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Metacritics top 10 critically acclaimed (90+) games of 1998. Do you agree? Which is your favorite?

Your favorite from Metacritics top 10 of 1998?

  • Baldurs Gate

    Votes: 23 6.0%
  • Half-Life

    Votes: 56 14.5%
  • Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped

    Votes: 6 1.6%
  • Metal Gear Solid

    Votes: 106 27.5%
  • Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time

    Votes: 127 33.0%
  • Grim Fandango

    Votes: 12 3.1%
  • Banjo-Kazooie

    Votes: 11 2.9%
  • Tekken 3

    Votes: 11 2.9%
  • Thief the dark project

    Votes: 10 2.6%
  • Gran Turismo

    Votes: 23 6.0%

  • Total voters
    385

SinDelta

Member
Ocarina of the Time easily. There are very few games that do so many things right: story, characters, art, music, level design, world design, world building, combat, exploration, puzzles, atmosphere, replayability etc It's not the best at doing one particular thing but it's the best at doing all those things in one game.
Later Zelda's improve on aspects of Ocarina of Time, but none have matched or surpassed it in all aspects. Not even Breath of the Wild (which is still an incredible game itself.)
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Tekken 3 was amazing. Couldn't believe how good it was on PS1. I thought Tekken 2 (which looked great at 60 fps) couldn't be topped, but then Tekken 3 looked grittier, less blocky and had 3D-ish backgrounds. Although T2 had better music.

I was thinking of picking MGS, but that was a one and done game for me.
 
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So some might laugh at how late I am on this but apparently Metacritic had tracked games as far back as the mid90's which surprised me. So I took a look at the top rated games that were dangerously critically acclaimed (MC score 90 or above) and wanted to know which of Metacritics top 10 1998 games were your favorite.

1998 is an important time in gaming. PC 3D cards were starting to consolidate, and consoles were finally figuring out 3D gameplay and we're about to transition to a new set of consoles with finished 3D game design. For the most part.

Here is Metacritics top 90+ critically acclaimed games of 1998 in order, which stood out to you?

Ocarina of Time
Tekken 3
Half-Life
Gran Turismo
Metal Gear Solid
Grim Fandango
Banjo-Kazooie
Theif project
Baldurs Gate
Crash 3 Warped

Also it's the only 90s year with 10 games scoring over 90 which also surprised me.
I voted Metal Gear Solid without even thinking

No matter how many masterpieces come out, no game will ever have such an impact on the industry like MGS
 

NahaNago

Member
It's a toss up between tekken 3 and gran turismo. I played a lot of both games back then. I didn't have a n64 back then so I didn't play ocarina of time until much later. All 3 games are great and I spent tons of hours playing each game. I would say I enjoyed tekken 3 and ocarina most since I went and did the story mode for all characters I believe for tekken and I just loved the world and characters of ocarina of time back then.
 

TransTrender

Gold Member
Yeah, this is truly the toughest year and it can be argued a few different ways, but for me it's Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, next logical one is MGS, but Half Life can take it all above those two if you switch up your criteria.
 

Tschumi

Member
Impossible.

I think i selected Half Life but i have entirely equal regards for MGS, OOT, Baldur's Gate, Thief, Grim Fandango and GT.
 

Kerotan

Member
Crash 3 was the only one I played that year so it wins by default. I played MGS in like 2003 and absolutely loved it.
 
Baldurs Gate was amaaaazing.
Tekken 3 and Metal Gear were good.
I didnt really care for Gran Turismo. Im not a car guy.
I didnt play the other games.
 

skit_data

Member
Gotta go for Half-Life

I played Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Banjo-Kazooie and Ocarina of time back then but Half-Life was the start of something new for me

Edit: Might add that the original Unreal had a bigger impact on me than Half-Life had at first glance, but considering the amount of time i spent in Counter-Strike it’s easy to see which one had a more long lasting influence on my gaming habits
 
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Kenpachii

Member
Ocarina easily.

The game was straight up decked with content that was so high quality the fishing mini game was practically considered a game by itself. The fact u could ride a horse through the landscape was also simple amazing in full 3D and with that u had young / old link, lots of stuff u could find like shooting into the sun giving you a fire arrow that was just straight up amazing if you just tried it out. Lots of memorable locations, combat was great. Locations where all beautiful and interesting, hard on top of it. Music was godly, the dungeons where insanely good worked out, the start area was nice and felt really well developed.

Honestly the game was just amazing, while tons of games today beat the game in obviously content / quality / gameplay etc. the game in its time period was just some next level shit. Everything just worked well, everything was just great. Nothing really came close towards it in its competition besides maybe mario 64 which was a gem on its own merits.

Ocarina, mario 64 really where mindblowing games and probably nintendo's height when it comes to there games. Nothing really after that, that came out got to the same dimension as those games.

The only other game i would consider on par or better then ocarina is pokemon blue/red, same concept insane amounts of content, lots of innovative stuff and basically made handheld gaming move into the next dimension as most content in that time on handhelds where basically garbage cash grabs with zero content in it, they where all practically mario knock offs.
 
