Rules: just pick 1 and explain why.
Iāve been playing since the NES and despite being from a low income family I had the luck of being able to play and own many consoles over the 3 decades of my life, plus some pc.
If you ask me right now? Resident Evil 4 (2005).
A before and after in gaming, to this day still extremely fun to play even for casuals but 20 years ago it was THE masterpiece. And everyone took notice of it, everyone played it, even players that didnāt cared about resident evil. The gameplay was so good that it got photocopied by everyone right after in the action genre.
Arguably the last big innovator in videogames minus Minecraft andā¦ PUBG (Fortnite did it better I know).
Try to NOT pick your favourite game, thatās a different thing.
Well, I think there are multiple potential candidates depending on how you define greatness. I think these few are certainly the most influential:
- Super Mario Bros. Possibly the system it ran on was more important, but this game was a system seller for the system that single-handedly saved not only the entire video game industry, but probably the very concept of video games at a time when it was looking like itād just be another fad that faded away right along with bellbottoms and pet rocks, with what was left of it remaining caged in Japan. Mario 1 was most peopleās first platformer, I also have to think that the first damn goomba in 1-1 probably holds the crown for the highest kill count of any entity in the universe.
- Tetris. Infinitely playable and probably infinitely played, and you can get it to run on damn near everything. Everyone knows Tetris, even people who havenāt played it or any other video game.
- Doom. Just, Doom. Yes, Quake was more advanced. Yes, Quake was technically the actual technological forefather to the polygonal 3D games we play today, and many game engines still include tiny bits of Quakeās original code. But there would be no Quake without Doom. It certainly wasnāt the first FPS, but itās the game that cemented the FPS formula for good and firmly established the x86 PC as not only a viable gaming platform, but the king of gaming platforms from that moment until this very day. Ever since Doom, outside of specialized arcade hardware the PC has been the powerhouse platform for the biggest, most technologically demanding games. After Doom game out everyone wanted their own āDoom cloneā on their platform just to show that they werenāt just another me-too, also-ran.
- Street Fighter 2. The genre defining 1 on 1 fighting game template. Enough said.
- Chrono Trigger. This game showed everyone not what a console RPG was up until that point, but what a console RPG could be if you put actual effort and creativity into it and didnāt just crank out another grindy and soulless, swords-and-sorcery-go-kill-the-dragon yawn fest just to keep your franchise going. Its contemporary Final Fantasy games almost got there (especially 6), but Chrono went the full mile. The feats Chrono Trigger pulled off on the humble SNES as well as many of the innovations it brought forward were far ahead of its time and it took literal decades for the genre to catch up to it ā including quite a few entries from its own studio.
- Final Fantasy 7. This game is objectively crap even compared to many of its peers. But there is no doubt that it was the next stepping stone from Chrono Trigger that finally firmly launched the console RPG into mainstream territory, made the genre as a whole truly successful, and was an awful lot of peopleās first RPG. It probably made a significant and permanent contribution to the formation of weaboo culture, as well.
- Half Life 2. No, not the first Half Life. Not Opposing Force and not Blue Shift, either. There was never before any hype and anticipation for a video game like there was for Half Life 2. In the months leading up to its launch it was all anyone talked about. Not Doom 3, not the new Warcraft. Half Life 2. And of course with Half Life 2 came Steam, and we all know how that turned out. Sure, Steam itself started life as a patch delivery and server browsing platform for Counterstrike, but up until Half Life 2 appeared in it, nobody cared. The impact Half Life 2 had on everything is absolutely undeniable, and that doesnāt just include the horde of games that came after it attempting to imitate its unbroken linear first person narrative and setpiece based game design as a cash grab, not to mention that phase in first person shooters where seemingly everything suddenly had to have physics puzzles in itā¦
Final Fantasy VII was my first RPG. It had a good (but sometimes difficult to follow) story, lots of quirky characters, Full Motion Video sequences, and a musical score that nears perfection. Hearing those songs today doesnāt just remind me of the game, it brings me back to all the emotional moments in the story where I felt like I was actually there, feeling what those characters felt and being there fighting along beside them.
A lot of how I feel about that game may be related to the fact that I was a teenager when I experienced it, but the lasting impression of that experience is why I think it is one of the greatest games of all time.
Copy this entire comment but replace āFinal Fantasy VIIā with āMorrowindā and you have my story.
I never played any Final Fantasy game until I was an adult and a couple years ago I picked up FFVII to finally play it, and three extended breaks and one full restart later and Iām barely halfway through the main story by my rough estimate the last time I played it - which was probably about a year ago. I just canāt get hooked into it for some reason that I couldnāt tell you. I played and enjoyed FFX (twice!) and I like the newer ones, but new final fantasy is essentially Devil May Cry now so I donāt really count those as the same. But I think what it is is Iāve just been spoiled by newer games and old school FFVII is just too crunchy for me now. Which is weird to say because see above about Morrowind, which I do still play up to the modern day, but it again makes sense because I grew up playing that one.
As someone who knows and loves the original, do you have opinions on the remake? I played a brief bit of it once at a friendās place and I liked it, it doesnāt seem very turn based anymore but I like that I suppose. It felt good to play. I didnāt have a reference for it story wise to the original at the time, I hadnāt played it yet. I hear it doesnāt contain the whole story.
As someone who liked FF7 a lot as a kid,and a bunch of other FF games, I really like remake.
I think 1 thing you have to know going in, is it isnāt FF7 just in a new engine with updated combat, and I think remake is a bit of a bad name for it.
Reimagining might be better.
You are correct that it isnāt the whole game, but it takes Midgard and makes a handful of setup hours from the first game, a good 40 hours of compelling story and world building(with some side stuff as well). It is very clearly a different story with changes that are interesting, but could very easily go off the rails if it isnāt properly managed.
It also has some incredible improvements to certain characters and even to areas of Midgard expanding on what was a very small part of the original games.
Combat is very good at mixing turn based actions(skills and spells and items), with action based combos. Dodging is a bit of a bait and is more positioning because you donāt get i-frames to actually dodge, blocking is important but doesnāt feel great(I heard it is improved in rebirth). The ability to switch characters and how unique they all feel is really enjoyable to me as well.
I am eagerly looking forward to Rebirth on PC cause I aināt buying a PS5.
Remake in my opinion is significantly better than 16 which I think is pretty mid, and I would recommend it as long as you donāt expect a 1 to 1 of the original.
FFVII Remake and Rebirth I think are really good games overall. The [nearly] completely different combat system from the original is fresh and engaging.
The story starts to deviate from the original near the end of Remake, and continues into Rebirth. I also think this is a welcome change (as long as it doesnāt stray too far from the original). But for everyone who never made it through the original, I imagine it can feel slow, confusing, and lacking, so I would actually encourage those players (unless you really hate spoilers) to watch a story synopsis youtube video of the original Final Fantasy VII. It will help.
Oh, and for the most part the new games still nail the music. Love love love it.
