After playing a game you think is your all time favorite, do you wait before calling it your #1?

[Bob Beat]

After playing since nes, I had top tier games, like LTTP up there. So it took a few years before I even accepted RE4 into my top 5.

In truth, I knew but I didn't want to be rash. So I moved it into the top 5, played the wii version and it got into my top 2 then I just accepted as my number one years later. Some games are amazing the first time through and you can easily misplace a decent game highly. Like Dead Space. Extremely good game that could get misplaced highly. And now I've played so many games it's hard to really know. GTA3 is a landmark but I can't fully know if it's top 10. Who gets knocked out? Will I instabuy if it gets a remaster? No. Shouldn't a top 10 cause me to day 1 it's rerelease? LTTP gets a remaster and I'm buying day one, no questions asked.

Maybe I should use that criteria. How likely will I buy a rerelease or remaster? Super Mario Galaxy? Say no more, fam. Metroid prime? I'm there. Even then, that is related to how much I want to see another game. I just don't want to endure n64/ps1 graphics. But ace combat 4? I'm all over it. Golden eye? I'll hesitate. But it feels like the best way, currently.

 

[Barn]

With a few exceptions (like guilty pleasure year-end lists), I don't really do personal numbered lists for any media -- I'm not super into applying that kind of objectivity to subjective stuff. I try to avoid "favorite" when I can; I feel like you get more insight into the thing you're discussing if you try to come up with more specific descriptions and superlatives, outside of this "this thing outranks this thing."

 

[Deleted member 14400]

Depends on if it's single player or multiplayer to me. The allure of a great multiplayer experience needs to be sustained for months/years before I can determine where to rank it.

Single player game rankings I can digest where I'd put them after a few weeks roughly.

 

[Digital Savior]

So does that mean you never go back to older games you already played?
Would make games feel kinda disposable to me, I feel like I'm concentrating too much on newer games adn trying to see everything in one playthrough to move on to the next game.

Click to shrink...

Not, never. Playing older games is definitely not a priority.

I'll keep playing new games until they're not fun anymore. Sometimes it's a few hours. Sometimes it's 40 hours. Occasionally I try going back to stuff I didn't play that much. I still play NES titles or older Zelda titles every now and then.

 

[Minotaur]

I have never been able to pick a favorite game. Its hard how do you guys do this. There so many to pick. I cant aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

 

[Man Called Aerodynamics]

No. When it's your favorite, you know immediately.

 

[Damn Silly]

I suppose I do in a way, but mostly because I don't think about it immediately after. The main times I think about my all time favourites is when threads about the subject pop up on here, or occasionally they're a discussion on Twitter or something.

I can generally pick up on if a game is special long before the end though.

 

[TriGen]

Yes, I need to wait. Not just all-time but sometimes my favorite GOTY will change down the line. Nostalgia and how memorable a game is really plays a huge part, so I might realize after the fact that it's the game I keep thinking about. For instance my clear top 4 in 2017 was: SMO, P5, BOTW and Yakuza 0. The first time I played each I thought it would end up my GOTY and since Mario came out last I would of voted for it at the end of the year. But, now? It's definitely Yakuza 0, even though all those games are on my top games of the gen list too.

The reason is because once the year ended I realized it was the game that left the biggest impact on me. I thought about the game and its characters, I looked up videos and wanted to hear other people talk about it more than any other. Now I might say it's my 3rd favorite game ever behind 1# OoT and #2 Persona 4. And the year it came out I probably would of put it 4th on my GOTY list and now it might be higher than that all-time for me. So, yeah, recency bias is real and I definitely get carried away if I don't give something time to breathe.

 

[MrNewVegas]

Never.

It's more about the experience the game provides you then the game itself.

There's so much more to it than the game. It's about what's going on in your life, your surroundings, the atmosphere.

A person should always know right after they finish up where it stands.

 

[Mechaplum]

Never.

It's more about the experience the game provides you then the game itself.

There's so much more to it than the game. It's about what's going on in your life, your surroundings, the atmosphere.

A person should always know right after they finish up where it stands.

Click to shrink...

This...was what happened to me in [E]nding.

 

[ShinyKyurem]

I don't really think I have a #1, because that place is always changing in my mind. So far, I've had many "all time favourites" such as Super Mario Galaxy, several Pokémon entries, Overwatch, Persona 3, Warcraft 3, Portal 2...

So yeah, the term "all time favourite" doesn't really mean much when it comes to me.

 

[MrNewVegas]

This...was what happened to me in [E]nding.

Click to shrink...

What a coincidence! Also one of my fave experiences!

 

[Mechaplum]

What a coincidence! Also one of my fave experiences!

Click to shrink...

 

[bionic77]

5 years is my test.

ChronoTrigger and Super Metroid remain the champs for me even though I have played some real masterpieces since then. They just seem to get even better the more time passes.

 

[bionic77]

No. When it's your favorite, you know immediately.

Click to shrink...

Eh. I was addicted to Super Metroid and ChronoTrigger when I played them and enjoyed them immensely. But it took years and multiple replays for me to realize they were my favorite games of all time.

Same for Daytona 2 in the arcade. I didn't just play it once and say this is the GOAT arcade racer. Took years before I felt that way.

More often than not after I beat a game I am ready for the next big thing.

 

[Larrikin]

Ever since I had a concept of a top 10, Psychonauts was always my number one, but that was also years after I played it. Only a few games have even come close (Hollow Knight, Just Shapes and Beats, Breath of the Wild) but nothing really hits me in all the same ways as Psychonauts. However, I'm really curious as to whether Silksong or Psychonauts 2 will dethrone it.

 

[TheRulingRing]

Well unless the game's managed to keep me engaged for many 100s of hours it wouldn't be in the running for #1 anyway, so yeah I guess I could say that I wait.

 

[yyr]

"All-time #1 favorite" is a thoroughly foreign concept to me. I instead keep a list of my all-time favorites, with no particular order or capacity. There's about 30 games/series on it atm. I don't think I've ever had one absolute #1 favorite.

I've been playing video games for about 35 years. I've enjoyed and loved so many that I just can't pick a single favorite, especially when I love so many games across so many different genres and generations. How is it possible to directly compare Q*bert, Super Mario World, Dance Dance Revolution, Gears of War, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Forza Horizon 4, and pick a favorite among them? I can't. They're too different. And that's just a handful of games I consider my absolute favorites; there are quite a few more.

But I don't take additions to the list lightly. Usually I wait until one of two things happens:
1) I become hopelessly addicted to said game, with no hope of escape
2) I look back on a game that I played a while ago and realize, this game was the bomb and I can't wait to play it again.