Honestly, no game is 'perfect.' There's always at least one gameplay section I can say 'Yeah, they could take this out and the game would be better for it' or a technical issue with graphics or framerate or load times or something else keeping it from complete perfection. That said, the closest games to perfect I can think of....
Super Mario Bros. 3
Metal Slug X
Vanquish
Bayonetta
Mega Man 9
Mega Man X and X2
Final Fantasy 6
Dragon Quest 8
God Hand
Gradius V
Contra: Shattered Soldier
Edit: How did I forget Rondo of Blood?! Fucking Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
Tetris. In my opinion, this is still the best puzzle game ever and I think it only got better once t-spins etc came in to the equation. Just a game that is really hard to fault, design-wise.
It's obviously not perfect, but contextually, Super Street Fighter II Turbo blows my mind. Street Fighter II was basically the first fighting game that was actually any good and there wasn't really a precedent for how those games should be made, but they pretty much figured it all out and that game is still a definitive blueprint for how to make a fighting game. Personally, I think Super Turbo is still one of the most interesting games for competitive play and it's still evolving despite its age. Old Hawk is top tier?!?
Grim Fandango. Perhaps the last great adventure game from the era when they were actually popular (could be wrong, maybe Blade Runner was later?) and although the pre-rendered backdrops and super primitive character models of the GrimE engine don't hold up the way later SCUMM games with wonderful handdrawn art do (Full Throttle still looks great, Curse Of Monkey Island is probably one of my favourite looking games), the creativity shown in every facet of the game just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and if you denigrate Grim Fandango, I'll punch you in the mouth. Which I think encapsulates what the OP partly intended with this thread. Games that you wouldn't want to hear a bad word against. Grim Fandango is certainly that to me. Does Disney own Grim now? I hope they do something with it. I still have my discs, but it's a shame it's not available digitally somewhere. What I'd really love to see is for it to get the same treatment that Monkey Island 1 and 2 did. It could certainly use a makeover, since it was in that early age of 3D that has mostly aged terribly. It certainly deserves one, the combination of the Dia De Los Muertos aesthetic mixed with Art Deco, SUBLIME! Special mention to Curse Of Monkey Island as well. Special mention to Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer in general, thanks for the childhood. I think Tim Schafer has proven himself time and time again to be one of the most uncompromisingly creative people in a risky industry so full of games that are antiseptically safe.
Mega Man, take your pick of whichever NES/SNES ones. I actually only came to these about 10 years ago, since I went from a 2600 to a Mega Drive, so there's not really that same element of nostalgia, but that only serves to show that it is really strong design that appeals. I could go in to detail about the controls and the level design, but I mostly just agree with what Egoraptor said in his Mega Man Sequelitis video, so if you're at all interested in that, just go here.
As for more modern stuff, I would say Saints Row: The Third and Mark Of The Ninja both show such incredibly strong design in almost all facets of the game, I find it really hard to fault them and, as somebody really interested in game design, I really respect the understanding of good design shown so prominently in both of those titles. I rambled incoherently about both of these games on my GOTY list for this year, so if you hate yourself, you can read that here.
@Coombs: In my eyes they are. It's a pretty subjective topic, and these are what I consider perfect. I prefer to look at the whole picture, instead of dwelling on things like "I wish they had done this differently, or this, and this" and basically nitpicking a game to death. That's not what being a gamer is about, I think. I took a lot out of these games, have very fond memories of them, and will play them gladly again because I was so impressed and had a really, really great time with them.
@xyzygy: I have played many games that were very good, that I would pick up again, Doesn't make them anything near perfect.
Edit: Really though your list has some very good games, Compared to some of the utterly terrible games that have been listed here I have no arguments other than the sheer number of games you found "perfect"
I'd say Portal 1 and 2, and Half-Life 2 are pretty perfect. Were it not for a few minor technical issues, I would say the same about Bastion and Shadow of the Colossus. I also can't really find fault with the formula for a Fire Emblem game. I guess I'd throw Chrono Trigger into the mix, too.
