Modern games that will become classics in the future.

[Xprimentyl]

Inside. Instant classic with the kind of cerebral appeal that will draw people in and keep people talking and speculating even when it inevitably shows its technical age. A masterpiece.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I...don't know. You have to be careful not to put just your personal favourites as a classic, though it may be classic to you, it depends on how it shook the foundations as a whole. Which makes it tricky, as something highly advertised and played by the many masses such as GTAV could be considered a classic, as it won't be forgotten any time soon, but I have the funny feeling not many on this site would agree with that. As our media becomes more saturated with choice, the idea of a classic "classic" is being watered down as the majority of people don't have to accept the single funnel of mainstream entertainment...sort of like why there cannot be another band make a cultural mark like Queen anymore; the landscape of society's access to entertainment has changed too much.

Anymoo, might as well try here. Agree with Bioshock collection and maybe the Witcher 3, but am not certain of the latter as I never hear it mentioned in the casual gaming circles of friends or elsewhere, only in the more serious/core gaming crowd. But hopefully it will be remembered. The problem is that to the uninitiated, it looks just like yet another fantasy world such as skyrim without the character creation or combat freedom. But I have been trying to sing its' praises, so it isn't for lack of trying!

Not sure about Wolfenstein TNO, it is very very good...but again, haven't heard it talked about around the casual scenes. Hmm, must inquire more.

Dark Souls, ehh...I want to say yes...but the player base isn't that big, nor is it really talked about outside of specific groups. Many I know who try it (or bloodborne) and give up right away lamenting its' existence entirely. Which seems to be the rule more than the exception.

Havent played these yet, but Splatoon and Deus Ex MD, they are apparently the greatest things since cubed orphans, and are both rare enough to not be bogged down into sequels. (Though Deus Ex may turn out otherwise).

Probably going to say Inside too; yes it was divisive...but so was Limbo and that stuck around in the mass consciousness for quite a whilsies. Inside has an even more "but, what the?...hmmm, wait, no...that's not right" thing going for it.

To throw in a couple of personal hopes; Enter The Gundgeon which really nailed everything that could be nailed with roguelike action and content. It has so much more over The Binding of Isaac, so one can dream.
Hand of Fate...There is a sequel soon, and not many people I know have heard of it....yet. So a bear must practice his marketing roar it seems.

Does a classic need to be considered mainstream though?

classic
[klas-ik]

adjective, Also, classical (for defs 1?5, 8, 10).
1.
of the first or highest quality, class, or rank:
a classic piece of work.


If we go by that definition then I'd have to agree with Ezekiel for one, that being Demon's Souls over Dark Souls. Granted there were definitely things the latter refined or improved upon, but as a whole it certainly doesn't feel as classic. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact Demon's was a more obscure exclusive before the franchise blew up that so many people seem to ignore it.

Others IMO would be:

Portal
Journey
The Wolf Among Us

If we allow sequels:

Witcher 3
Uncharted 2
Killzone 2 (at least among many PlayStation fans, it already is considered a classic that seemingly will never be bested)
GTAV

 

[BrawlMan]

L4D/L4D2

Crazy replay value because of randomized spawns and human partners. People have been playing this hundreds and thousands of hours. I've been playing it on and off for probably six years. A multiplayer game with actual characters and impressive amounts of dialogue. There's nothing else like it.

Yeesss! Especially the first one for me.

Bayonetta 1 & 2, Mad World, Vanquish, almost anything by Platinum really. Fun arcade style game with plenty of action, fast pacing, and some of the best gameplay no one has able to replicate.

No More Heroes 1 & 2, Lollipop Chainsaw, and Killer Is Dead. I like to call it, The Grasshopper Hack n Slash Tetralogy. Shadows of the Damned is less so. And it is not because, it's a bad game, just average. Very middle of the road.

Punch-Out (Wii) - Need I say more.

DK: Tropical Freeze - Unlike Returns, the sequel didn't go overboard with the difficulty.

Split/Second - An awesome racing game that deservedly needs a sequel. Too bad Disney pussed out on it for Dinsey Infinity and casual mobile games.

