Shadow of The Colossus. Archetypal hero type fights 16 giant monsters to save his dead love. There's literally nothing else in The Forbidden Lands save for lizards and platforming puzzles. You're playing to see what the next colossus looks like. It's a game pared down to its barest essentials.
Also: absolutely incredible graphics, it's actually confusing to me how the PS2 can handle it.
Outer Wilds is my favorite game, it's just so tight between the narrative and the gameplay, there's not a second wasted and everything ties together appropriately and it doesn't overstay it's welcome so long as you're moderately competent at the sleuthing. Better yet is the DLC they released was equally satisfying while remaining a standalone narrative with it's own themes and mechanics, while still managing to tie in nicely with the base game narrative. I would suggest holding off on playing it until you've completed the OG, but theoretically you could do it anytime during the playthrough.
I guess the only downside I can think of is re-playability, being a mystery/puzzle game once you've acquired the prerequisite knowledge it's a bell that cannot be un-rung and experienced again with the same novelty. Maybe someday I'll go back, but until then I'll suffice with the tear-jerking OST of both game and DLC, as I'm reminded of the most humanistic and existential game I've ever played.
The only fault I can find are the relatively unwieldy controls. Had a friend who just got frustrated with the spaceship control and dropped it, despite my strong recommendations.
And spoiler do not click if you want to play the game ever which you should just do it stop arguing it's fantastic:
seriously dont
i got stuck on the hourglass twin puzzle with the warp. I understood the concept of warping to the other planet right, but apparently if you miss the timing, the sandstorm just yeets you into the sky. After three attempts I gave up and hours later had to ask the internet. Was a bit sad, because I just missed it by a fraction of a second.
I had a friend play through it and stream it for me to watch, and it was a great experience for us both. Got a lot of that sense of wonder that I had when I first played it myself.
Lol vicariously re experiencing the game is a pastime on YouTube. Symbalily and "About Oliver" have good LPs.
Zelda - A link to the past: Set the Zelda formula for the next two decades. Aged imho better than OoT, because it stayed within the capabilities of the SNES and the pixelart is timeless. Wonderful vibes, great pacing and just so much fun.
A link to the past is my favourite Zelda Game. I wish they would make something of that format and style again.
It’s ironic, because the first place my brain goes with the prompt “perfect game” is Hades. In terms of what it sets out to be, the combat, the gameplay loop, the art, the story, writing, voice acting, music, the game doesn’t miss a mark.
However, I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest game I’ve ever played. Often times the great ones have flaws, sometimes deep ones, but that’s part of the nature of pushing limits. It’s rare to do something novel and untested in a medium and also do it perfectly.
I don't know if I agree that it's perfect for one reason: the difficulty curve is weird. It does a great job of easing you in as you're learning the game through the thoughtful upgrade systems and by slowly unfolding the stories each run. But once you win the first time, the skills you've learned coupled with the big Darkness payoff can make future runs much, much easier.
Obviously the Heat levels are supposed to counteract this, but if you increase by one heat per run per weapon to collect all of the boss rewards, some players might not be challenged again for dozens of runs until the Heat modifiers start making a difference.
Also the game won't give me void fish to fill out the codex 
Most roguelites are like that tbh, except some older ones like Nuclear Throne from the days before permanent progress got really integrated into the genre.
I personally don't really consider it a flaw so much as a shift, because once you hit that point you have the tools and more freedom to branch out and try less optimized builds because they're fun.
Undertale. I can't find fault with this game that i can do it with my other favourite game. Not Prey, not FO4, not stardew, not half-life 2, not darksouls 3, not monhunt 4u/world.
It just went above and beyond what a game of its size and scope should achieve. It should have been a little niche game, praised by some critics in a blog post here and there and gotten some mild success in a steam sale. But the music and the writing dragged it into the spotlight and made it unavoidable for anyone talking about games ever again, as it should be.
Ocarina Of Time because I'm old and I still think it holds up. Dark Souls 1 probably for the same reason even though it is janky.
A friend of mine played Ocarina of Time for the first time a couple of years ago, and did confirm that it's legitimately great and not just nostalgia glasses.
I loved Link to the Past so much that Orcarina was a let down to me at the time.
DS1 is many wonderful things, but far from perfect. Iconic, visionary, genre defining - yes. Perfect? Only if you stop at Ornstein and Smough.
Perfect? Only if you stop at Ornstein and Smough.
I really feel that one. In fact the first time through i did basically stop after Ornstein and Smough. Everything thats great about the game kind of unravels a bit after that point. If the game stopped there, it would be a lot closer to perfect. Still love DS1 though obviously
HADES
HADES YOU HAVE TO PLAY HADES.