I like games that have a few flaws, it gives them character.
Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the games I really like are games that I've played to the point that I notice all of their subtle wrinkles. I've also personally found that the more polished a game is the less interesting these vague weaknesses are.
To me perfection would be playing a game and not feeling frustrated at any point
Now, I don't know if I'd go that far. Frustration can be a useful part of storytelling or delivery of a medium. I was often frustrated with Kenny in The Walking Dead, but that was intentional. The same goes for the last two levels of Super Meat Boy's Dark World. But I agree that needless frustration or unintentional frustration obviously would keep a game from being considered perfect.
For the record, I think Tetris, Bejeweled, and Portal are perfect executions of relatively dull concepts (Portal's obviously more ambitious than Tetris or Bejeweled, but less so than, say, Red Dead Redemption or Super Meat Boy.) Ms. Pac-Man and Pong are probably quality nominees as well. If Fez didn't have massive technical issues, I'd choose it in this conversation. Also, it's worth noting I'm not generally a puzzle-game guy, but they're generally uncomplicated games that make for nigh-on-perfect implementations.
To respond to what @Jeust said:
Which game can't you find any flaw with or think of anything you could make better?
Personally I have to say:
Limbo - I disdained it when I heard how brief it was, but after I played it I think it has just about the right length.
Binding of Isaac - I'm completely satisfied with what the game provides.
Fable 3 - I loved the game, its simplicity, variety, its plot, everything.
Final Fantasy XII - I loved everything of the game, from the gameplay, to the story, everything is so fantastic in my books.
Limbo is awesome, but I do wish it hadn't peaked at the hotel. The ending is fantastic, too, but the game loses much of its atmosphere after the topsy-turvy section.
Binding of Isaac is a game I haven't spent enough time with, but yeah, I could see an argument for it. I think the control model could be a little tighter, I guess.
Fable III has really problematic UI and technical issues. I'm not judging the game on a design, art, or storytelling merit as I've played extremely little of it, but I simply can't abide it being called "perfect" in the general sense.
FFXII is a game I played for a very short time about eight years ago, so I can't judge that choice either.
Journey is my favorite game of this gen, hands down, but it's not "perfect". I have to unplug my Ps3's Ethernet cable to avoid getting a partner, which should be an option I can set manually.
AoE2 (or the Star Wars flavor of it) would be on my own list, except that the AI path-finding is horrible. Definitely think it's one of the top 3 RTS ever made though.
@Coombs: Yeah, can't really fix Tetris. I just kind of put it in the same category as Pong, fair or not. I think it's very hard for more modern, complex games to fit the standard of "perfect". The more simple the game the easier it is to make it flawless.
Also, so much of what you view as perfect or great comes from your personal perspective. Take a game from my list for example, MK9. I can understand why some would roll their eyes at that selection. However, if you grew up playing MK in arcades and haven't played fighting games in years your opinion would differ vastly from someone who never had that history with the franchise or was a hardcore fighting game fan and was just picking up the next latest thing.
Its such a subjective question, which makes it fun.
Side Note: I like the early Mega Man games a lot for this topic.
There are a ton of other games that I really love, and have played much more than the games I've mentioned. Spesifically Bethesda's TES series is one that hits me hard. I love Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, and combined I've probably spent more than 1500 hours in Tamriel. Thing is, they're not perfect. None have great combat, which is the biggest issue since there's a lot of it. And then there the minor stuff. Why can't they animate my characters legs in first person? Halo does it. Why can't they make a animation of a hand opening a door? Far Cry 3 does it. All I want is for them to commit fully to either first or third person. I'm weird, because small stuff like that often break my illusion.
Fallout 2 - This game is perfect. Even close to 15 years later, it's still a fun, awesome game.
Uncharted 2 - I enjoyed every second of it and when it was over, I wanted to play more.
