What is the greatest game ever made? One of our esteemed colleagues here in Gaming Respawn decided to throw out this little hypothetical question to the rest of us on this site, supposedly out of curiosity’s sake (but I’m largely sure he was just angling for another group feature). This question then snowballed itself into this feature, where a few of us share our thoughts on what we believe are the video games that stand above all the rest and will likely be forever hailed as the best games, now and forever. Join us in “Gaming Respawn’s Greatest Game Ever Made” and find out if your choices match any of ours.
Peter Keen
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Sic Parvis Magna – Greatness from Small Beginnings
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Without question, the greatest game ever made is Uncharted 2. This is obviously subjective as if your favourite genre of gaming is multiplayer FPS shooters, then the greatest game in that category is, again, without question, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The “Daddy” of FPS shooters that has defined how to make and what to expect from an FPS shooter ever since.
Me, however, I’m more of a single-player, story-driven, third-person adventure type gamer. Tomb Raider, God of War, James Bond, The Last of Us, Stellar Blade, Ghost of Tsushima, Dead Space, etc. The game that sticks out a country mile in this category and hit me the hardest when playing it was, and still is, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
It was the 11th November 2009 at precisely 19:42:03 seconds in Asda Oadby, (Leicester) for £39.71 that I bought Uncharted 2. I still have the receipt. I bought the game as I was kind of getting bored of what I had been playing and wanted something different. I had played the demo of the first Uncharted and thought it was okay, but on a whim, I bought Uncharted 2.
My gaming life changed forever from that point on.
I literally could yarn for ages about this game, but I am aware I need to keep this somewhat brief. So, what was it about the game that won me over to think of it as the best game of all time?
The short version would be, for me, this was the first game I played on my PS3 that crossed the boundaries between playing a game/watching a film. The story, presentation, characters, and narrative were spectacular. I laughed, I cried, I worried every step of the way. I was on a ride. It was the first game that made me get my wife and friends to stop what they were doing to tell them, “You have to come look at this!”. Then, there was the train level! It blew my mind that a game could do that!
One of the best qualities the game has that is very underrated in today’s world is the humour. The game still has some of the best one-liners and quotable jokes in gaming that even today cannot be beaten. I still quote them even now.
This film vibe wouldn’t work, though, if the game’s graphics didn’t look as spectacular as they do. I fired up the game again on my PS3, and even today on that hardware, it STILL looks stunning. The gameplay was smooth, the gunplay excellent, the puzzles just this side of frustrating and the platforming fun.
This is the game I have played through more than anything else in my life. It recently overtook Devil May Cry. I’ve now played Uncharted 2 from start to finish seven times, and I could quite happily sit down and do it all over again.
It wasn’t just the single-player adventure I adored. I also really fell in love with the multiplayer side of the game too, especially the game mode Plunder. Plunder was an Uncharted version of Call of Duty’s Capture the Flag, just with fewer helicopters and kill streaks. That’s what I loved about it; it was simplistic, gun-on-gun fun.
I seem to recall there was a time when the servers were shut down, but you could still access the local multiplayer game from your own console for any LAN matches. I didn’t have that kind of friendship with enough people to do that, so what I used to do was get into a lobby by myself and wander around the maps for a literal in-game walk in the multiplayer world.
Overall though, the main thing about the game that I liked was the feeling that I was not only watching a great film or playing a game, but I was also learning a bit of history with it. Admittedly, the real historical facts were bent somewhat for the game’s narrative, but the game impacted me enough to take the time to read about the real adventures of Sir Francis Drake and Marco Polo.
The game also impacted me in real life to take the time to find and wear a leatherbound watch, just like Drake has. Do you have any idea how hard it was to find something similar?
I platinumed Uncharted 2 and have also platinumed it again when it was part of the PS4 Nathan Drake Collection. Whilst playing the game on that collection, I streamed the entire game from start to finish, titled: “The Greatest Game Ever”.
