So I was having a conversation with a couple of my friends, both indie game developers, about what we thought were the best videogames ever made were. Obviously many have attempted to make this list, and like others we had our own criteria: 
 

1. The game must still be relevant in terms of gameplay.
2. The game's gameplay must have few to no ways to be improved.
3. Most importantly: No nostalgia! A game is not good simply because it is old.

k but it is tho 

I think it's all a matter of opinion. 
 
Change the title to, "Why I think GoldenEye 64 is not one of the best games ever".

" I think it's all a matter of opinion. 
 
Change the title to, "Why I think GoldenEye 64 is not one of the best games ever". "

In other news, Space Invaders is shit. 
 
Goldeneye still has its place in gaming history, and I really loved it at the time, but the FPS genre has well and truly moved on. So at the time, it was one of the best games ever, but now for me it merely stands as an important benchmark in the history of gaming. What's going to happen in the far flung future when we plug shit into our skulls? Look back and say that Half-Life is an unplayable mess that isn't deserving of its place in the annals of our favourite pastime?
 
Also, I doubt the validity of the statement that Goldeneye is literally unplayable. It was obviously playable at one point; it's just that our hands and brains have been trained to do something else now.

BUT YO BRO I PLAYED IT WITH ALL MY BUDDIES AND THEN ONE GUY PICKED ODDJOB AND WE BEAT HIM UP FOR IT AND THEN WE PLAYED SLAPPERS ONLY ON FACILITY. SPLIT SCREENZ 4 EVA!
 
But, even as someone who owned a N64 when it was still relevant, I don't really like Goldeneye all that much and never really did, being more into the platform's endless bevy of 3D platformers by that time. However, I disagree with your 3 criteria, because using those, no game is one of the best games ever. To some degree, all of the greatest games of all time have issues or parts that are antiquated, with or without nostalgia. It just depends on your tolerance level.

While I certainly see your point (and will generally agree that Goldeneye hasn't aged as well as other classics), there are still arguments to be made for its greatness. One of those arguments is that it was really the first game that made the FPS experience - especially from a multiplayer point of view - really, really work on a console. And that was a pretty big deal.
 
::EDIT:: Also, I think I disagree with the notion that things can't have improved much (if at all) since the game's release. Things have improved a lot in the movie industry since Citizen Kain, but that film is still hella classic.

If you were into pc fps games at the time Goldeneye was pretty painful to play even at release.

Good thing your criteria doesn't apply to anyone but you, eh? Goldeneye was great to those who were there at the right place and time, and still is.

Yes, Goldeneye hasn't aged well, and I would definitely not count it as one of the best games ever.  But it was definitely one of the most important.
 
It's significance should not be understated.  Everybody knows that the gameplay hasn't aged well at all, but it made its mark on the industry in a very big way.

" I am part of the group that know much better PC games at the time and therefore considers it just another console game.   My 2 cents "

 Also, I doubt the validity of the statement that Goldeneye is literally unplayable. It was obviously playable at one point; it's just that our hands and brains have been trained to do something else now.    

" If you were into pc fps games at the time Goldeneye was pretty painful to play even at release. "

This is not one of the best threads ever about a game that came out over a decade ago
Perhaps you could spend the next decade coming up with a better topic?

I concur that the game has not aged well. It lacks most of the things that we take for granted in first-person shooters: like a jump button and the ability to move while aiming.

I did not even know that GoldenEye 64 was in the running for greatest game ever. Good to great game? Sure. Ever? Meh. Mario 64 is where it's at...................................two turntables and a microphone..........sorry.......

Troll.

It was a changing point for console shooters. Anymore than that now, no not really. It is still an important game and if you say otherwise I feel that you are wrong, as it is not an opinion.Without it, who knows where console shooters would be today.
 
Not every single game has to redefine the genre or be a complete overhaul. Improvements over what is there is great. If you compare and contrast every single game then RE4 and RE5 are nearly identical, going from Tomb Raider to Uncharted was just a step up and every Halo or CoD Reiteration was only a slight step up til the current release. However the progress made with the console market from say Goldeneye to Black Ops or Reach is a far more dramatic increase then say Goldeneye to Perfect Dark to Halo 1

Doom sucked too and that Wolfenstein 3D crap, man... balls to the wall old. Don't get me started on the lame Half Life. Actually, any first person shooter that is released is dated the day it's dated and gone gold. 
 
I'm kidding of course. You need to look further into your method. How about level design? Multiplayer functionality? Being a template for other developers to learn from? Perfect Dark came after GoldenEye, but without GoldenEye no Perfect Dark. Without Perfect Dark would there be a Halo?
 
First Person Shooters are a strange breed. They need the old to learn for the new.

So does SOCOM 2 meet that criteria? Cause it has yet to be improved on, and is easily the best out of the 3rd person online shooters. 
 
Also, I'm in the "Perfect Dark > Goldeneye" crowd. I understand both game's significance. I just liked Perfect Dark better and thought it was the improved version of Goldeneye. SO MANY MULTIPLAYER OPTIONS!

Too bad Halo didn't prove that PC Shooters can be done successfully on console, pretty sure you are still get help from the game with a little thing called aim assist. No PC shooter has that, it requires you to accurately aim at the person. Unfortunately I don't foresee console shooters ever meeting the standard that is PC shooters. 
 