Resident Evil 4 - See Uncharted 2 above. Same deal
Deus Ex - probably my favorite game ever
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - take MK3 and add new characters, stages, and a the ever present bat-shit crazy MK mythology and you've got the best MK ever made
Super Mario World - Do I need to say more? It's Super Mario World!
I'll be the first to admit that these games have some problems (every game does to some extent), but the small problems they may have can't even compare to the rest of the truly amazing game.
In recent memory, I thought Bastion was a really complete experience that absolutely captivated me. I can't say I see a failing in any part of it: good gameplay with meaningful customization, good story, good music and audio, good graphics and art style, and a decent amount of originality in having the entire game narrated to you.
@Video_Game_King: I take your Celice (or Seliph, as it's apparently translated in Awakening) and raise you his cousin, who has a much harder game with far less Legendary Weapon abuse.
I don't actually think this game is perfect, but it's up there with Path of Radiance in "Fire Emblem games I think are the bestest", (Seisen no Keifu and FE7 are slightly below that) and being that Fire Emblem is up there with Might and Magic and Resident Evil in terms of series I love irrationally and unconditionally, I think it fits.
To be honest though, I over-analyze games and am far too willing and able to nitpick flaws in them. Thus, my view of perfect games are probably tainted by nostalgia. Like, if you asked me if Ocarina of Time was a perfect game, I'd say yes (sorry @Little_Socrates), but I am aware of the niggling issues that game has now that it has aged somewhat, like how Hyrule Field is big and empty and boring. Same probably goes for Super Mario 64, Super Mario World, and really almost anything with "Super Mario" in the title that came out before 2002. So basically, adolescence and adulthood robbed me my ability of enjoying things unconditionally and now I am a bitter vindictive individual.
Everything else I have ever played has room for improvement.
White goes first. Also, I would argue Go is even more perfect than Chess. But again, white goes first. Go is argued by many game scholars to be the best game of all time. It is incredibly simple to learn but takes a lifetime to master. It is perfectly balanced in every way except for its sole flaw that white always goes first. Since Go isn't perfect there simply can't be a perfect game.
But black goes first in Go. And white starts with more points.
@ArbitraryWater: Am I the officlal "Duder Who Hates Ocarina" now? 'cause that's pretty all right by me, even if I've still not actually done my Ocarina write-up. I might get on that this summer. I'll play Ocarina a WHOLE BUNCH OF TIMES to make that happen, I think.
Everything else I have ever played has room for improvement.
White goes first. Also, I would argue Go is even more perfect than Chess. But again, white goes first. Go is argued by many game scholars to be the best game of all time. It is incredibly simple to learn but takes a lifetime to master. It is perfectly balanced in every way except for its sole flaw that white always goes first. Since Go isn't perfect there simply can't be a perfect game.
But black goes first in Go. And white starts with more points.
Sorry that's what I meant. Black goes first. Point is that the player that goes first has a different starting position than the player that goes second. A handicap may be present to try and account for this but that doesn't change the fact that in a perfect game there wouldn't need to be a handicap because both players would have an exactly equal chance of winning. Hence the game is flawed. It is the flaw of any turn based game. The first player either has an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the game.
There aren't any games which I think are perfect, although a few come very close.
Final Fantasy IX - isn't "perfect" because they throw in some annoying mini-games. Still my second favorite game.
Red Dead Redemption - Not perfect because some of the horse roping mechanics were a bit shoddy
Persona 4 Golden - great, fantastic game, my third favorite of all time, but not perfect because if you want to use any characters except the first four, you're forced to grind.
To the Moon - my favorite "game" in existence. But the reason it's not perfect is that.... well, it's barely a game. So many I should call it my favorite "interactive media thingy" in all of existence.
Everything else I have ever played has room for improvement.
White goes first. Also, I would argue Go is even more perfect than Chess. But again, white goes first. Go is argued by many game scholars to be the best game of all time. It is incredibly simple to learn but takes a lifetime to master. It is perfectly balanced in every way except for its sole flaw that white always goes first. Since Go isn't perfect there simply can't be a perfect game.
