List of video games considered the best

This is a list of video games considered the best or greatest of all time. These are the highest-ranking games that have appeared on various critics' lists and audience polls conducted by different publications and organizations.

According to most criteria, the title widely regarded as the greatest game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) for the Nintendo 64. It has been included in the most "best games ever" lists, as well as topping the most lists and ranking within most lists. In addition, it has the highest rating on Metacritic (99 out of 100).

Methodology


The article has several lists based on several methodologies:
 * The first list is based on weighted scores, ranked according to a system of top-ten weighted ranking scores from a handful of selected lists, originally devised by the Filibuster site in 2012.
 * The second list only includes the top two ranks from most lists.
 * The third list includes all ranks from a large number of lists, with the minimum criterion for inclusion being at least ten sources; for sources listing the top 200 games, only the top 100 are considered. For sources restricted to the "seventh generation" of gaming, only the top 25 games are considered.

A number of sources taken from across publications, from to the present, were used to compile the list. Games which consistently showed up in multiple lists are featured below. Some of the lists are outdated in that the same publication later published another best-of list. There were two notable exceptions to critic "best of" lists: games are credited for having Metacritic scores of 95 or greater, and several large reader-submitted polls are used. In general, contemporary reviews do not necessarily reflect the long-term consensus, hence only a single source of credit for high Metacritic reviews; and open player-submitted polls, while obviously measuring an important facet of a game's reputation, tend to be easy to rig or otherwise influence, hence the primary usage of critic lists.

Because most sources are from the English-language press, this list generally reflects the preferences of the English-speaking world, rather than those of other video-game-playing areas, such as Japan and South Korea. The only non-English sources used are Japanese reader polls from Famitsu and Dengeki, and a German reader poll from Maniac magazine.

This list mostly includes games since the "third generation" of gaming onwards, along with some prior arcade games of the late 70s to early 80s.

Top ranks
This table lists video games by the number of "best games ever" lists that they topped.

Short-term perceptions (review scores)
This is a list of games that have been given the highest aggregate review scores by Metacritic and GameRankings, based on an average aggregate of contemporary review scores. However, contemporary reviews do not necessarily reflect the long-term consensus (which the "best of" lists for the main tables above represent better), but review scores mainly represent the short-term perceptions of a game at the time of its release.

In addition, the selection of reviews used by Metacritic and GameRankings are mostly restricted to modern websites and magazines, with older defunct publications excluded, hence older games (especially games prior to the sixth generation) are usually heavily under-represented. Furthermore, most of the reviews are from the English-language press, thus mostly reflecting the review scores of modern English-language reviewers, and to a lesser extent, Western European reviewers, downplaying the preferences of other major markets such as Japan and South Korea.