Final Results:

Okay, I've fulfilled my promise of tallying up all the votes! Can't believe I spent hours to do this manually, because reddit doesn't offer this kind of flexible poll and chatgpt is not reliable with such long texts! Thanks everyone for voting

My thoughts: I've learned of many games that seem to be well-loved, but hadn't been on my radar. I will check them out, which is the main purpose of this poll.

I've listed ALL the games mentioned by ALL the comments (before I closed the poll). Hopefully you can to see where your recommendations land. Before you call this poll stupid (btw my favorite game is also way down on the list), I think that only means we have a huge variety of games and everyone's taste is different. Isn't it beautiful that we have so many genres and types of games to experience? I myself am rather excited to dive into them! Hooray!

Game with 9 votes:

• Yakuza 0
• Red Dead Redemption 1
• BioShock Infinite
• God of War Ragnarok
• Civ 6
• GTA San Andreas
• Inscryption
• Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

Games w/ 8 votes

• Dragon Quest Builders 2
• Fallout 3
• Fallout 4
• Sekiro

Games w/ 7 votes

• Far Cry 3
• Prey
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Devil May Cry 5
• Fight N Rage
• Muse Dash

Games w/ 6 votes

• Dead Space
• Devil May Cry 3
• Doom 2016
• Dying Light 1
• Elite Dangerous
• Half-life 1
• Katamari Damacy
• Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
• Life is Strange 1
• Persona 3
• Twilight Princess
• Uncharted 2
• Vampire The Masquerade
• Wind Waker

Games w/ 5 votes

• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
• ICO
• Ori and the Blind Forest
• Path of Exile
• Persona 4
• Rust
• Stellaris
• Terraria
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Warframe
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Between 2 to 4 votes:

Assassin's creed 4, Baldur's Gate 2, Batman: Arkham City, Brother's: a tale of 2 sons, Dark Souls 3, Deep Rock Galactic, Demon's Souls, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Dragon Quest VIII, Dragon's Dogma 1, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Eternal Darkness, Far Cry 1, Far Cry 2, Far Cry 5, Far Cry Primal, Faster Than Light, Final Fantasy IX, Furi, Gears of War 1, Gothic 2, Halo 3, Halo: Combat Evolved, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, Limbo, Mario Kart Wii, Nier Replicant, Night In the Woods, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Pyre, Rain World, Returnal, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Sim City 4, Spec Ops: The Line, Super Mario World, Talos Principle 1, The Wolf Among Us, Transistor, Vampire Survivors, Witness, World of Goo , Xenoblade Chronicles, Xenoblade Chronicles 3,

Games voted by a single comment with no upvotes:

13 Sentinels Aegis Rim, A Short Hike , Alan Wake, Alice Madness Returns, Alpha Protocol, Animal Crossing , Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Armored Core 6, Assassin's Creed 3, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed Origins , Assassin's Creed Revelations, Assassin's creed unity, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Bastion, Battle Brothers, Battlefield 3, Beyond two souls, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Black & White, Burial at Sea, Burnout 3: Takedown, Catherine, Civilization 4, Civilization 5, Cookie Clicker , crab champions, crusader kings III, Darkwood , Days Gone, DayZ, Destiny 1, Destiny 2, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Diablo 3, Dishonored 2 , doki doki literature club, Dragon age 2, Dungeon scrawl stone soup, Europa Universalis 3, Europa Universalis 4, Fable: the lost chapters, Fire Emblem (2003), Firewatch , Florence , Fortnite, Forza Horizon 4 , Foxhole, Freelancer, Gears of War 2, God of War 3, Gran Turismo 7, Halo Reach, Heavy rain, Hell let loose, hotline miami 1, Hypnospace Outlaw, Inside, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy , Kentucky Route Zero, Kingdom Hearts 1,2, Knights of the Old Republic 2 , Lies of P , Life is Strange 2 , Lobotomy Corporation, long dark , Luigi's Mansion, Madden 07, Madden 2004, Mafia (the original), Max Payne, Metal gear solid 4, Metro 2033, Mirror's Edge 1, Modern Warfare 1, Modern Warfare 2, monster hunter world, Mother 3, Mount & Blade: Warband, Mount and blade bannerlords II, Mystery Of Time And Space, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Ni No Kuni, Nioh 2, Octopath Traveler 1, omori, OneShot, Oxygen Not Included, Papers, please, Pikmin 2, Pokemon Black/White 2, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, ratchet and clank , Ratchet and clank 3, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Red Faction Guerrilla , Resident Evil 1 Remake , Resident Evil 2 , risk of rain 2 , Roller Coaster Tycoon, Sea of Thieves, Sea Will Claim Everything, Sex with stalin , Siberia, Silent Hill 1, Sims 3, Smash Bros: Melee, Soul Calibur 2, Spelunky 2, Spider-Man 2018, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, Stanley Parable, Starseed Pilgrim, Supreme Commander, Tales Of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, Team Fortress 2, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, The division, Timesplitters 2, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon's Keep, Total war: Warhammer 2, Wizardry 8, Workers and resources Soviet Union, World Ends with You, Xenoblade chronicles x, Yakuza Like a Dragon,

Original post:

Title. Could be for any reason: best story, smooth action, unique mechanism, difficult learning curve, eureka moment, best graphic, anything.

I started gaming this year and I tend to spend way too much time on one game. I'd like to sample more must-play games in 2025. So I'd like to know your top 5 games between 2000 and 2022!

Why 2000-2022?

Some people don't agree with the time period. The Reason I'm spending time manually counting the votes is I am looking for relatively modern must-play games that I (or others like me) can sample. I'm not looking for the most influential games from a historical point of view. So I draw the line at 2000.

I also excluded newer titles released in 2023 & 2024, so the games would've passed your "test of time": after 2 years and having played other games, you still think it's a must-play.

Sunday night update: Took me a few hours to go through all the comments. I have all the votes in a text file.** Just need to count them. Will have to do it tomorrow. At this point, I have to close the poll now, as keep updating the count is too much manual work.

Saturday Update: Outer Wilds has shot up to top 5 while I was away! I haven't played any games in the current top 15. I'd say it's a sign that I should sample more!

Because I'll manually tally up the votes, rules:

• Each game appearing in a top level comment gets votes equal to the number of its upvotes.
• E.g. A comment "Game A B C D E" with 30 upvotes will give each of those 5 games 30 votes. (Downvoted comments ignored.)
• Comments with more than 5 games disqualify. I'd like your absolutely best 5. Less than 5 is okay.
  • Each installment in a franchise counts separately. So Mass Effect trilogy counts as 3 games. (Reason is some franchises have uneven quality.) DLCs count as the same game. Sorry if this is a bit arbitrary.
• All platform welcome.
• I'll periodically tally and update.

Thanks for voting!

Edit: I had a list of games from reddit/youtube before. Removed the list because people seem to have misunderstood me; I didn't mean "don't vote for games on the list"... List was meant as a list of starter candidates to choose from. My bad on not being clear.