 

[Myria]

-Destiny

You're probably giving me funny looks, but hear me out. Destiny was big, in as much that it sold, by my last count, 25 million copies. From what I can tell, Destiny does have a pretty loyal playerbase. There's a lot of people who rag on it, and, like most of the games on this list, I haven't played it. However, I think there's an audience for the game that got its first introduction to MMOs via this game, and I can see it being beloved by those people in the future.

I think you're right about Destiny, to be honest. If nothing else it'll be remembered for having saved itself from a disastrous launch, a rare thing.

I'm not a huge fan of Destiny. What it does, it does well, often extraordinarily so, but it doesn't do enough for me to find it all that engaging. For better or ill, many of my friends are huge fans, though, and one thing Destiny does very well is co-op and group play, so I have put more hours into it since launch playing with my friends than I care to think about. At launch it was seriously a mess, the story was disjointed and at points insultingly stupid, the reward system was a bad joke, the content lacking at best. Over the course of three expacs Bungie has managed to fix a lot of what was wrong with it, reportedly in large measure by listening to the devs who fixed Diablo III and managed to turn that game around. Granted, there's been a content drought since the last expac, the holiday and special events system is odd at best, the addition of microtransactions is unfortunate at best, and a lot of the 'fixing' of the storyline has involved simply hand waving things away (doubt we'll ever see The Stranger again or ever know what in the world she was about), but for the most part the fans have been happy with the changes. The loot system is vastly improved (it's arguably too generous now), gearing up is way less of a chore, and newer content has been a vast improvement on what came before.

While the game gets slagged a ton on the net, and in many ways deservedly so, it has sold an ungodly number of copies and has a huge fanbase. I have no doubt the upcoming Rise of Iron expac will sell like hotcakes and lead to a successful Destiny 2 launch sometime in the future.

Sadly, at least for me, The Division -- whose gameplay I in many ways prefer to Destiny's -- launched with many of the same problems, not to mention the laughably badly thought out Dark Zone, but the pace of changes and improvements has so far been glacial and often depressingly short sighted -- overall the game has gotten worse since launch, not better. Unlike Destiny, I have my doubts that The Division will ever recover from its bad launch and subsequent missteps, let alone go on to be thought of as a classic by anyone. Ah well...

 

[sageoftruth]

While I'm not a huge fan, I'm guessing Halo would be one.

The game set a lot of trends in the game industry. Not trends that I'm a fan of, but that does give it a load of historical clout which is a great way to become a classic among connoisseurs.
My roommate is a huge sucker for old games or movies that heavily influenced their industry in some way and I could easily imagine him playing Halo if he'd been born some time in the future.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Does a classic need to be considered mainstream though?

classic
[klas-ik]

adjective, Also, classical (for defs 1?5, 8, 10).
1.
of the first or highest quality, class, or rank:
a classic piece of work.


If we go by that definition then I'd have to agree with Ezekiel for one, that being Demon's Souls over Dark Souls. Granted there were definitely things the latter refined or improved upon, but as a whole it certainly doesn't feel as classic. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact Demon's was a more obscure exclusive before the franchise blew up that so many people seem to ignore it.

In theory, it wouldn't. But in practice, the "modern classic" seemingly requires a subjective/objective balance of the two; quality and reach of influence within the medium. Hence my complete unsureness (is that a word?). If we are going back a generation, then I would agree that Portal should be a classic. Also would like to add Red Dead Redemption to the list of hopefuls. One could even argue that Call of Duty 4 is a classic for how it inspired the dreadful trend we now passively endure.

 

[Sonmi]

Dark Souls is the obvious choice. It revolutionized game design, and has one of the best plots out there.

While I absolutely agree that it will be remembered as a classic and that it had a lot of effect on game design (mostly because of how popular and good it was rather than how innovative), you're confused here between what the plot and the lore are.

Dark Souls's plot is minimalist and simplistic, it does its job well, but calling it "one of the best out there" is crazy.

