The 5 Best Role Playing Games
Everyone has their own opinions, but in my mind, these are the 5 best RPGs ever. The factors that went into the selection process were a combination of: how revolutionary the game was, how fun the game was, and how original it was. Some of these aren’t technically even RPGs, but they’re close enough in my book. So, without further ado, the 5 best!
Zork started the whole RPG genre. Even though it was completely text based, it was immersive. 50% fantasy/mystery book, 50% game, and 100% percent awesome, it is undoubtedly the best text based game ever made. Spawning two official sequels, and a number of ports and copies, nothing ever beat the original. This is one I actually still play on occasion, almost 30 years after its release.
Although it was one of the first console RPGs, “Zelda” is still one of the best ever made. It truly lived up to its “role playing” title. You fought beasts, gained items, and unlocked dungeons. The Legend of Zelda defined role playing games as we know them.
While by no means was it the first of its kind, Diablo sent a message to the gaming community, letting it know RPGs were here to stay. I’m sure many of you remember literally being afraid as you fought through level after level, slowly descending to the bowels of hell. My first truly frightening experience in gaming was The Butcher’s famous one liner “Ah, fresh meat!”
It’s as if I could hear the cries of millions just then. Although many believe World of Warcraft to be the penultimate in the MMORPG genre, I disagree. While “WoW” was a great game, that attracted millions of users, “SWG” was better. It had all the features of World of Warcraft, and more; such as: better graphics, a much larger “universe” with multiple planets, the ability to build multiple homes or stores, the ability to build a completely customized spacecraft, and then fly it from planet to planet, fighting battles all along. SWG really showed what the potential of an MMORPG was.
While no single aspect of the game was original, the fact that they were all put together was. A truly role playing FPS, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. combined the best aspects of both genres. The first person shooter fighting style made killing intuitive and realistic, and the RPG item collecting style only furthered that realism. You could now find a gun, find a scope to put on it, collect ammunition from corpses, and steal food off of a table, all in the hopes of fending off attacks from nuclear-radiation-mutants.
So, there you go: the 5 best. Feel free to email your complaints about not featuring a specific game. No, seriously, do it, I may not have heard of the game, and I want something to play.
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