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radjoshcon

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The Besties' Required Reading List Revised

The Besties podcast recently wrapped up their required reading list of games from 1980 to 2020. They picked 25 total games across that time that they felt created a "syllabus for Video Games 101." Their list is pretty good overall, but there are a couple issues that I have with specific picks and their overall methodology that I would like to address. The list below is my revised list based on their original 25, with a couple of games swapped out for what I consider to be better examples to build a canon of video games.

When building the list, Chris and Russ of The Besties split games up into 5 year chunks and attempted to select 2-4 games in each 5 year period. I generally agree with this approach because I believe it is important to have a list that spans both the technological and design spectrum going all the way back the the beginning of modern video games. I have a minor gripe with the rigidity of number of games per time chunk, but that is easily addressed by revising the list once each time span is considered on its own. You'll see in my full list that I considered updated versions/sequels to games already on the list and ended up making a few swaps that should provide a better base of knowledge for our reader.

The area where I disagree the most with The Besties' list is how little they prioritize the importance of actually playing the video game in order to understand its place and influence. For example, World of Warcraft is difficult to place on this list. It did revolutionize MMOs and had a massive impact on the industry for years after its release. However, playing World of Warcraft now does not fully convey that impact or help the player understand how important the game was at the time. This has the potential to be an issue for a few other multiplayer/games-as-a-service type games on this list as time passes since so much of the importance of those games is the social/cultural impact they had at the time.

I'll save the rest of my gripes for the specific game writeups. I really do think that Chris and Russ did a great job with this list. For games that are slam dunks, I won't have much to add, but for the games that I replaced and a few other close calls, I will add my thoughts below.

Here are the games that I cut from the original list. Why and what for will be detailed in the entries below.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Outer Wilds

Demon's Souls

World of Warcraft

Grand Theft Auto 3

Stardew Valley

List items

  • Tetris is one of the biggest slam dunks on this list. The gameplay is immediately understandable and engaging no matter which of the many versions is being played. It is incredible that from Tetris DMG to Tetris Effect, the core gamplay has remained the same. Tetris pushed every puzzle game designer since to come up with something as pure and nobody has taken the crown.

  • Pac-Man is a great example of cultural importance with how huge it was in arcades and how it led to console ports with wildly varied quality. It is also examplary of arcade gameplay of the '80s.

  • Must have a 2D Mario on this list and they nailed the game feel and level design from the start.

  • If there could only be one Zelda game on this list, the original would not make the cut. Breath of the Wild or maybe even Ocarina of Time would be better solo examples of the franchise's influence. Thankfully, there is no such restriction and thus The Legend of Zelda and Breath of the Wild form fantastic bookends for this list.

  • I almost cut SimCity from this list, but its influence reaches a lot further than I initially realized. There are the obvious throughlines of the Cities and Anno games, but there are also parts of SimCity in building sims like Factorio, Frostpunk, and Steamworld Build. Even Minecraft takes some inspiration from this game. This also makes for a great reading list game since it is on the simpler side and therefore much more accessible.

  • A Street Fighter game absolutely belongs on this list. I considered changing this to Street Fighter 4 since that game is the final form of SF2 in terms of gameplay. Ultimatley the influence of Street Fighter 2 and the fact that it is still played as a competitive game today keeps it on the list.

  • Doom's influence on the FPS genre is undeniable. It is also an interesting experience from a tech perspective to play this game and then compare it to some of the other first-person games that come later on this list.

  • Not much to say about Super Metroid. This game (with some credit to Metroid before it) spawned an entire genre and it is difficult to appreciate the games made today without experiencing the original.

  • Chrono Trigger is a singular piece of art created by a team of the best video game designers, composers, and artists of their time AND it is also a videogame-ass video game that provides all the meaty RPG systems that one expects from the best JRPGs out there. The most complete package of the first 20-ish years of video games.

  • Super Mario 64 is crucial to understanding movement and level design in 3D platformers. We don't appreciate how important the controls are for the future of any game with 3D movement. Without Super Mario 64, 3D platformers would have controlled like Bubsy 3D a lot longer than any of us would have liked.

  • I considered changing this entry to the FireRed/LeafGreen remakes of the original Pokemon games. The remakes are fantastic versions of theses games that fix a lot of the systemic issues that the originals had. I landed on keeping the original games here because there is value in understanding how huge these games were while being Game Boy games with janky sprites and not the most elegant stat system behind the scenes.