The lore is great though, and extremely well integrated into gameplay.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Does a classic need to be considered mainstream though?

classic
[klas-ik]

adjective, Also, classical (for defs 1?5, 8, 10).
1.
of the first or highest quality, class, or rank:
a classic piece of work.


If we go by that definition then I'd have to agree with Ezekiel for one, that being Demon's Souls over Dark Souls. Granted there were definitely things the latter refined or improved upon, but as a whole it certainly doesn't feel as classic. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact Demon's was a more obscure exclusive before the franchise blew up that so many people seem to ignore it.

In theory, it wouldn't. But in practice, the "modern classic" seemingly requires a subjective/objective balance of the two; quality and reach of influence within the medium. Hence my complete unsureness (is that a word?). If we are going back a generation, then I would agree that Portal should be a classic. Also would like to add Red Dead Redemption to the list of hopefuls. One could even argue that Call of Duty 4 is a classic for how it inspired the dreadful trend we now passively endure.

Oh yes, I really enjoyed RD:R too. That will deserve classic status for sure in a couple generations, and I hope they have another one in the works.

COD was fun too, but it pangs me hearing it in the same sentence as the word "classic".

Oooooowwwwwch it just happened again!

 

[Igor-Rowan]

I will only use 2010's examples because games prior to that I do not consider "modern" at all, because games like Portal or Bioshock already released before that period and their popularity speaks for themselves.

Life is Strange and Undertale: They're like Earhtbound, charming in how quirky and different they all are and that speaks to their fanbases on a way people may or may not understand. Earthbound's success did came out eventually, but it's more of a cult classic than a classic per se.

Shovel Knight: The sheer amount of success this game did made it a classic already, with Nintendo giving it an amiibo, Sony giving it Kratos and Microsoft giving it Battletoads. The main companies acknowledging a game like this is definitely new.

Xenoblade Chronicles/X: Both games are rather unusual takes on the JRPG genre, following the usual anime tropes, but having mechanics and a lore substantial enough they managed to make Yahtzee, of all people, play it for a long time. Easily the reason to own a Wii U since it has both.

Mighty No. 9/Bloodstained/Yooka-Laylee: Yeah these ones definitely will become classics regardless of their quality, there is a reason they were overfunded.

Cave Story: It got a re-release on 3DS that contains the original, so it counts.

Battleborn: More of a cult following than anything, Gearbox's Borderlands-style is either love it or hate it.

The Wither 3: Wild Hunt and Middle-Earth: Shadows of Mordor: Do I need to say anything? At all?

 

[Catnip1024]

- Counter-Strike was built on top of Half-Life and, indeed, some of the most iconic of mechanics CS it sports come from that fact.
- DotA itself is also a shining example. I'm not even talking about Dota 2 - that game is mostly a port of DotA: Allstars into the Source engine. It's simplifying things a bit but it's close enough. DotA: Allstars itself is the...let's call it "sequel" of the original DotA. Did you know the two were different things? A lo-o-o-ot of people don't and that's not something new - a decade ago, a lot of people didn't also didn't know that even if they had played for years DotA: Allstars. At any rate DotA isn't even the first take on the concept - it is quite truly built on top of a lot of other effort, ideas, concepts - all refined over a very long time.
- System Shock 2 is vastly more popular than its predecessor
- Hardly anyone will mention The Elder Scrolls: Arena in a discussion about the series and its high points. Relatively rare but still mentioned is Daggerfall, while Morrowind and Oblivion tend to take the bulk of the highlight somewhat because Skyrim almost inevitably starts getting compared to at least one of them.
- I actually wonder how many people who've played Team Fortress 2 have played or even seen the previous game which was a mod for Half-Life. And even then, that TF was not the first one - that honour goes to the mod for Quake. That part tends to get lost as some sort of ancient history.

Well I wouldn't count games that were simply done on the same engine as being the same series. Counter Strike or Team Fortress 2 are markedly different from HL2. I would also make an exception for stuff like MOBAs, because they essentially stand alone. They aren't part of a series proper.

