What is the BEST game you've ever played and which one is the WORST?

[IntelliMission]

You can only pick one game for each category.

[Steven Pendleton]

Best: Super Metroid

Worst: I can't decide between CrazyBus or Fellowship of the Ring for GBA. I guess Fellowship since it's actually a real game that got released. It is absolutely TERRIBLE and you can't even beat the game without abusing a glitch because the game ALWAYS crashes 100% of the time upon entering a room that you ABSOLUTELY MUST GO THROUGH. I am not sure how that made it through testing unless they didn't have any QA thing at all. This game is trash and never should have been released. Go play it if you can!

[IntelliMission]

Thanks digdugnate, that was really insightful. ?

 

Back to the topic, for me it would be:

 

Best game: The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) (check out this amazing 1h review of the game I just discovered)

 

Worst game: Amstrad Jumper (1985)

 

By the way, Tommy Tallarico answered this question the other day. The best one for him was Super Mario World and the worst one High Heat Baseball 2003.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Best: Soldier Blade on PC Engine.

Worst: Some LJN NES game (any of them).

 

Worst game I own though is Superman 64... though I will not defile my N64 by playing it. I bought it at Goodwill for like 88 cents... I think I paid too much. lol

[CatPix]

Though.

But if I have to pick up one of each, it would be Silent Hill on PS1. I played it again recently and wow. I was paying more attention to details than before and.. This game is so polished.

The amount of details that are well-though are amazing.

 

The worst game? Hard to say, for I gave up on so many games that were bad that's it hard to judge.

There are several bad games I picked up with low expectations, they didn't dissapoint. But one that got me like that is Martian Gothic on PS1 (also exists on PC).

 

It's a survival-horror based on Mars, where you lead 3 characters; they can't meet each other or they die.

It sounds cool and all, until... After about 2 hours of playing, you find out that basically when you find a new item.. it's NOT for your character to use, but either of the two.

Instead of having short gameplay sequence where you play the same character for several minutes, you're basically playing a big inventory management game which weakens the little threat of failure you might feel.

And the limited 12 saves feature (a whopping 4 on PC) doesn't help. How do you know when to save when you don't know how long the game will be? It's just a detail but Resident Evil does it good : you know you'll find typewriter ribbons to save when you reach a new save point, so you're always having one or two extra saves. You beg to get more ribbons... but at the same time once you get a lot of three, you know you can play and save a bit more.

 

Martian gothic is the worst game to me because it's not a bad game. I think if I replayed it with the right mindset I may even like it.

What make it so bad to me is that the gameplay, look and feel are full of promises; but instead you face a boring game with a clumsy gameplay that drown the survival-horror feeling into a numbing item management game.

[Steven Pendleton]

57 minutes ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Best: Soldier Blade on PC Engine.

Worst: Some LJN NES game (any of them).

 

Worst game I own though is Superman 64... though I will not defile my N64 by playing it. I bought it at Goodwill for like 88 cents... I think I paid too much. lol

I need to play Soldier Blade. Speaking of defiling systems, I just made my PC Engine play Keith Courage in Alpha Zones for the first time. Never again. I made it play R-Type I, Super Darius, and Gradius II in order for my PC Engine to stop hating me for playing that horrible game. Too bad I am pretty tired right now and game overed really fast on all of them. Maybe I should play Soldier Blade as well.

[Magmavision2000]

Best: Shenmue (haven't finished it yet though), it's one of the very few games that I'm actually invested in its story.

 

Worst: Coleco Tabletop DK, what do you get when you mix bad controls, unfair jumps, and semi annoying sound? You get this game.

[IntelliMission]

Thanks for the answers, I'm learning a lot and remembering a few things too.

 

I especially like CatPix reply, where both his best and worst games are PS1 survival horrors.

 

Silent Hill is definitely on my top 10 games. It was one of the surprise masterpieces that started appearing for the PS1 just after I bought the console in late 1997.

 

I was really lucky: major titles as Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Driver, GTA or Gran Turismo, Abe's Odyssee, Spyro did not even exist when I decided to save my weekly allowance for 6 months to buy the console. I only knew Twisted Metal 2, Goal Storm/Winning Eleven (old name of Pro Evolution Soccer), Soul Blade and Resident Evil.

