I have is that I wish there was more of it.
The original Deus Ex. The storyline, the way the game world reacted to your actions and made it feel like your actions were relevant to the world around you instead of just being a static place where stuff happened to you...
Super Metroid. It's an amazing game if you play it normally, and you can branch out into sequence breaking tricks pretty easily. It basically created/popularized an entire genre of games.
There are lots of great choices here, but Super Metroid is mine as well.
Gorgeous game, great music, not horrifically difficult once you figure things out.
Can we go really old with these?
Because Zelda Link to the Past is a perfect game.
I know how ubiquitous it is, but I still replay it on a regular basis. Its perfectly designed, balanced, simple... Im not saying its superior to modern games or something stupid, I just think its pretty flawless. That is all.
1000% agree. Im a huge fan of all things Legend of Zelda and this one still stands as a masterpiece to me as well.
I think I would have to go with Stardew Valley. It has something for any mood I’m in.
I can spend my time on the farm, looking after the animals, crops, reorganising. I can go and be social with the neighbours, help them out, do some work towards the community centre. If I feel adventurous I can go explore the mines fighting monsters.
Where I’ve done all that I can start again on a new farm and try a different strategy, I can even play with friends and work together. Its just cozy fun.
I would interpret "perfect" as "i can't find anyhing negative to say about this game". So for me the candidates are:
Control seems pretty good at what it wants to do. Nice graphics and soundtrack, fluid movement in combat (closest description I could think of) and cool, intriguing story. It also has one of the best video game quests I've played: Ashtray Maze
Skyrim (despite the numerous bugs) is another one I will say is close to perfect. Really good game and the community is pretty great as well.
I’ve said it 1 million times and so have many others, but it is and will always be Ocarina of Time. It’s the only game I play through every single year and still love every single second of it.
FTL. It took a concept and ran with it. Plus a great soundtrack. It has a great replay value as well.
The Hunt for Red October on the C64 - varied levels, great art and music, really good difficulty curve.
Fata Morgana.
Listen, whether you like Visual Novels or not doesn't matter. But Fata Morgana is just somehow...perfect. Everything is resolved and I don't feel any need to complain about any aspect of it. It was an experience to play a game that left me with no questions afterwards. It was just a really good story.
My vote is for Slay the Spire. Invented the deck-building roguelike genre and did so with an interesting setting, simple but appealing artstyle, memorable soundtrack, and very tight balancing across 21 difficulty levels.
Also Tetris, but that's already been said.
Factorio. The game automatically adjusts difficulty based on your speed and familiarity. Pros scaling rapidly are going to have a harder time with biters than a noob learning the ropes on the exact same difficulty settings. Difficulty settings can be scaled up for a true challenge. Mods are supported damn near as much as first party devs. It’s a very well optimized game. It’s just technically impressive, psychologically fun, and fundamentally well balanced.
Both Portal games are perfect. Portal 1 did some much great stuff and portal 2 said fuck it and decided to be more perfect then the first.
I respect this, but always had trouble with portal 2. It has some great parts but is also way too long.
For a game to be perfect I think it's got to be absolutely pinpoint in achieving what it sets out to do. Doesn't matter if it's a small game, or an expansive open world.
I'm gonna go with Superhot. For my money it took an idea, and ran with it to its natural conclusion. It's laser focused on that one core mechanic and pulls it off so well that I don't think anyone else has even tried to replicate it.
Skyrim. It's a beautiful game, even now when I play it I take a moment to just look at how gorgeous the scenery is. I love the quests and that you can own a horse/house/child/ get married. I love the potions and crafting and customisation.
I don't think there are many games quite like Skyrim
Chrono Trigger: every aspect (graphics, gameplay, story, music, replayability...) has such level of polishness that it's still outstanding almost 30 years later.
No other JRPG has come even close and, as a Final Fantasy fan, that's hard to admit
My answer to this is always Portal, the first one. It was so unexpected and so, so good. Nothing in gaming before or since has been that magical of an experience for me. Maybe early Pokemon, when my little kid eyes were opening to what gaming could be. But there's just something special about Portal. Such a concise, perfect little game.
