If it’s the one that got them their recognition, it’s little more than arbitrary; luck, place and time; things that don’t have to do with how good the work is. Some “masterpieces” weren’t considered such until they were exposed to people over and over again, like The Mona Lisa at the Louvre or It’s a Wonderful Life on TBS. I’d have a hard time calling a number of games masterpieces that I didn’t care for, because this isn’t objective.
A masterpiece could just refer to a piece of art from a master. It could refer to the quality of an engineering project, or the skill involved in the work’s creation. Are these not objective qualities?
I don’t really think the Mona Lisa is a great image, personally (it’s a boring portrait), but I can still recognize that it was masterfully done.
This gets trickier with games, because an experienced game designer can, for instance, look at the UI design and graphics programming of a Ubisoft open world slopfest, and say those parts were masterfully done (even if the overall game isn’t so fun). And, even the best of video games have bits of them that weren’t as good.
So I think it’s actually really important that the games that would be considered objective masterpieces would have to overcome any language barriers and be an experience approachable by anyone. You can learn the mechanics to enjoy the gameplay without words
So:
Portal
Journey
Binding of Isaac
Shadow of the Colossus
Metro 2033 (which I have sat on and I believe even if it was entirely in Russian you would still get it )
DOOM (original you don’t need words you shoot)
Super Mario Bros. 3
Katamari Damacy
Then there are dialogue option stories that are fantastic stories that I could consider greats but shareable masterpieces is hard to say as they rely on you speaking the language both literally and then gameplay wise:
Missing crossplay really sucks. I theoretically have an enthusiastic squad … too bad one player only has a PlayStation while me and the other person have PCs.
Yep it’s really whack. Sucks too because I have 2 distinct squads. A crew from college and a crew from high school. One on PlayStation and one on PC… Like I could buy it on both I suppose but that just sucks lol
That seems like a massive oversight. That’s so weird. I get it’s probably way easier to implement it the way they did. But because you likely will wana group with friends, it really limits people
You are wrong about borderlands as there is one more and it is pretty muc h perfect.
Tales from the Borderlands.
Shame they never made a sequel for it but the artistry, music and story are all so well crafted. Someone loved Borderlands making that.
Metro 2033. Played it in the dark with good surround sound headphones on, and it’s positively claustrophobic.
Last Light is good too, but at little too optimistic IMHO. 2033 nails that endless pit of despair feeling, with just enough lucky breaks that you might make it through.
If you really liked BG3 you might also like Neverwinter Nights 2 and DA:O. I heard there was a remaster of Neverwinter Nights 2 in the works, maybe give it a try when it comes out.
I remember trying the demo to Homeworld when I was a kid, it came with one of those old school PC GAMER demo CDs. I think I was too young to understand how to play it effectively, but still loved it because I found the ambience of the experience so memorizing while hyper-cozy. Would you say it she’s well as something worth going back and playing now, and what of the sequel(s)?
Curious to hear what the criteria for “masterpiece” is, otherwise I think it is just peoples’ subjective opinion of what makes a great game that they also think others might agree about being a great game. Genuinely curious, interested in discussion, not saying this to shut down any of the answers here.
Historically a masterpiece has been a (or the) work that demonstrates an artist is capable of utilizing their medium to its fullest extent, i.e. it has been mastered. Per ye olde Wiki:
Historically, a “masterpiece” was a work of a very high standard produced by an apprentice to obtain full membership, as a “master”, of a guild or academy in various areas of the visual arts and crafts.
In that light, I’d say the best qualified would be games that completely utilized the capabilities of the platform they were designed for or, perhaps of interest to more people, expanded what everyone thought could be done with those systems. Games which were furthermore well polished and complete, and did not have much room for improvement taking into account the constraints they had to work with at the time. (For instance: No duh we could make Mario 64 run at a higher framerate and have better textures to look nicer on hardware now. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t arguably a masterpiece of its time, on the system it was on.) This doesn’t just have to be technical stuff – It could be the way the game used storytelling, its gameplay mechanics, or anything else.
Then Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom belong to that category - run smoothly as fuck on one of the lamest consoles there is, and are beautiful and complex.
Spyro and Crash trilogies on the PSX, as well as the Quake 2 port, would definitely merit being called technical masterpieces
On the original Xbox, Phantom Dust would fit that bill, despite being a commercial failure at the time. The tldr is that you create a collection of spells (attacks, traps, dodges, curses, buffs) and try to grab them and the “mana” during the real time duels, in order to beat your opponents. Terrain is semi destructible and you have to take into consideration the trajectory of your spells - www.xbox.com/games/store/…/9PCDNBHR11MR
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