There are other opinions as to the greatest game, but this game affected my entire gaming life to which I subconsciously judge every other game I have played ever since. So yes, for me, it’s the greatest game ever made.
Tasha Quinn
Persona 5 Royal
I think that there’s always going to be an element of bias when someone is asked what they believe the best game ever made is. A game could be almost flawless, but if I don’t like it, I can’t make that claim about it. That being said, there are games that I adore that I can’t make the claim about either. There is a game that I think falls into both categories: Persona 5 Royal. Between the base game and Royal, I’ve dedicated a huge amount of time to Persona 5, and frankly, I haven’t regretted it. It’s rare for me to do a full replay of a game as big as Persona 5. I was initially against buying Royal when it originally came out because I thought it was just a cheap cash-grab with a little extra content, but boy, was I wrong.
Persona 5 Royal adds so much new content that it was like playing a new game. It wasn’t just dumped at the end either; it was woven throughout the game, making something I already considered to be brilliant even better. I really enjoyed Persona 3 and 4, but I think Persona 5 nailed just about everything. The cast of characters is amazing. Each one of them has a lot of depth, giving them a compelling reason to join the Phantom Thieves. Even the villains are well written, leading to the creation of one of the best, most sympathetic villains I’ve ever come across in video games.
I loved the gameplay variation it offered. I’d get just as hooked on the social sim aspect as I would exploring palaces. It’s one of the rare games that actually made me lose track of time because I just wanted to play one more day. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of turn-based games, the combat in Persona 5 is so flashy and fun that I never found myself minding it. Then there’s the music. The songs by Lyn Inaizumi have no business being as good as they are. I’ve got most of them in my Spotify playlist because, damn, they’re good. I genuinely don’t think there’s a bad track in the whole game. There are a lot of games that excel in a couple of areas, but in my opinion, Persona 5 excels in most areas. I’m sitting here trying to think of an issue I had with the game, and I can’t. I’m not the only person either; the reviews speak for themselves.
Will Worrall
Shadow of the Colossus
It’s a hell of a tough question: “What game is the best ever made?”. For a fair few years there, a certain subset of the gaming crowd would have told you that it was Ocarina of Time, apparently entirely blinded by their own nostalgia and years of staring at pixels and polygons. For my money, the question was nearly impossible to answer until, sitting around playing Ico one day, I was comparing Ico to the follow-up, Shadow of the Colossus, and said it wasn’t a fair comparison because “Shadow of the Colossus is the best game ever made…oh.”. And so, my answer was found.
Shadow of the Colossus is still, to this day, a groundbreaking masterpiece of epic proportions. It’s the mark of a great game that, without needing almost anything, anyone can pick it up and play it. There are no dialogue-heavy scenes, no massive tutorials, and no secondary characters following you around the place jabbering in your ear-hole. With nothing but a sword, a bow, and a horse, you’ve got an epic journey and a classical tragedy at the same time.
Even amongst those friends that clearly didn’t care about the art-house styling or the deep narrative meaning of games, they still loved and played the hell out of Shadow of the Colossus, and in many ways, it’s that accessibility that manages to make this into the best game ever. Unlike a lot of other games, the gameplay is simple enough that practically anyone can play, but it’s in-depth enough that it feels like a grand adventure that takes place over weeks or a month.
When you combine it all with the wonderful environment that you’re free to explore from the get-go, then it’s no wonder that, despite being decades old at this point, people are still thinking, talking about, and definitely still playing Shadow of the Colossus.
Matthew Wojciow
BioShock
When thinking about a game that is pure brilliance in every department, it’s always tricky. For one reason or another, something just lets the game down, whether that be a weak-ish ending or annoying level or something in-between. However, I managed to narrow my choice down to two: Dead Space Remake and the original BioShock. In the end, I went with the original BioShock. What made me pick the original BioShock over the Dead Space Remake is that the latter had the chance to fix the issues the original had, whereas the original BioShock does not need sections redone or mechanics tweaked and is still just as fun to play almost two decades on from its original release.