Regarding the Elder Scrolls, thats a funny one which depends on which game was the first you played. I love Oblivion because it was the first one I played, but people who play Skyrim first will hate it. But they were fundamentally different games due to being different stories set in different parts of the same universe. Witcher 3 is a continuation of a story, which doesn't stand alone as well (which sucks, because Witcher 1 was awful).

Like, I'm not saying it's a hard and fast rule. It's just that I wouldn't be able to hold the end of a trilogy up without the rest as a classic. And yes, I mentioned DA:O above, but that works best standalone imho.

 

[DoPo]

Well I wouldn't count games that were simply done on the same engine as being the same series.

Not the same series but your second point - building on top of existing stuff.

Team Fortress 2 are markedly different from HL2

TF 2, if the number in the title didn't tip you off, has a previous entry. In fact, two previous entries. It may be different to HL (or even HL2), however, it is still series of itself.

I would also make an exception for stuff like MOBAs, because they essentially stand alone. They aren't part of a series proper.

Again - build on top of existing stuff. DotA would not be the same nowadays if it wasn't build using the Warcraft 3 engine. Games that derived from it have also taken after some of the traits inherited from there. Even if they consciously avoid picking a feature, it could be important - I know that in League of Legends, you cannot attack your own creeps and that, for some, is a big difference. I've seen people openly state that they prefer that mechanic gone, hence partly why they prefer LoL.

In addition a VERY. LARGE. PORTION. of all mechanics in DotA are not original. It started off re-using a lot of abilities from just Warcraft 3 but then it grew to try and experiment with them. As a custom map, it dipped a lot into the scene for those - it received a lot of input and incorporated a lot of ideas that might not have existed without the community around WC maps.

Simply put if you consider DotA to be completely separate and distinct, it's truly disregarding both what led to it and what led from it. Were it standalone, it would have been a very different game.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Woof. The official 'feel old yet?' game thread.

I was going to say Bioshock, 'cause its too amazing to not be a classic, but there are kids on this very website born after its release, and its a launch title from the previous generation at that! Its old! And I'm old! And you're old!

Oh! And probably Left 4 Dead 1-2, but again, I still consider them new games, but oh man...8 years ago. Left 4 Dead is in fucking 3rd grade!

 

[sXeth]

-Destiny

You're probably giving me funny looks, but hear me out. Destiny was big, in as much that it sold, by my last count, 25 million copies. From what I can tell, Destiny does have a pretty loyal playerbase. There's a lot of people who rag on it, and, like most of the games on this list, I haven't played it. However, I think there's an audience for the game that got its first introduction to MMOs via this game, and I can see it being beloved by those people in the future.

I think you're right about Destiny, to be honest. If nothing else it'll be remembered for having saved itself from a disastrous launch, a rare thing.

I'm not a huge fan of Destiny. What it does, it does well, often extraordinarily so, but it doesn't do enough for me to find it all that engaging. For better or ill, many of my friends are huge fans, though, and one thing Destiny does very well is co-op and group play, so I have put more hours into it since launch playing with my friends than I care to think about. At launch it was seriously a mess, the story was disjointed and at points insultingly stupid, the reward system was a bad joke, the content lacking at best. Over the course of three expacs Bungie has managed to fix a lot of what was wrong with it, reportedly in large measure by listening to the devs who fixed Diablo III and managed to turn that game around. Granted, there's been a content drought since the last expac, the holiday and special events system is odd at best, the addition of microtransactions is unfortunate at best, and a lot of the 'fixing' of the storyline has involved simply hand waving things away (doubt we'll ever see The Stranger again or ever know what in the world she was about), but for the most part the fans have been happy with the changes. The loot system is vastly improved (it's arguably too generous now), gearing up is way less of a chore, and newer content has been a vast improvement on what came before.

While the game gets slagged a ton on the net, and in many ways deservedly so, it has sold an ungodly number of copies and has a huge fanbase. I have no doubt the upcoming Rise of Iron expac will sell like hotcakes and lead to a successful Destiny 2 launch sometime in the future.