Hades. I don't think I've come across a game so carefully paced as Hades, both plot-wise and in the gradual introduction of game mechanics. Which is bloody impressive considering that it's a roguelite.
Bioshock I think, loved it so much. Excellent writing and graphic design. Wish the remaster had improved the visuals more tho
Yesssss loved this game. Played all three and nothing hits like the first one.
Truth. I still love Infinite, though. I may be in the minority for that, but it's such a bizarre atmosphere and the imagery and soundtrack really stuck with me. Welcome to the circus of VALUE!
Oh geez, I'd forgotten about the circus of VALUE! Gotta emphasize it like that 😂. I think I found Infinite to be more of a mixed bag. Creepy but in a different way. All I remember is being killed by George Washington 😂
Zelda Links Awakening. It's a perfect clock, every wheel in place.
I’m more into links awakening, but they are really the same era and similar in many ways.
If we're going really old school, then Space Invaders. Its way of leveraging the hardware at the time to make the enemies and music speed up after you defeat more of them is elegant. Back then, the more things a game had on screen, the slower it ran. So, destroying more enemies removes more things from the screen, causing both enemies and music to speed up.
This is something that's taken for granted today, but I think at the time, it was genius.
Outer Wilds
Agreed. There is something very special about Outer Wilds
Guild Wars, especially for the PvP mode. I loved the visual feeling of the game, it felt sharper and less cartoony than a WoW.
Some classes were kind of novel too at the time.
And the feature I loved was the limited skillset you had to chose : you could be lvl 20 (max) and know 30 spells but you could only pick 5 in your active bar. It made for so many interesting builds and combinations !
Lots of contenders for me: Resident Evil 2, A Link to the Past, Ocarina of time, Goldeneye, Half-Life, Diablo II, Skyrim, Alien: Isolation, Borderlands 2, Mario 64
But I gotta go with Runescape
For me, probably Half-Life 2. Especially at the time? It was such a leap ahead in both technology and overall world immersion. I still revisit it sometimes and get sucked right back in.
I’ll agree with you on Beatles Rock Band too, though. It’s a work of art.
Dragon Age. I literally fell in love with Alistair while studying for my masters, so it must have been an excellent storyline for an RPG. I also played it through in full twice because it turned out my initial character choice made my perfect ending impossible..
Metroid Prime has to be pretty far up there. It was a bold step forward for an established franchise that could have gone wrong so many different ways, but holy cow they nailed it. The controls are probably the only weak part, but to be fair dual analog controls hadn't really caught on yet. Every area of the map has character. So many of the boss fights are memorable, from Omega Pirate being fueled by raw Phazon and destroying its own soldiers, to Thardus whiting out the whole arena, to Meta Ridley wrecking the shit out of the Artifact Temple. The music is great, bringing back bangers from previous games, subtly remixing in other motifs from the past as well to give the game a familiar feeling, while adding beautiful new ambient music of it's own. The plot progresses forward with only a limited amount of cut scenes and dialog. It combined two genres in an innovative new way that 20+ years later still hasn't really been recreated yet.
And then once you've finished playing everything and finding every last thing as intended, there's still more fun to be had in learning some of the more basic glitches to get items way earlier than intended. Giving the devs the middle finger by getting items the first time around without taking a long backtracking trip later to come back and get it. Speeding through areas and blasting through boss fights with equipment and weapons you're not supposed to have yet. It contributed in large part to the birth of the modern speedrunning scene as people came up with more and more creative ways to get around formerly impassable obstacles.
20+ years old now, and it still holds up (as long as you play Primehack or Remastered to get more modern controls).
I have always been a fan of stealth games. Dishonored (especially the first) scratched the itch perfectly! It's atmospheric. It's not open world, but each level has its own area to explore that is filled to the brim with stories, sometimes a small side quest etc. I also love how you get to influence the ending.