 

I ended up "buying" (actually buying copies) of so many hidden gems or unexpected hits... some of them belonged to genres I haven't even played before (dancing games, musical creation games...). And the coolest thing is that most games were Japanese or American and so these copies were NTSC, removing the PAL borders and 15% slower speed of official conversions.

 

It was a cold February of 1999 and a friend and I bought two copies: Silent Hill and Siphon Filter. The deal was that the final owner of each game would be the one to play the other game for some weeks until it's finished, and then finally each true owner will have his game forever. So I chose Silent Hill as my true game and started playing Siphon Filter. I stopped after the second stage: Since mid 1997, I had played for the first time and finished Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Blood, Tomb Raider and Metal Gear Solid. Siphon Filter simply didn't have a chance. I was busy with Tomb Raider 3, International Superstar Soccer/Goal Storm/Winning Eleven and probably some 3D platform game, so I was not in a hurry.

 

After a few weeks, we finally interchanged our games and I started playing Silent Hill. I can see why CatPix chose it as the best: the game had everything. It has amazing graphics, even using the PS1 limitations to create the fog and using pictures of real buildings as textures. It has outstanding sound, with those noises instead of normal music during the intense sections. And it has perfect gameplay, with fun and balanced action, interesting exploration and only a few puzzles that are just difficult enough. The story is kind of okay for a movie but this is a game, so the narrative is perfect. There are almost no dialogs, you are living the experience.

 

I decided to play the game on normal but without using bullets except when necessary, only with the crowbar. Good times! I also committed the mistake of playing the game 1-2 hours ever night, just before going to bed. Man, those were the worst nightmares I've ever had. I will never play the game again for this reason.

 

But I recommend everyone to give it a try. Definitely better than the first 3 Resident Evils, where your inventory is limited and have to use chests to store things. They are also not as immersive by a mile. Silent Hill has a few WTF gameplay (not story related) elements that I can't reveal but that every player should experience.

Edited March 3, 2020 by IntelliMission

[+LS650]

Best game: DOOM on various platforms, especially Jaguar.  I've played it so-o-o.. much, I can't even begin to estimate how much time I've spent playing it.  Hundreds of hours I'm sure.

Worst game:  This is a hard call, but I'm going to say Vectron for the Intellivision.  Really it's just unplayable.

[Newsdee]

Best Game: Saint's Row IV.  It reminded me of City of Heroes, an MMO I used to play. I liked that it didn't take itself too seriously and the extreme character customization it offers.
I wouldn't replay it though; too many other things to try. Witcher and Planescape:Torment were much more enjoyable to me story-wise, but I consider them less accessible than SR (hence why I pick SR for this thread).

 

Worst Games: Many "adult" games that came out over the years were downright terrible.

In particular, arcade-style games that basically used the mature theme to sell, but didn't have any other redeeming quality (not even a basic storyline, or some kind of card game simulation).

 

 

 

 

[IntelliMission]

6 hours ago, Newsdee said:

Worst Games: Many "adult" games that came out over the years were downright terrible.

In particular, arcade-style games that basically used the mature theme to sell, but didn't have any other redeeming quality (not even a basic storyline, or some kind of card game simulation).

 

You gotta choose one of those. Rules of the topic. ?

 

Seriously, it would be great to know the name of one of them, the one you disliked the most. I'm curious now.

Edited March 5, 2020 by IntelliMission

[mbd30]

Best: Tetris (NES)

 

Worst: Custer's Revenge (Atari 2600)

 

I guess Custer's Revenge "wins" because it's offensive in addition to being an awful game. It was a tough call between that and Action 52.

[NE146]

Worst? I've been playing video games since the 70's so I've seen a lot. Aside from the simpler trash games on the 2600, flash games on the web, etc.. the ONE game beyond those which comes into mind whenever I think 'Whew! That was a bad game.' is Pit Fighter for the SNES

 

Best. Same thing.. there's way too many bests throughout the decades. I was going to say Link to the Past but it's not like I ever play that anymore past the dozen or so times I've completed it.. I'm done with it.  So if I don't play it today is it still the best?

 

If that's the case I guess to me the best is Robotron. It's ancient, primitive and visceral.. the sprites jump large sections at time. But it's a game I have played consistently for nearly 4 decades. That has to mean something.

[IntelliMission]

NE146, the way I see it, you don't need to play a game several times to consider it the best you've ever played.

