Alright, time to piss off everyone
Left is Civ, StarCraft and Half-Life.
#3. StarCraft -Great game, and lots of fun. Arguably South Korea's national sport, which is very very cool. But outside of the RTS genre, which is absolutely codified, it's impact, while still there, wasn't as great. It even added things to our lingo, like Zerging, but it's still not on the top two spots, sorry.
#2. Civilization - With a truly influential and powerful game, Civilization is an awesome game at being time-consuming. It's a good game. But it's influence outside of the strategy genre isn't as much. Sure, the occasionally RPG or something might still have something in-game similar to the Civilopedia, but the game isn't #1.
And that might make a lot of your mad, because my choice for the Best Most Influential Game of All Time is Half-Life, a choice you might not agree with, but it
is the correct one.
Half-Life
First of all, Half Life actually did a course change on a burgeoning genre of the FPS, that was already codified with games like Wolfenstein 3d and Doom. And then Half Life came through and it's key was immersion and story telling. Gone are levels and getting scores and the gaming interface. You'll find items in realistic places, like ammo in ammo bins, and gone are the flip to full-motion video or anything. It pushed immersion in a major way that pushed not just FPS genres to a new level, but also every other first-person game in that followed, such as Morrowind or Fallout 3, which is still a direct follow to Half-Life. Given the huge role both FPS games and first-person generally is in today's gaming market, Half-Life is the clear winner for most influential.
It's also a Hell of a lot of fun, by the by.
So, here's to Half-Life!
Enter the hazing.