Breaking the game down, it still looks and sounds amazing, with the eerie nature of the ruined utopia of Rapture still a pleasure to explore, even in its base Xbox 360 version, and more so in BioShock: The Collection. I always notice new details about this world every time I replay the game, and the collectable audio diaries really do flesh out what this world was like before it went to ruin.
The gameplay is extremely varied thanks to the plasmids. There are always new combinations to try and mess around with, and the general progression of how powerful you are throughout never makes the game boring. Also, it rewards you for exploring as the weapon upgrade stations aren’t always in obvious locations, so it pays to be thorough. Lastly, you have that truly incredible story. I would pay good money for the memory wiper gizmo from Men in Black so I can experience that rug pull twist again. Every character is well written, and the fact the ending you get depends on how heartless you are really makes it worth replaying to see the other side of the coin. A truly magnificent game that I am proud to have as one of my very few platinums.
Daniel Garcia-Montes
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
When asked which game I think is the greatest game ever made, it took some doing for me to think up of an answer. The question wasn’t which game is my favorite (though that’s not an easy one to answer either) but which game do I feel is the greatest one ever made. In order to find a legit answer, I had to look at things both objectively and subjectively. There are many games and series I’ve played over the years that I absolutely love, like Metal Gear Solid, God of War, Mass Effect, Ghost of Tsushima, the Insomniac Spider-Man games, and others. And there are even more that I enjoy but that I can also understand not everyone else would like as much as me, let alone think any of them could be considered the greatest games ever made. There are many different video game genres out there, and among them, many consist of a multitude of aspects and features. Some games blur the lines of what separates a game from a movie or show (Metal Gear Solid and God of War come to mind again), others are all about pure gameplay (such as Call of Duty and other multiplayer-focused games), and yet others have very little actual gameplay and are almost entirely focused on narratives (like Dispatch and other visual novel-type games).
For my part, the greatest game ever made should be able to do it all: possess great gameplay, have a great story, and contain enough content to make your playthrough worthwhile and memorable without making you wonder when the hell it’s going to end. The games I listed above that I absolutely love all meet these requirements. But I can think of only one game that does it all even better than those games. Only one game feels so complete, so damn near close to perfect that, even though I’ve only played it once (so far), I still think about it to this day and can’t help but be impressed with how it expertly and seamlessly brought together so many features almost flawlessly. That game is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
The Witcher 3 is a fantasy action-RPG, though it’s also so much more than that. There are plenty of other fantasy RPGs out there, but what sets The Witcher 3 apart from the rest is its balance between engaging gameplay and its very well-written story that can go in so many different directions based on the player’s choices. With regards to the story, The Witcher 3 sets a very high bar. The writing, presentation, and immersion are almost unmatched compared to other cinematic games, but again, it can go in so many directions based on the player’s choices in so many missions, not just in the main campaign but in the side missions as well. Your choices have consequences for Geralt, but even when you think you made the “right” choice, you’ll still be met with unforeseen results, and bad s**t ends up happening anyway. Not always but still pretty often. Lots of times, you have only crappy choices and must choose the least crappy one among them…or you can make Geralt a complete asshole and choose the worst option on purpose.
As for the combat and gameplay…it’s great. I can’t say the combat is as good as in other combat-focused games like Nioh, but it’s still tight and works very well. Geralt has a number of combat skills and Signs (spells) to use against enemies, as well as potions and gadgets that can provide useful debuffs for enemies or buffs for Geralt. And there are plenty of swords and armor sets for Geralt to use as well. The open-world is also full of stuff to find and missions to undertake. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt basically combines the immersion and mission structure of Skyrim with the cinematic flair and choice-based storytelling of Mass Effect, along with combat that rivals that in Dragon’s Dogma. It’s just that good, and that is why I believe it to be the greatest game ever made. And to think, I almost didn’t play it at all since I never got to play the earlier games in the series.