You seem to think that every game must be ground breaking for it to be ONE OF THE BEST GAMES EVER. You are so close minded with your opinion that there is really no point in anyway trying to convince you otherwise, you made this thread to just constantly say NO NO NO to other peoples opinions.

" I am part of the group that know much better PC games at the time and therefore considers it just another console game.   My 2 cents "

" @august said:

" If you were into pc fps games at the time Goldeneye was pretty painful to play even at release. "

Yeah that's what GB said, good work parrot. Except Goldeneye came out about a year before those great PC games came out like Unreal and Half Life. Unless you meant Quake 2, lol. So no. At release, you weren't playing Half Life and Goldeneye wasn't painful. This bullshit revisionist history coming from people who clearly didn't play Goldeneye when it came out is painful. I'd love to see someone come in and say fucking Heretic and fucking Quake 1 and 2 outclass Goldeneye, I'd fucking love to have a laugh. Or Descent. Dear god, someone say Descent is better than Goldeneye, make my night. "

Fine. Will you settle for just one of the most influential console fps of ALL TIMES? HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM?

" @BrainSpecialist:  Perfect Dark was a much better game than GoldenEye 007 on the N64. But it was championed for being more robust in the single player and the multiplayer absolutely set the next bar for first person shooters in console gaming. But this is more of a console lineage. These other dudes are right about PC first person shooters. As far as gameplay, consoles can't match PCs, but never the less both are fun as hell for a lot of people.   It's more history than nostalgia.  "

GoldenEye has always sucked.

I agree with most of the others and it's a matter of opinion.  Does Goldeneye still hold significance today...NO, but was it significant back in it's time YES.  Goldeneye proved that first person shooters can be popular on home Consoles.  But when compared to others that have come after nothing significant was carried over from Goldeneye.  Halo took the idea of popular first person shooters and defined controls to play best with the limitations of a home console.  COD took it further by redifining that gameplay and adding incentive to keep playing "perks".   
 
For the other games listed Mario 64 and Zelda, you can still see aspects of those games in the current games of this generation.  And agree that the true test of any games "right" to be considered greatest all time is the playability of said game against the best of the modern era.  If you can honestly say that you enjoy said game now up against the competition then that game is worthy of a conversation.   
 
Goldeneye was a vital piece of the stepping stone, but other games in the genre have simply made it irrelevant in comparison. 

Every game can be improved. Without exception. Gaming is, after all, a young medium.

" @Axxol: How do I do that?  I'm not suggesting the game is bad, I'm saying that the gameplay is no longer relevant to modern games and has been substantially improved upon.     "

the problem with statements like the orginal post is that it for some reason assumes that videogames "evolve". 
  
They don't evolve. WHat they are is trendy.  
 
Many developers will say it as "a purchase of one game one year is a vote for three more of the same game next year". 
 
The brilliant points that made up Goldeneye may not be trendy at the moment, but that doesn't make them any less brilliant or relevant than MMA makes traditional Kung Fu or Karate. 
 
TO judge what made Goldeneye great, you have to ignore a lot of the standards that are currently trendy. But there is plenty that the game did that even today aren't surpassed. 
 
Heck, the collapseable mission stucture which builds more complicated levels for higher difficulty levels instead of just making badguys soak up more rockets deserves to make Goldeneye a classic in and of itself.

Umm it brought first person shooters to consoles

Wasn't Goldeneye the first game to ever have headshots? And limb-specific damage? And that awesome difficulty structure where it added things to the campaign instead of just making you take more damage and enemies take less or whatever?  
 
Man, Goldeneye was sweet. Hard to play now, but damn it was sweet.

"Every game can be improved. Without exception. Gaming is, after all, a young medium. "

You're trying to use objective analysis to reach subjective conclusions and that's never going to work.

He's talking about the best games currently in existence. He isn't talking about how good they were when they came out. That's irrelevant to this particular debate. Basically, if you introduced the game to someone who had only played games for a few years, would GoldenEye rate higher with them than, Call of Duty Black Ops, Halo: Reach, KillZone 2, or whatever your current FPS of choice is? Even if someone completely overhauled the game's graphics so that that wouldn't be a mark against the game, I doubt it could stand up to the modern state of game design. 
 
In contrast, there are many older films that still hold up, and I'm talking about films that came out well before I watched them, and even well before I was born. Game design is still in it's infancy, so it's no wonder that many of the early experiments are just not crafted well enough to stand the test of time.
 
Was GoldenEye an important game? Of course! Extremely important! Is it still one of the best games in existence? I don't think so.

" @ArbitraryWater said:

"Every game can be improved. Without exception. Gaming is, after all, a young medium. "

 
This rule doesn't apply only to games though. Everything can be improved, period. No matter how good it might seem the first time, with time you realize certain things could be better, and if those are improved then new ones show up, nothing is perfect.  "

It was cool in its day. But fuuuuuuuck, don't go back and play it now. 

Am I the only one who thinks the whole "best game ever" is really immature. I mean it's obviously a matter perspective and honostly who gives a fuck what other people think is the best game ever the only purpose in making these discussions is that you don't have enough confidence in your opinions so you need other people to validate them.