Here at The Games of the Year, we’re dedicated to letting you know which classic games are worth your time today. That means telling you what we think of each game we talk about. We judge on a five rating scale:
Essential: These are among the best games you can play from a given year. They’re tons of fun and easy to recommend to pretty much any player who doesn’t specifically dislike the type of game. An essential RPG might not turn around someone who absolutely despises RPGs, but even if you’re a bit negative on the genre, this is one worth considering.
Worthy: These are good games and worth playing, many of them are even very good, but they aren’t necessarily must play games or all-time greats. If you like the genre or the series you should absolutely give games in this category a try, but if you’re not a big fan you can probably find better options. Still, if you like games like this then you’ll have a good time.
Playable: Games in this category are fine. They’re playable. You won’t hate the world while you play them. That said, there have been thousands of games released over the years and these ones aren’t particularly great. Even if you played games all day every day, you could probably still find better options than these to fill your time. If you’re a big fan of the genre or the series you might still consider giving them a try though.
Don’t Bother: These are bad games. No, they won’t make many lists of the worst games ever. They probably have some redeeming qualities. They’re still bad though. The fun is limited or offset by too many moments which aren’t fun and they’re simply not worth your time with so many better titles in the history of video games.
Awful: Don’t play these games. These are absolutely atrocious games with few if any redeeming qualities. Many of them are among the worst games of all time and none of them are worth your time unless you’re specifically interested in terrible games.
When we judge the quality of these games, I do think it’s worth letting you into our mindset. We’re not here to tell you whether these games were good thirty years ago. We’re here to tell you if the games are good today. That means games which were only ever interesting because they were technologically impressive or doing something new probably won’t do as well. That said, we’ve been playing games for a long time and we are capable of looking at games for what they are. That means if a game has a control scheme or options which might feel off compared to games today, that isn’t a death sentence. We’ll engage with the games and see if we get used to how they do things. That said, they won’t get bonus points because they were doing something interesting in 1993 if they’re just not fun to play in 2026.
We also give each game an importance score where we do give credit to their historical legacy. This isn’t a quality rating. Some of the most important games ever made are not much fun, while other games are incredibly fun to play but didn’t really influence anything. These ratings are:
Crucial: One of the most important games ever made. If you’re looking to understand the history of video games, this is a game you should be familiar with.
Important: This game had an impact on the industry, but it didn’t the world or completely reinvent anything.
Mild: These games may have had an impact on the industry but it was a small one. Perhaps it introduced new mechanics to a popular series or influenced an important creator, but its impact wasn’t immense.
Unimportant: These might be good games, but they aren’t important to the history of video games. They had little to no influence on the rest of the industry and the only thing that would be different if they had never existed is that we’d have one less game to play.