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Ocarina of Time — Best Game Ever?
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the best game yet made, according to a list compiled by readers and writers of the lauded British gaming magazine Edge. Their list of the hundred best games ever is top-heavy with Nintendo titles, a full five out of the top ten being released to a Nintendo platform. Obviously, this sort of thing can get contentious, and CNet's Crave blog spoke up quickly with a contrary opinion. "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is truly a masterpiece that should be thought of as one of the greatest games ever created. But to call it the greatest game of all time is a serious misstatement. Unlike Super Mario Bros., Ocarina of Time was released in an era where video games were booming and sales were on the rise. Simply put, everyone was playing video games, and the game was the best of its time. But no other game in history--Ocarina of Time included--was able to save an entire industry from almost guaranteed destruction the way Super Mario Bros. did, and it is for this reason that we should all give ol' Mario and Luigi credit where it's due." Let's hear it, then. What game deserves to top a list of the 100 best games ever made?
Psychonauts got in at 99? I would have pushed it into the top ten, but it's good to see that the game hasn't been completely ignored. I wonder how many people have actually played it.
You can't say something is the "best" without defining what you think those qualities are that make something best.
Storyline? Gameplay? Graphics? Sounds? Replayability? Uniqueness?
The answer is yes. Ocarina of Time has every element that makes video gaming such a rewarding and engaging pasttime. It was revolutionary, and it is still fun to this day.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
There are a lot of sequels on the list, often coupled with the omission of the original(s). They omit both Doom and Half-Life, while charting Doom II at 78 and Half-Life 2 at 4. Honestly, that just doesn't make much sense.
...that the South Korean Air Force has an official Starcraft team.
I'd say that getting your videogame elevated to the status of stadium-worthy spectator sport is a pretty huge achievement. Blizzard's Starcraft is surely up there.
(This is complicated only by the fact that it has so many worthy competitors from the same era: Age of Empires is the first that comes to mind.)
It still doesn't compare to the number of hours spent playing Super Mario Bros. Counterstrike can't even come close to the number of children(boys AND girls), teens(men AND women) and parents(men AND women) who were drawn to SMB like a moth to a flame. In 15 years, I doubt you'll find many people who keep a computer around just to play Counterstrike or it's sequels.
Nintendo is arguably the only developer(hardware and software) to stay true to the original idea of Video Games as a source of fun instead of pimping it out to gain control of the home theater market. Sony is starting to lose it's way and Microsoft is Microsoft.
I am not a nintendo fanboy but I do respect the Old School.
Deus Ex gets my vote.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
This list is one of the worst "Top 100" I've ever seen.
The flaws are many and frequent.
How could you have a top 100 list of games that completely excludes ANY Bioware or Black Isle Studios games? On top of that, there's no homage to some clear classics and pioneers of gaming, such as Zork, or Hero Quest. Only a brief mention is made for Monkey Island.
The fact that the vast majority of the games on the list were made after 2000 says a bit.
Um, dude. Solitaire. Win 3.11 edition. Before they ruined it with fancy graphics. Back when it was pure.
without question half-life. It was the first game to have mod tools for the fans that were freely available as well as an actual effort behind them to ENCOURAGE mod-making, it was the first to make such a business model succeed on a massive scale, and encouraged the proliferation of community involvement in games, eventually resulting in what some would call "Web 2.0".
Nothing in the history of gaming has impacted the WORLD in the way that it did, and for that reason I'll say that it was the best game ever.
You may claim that other games did it better, I might even yield to the idea that the BUILD engine with Duke 3D should have the title, or maybe even quake or quake 2, but those games didn't succeed in luring in the mod community and fostering its growth as well as Valve did with Half-Life. The mod community for Quake 2 seemed to be just a thing that popped up around the game, but Half-Life actually welcomed it in and put effort into it.
This truly was the beginning of the real internet we know today, and marked the point in history where the community surrounding a game became just as important as the game itself.
I cast my vote for Half-Life, not any Zelda game. While Ocarina of Time was exceptionally well made, and possibly flawless, it IS possible to do more. And many games have.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Nethack. I'm still playing the DOS version. :)
And I'm a female
If you are to judge a game on how many hours are played, you shouldn't forget Starcraft. That game is even older.
With the Wii, Nintendo may be getting closer to VR than any other game system ever has. Remember VR Headsets, Force feedback controls, and all those other things that you never see around anymore? Well I for one think the Wiimote is the best progression we have towards actual VR. The fact that you can swing it like a golf club, or a tennis racket, or a baseball bat, and have it do the same thing on the screen is kind of exactly what people looking for VR have been dreaming of for a long time. It's not much of VR if you're just pushing a bunch of buttons but you happen to have a set of VR goggles.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.