Sadly, at least for me, The Division -- whose gameplay I in many ways prefer to Destiny's -- launched with many of the same problems, not to mention the laughably badly thought out Dark Zone, but the pace of changes and improvements has so far been glacial and often depressingly short sighted -- overall the game has gotten worse since launch, not better. Unlike Destiny, I have my doubts that The Division will ever recover from its bad launch and subsequent missteps, let alone go on to be thought of as a classic by anyone. Ah well...

I enjoy Destiny, but I think its definitely in a list where the sequel is a much better bet at being a classic (maybe, they do have a bit of a problem with numerous things, and after seeming to fix them, a tendency to in the next update break them again).

One interesting, though oft overlooked thing with Destiny. Its the one game of many I've tried where a party in NA/Aus, Eu/Aus, all three, or even across 4 continents. We've been able to play with no detrimental lag. Every single other game, including GTA (who have all the money to throw at servers) and Overwatch (Blizzard, who also have all said money, and should have better netcode then anyone given how long they've been running online games at a AAA level) someone in our intercontinental group of friends is always the unlucky one getting hosed by having to be on a different region.

 

[FalloutJack]

Doom hopefully. its return to classic after all.

I have to agree with this here. It's historical in gaming and its latest game is a hellish wonder to behold.

I'm also just going to flat-out say that Atlus games largely qualify on this.

 

[PapaGreg096]

Snip

I don't see why Dishonored won't be considered a classic just because its a homage, hell Star Wars is pretty much a homage to Samurai movies and that franchise is a classic

 

[Hawki]

Since people are including the 2000s as modern games, I guess I can nominate the following, though I'd argue that a lot of these games have already established themselves as classics in one form or another:

-Assassin's Creed II
-Battlefield 2 (though maybe 3, as from what I understand, many people first jumped onto the series with said game)
-BioShock
-Borderlands (though 2 could hold the "classic" position)
-Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
-Batman: Arkham Asylum (since we're in the 2000s, I can point it out)
-DotA 2 (actually, that's a 2010s game, but, yeah)
-Diablo II
-Dragon Age: Origins
-The Elder Scrolls Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim (another user highlighted it better, that your 'classic' Elder Scrolls games is probably going to be your first)
-Fallout 3/New Vegas
-Final Fantasy X
-Half-Life 2
-Portal
-Team Fortress 2
-Halo 2 (pretty much any Bungie Halo, but while not my personal pick, 2 seems to be lauded the most from this era)
-League of Legends
-The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask/Twilight Princess/The Wind Waker (honestly, almost any LoZ game could be a 'classic' in a similar vein as Mario)
-Mass Effect 1/2
-Metroid Prime (Trilogy)
-Any Pokemon game (see the Mario argument)
-Resident Evil 4
-Sonic Adventure 2 (see my Generations argument up above)
-Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
-Warcraft III
-World of Warcraft

Looking at the list, I'm reminded why I didn't start off in the 2000s, as I'd have thought that a lot of the above games are already considered classics, whether they be reguarly brought up in a glowing light (Metroid Prime, KOTOR, etc.), whether they were a groundbreaking shift in/introduction to a genre/series (Fallout 3, World of Warcraft), or are simply just too popular to ignore (Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls).

I do feel like giving a shoutout to certain games like Dead Space, Gears of War, and StarCraft II - all have their origins in the 2000s (or in SC2's case, 2010), but I can't call them universal classics. Dead Space has struck me as generally being well liked, but not with a particuarly large fanbase. Gears of War is kind of the same, and has always been overshadowed by Halo as far as Microsoft exclusives go. StarCraft II is a bit hard to quantify, because I get the sense that many people have played SC2 without playing SC1, while a lot of people who played SC1 consider it superior to SC2, but problem is, it's an RTS. Warcraft III seems to be held up as a classic nowadays, but while popular by the standards of the genre, SC2 seems to be too niche to list here. It's kind of similar where, despite being one of the best selling games of all time, I can't list Diablo III, because to this day, it's always been overshadowed by Diablo II within a significant portion of its fanbase.

