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10 Essential Titles Every New Gamer Must Play

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WhatCulture Gaming built a beginner’s syllabus, and it starts with a kid pulling a sword out of a pedestal in Hyrule.

WhatCulture Gaming’s video essay outlet put together a rundown aimed squarely at people who’ve never picked up a controller, or who own a console and don’t know where to start. “10 Essential Titles Every New Gamer Must Play” skips the temptation to just list whatever’s topping the charts this month and instead builds a syllabus out of the games that actually shaped how modern titles play, feel, and get designed. The pick at the top of the list isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s followed the outlet’s other rankings — it’s the game most historians point to when they talk about 3D adventure design taking its final form.

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) anchors the list as the title credited with codifying 3D navigation, lock-on targeting, and cinematic world design conventions still used today.
• Super Mario Bros. (1985) is highlighted as the foundational platformer that established video gaming culture from the ground up.
• The full ten-game rundown spans four decades, from 1985’s Super Mario Bros. to 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V, deliberately mixing genre-founding classics with modern open-world staples.

The Two Games That Set the Rules

Ocarina of Time gets top billing for a reason that goes beyond nostalgia. Before 1998, 3D action-adventure games were still figuring out basic problems — how do you aim in three dimensions, how do you keep a camera from fighting the player, how do you make a sprawling world feel navigable instead of disorienting. Nintendo’s answer, built around Z-targeting and a structured day-night cycle across Hyrule, became the template that countless studios have leaned on ever since.

Super Mario Bros. gets the other anchor spot, and for a much older reason: it’s the game that turned a side-scrolling jump button into a language every subsequent platformer would speak. Anyone curious about how far that DNA has traveled can see it in the ongoing wave of fan reworkings of the original game in modern engines, which only exist because the source material’s level logic still holds up.

The Open-World and Sandbox Entries

Grand Theft Auto V (2013) represents the modern side of the list — proof that the open-world formula matured into something with a genuinely compelling narrative structure rather than just a big map to drive around in. Minecraft gets its slot for the opposite reason: no story, no scripted objectives, just a building and exploration sandbox that succeeds because it gets out of the player’s way. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion rounds out this trio as the game credited with popularizing the open-world RPG format that Bethesda and its imitators have built entire careers on since.

Ocarina of Time didn’t just headline its own genre — it wrote the rulebook every 3D adventure game since has been quietly copying.

The Genre Curveballs

Doom (1993) is the list’s shooter pick, credited with helping establish the first-person shooter genre during a decade when the format was still finding its footing. Portal takes the puzzle slot, built around a first-person mechanic — the portal gun — that’s inventive enough to have spawned its own sub-genre of spatial-reasoning games. Metal Gear Solid earns its place for helping revolutionize stealth design in the late ’90s, blending espionage plotting with mechanics that rewarded patience over gunfire.

Bioshock lands on the list for a different kind of ambition: an art deco underwater city, Rapture, wrapped around a first-person shooter that used its setting and narrative twists to do more than point-and-shoot combat usually attempts. Readers who want the deeper breakdown of how that story actually unfolds can find it in a full explainer on Bioshock’s story and characters.

The Closing Pick

Final Fantasy VII closes out the countdown, and it’s the clearest signal of what WhatCulture Gaming is trying to do with this list — give a new player one entry point into the JRPG genre, not just the shooters and sandboxes that dominate modern charts. It’s positioned as a PlayStation-era classic with an epic scope and a cast newcomers are expected to recognize the moment they start digging into gaming history, even if they’ve never touched a PS1.