Summary
Good games are a rare breed, and great video games among them are even rarer still. From those great games come the games that shape the entire industry going forward, managing to win multiple awards for beinga revolutionary game.
These video games have managed to excel in almost every way, gaining critical acclaim for the work put into them. They rise to the level of the best video games ever released, managing to send waves throughout the industry that other developers learn from. None of these games are better than the last, since all of them were great for their own time, but there’s no denying that they’re among the best titles of all time.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is thesecond entry in the Red Dead Redemption seriesand is perhaps a rival for the most beautiful game ever. With breathtaking environments and its amazingly artistic portrayal of the Wild West, RDR2 deserves all the awards it has gotten.
It was a defining video game with almost no rivals in the action-adventure open-world genre, even five years after its release. If Rockstar’s magnum opus ended up at the bottom of this list, imagine just how amazing the rest of the entries are.
Uncharted 4 takes cinematic action-adventure games to the peak with the amazing way in which they tell the story. The light-hearted premise is perfectly contrasted with real stakes, and the character depth is at the next level in a video game, as if you’re watching an interactive TV show.
It’s one of the few Triple-A titles that is amazing in almost every aspect, and its gameplay is exceptional, too. It’s a great send-off to one of the best gaming series out there, and as the fourth and final entry set new heights for video games.
The never ending video game that has spawned endless re-releases and has one of the most active modding communities of all time, Skyrim is a classic. When it came out, it was a revolutionary RPG that offered next-level freedom in the Elder Scrolls world and had well-thought-out story lines and side quests that built upon the main game.
The Elder Scrolls 5 deserved all of its awards because of the atmosphere it created, and it’s still one of the most played games on Steam right now,thanks to the modders who keep building upon one of the best gamesof all time.
A PS exclusive for a time,The Last of Uschanged the landscape of storytelling in video gamesby taking the overused Zombie genre and introducing a deep character-driven narrativeabout Joel and Ellie.
HBO has even adapted the game into a TV series of the same name, which has also won awards. A remastered version and a remake for PS5 and PC have maintained the quality of the original game and even expanded upon it in some ways.
A Nintendo original,The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was a fresh new take on open-world video games that now relies on your creativity and problem-solving skills to progress instead of holding your hand throughout the playthrough.
The visual aesthetic and the iconic music elevate the atmosphere of the game, which garnered critical acclaim the day it was released. The sequel, Tears of the Kingdom,built upon the original formula and gave us a great experience as well, but Breath of the Wild was ahead of its time.
God of Waris one of the best soft reboots to an almost dead series that added so much depth to the once all-consuming anger of Kratos.It shifted from Greek mythology to Norse mythologyand instead of focusing on larger than life stakes and vengeance, God of War tells the story of Kratos and his son Atreus as they explore the Norse world to scatter Atreus’s mother’s ashes while being thwarted by petty Gods.
By shifting the focus on the characters, God of War provided a similar narrative experience to The Last of Us and even surpassed it in some ways, providing players with a fresh story while staying true to its roots.
Baldur’s Gate 3is the most recent video game to have won this many awards for its unique and interesting take on party RPGs. The sheer amount of choice in this game blows every other RPG on the list out of the water,thanks to years of expertise on the developer’s part when crafting their best game yet.
There are a lot of characters and a lot of content that guarantees hundreds of hours of gameplay, even if you take the linear approach, and the extreme level of replayability will no doubt cement this game’s position as one of the most revolutionary games out there.
The game that essentially became the industry standard of action RPGs, CD Project Red really went above and beyond forThe Witcher 3, which became a fan-favorite the moment it was released. As a game that was released in 2015, The Witcher 3 had no right to look as amazing and have as much content as it does.
It tookmedieval fantasy settings in video games to the next leveland went down as one of the best video games of all time because of its approach to Andrzej Sapowski’s works, elevating the narrative and inspiring TV shows like Netflix’s The Witcher.
The Last of us Part 2, just like its predecessor, provided players with an unmatched story full of twists and turns that were a big risk for the studio that paid off in an amazing way.
With the third Naughty Dog game receiving critical acclaim for its story, the developers have cemented themselves as one of the best storytellers when it comes to video games, unlike any other publisher at the moment. With the second season of HBO’s Last of Us on its way, The Last of Us Part 2 will get even more time in the spotlight and deserves its place on this list.
Elden Ringis FromSoftware’s best game yet that, besides having the most engaging style of gameplay for a video game, reached new heights with its open world system that is crammed with content.
There are huge side quests that will take you an eternity to figure out if you’re playing without using the Wikiand the story has a lot of depth. Overall, it deserves the number of awards it has gotten for taking creativity to the next level and combining all sorts of art forms that elevated it to a masterpiece.