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Great Hair

Banned
Baldurs Gate (PC, too niche + pcs were expensive)
Half-Life (PC, was it that revolutionary, unreal ?)
Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped
Metal Gear Solid (start of a new era)
Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (No Mario64 though)
Grim Fandango (PC, too niche + pcs were expensive)
Banjo-Kazooie
Tekken 3
Thief the dark project (PC, too niche + pcs were expensive)
Gran Turismo (truly impactful)

My vote as Fan of GT, goes to MGS (due Psycho Mantis + other moments, truly revolutionary, first "playable/cinematic"). That SS R11 chicane, f*ck that.
 

llien

Member
XCOM: Enemy Unknown,
XCOM: Terror from the Deep.

Neither of these made it into the list?
What a joke.
 

mcjmetroid

Member
Amazing year. I actually forgot that metal gear solid and OOT were the same year?

Both revolutionary games but for both completely different reasons.

Ocarina of time made you feel like you were in a world and an explorer like no other game before.

Metal gear solid was the first game to seriously be presented in a movie like light and drove the narrative forward for story in games. In my opinion it's never even been topped here.

I'm going with metal gear solid because it's the game I go back to more.
 

Sophist

Member
It's just lock on tracking movement computers had this for awhile and iirc so did some arcade games.

The heck is "cinematic" Z targeting lol? Why are we pretending it's anything more than movement lockon. I mean it was probably the best implementation on consoles but most games are now using that poor version of better lock on systems perfected by PC.

N64 had good games but the system created so many myths it's nauseating. Like Mario 64 was the first with camera control. Wut?

Which pc games anterior to OOT had z tracking?
 

CuNi

Member
Everyone who hasn't picked Half-Life, I'm sorry to inform you that you have picked the wrong game.

Jokes aside, it's crazy how many good games released in a single year in the past.
Obviously "good games" are very subjective and everyone has a different taste, but to this day many of those games are still very popular.

I wonder if we'll ever have such a time again. And no, I don't mean that every year has to release 5 bangers or so, but once every 5 or 10 years would really be awesome to get a buttload of very acclaimed games that are somewhat innovative or risky in their takes, and not just "Game Installment YXZ" of Franchise "ABC".
 
No Resident Evil 2 invalidates that list 😂 (I just checked, RE2 missed the cutoff by ONE point...)

Out of the ones in the list, these days my overall favorite is Ocarina of Time.

Historically though (and, still to this day) my sentimental favorite is Tekken 3. The thing with Zelda is that it felt like a generational jump because it was -- it was literally on the next-gen console, compared to Link to the Past. Tekken 3 felt like a generational jump on the same console as its predecessor. Gameplay is fast and fluid, with all sorts of crazy new moves and counters for returning characters; the new characters are well designed and appealing to play; graphics were jaw dropping at the time (and in my opinion, very much still hold up), and the audio design is fantastic, too. An improvement over Tekken 2 in almost every conceivably way -- and this is coming from someone who absolutely loves Tekken 2.

Another way in which it was a generational jump is that -- one of the only times I've ever witnessed this in a video game series -- the in-universe generation literally jumped, too. This industry, especially the Japanese side, struggles with the concept of age (which is why every other JRPG is full of fucking high schoolers, or why Kyo Kusanagi in King of Fighters looks exactly the same in 2021 as he did in 1994). But Tekken 3 dared to advance the narrative by actually advancing the passage of time. Returning characters (most notably Paul and Heihachi) were old. Other characters (King 1, Kazuya, Jun Kazama, etc) were killed off, and a bunch of others (Baek, Marshall Law, Michelle Chang, etc) were retired, for story reasons.

It was a great balance between "throw a lot of the old cast out" and "keep things somewhat familiar to not entirely alienate your audience." Hence, Julia Chang -- a new character -- handles somewhat familiar to her predecessor, Michelle Chang. King 2 is a natural gameplay extension of King 1. Bryan Fury is similar to Bruce. This is how you succeed in generational jumps; while I prefer the Street Fighter III way (throw everyone out, even in fighting style), it can be too alienating to series fans.

Tekken 3 is awesome.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Probably the greatest year of my gaming life.

I went for Half-Life, but every single game on that list is a masterpiece.
 

Null Persp

Member
What a year, I can't choose, so many great games.

Unreal
Half-life
Commandos
Metal Gear Solid
Grim Fandango
Fallout 2
SiN
Thief:The Dark Project
Falcon 4.0
Baldur's Gate
Tekken 3
Resident Evil 2
Gran Turismo
 
S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
WideeyedNegativeBinturong-size_restricted.gif


I can't decide, it's too difficult.
 

BigBooper

Member
I'm surprised Baldur's Gate isn't higher, considering the other PC exclusives on there. It's a good list of games, but I'd probably put Thief at #1 for me.
 

Sp3eD

0G M3mbeR
I put so much time into tekken 3. I even loaned my ps1 to my friend for like 2 weeks so he could get better at Jin just so he could fight my hwaorang at a decent level. Was an amazing time.
 

Verchod

Member
Some absolute classics in that list, but had to be Thief for me.
Crash definitely the odd one out there..
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Best year in gaming hands down. Many of my all time favourites come from 1998, but from this list it'll be Gran Turismo.
 

Orta

Banned
Why the fuck is Resident Evil 2 not in that list?

As for it, meh, didn't really like any of them.
 

KouNaN

Neo Member
It is hard to vote, when you have not played most of the games. But OOT was great. I still remember a lot of levels and have not played it for ages.
 

Shut0wen

Member
Man i cant believe gran turismo is on here, all those games have aged like fine wine (especially ocarina of time) but gran turismo on ps1 is pretty bad, frames drops everywhere and i booted it up in ps2 and ps1 about 2 years ago as well
 
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