Join today to claim your daily loot

15 Video Games That Still Feel Special Years Later

1-15

Some things don't fade.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - October 8th 2026, 22:00 GMT+2

Batman Arkham City — 15. Batman: Arkham City (2011)
Gliding across Gotham's rooftops in Batman: Arkham City never gets old, even when you know every grapple point by heart. The freeflow combat system turned beating up a dozen thugs into something closer to a rhythm game than a brawler. Throw in Mark Hamill's last real run as the Joker and you get a villain performance nothing since has matched. Few games understood their source material this well and then built a playground worthy of it. | © Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Super Mario Galaxy — 14. Super Mario Galaxy (2007)
Gravity stopped being a rule and became a toy in Super Mario Galaxy. Walking around a tiny spherical planet, flipping upside down without a loading screen in sight, felt like nothing else on shelves in 2007. Every level introduced a new gimmick and then had the discipline to drop it before it overstayed its welcome. Nintendo had more genuine ideas in this one game than most studios manage in a decade. | © Nintendo

Shadow of the Colossus — 13. Shadow of the Colossus (2005)
Sixteen colossi stand between you and the thing you actually came here to do. Shadow of the Colossus strips away towns, shops, and side quests until all that's left is a boy, a horse, and something enormous you have to climb. Grabbing onto fur as a creature the size of a building tries to shake you off still triggers actual vertigo. The quiet after each kill hits harder than the fight itself ever does. | © Sony Computer Entertainment

Fallout New Vegas — 12. Fallout: New Vegas (2010)
Nobody hands you a clean hero's path in the Mojave. Fallout: New Vegas lets you sell out every faction in the region if you feel like it, and the game never punishes you for choosing chaos over virtue. Obsidian built a wasteland where factions remember what you did and react accordingly, which made every playthrough feel like it belonged to someone else. That kind of reactivity is still rare enough to make this one worth replaying. | © Bethesda Softworks

Resident Evil 4 — 11. Resident Evil 4 (2005)
A chainsaw-wielding villager and a poorly timed dodge taught an entire generation to respect personal space. Resident Evil 4 swapped fixed camera angles and tank controls for something faster, meaner, and somehow scarier for it. Leon's one-liners shouldn't work next to the tension of a village turning on him, but they do anyway. Twenty years on, the over-the-shoulder aim still feels tighter than games released last month. | © Capcom

Cropped Grand Theft Auto San Andreas — 10. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
CJ starting out with nothing but a bike and a bad reputation in Los Santos set the tone for everything after. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas let you gain weight, lose it, learn to fly, join a gang war, and still have time to customize a lowrider's hydraulics. The map alone, three cities and everything between them, felt bigger than what most games attempted back then. Nothing since has matched how much stuff Rockstar crammed into one criminal's rise from the bottom. | © Rockstar Games

Skyrim — 9. Skyrim (2011)
Dragons weren't even the best part of Skyrim. You could ignore the main quest for forty hours chasing a rumor about a chest at the bottom of a lake, and the game never once made you feel behind. Every hold had its own politics, every cave had its own little story scratched into a journal nobody else would find. Bethesda built a world that rewarded wandering more than winning. | © Bethesda Softworks

Red dead redemption — 8. Red Dead Redemption (2010)
John Marston just wants out. That single idea carries Red Dead Redemption across a dying frontier full of duststorms, bounty boards, and strangers who never stop needing help. Riding into Mexico for the first time, sun bleeding orange over the hills, remains one of gaming's best "just look at this" moments. It ends the way westerns are supposed to end, quiet and a little bit tragic. | © Rockstar Games

Portal 2 — 7. Portal 2 (2011)
Two robots bicker their way through Portal 2 and somehow make physics puzzles feel like comedy. Wheatley's chatter turns what could've been a dry sequel into something genuinely funny, right up until the story flips on you. The co-op mode deserves its own mention, since figuring out a portal puzzle with a friend produces a very specific kind of screaming. Valve took a clever one-off idea and expanded it without losing a shred of its charm. | © Valve

Mass Effect 2 — 6. Mass Effect 2 (2010)
Loyalty missions turned Mass Effect 2 into something closer to a character study than a shooter. Getting Garrus, Tali, or Mordin through their personal crisis mattered more than any firefight against the Collectors. The suicide mission at the end forces you to reckon with every choice made along the way, and losing a crew member you'd grown attached to actually stings. BioWare figured out how to make a squad feel like a family you'd die defending. | © Electronic Arts

The Last of Us — 5. The Last of Us (2013)
Twenty minutes into The Last of Us, Joel loses his daughter, and the game never lets you forget it. Everything after is filtered through that grief, even the quiet bus rides and the giraffe scene that gives you thirty seconds to just breathe. Ellie's growth from cargo to partner happens so gradually you don't notice the shift until she's the one saving him. The ending still splits rooms, and that's exactly why it worked. | © Sony Computer Entertainment

Bioshock — 4. BioShock (2007)
Would you kindly remember the first time Rapture flooded around you? BioShock dropped players into an underwater city built on Ayn Rand ideals and let it rot beautifully from the inside. The Big Daddies lumbering past while Little Sisters hummed to themselves made every hallway feel like a held breath. Few twists in games land as hard as the one buried in that phrase. | © 2K Games

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt — 3. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)
Geralt of Rivia spends most of this game hunting for a girl who doesn't need saving nearly as much as everyone assumes. CD Projekt Red built Velen and Novigrad so dense with side content that the main quest almost feels like a distraction. A random contract about a missing goat could unravel into something darker than the story itself. Nobody expected a monster-hunting sequel to redefine what an open world owes its players. | © CD Projekt

Half Life 2 — 2. Half-Life 2 (2004)
Gravity guns weren't supposed to be this fun. Half-Life 2 handed players a tool that turned toilets and sawblades into weapons, and suddenly every room became a puzzle box. Ravenholt's zombies, the eerie hum of Combine patrols, Alyx Vance actually feeling like a person instead of an escort mission. Valve proved physics could be the star of the show, not just the backdrop. | © Valve Corporation

Cropped The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 1998 — 1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)
Link steps out of the Temple of Time as an adult, and Hyrule has aged with him into something darker. Ocarina of Time turned a simple flute into a time machine, a language, and a way of talking to the world itself. Z-targeting alone changed how three-dimensional combat would work for decades after. That opening chord still means something, even now. | © Nintendo

1-15

Most games get completed and forgotten, but a rare few leave something behind that stays with you long after you've put the controller down. Here are 15 video games that still feel special years later.

Facebook X Reddit WhatsApp Copy URL

Most games get completed and forgotten, but a rare few leave something behind that stays with you long after you've put the controller down. Here are 15 video games that still feel special years later.