That said I would list four video games as coming as close to perfection as I could imagine
- Braid - Closest to perfection. Outside of a couple unfair puzzles there is no flaw. 10/10 for me.
- Half Life 2 - At the time of release I would argue that due to the technical limitations of the time the game was about as perfect as I could imagine. Like most games where tech is a major factor, though, certain elements of the physics engine as well as the constant loading means that today the game is only a 9.5/10.
- Portal - Again, outside of the load times I would call the game pretty flawless in its execution. That said, the improvements in the second game prove that the first game wasn't perfect as perfection can't be improved on.
- Journey - In all honesty I can't think of a single flaw in this game other than the fact that you can't turn the motion controls off so the camera sometimes will pan when you don't want it to. It and Braid are my two 10/10 games. Portal and Half Life 2 are the 9.9's.
Why is White going first a flaw? Simply flip a coin and decide who gets White.
Closest a story based game has come to perfection in my opinion. Would perhaps be perfect if someone cut out half of the patronising, explanatory cutscenes.
Journey. Sure, I would've enjoyed travelling through a land 20 x times bigger than the current one for +10 hours, but besides that...I think it was near perfection. Something similiar could be said of Half-Life 2, especially on my first playthrough.
@Jeust: If you're going to classify a game as perfect because you " think it has just about the right length", you might want to clarify your definition of perfect, because I have an entire Steam library of perfect games for you to browse through.
@Gerhabio: Because white has the advantage. They get to make the first move meaning they get to decide how the game opens. Black's first play is limited by what white has played. He/she needs to provide an effective response, and therefore may not be able to perform the opening strategy he originally planned. At high level play the advantage is very small, but for beginner and intermediate players, white has a decent advantage. As someone else said already, white wins 5% more games than black. It should in theory be 50/50 or at most 49/51. That extra four percent shows that in the right situation the white player has an advantage. The same goes with Go. The black player has the advantage and in most situations white actually gets a very small handicap to try and account for that. This is a problem for every turn based game from something as casual as Monopoly all the way up to Go. By going in turns one player is always going to have the advantage. In many card games it is good to go last as you won't have to guess what card the other players will play. This is true in a game like Bridge or Hearts. Seat position in trick based card games can be pretty huge in the same way that getting to go first in Monopoly means you have the highest chance of being able to land on an open property, while going last gives you a distinct disadvantage directly related to the number of total players. If you are playing with six people for example, then it is possible that every colored property on the top row would have been purchased by the time the last player went. Turn based games are inherently flawed in this manner, even though a game as seemingly simple as Go is in fact so complex that no computer in the world has ever come close to beating a top ranked player. In fact, there are more possible variations to a game of Go than there are atoms in the known universe. It would take decades for even a super-computer to calculate the best move to make in a single game. The only solution has been to feed the computer thousands of Go games and have the computer find the one closest to the current situation and choose the correct move from that game. In essence a computer cannot be taught to play Go, merely taught to place stones based on the probability that in most games in its database, the player chose that move. As such, Go is arguably the most complex game known to man while also being all but perfectly balanced in every conceivable way except the fact that black goes first, meaning white's first play must be a response. Since the best game in the world has a flaw, then it is safe to assume that every game known to man is flawed in some way.
Super Metroid is the only game I can think of that I would be okay calling perfect. There are other games that come so damned close but they always have at least one minor problem:
Metroid Prime: There's one section, before you fight that invisible boss, that needed a save point. It's too long of a stretch to have to retread if the boss kills you.
A Link to the Past: The game is overall too easy and the Gannon fight sucks.
Final Fantasy III(VI): The final boss is way too easy and the translation is kinda screwed up...there is no god damned dragon in the forest.
Chrono Trigger: That bike race is fucking terrible.
Deus Ex: Had some completely useless skills and weapons.
Final Fantasy Tactics: Had a couple of really unfair fights.
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