Outer Wilds

Chrono Trigger

The story is great. The music is timeless. The replay-ability of the game is off the charts. You can change the combat style to be time-based instead of turn-based.

Sekiro (RPG).

It's not necessarily representative of RPGs as a whole, but man, I have never played a game that felt so polished. The combat is immaculate, the levels are beautiful, and more subtly, the power scaling is really well tuned. Because it's not open world, they were able to hand tune the enemies' difficulty more closely to match your own progression, and for me, it resulted in fights that always felt challenging but fair.

Hades is perfect. Every single pillar of that game supports each other.

In terms of games that were so advanced they almost feel like they were made by time travellers:

• Elite (1984) - procedural open world space sim

• Ultima VII (1992) - full NPC schedules, open world and day/night system so you could rob stores at nights, follow people, etc. and awesome exploration. In 1992!

• X-COM (1994) - a voxel-based LOS system, destructible environment, z-levels, natural elevation on terrain (deforming the isometric grid), reaction fire, etc.

• Daggerfall (1996) - a faction system, procedurally generated areas and quests, a lot of options to get to different areas (climbing, levitation, etc.)

• Thief (1998) - a full sound simulation with different materials having different properties, the ability to extinguish torches (dynamic lighting!) and cover metal surfaces, a light system for visibility too (now commonplace).

• Baldur's Gate (1998) - a semi open-world AD&D2e implementation - with co-op multiplayer! (most modern games don't manage this)

• Deus Ex (2000) - a branching FPS/RPG campaign where choices matter with a basic stealth system and lots of approaches to each level. It was basically a completely modern game out of nowhere in 2000.

• Runescape (2001) - one of the first major graphical MMORPGs with a full player economy.

• Morrowind (2002) - a fully 3D open world with a lot of options for magic (including custom magic) and exploration.

• Hitman 2 (2002) - first stealth-focussed game with a full disguise system, map, etc.

• Oblivion (2006) - like Morrowind but with some NPC schedules (like Ultima VII), a stealth system (based on Thief) and Havok physics based traps.

• Red Faction: Guerrilla (2009) - fully destructible buildings and environments in an open-world campaign.

Those are the ones that really stick out (also Super Mario and Zelda on consoles, especially the SNES, N64 and recently on the Switch handheld). It's a shame that the rate of progress seems to have slowed down a lot at least in terms of ground-breaking features and simulations.

But who knows maybe Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield will both be on future lists like this.

Ultima VII really sticks out as just crazy though, that game could have released 10 years later and held up.

Bioshock is the answer.

I’m going to take it back to the SNES days

Chrono Trigger

Earthbound

Super Mario World

Super Metroid

Megaman X

Super Mario RPG

Zelda: A Link to the Past

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

For me it's Half Life 2 because I have such a specific and vivid memory of playing it the first time in my rainy London flat in 2004.

It was this exact moment when I had the experience, for the first time in my life, that:

I'm in this world, I am a part of the game.

Funny OP calls out Half Life: Alyx as one of the best VR games, when VR is all about being 'immersive'.

But for me that moment 16 years earlier will always be the moment I first experienced being 'immersed' in a video game.

Half-Life was a game changer when it came out.

First-person shooters in those days were basically just spawning in a level, shooting generic bad guys and picking up loot. Half-Life had this insane story and they didn’t use any cutscenes or take away control from the player except to load the map, the whole story was told through the environment you explored and the characters you interacted with.

Even 20 years later, people are still having discussions about who the G-Man works for, or whether Dr. Breen (HL2) was a good guy.

The Hitman trilogy has immersive world design and great replayability! One of my favourites.

Dishonored 2 is fantastic! I absolutely love everything about it. The graphics, world design, sounds, music, stealth gameplay, perks, story and etc. I'd live in Carnaca if it was possible! (I have to mention the world design again bc it is so good!!)

How do you classify best? Could a 16 bit be considered best if the mechanics and graphics are spot on? I’m thinking of Zelda ALTTP for instance. The game is just flawless in my opinion.

I have to go way back and vote for the Shenmu trilogy. Open world and RPG.

I agree that Half Life for action adventure.