It's the closest a game ever got to perfection without being some barebones abstraction like Tetris or something.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is a game that has incredible gameplay, perfect controls, tons of content, and stellar graphics (that got even better in the SNES remake).
The first thing i think of in terms of a perfect game is Link to the Past. Its a perfect excecution that still holds up like over 30 years later
If I think of more later I'll try to remember to come back to this thread and edit my post.
Aside: There needs to be more high speed competitive games like Rocket League that use 120HZ event loops (that aren't just twitch reflex FPSes). I miss playing a game with the controller where careful and precise control would make you feel like you had a superpower compared to the average player. Like, if you practiced enough you could keep the ball on your car (aka dribbling) and flip it up in the air just before an opponent tried to take it from you (making them feel sooooooo inadequate haha). Also, expert mid-air maneuvering could have you completely crushing your opponents with them feeling like they didn't stand a chance... Not because you got lucky and/or bought the best equipment but because of your sheer skill at the game.
I also miss the feeling of being an impenetrable goalie, haha. Even facing off against pros I could lock them out of scoring unless they coordinated their attacks. It felt sooooo good to block a well-executed, amazing double touch ceiling shot and then... "Calculated" followed by another block within a second from their teammate, "Calculated". Ahahaha. Good times.
The only game that has truly achieved perfection is Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque
StarCraft brood war is the perfect convergence of bugs and intentionally difficult mechanics that kicked off the entire e sports industry and it consumed my entire teenage years.
Diablo 2 similarly was a perfect accident by Blizzard. I can go back and play it or the remaster any time and have a good time, even if the remaster has new questionable content
gotta go with tetris here just for the addictive and pure mechanics
Time to start a struggle session.
In terms of the graphical-technical, musical, and narrative achievements, I consider Genshin Impact as a "perfect game".
I consider Factorio very close to perfect. It does what it wants to do very well and has a functional but pretty visual look.
Ori and the Blind Forest and especially its sequel, Will of the Wisps, are both games where I genuinely don't have any critiques of the gameplay or story. There are some games that I like playing more, like Elden Ring, because they have more things to do and choices and such, but those two games for me have immaculate vibes and perfectly execute the vision of the developers.
It's very easy for sequels of games to become overloaded in the quest to add more stuff so that they feel like different games, which usually comes in the form of adding lots of discrete subsystems which can be interesting but often not very intuitive for new players especially in aggregate. This is not so for Will of the Wisps, where there are new abilities but all of them feel like completely natural things that you should obviously be able to do, and are very simple. The most "complicated" addition is an improved combat system with more choices especially for boss battles, but the first game relied on chase sequences rather than battles, so it's not as if you could critique the first game for not having a better combat system for boss battles when it doesn't even have them (it would be like critiquing Portal for not having a hunger system or something). And the combat system in WotW is kept pretty tight and simple and the animations and how they chain together have the correct physics and weightiness.
A game like Path of Exile on the other hand is really my nightmare game, where it feels like the whole thing is just a shitload of discrete subsystems duct-taped together without a strong skeleton holding it together. Most games fall on a spectrum between the "streamlined, simple, tight" design and the "chaotic, complicated, expansive" design though.
It's very easy for sequels of games to become overloaded in the quest to add more stuff so that they feel like different games, which usually comes in the form of adding lots of discrete subsystems which can be interesting but often not very intuitive for new players especially in aggregate.
That’s what happened with Tears of the Kingdom, the fuse mechanic was amazing on paper, fuse any item in the game to an arrow, but in practice there was only like ten items that made any sense to fuse to them and the rest were pointless.
NGL I love teetering shitheaps like Path of Exile and Warframe. It's probably my own modder/dev brain but I can really feel the devs having fun playing around with this thing they've made, this solid foundation, and just filling it with stuff they thought was cool.
Half life Alyx for me. I've played hundreds of games in every genre and nothing has ever given me such a visceral emotional reaction as that game. From beginning to end I was drawn into the experience so much I forgot how to use my hands in real life.
Morrowind
I want to love Morrowind but I can't get past the combat being so 2006
Half-Life (1998), Deus Ex (2000), GTA San Andreas (2004)
All three games that are great writing, plot and gameplay wise, while also being actually finished (which is shockingly uncommon among the GOAT games)
I like a podcast by the Crashlands devs, and instead of talking about great or perfect games, they talk about games that "nailed it" vs "missed the mark." There's no such thing as a singular perfect game, but games that flawlessly execute their devs' vision or games that click with you, personally, in a way that other games just don't.