  • Final Fantasy 7 is a great example of how this is not a "best games" list. There are reasonable arguments for every mainline game after Final Fantasy 7 being better than it. Despite that, this game remains the most important one to play.

  • StarCraft is the best representative for the RTS genre as a whole and is an interesting look into PC gaming of its time.

  • Resdient Evil 4 is the second windmill slam on this list. RE 4 will likely go down as the most influential game of the CENTURY let alone its decade. Every modern third-person action game owes some if its design to Resident Evil 4. Absolute must play.

  • The experience of playing Wii Sports is vital to understanding what made the Wii a 100 million seller. While motion control for traditional gaming consoles has mostly died off, Wii Sports is still worth playing and could be used as a jumping off point to explore VR experiences that strive for that same 1-to-1 motion feel.

  • BioShock and the next game on this list sort-of combine to replace Outer Wilds on The Besties' list. Outer Wilds presents an amazing clockwork solar system to play in, but it feels like jumping directly to a graduate level course on video games instead of making sense in "Video Games 101."

    BioShock stands as the immersive sim representation on this list. While I would argue that Prey (2017) is the best of the genre, BioShock is ultimatley the more influential game for bringing the Thief/Deus Ex/System Shock gameplay to more people and introducing the environmental storytelling with audio logs format to gaming at large.

  • Portal nails the difficulty curve for a 3D puzzle game where the situations it presents are just tricky enough to make you stop and think, but never impede the overall momentum of the game and allow the iconic narrative to play out with perfect pacing.

  • Minecraft is great for this list because it has both the core gameplay experience of starting from scratch to building up a base to exploring the world AND the massive breadth of mods and user generated maps.

  • The Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare experience that existed back at the game's release in 2007 absolutely belongs on this list. The issue is that the multiplayer experience today is nothing like it was back then. I almost cut this game for similar reasons that I cut World of Warcraft, but I left it on because there is a single player component to this game that does still hold up and provides important context for future military FPS campaigns. Also, I am changing the game to be the Remastered edition that came out in 2016 since there is a small community still playing multiplayer there.

  • Dark Souls replaces Demon's Souls from the Besties' original list. While I appreciate the Besties wanting to start at the beginning with Demon's Souls, Dark Souls is a better representation of the genre. The interconnected world and the more involved NPC interactions and secrets are key pieces of the Souls-like formula that Demon's Souls is missing.

  • I considered Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 to replace one of my cuts from The Besties 25 (I suppose this replaces World of Warcraft, but I don't consider it a 1-to-1 swap.) I landed on Skyrim. It best represents the Bethesda open world game and comes at the inflection point for the genre. Skyrim is a worthwile experience on its own and will give important context for why a game like Starfield is dissapointing to so many.

  • I decided to swap in Grand Theft Auto 5 for Grand Theft Auto 3. Just playing GTA 3 would leave so much of the experience that makes the GTA series so relevant today off of the table. GTA 5 carries forward the basic gameplay from GTA 3 and adds so much more with the inclusion of Grand Theft Auto Online.

  • Swapping Slay the Spire in for Stardew Valley was the last change I made to the original list. During the final Resties episode where Chris and Russ trimmed their 28 game list to the final 25, they discussed and ended up cutting Spelunky and Hearthstone. That particular combo got me thinking about Slay the Spire and how this game captures both the roguelike/lite and card game trends of the mid to late 2010s. Slay the Spire is a great example of the established roguelite progression systems and the originator of the card based roguelite gamplay seen in sucessors like Monster Train, Griftlands, and Roguebook.

    Stardew Valley was a tough game to cut. It did revive the Harvest Moon-style life sim, but I felt like enough of its systems and the loop of improving your farm are represented in other games on this list like Minecraft and SimCity. Defintely the toughest cut and the one I am least confident is correct.

  • Fortnite is here to represent the battle royale genre and is currently the best example of a good cultural metaverse. I have some concern about how this pick holds up over time, much like my concerns about COD 4:MW and WoW, but for now, Fortnite is extremely relevant and the play experience is the best it has ever been.

  • There are way too many things I could say about Breath of the Wild. Its influence on gaming is still in the early stages. Although games like Genshin Impact and Immortals Fenyx Rising are directly inspired by it, Breath of the Wild is a game whose influence goes beyond full-on clones. Just consider the various instances of game developers wondering how they got a certain physics or environmental interraction to work. All the small things that Breath of the Wild does to fill its open world are what will truly inspire new things in game development going forward.
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