Definitely Portal 2 and the Talos Principal for puzzle.

Rocket League is awesome and so are the Skate games.

Crazy Taxi and Paradise City belong somewhere too

The Talos Principle is one of my favorite puzzle games of all time because it actually got me to stop, read, and consider the message

Hades, RoR, and RoR 2 are contenders for best roguelike for me. Not my favorite genre but these hooked me with great replayability

Valheim, while unfinished and full of bugs, was my favorite open world experience with friends but I think Astroneer is a more perfect game. It's simple and does a great job "directing" you while you make your own choices. The sound design is unmatched for relaxing

I love strategy games but I'm a basic bitch here without a variety of them so Civ6, Cities Skylines, Advanced Wars, FTL, and Into The Breach are my favs

I'd split action into two separate categories: Action and multiplayer FPS.

Tomb Raider (2013) was a pretty perfect action game for me. Probably not flawless but I look back on it fondly

Overwatch remains my favorite FPS even though I stopped playing awhile ago. There's just no objective-based team shooter with unique roles besides....TF2, my previous favorite FPS

XCOM, XCOM 2 (Strategy)

The balancing of risk/reward, tactics, and roster management spawned a whole genre. The newer XCOMs (Enemy Unknown/Within and War of the Chosen) are still so much fun.

Also, plugging /c/XCOM while I'm here.

Rdr2 deserves a mention

In the sports category, Rocket League is hands down the greatest game ever made. I've got over 3000 hours into it and I still love playing it and watching it. I don't think you can even call other "sports" games sports compared to it, at least the ball based ones.

Best modern games I have played:
Action: Risk of Rain 2 (Roguelite), Hades (Roguelite), Cuphead
Action-Adventure: Alien: Isolation (Stealth/Horror)
Adventure: Subnautica
FPS: Halo 1-Reach (Story), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Competitive)
Puzzle: Portal 2
Role-playing: Divinity: Original Sin 2
Simulation: Rimworld (Colony), Stardew Valley (Farm/Life), Squad (Military), Cities: Skylines (Builder)
Strategy: Civilization 5 (4X), FTL: Faster Than Light (Roguelite), Stellaris (4X)
Sports: Forza Horizon 4
MMO: Old School RuneScape
Openworld: Minecraft
VR: Half-Life: Alyx

Some random games I enjoyed and would recommend:
Prodeus - a retro DOOM-like FPS, really captures the DOOM essence
Tomb Raider reboot: casual action-adventure games, just chill to play through
PlateUp! - a cooking roguelite management game, kinda like Overcooked (which is also a blast)
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes - one person has a bomb, the other the manual to defuse, lots of fun
Planet Coaster - a really good modernisation of the classic Roller Coaster Tycoon games
Sea of Thieves - open world PvPvE pirate adventure game, great fun with friends, wish they had progression though
Satisfactory - a factory building game, like a 3D Factorio (also good), it just needs an ending
Until You Fall - a VR sword fighting roguelite, wish they would expand on it, good fun while your arms dont hurt

From my own Steam stats: Portal 2 (276 h), The Talos Principle (161 h), Skyrim (158 h) and Torchlight (139 h).

But I bet I invested much more time in Doom, Doom II and all the expansions and mods.

And before that in Elite (for the 128K ZX Spectrum).

I'm surprised to not see any love for The Witness. I'm not usually a puzzle guy, but the way they teach you how to play without dialog is incredible and the environment is gorgeous.

Chaos is a brilliant multiplayer turn-based strategy game.
Lemmings is the perfect puzzle game (also shameless plug for !lemmings)

Nobody putting Left 4 Dead or L4D2 out there? I got 2,000 hours across both. Never had that much fun gaming before or since.

This is a VERY BIG question. Should be broken down into smaller categories of gamez.

I really enjoyed both the Ori games, Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. The dev studio more or less got scrapped, but the two games they put out are honestly my favourite platformer games ever made. The music, combat, platforming, story and artwork are all so well done!

Easy.

Disco Elysium for all categories.

It's weird, but the answer I came up with for ALL those categories... was Dark Souls. Even Sports.

For RTS, I like Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.