 

Some games, especially one player games, are one time experiences. You lose the surprise factor the second time (unless it's 10-20 years later, and even then you remember many things). I know some guy who finished Monkey Island every couple of years or so. He told me he had beaten the game 20 times and tried to do some kind of speedrun before me. It's also my favorite game, but I have only finished it twice. I waited almost 10 years for the second attempt, when I was sure I didn't remember most of the puzzles.

 

And then there are some Japanese games that I would place in my top 10, such as Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill, that are so dramatic I don't even want to play them again (Silent Hill gave me nightmares and the torture in Metal Gear Solid gave me a contracture in the shoulder).

[Punisher5.0]

On 3/3/2020 at 4:21 AM, IntelliMission said:

 

Best game: The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) (check out this amazing 1h review of the game I just discovered)

 

That was a fantastic video. Thanks for sharing it

[Steven Pendleton]

I totally forgot about Action 52! Would Action 52 itself count or would it have to be one of the games contained in Action 52? I tried a few of the games on the Genesis version and they are pretty bad. Then I tried the NES version on the MiSTer and it's even worse. Can I take back Fellowship of the Ring? At least that game is mostly playable, but I think some of the games on Action 52 don't even work and crash when you select them.

[Newsdee]

18 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

 

You gotta choose one of those. Rules of the topic. ?

Seriously, it would be great to know the name of one of them, the one you disliked the most. I'm curious now.

 

I can't find it now, I stumbled across this DOS shareware some weeks ago and it was just terrible.

Perhaps it shouldn't count because it wasn't made by a company (just a random dude) and bad games like that are legion.

To change my reply... the one famous game that I disliked the most was... The Sims (and sequels).
I understand why people like it but it always felt tedious to me.  Perhaps as a a result of playing a lot of Sim City back in the day.

It's not a bad game objectively, just not a good game for my taste. I also have trouble with Civ sequels, they feel like a convoluted version of Civ 1 to me.

Edited March 6, 2020 by Newsdee

[IntelliMission]

The question was about any game, not just commercial... it's funnier this way. Sometimes even the programmer(s) of those shitty shareware/type-in games recognize their games suck. ?

[Newsdee]

In that case... check out Executioners by Bloodlust Software.

(interestingly, they later came up with a pretty famous emulator, NESticle)

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9a48z3/the-story-of-nesticle-the-ambitious-emulator-that-redefined-retro-gaming

Edited March 6, 2020 by Newsdee

[Bloodreign]

Best game, too many to name, worst game, freaking Hydlide. A friend of mine gave me this years ago, the music is painful on the ears, it had no business being on the NES for as old and damned near unplayable as it is. A good NES port of an early 80's arcade game is fine as they tend to be twitchy, but Hydlide is an early RPG/Adventure game, and it is clunky as hell.

[high voltage]

Best Game: Curse of the Azure Bonds, me and my work colleague played this game from 20:00 evening till 08:00 early morning, winning. Marvellous.

Worst Game: Sssnake, I mean 'really?, yes 'really', that bad.

[IntelliMission]

1 hour ago, Bloodreign said:

Best game, too many to name

 

Try to choose one! ☝️??

[adamchevy]

Best : Robotron 2084

Worst: World of Warcraft

[IntelliMission]

@adamchevy That's a really interesting choice of games, because I'm sure that many people (especially the ones born after 1990) consider World of Warcraft the best game they've ever played and I suspect they would probably choose Robotron 2084 (or any game with similar graphics) as their worst gaming experience if you only showed them one particular game of that era.

 

I've never played WoW because I'm not into RPG games, but I am curious... what made you dislike it so much? Do you prefer deeper RPG games?

Edited March 7, 2020 by IntelliMission

[adamchevy]

[mention=36990]adamchevy[/mention] That's a really interesting choice of games, because I'm sure that many people (especially the ones born after 1990) consider World of Warcraft the best game they've ever played and I suspect they would probably choose Robotron 2084 (or any game with similar graphics) as their worst gaming experience if you only showed them one particular game of that era.
 
I've never played WoW because I'm not into RPG games, but I am curious... what made you dislike it so much? Do you prefer deeper RPG games?

I dislike it because it theoretically has no end. I dislike the social classes that are created because of play time, which I think is a total waste of your life.

I think the idea of an mmorpg is a good idea, but the way World of Warcraft is designed to keep you playing reminds me of the casinos I grew up around in Las Vegas.