 

[sXeth]

Warcraft III seems to be held up as a classic nowadays, but while popular by the standards of the genre, SC2 seems to be too niche to list here. It's kind of similar where, despite being one of the best selling games of all time, I can't list Diablo III, because to this day, it's always been overshadowed by Diablo II within a significant portion of its fanbase.

I don't hangout in the elite RTS community or anything, but I mostly remember Warcraft 3 getting absolutely ripped on for being a Starcraft clone (In many of the unit abilities, not to mention the Undead using the Zerg's creep mechanic), and the whole hero mechanic thing. The latter took off as its own thing, sure, but I think its generally considered sub-par for the actual RTS gameplay.

 

[Hawki]

Warcraft III seems to be held up as a classic nowadays, but while popular by the standards of the genre, SC2 seems to be too niche to list here. It's kind of similar where, despite being one of the best selling games of all time, I can't list Diablo III, because to this day, it's always been overshadowed by Diablo II within a significant portion of its fanbase.

I don't hangout in the elite RTS community or anything, but I mostly remember Warcraft 3 getting absolutely ripped on for being a Starcraft clone (In many of the unit abilities, not to mention the Undead using the Zerg's creep mechanic), and the whole hero mechanic thing. The latter took off as its own thing, sure, but I think its generally considered sub-par for the actual RTS gameplay.

I can believe those elements (certainly blight is based off on creep, and the Scourge structures share the 'warp in' mechanics the protoss possess), but in regards to what's counted as a classic (for me at least), the above tend to be academic for that purpose. SC2 certainly eclipsed WC3 in terms of e-sports, but as far as the mainstream goes, Warcraft III tends to be looked on with fondness. There's reguarly cries for a Warcraft IV, and while there's the occassional individual who claims that Warcraft II is the best Warcraft RTS games, 3 seems to be the most popular. In a way, WoW might have also helped, making more people aware of WC3.

In contrast, I haven't seen SC2 make in-roads into the mainstream in the same way that WC3 did, and a lot of that is due to the complexity of its gameplay. Also, while most Warcraft fans tend to nominate WC3 as the best Warcraft RTS games, SC2 has perpetually resided in SC1's shadow, at least as a point of comparison, I've found. I can't claim that either 'side' has a majority, but at the end of the day, mainstream-wise, Warcraft III seems to be better well known. In the scope of its fanbase, I can't claim that SC2 is the definitive StarCraft game, and it doesn't seem to have reached the levels of success Warcraft did.

In the end, maybe it's best to compare Warcraft III to LoL, and StarCraft II to DotA 2. There's plenty who consider SC2/DotA 2 the more complex (and ergo, "better") game, but WC3/LoL has the larger playerbase, and I'd warrant it's down at least in part to great accessibility.

 

[DoPo]

Warcraft III seems to be held up as a classic nowadays, but while popular by the standards of the genre, SC2 seems to be too niche to list here. It's kind of similar where, despite being one of the best selling games of all time, I can't list Diablo III, because to this day, it's always been overshadowed by Diablo II within a significant portion of its fanbase.

I don't hangout in the elite RTS community or anything, but I mostly remember Warcraft 3 getting absolutely ripped on for being a Starcraft clone (In many of the unit abilities, not to mention the Undead using the Zerg's creep mechanic)

wat. That...makes no real sense. They are "clones" to the extent of both being in the same genre (topdown RTS) and both being produced by the same company (which, true, will lead to re-usage of some mechanics and use a similar UI). Other than that, the two are quite different. Heck, the unit abilities are probably one of the largest differences one can point at. The entire dynamic of the games is different.

WC is to be called a clone of SC, than the entirety of the Westwood RTS games should also bear the same title - Command & Conquer - be it any of the franchises - the core, Red Alert, Generals...well, probably not Renegade but all the other games are just clones of Dune 2.

What's next? Arkanoid is a clone of Pong because there are a ball and a paddle?

 

[CaitSeith]

Minecraft
If we are talking about games that in a few decades will be looked back by grown up gamers with both nostalgia and pride; I'd say Minecraft will be considered a classic among them.