My personal example is Magicka, because it's incredibly janky and flawed and has the worst fucking netcode I've ever seen that still technically works. But the free-flowing spellcasting and globally-enabled friendly fire, it's a combination that hit me so perfectly it actually shifted my taste in games ever since. It feels like something is missing now when a game doesn't trust me enough to give me enough power to be a danger to myself.
Magicka is one of those rare games where it being technically borked actually made it more memorable. One session i was hosting for friends somehow I ended up in a mirror dimension in the boss arena but I had no boss in mine. But I could drop mines and blow them up which did damage to the boss in the dimension that it existed. I've never seen netcode do such wacky things especially when I'm the host.
Outer wilds.
It's the perfect length (8-14 hours), it's not too difficult nor too easy, provides satisfying movement systems that are responsive and just make sense logically/mentally.
The story isn't spoon fed to you but isn't so cryptic that you're lost and its puzzles are incredibly satisfying to solve while depending entirely on your knowledge so they feel fair.
The vibes that the soundtrack, soundspace, and aesthetics all come together to engross you in are just impeccable.
It also just sticks with you for so long, a good game makes you think about it while not playing. OW has you thinking about it for years after being done with it.
People are going to say Tetris, but they are wrong. There are hundreds of variations of Tetris all with different mechanics and gameplay elements, from the way the pieces move, to the way the next random piece is selected, most people just don't notice them. I'd recommend anybody who likes Tetris to play a round of Tetris Grandmaster 2 Plus and you'll see that the "standard" Tetris we get copyrighted from the Tetris Company is far from perfect. TGM really just feels fantastic and after playing it it genuinely feels hard to go back.
Two games I'd consider as-close-to-perfect as you can get are Outrun 2006 and F-Zero GX. Outrun 2006 is just perfect arcade fun, drifting at 200mph through those extremely varied environments with those cheesy vocal tracks is a complete blast (the minigame mode adds great variety as well).
F-Zero GX is just mechanically incredible, with the manual boost, boost pads and your cars energy providing a perfect risk-to-reward system with incredible tracks that feel perfectly designed to take advantage of the mechanics and all feel different. Then there's the games infamously high difficulty which turns every race into a High-Speed-high-adrenaline-rush. Not to mention the fantastic music, the story mode with really characterful cutscenes and and the dozens upon dozens of unlockables. I don't think there has ever been another racer that feels als fully featured as F-Zero GX, it truly feels like a swan song for the series, it's as perfect as games get.
Tetris
Latest Hitman series and the Yakuza JRPG.
FF7 was the peak of JRPG development and nothing has really hit that peak since.
Left 4 Dead 2
Neon White is a perfect game. Unparalleled soundtrack, perfect gameplay loop, replayable, great voice acting, immaculate game feel, and it's single player. If you like speedrunning and trying for the "perfect" time, I highly recommend it on keyboard and mouse. I'm not even a shooter guy, but I still like it.
You collect cards in level, and you can either use them as guns or discard them for mobility, which provides a lot of flexibility and room for creativity. You can also rotate through the cards and save them for later.
The design of the three tier time scoring system is addictive, and then after that, you can try to climb the online leader boards.
Depends heavily on how you define it, but I see perfection as kind of unatainable. A game might come really, really close, but I haven't find the one that I think is perfect yet.
There are games I love to death like NieR: Automata, Isaac, Dark Souls 3 and Skyrim, but there's always something that could be better, as much as I love these games, be it technical-wise, gameplay-wise, or whatever else.
Also, even if I really think a game is perfect, that would be only for me, other people are gonna have a differing opinions and might disagree with that, so it ends up being a very personal thing.
That being said, there's 2 games I'm playing right now that are impressing me so fucking hard.
I'm finally playing Breath Of the Wild, and fuck, why have I waited so long? I must be only 15 - 20 hours in, but holy shit is it so good so far, I can't believe it.
The other one is Baldur's Gate 3, I have only 6 or so hours so far, but this game is so charismatic, like, how??? I didn't get the love for the characters I have seen all over the internet, but literally 5 minutes talking to them and I kind of get it now.
I really hope these 2 come close to how good I always see people talking about.
Kingdom Hearts 2 Critical Mode is perfection and I haven't played anything since then that scratches that same combat itch. You take more damage, but dish out a lot too. The Org XIII fights are amazing and you have to use everything in Sora's toolkit to beat them. It's not just a button masher like the regular difficulty is.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and its a damn shame FromSoft never did anything with it
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
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