What was the most polished game ever released?

In this day and age where games being released unfinished is par for the course, I thought we'd share a game that impressed with its crazy showroom polish that made the experience that much more enjoyable because you knew you were playing something that was carefully crafted, well thought out and expertly put together to make a crazy good, polished game....

Not sure I'd add games that were patched a thousand time post launch... So for example I think you could say breath of the wild was a highly polished product, maybe the most optimized open world game on its host device we've seen. The Witcher 3 on the other hand when released was buggy with suspect controls that needed several patches and overhaul work to get it to where it s now.

What say you system wars?

Super Mario Galaxy and Nintendo games in general will very rarely have bugs, slowdown, crashes, etc plus the gameplay is (in the best ones anyway) finely tuned.

inb4 Tetris.

Honestly, it's a matter of scope/ambition vs polish. It'd be easy to list a ton of super tight smaller 2d games that are damn near perfectly polished.

All around I can't really narrow it down to a specific game as there are so many, but yeah, gotta give Nintendo props. It's like they get to the point where most devs would just release a game, and then spend an extra 6 months cleaning it up. There are certainly examples to the contrary, but on the whole they really put out some damn solid games.

Skyrim

GTA5

Duke Nukem Forever. 12 years of polish on that puppy. :P

I think a lot of the older games are very polished..... they started becoming unpolished when developers gained the ability to release patches.

Although I'm not a that much of a fan, Metal Gear Solid 2 has super, super finite detail. Even to this day it's still kind of impressive.

Going to be bias and include Halflife 2, one of the first games where physics was a thing, and it's very, very hard, nigh impossible to mess it up or have freak outs. Likewise this game looks great and was specifically designed to run across as wide range of machines. At the time a mid end machine could handle it NP, while someone like Doom 3 gave them a breakdown, or be downgraded to the point that it looked noticeably shit.

@mems_1224: you must mean the ps3 version. :P

Breath of the Wild. Insane polish for such a large open world.

Super Metriod

Super Meatboy

Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy VI, Chronos Cross, Persona 4G, Persona 5, Horizon Zero Dawn comes to mind.

Are you asking from a technical perspective only or all round?

Because if we're going with just technicality, so graphics and sound, then the obvious answer is MGS V. As much as I dislike the game in comparison to its far superior predecessors, from a technical standpoint it was almost perfect. Released with smooth, beautiful graphics that still stand today and at an almost unmolested 60 fps throughout. Just a fine achievement from a programmers point of view.

If we're talking a complete package, so graphics, gameply and modes then that would have to go to the PS2 edition of Resi 4. One of the most finely tuned gmaing experiences ever. Shout out to Fight Night 3 and 4 as well, Mario Galaxy, the current Zelda and quite a few others.

@ConanTheStoner: breath of the wild is the first Nintendo game I've played since Galaxy (which is also insanely polished and could easily won this category) and I forgot just how important it is to the overall impression of a game to know that the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed, right out if the gate.

I want a Mike Tysons punch out 2, where you have to fight him at the end with his tiger face tattoo, only he's dressed like he's going to the club.... Street fight final level a'la rocky 5.

Witcher 3 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Super Mario Galaxy

Do later editions of Street Fighter 2 count?

Tetris

Umm... what?

Final Fantasy Tactics was launched with an absolutely broken translation and even more broken game balance. Final Fantasy 6 was terribly balanced as well, and one of the core attributes was glitched to the point where it didn't work. Not to mention the other 100 glitches that game had.

Super Metroid actually a lot of snes games

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic

Ninja Gaiden Black

Mario Galaxy 1 2

Metal Gear Solid 4

@aigis: .....!!!

Not with it's frame rate...

@scatteh316: Its frame rates were great. Just had a few weird spots that were quickly patched. Still its the most polished open world game ever made.

For what it is, probably Breath of the Wild.

Objectively and overall I'd give it to Metroid Prime.

What he said, including the bit about FF6.

FF6 may be my favourite FF, but it's f*cking horribly balanced.

if it's not 60fps, it's not polished, it's called acceptable.

SMB3 comes to mind. And Mario Galaxy. And Shenmue II. Super Mario world as well.

@funsohng: Its called works. Cant be said about a lot of other games.

Replaying it recently and frame rate drops a pretty large amount.

Basically if there is tall grass and a couple mobs about lol

I thought we talking about games that are polished, not games that work.

Definitly some oldschool 2D games will win when we talking about polishing in general. There was very little room for error in very simplistic 2D games like first atari games etc.

Polishing simplier games its a way easier task than a super complicated 3D open world based on high end graphic engines and so many other things that they need to be combined in the best possible way to be glitch/bug free.

For example Pac-man >> Zelda BOTW because pacman is bug free therefore technically is more polished. Something doesnt sound fair here does it ?

@Chutebox: Wii U? Frame rate drops were patched out on Switch (albeit of course that does take the game out of consideration for most polished launch, by that definition)

I look poor to you!?

Nah, switch version. I'm actually seen more frame drops the second time around.

The first game that came to my mind is Super Mario Galaxy 2. It's many times more ambitious than the first and quite a bit more polished too.

Also practically every major release from Nintendo. Their quality control is insane. I remember Retro studios mentioning that they spent an entire year just on polish for Donkey Kong Country Returns as per Nintendo's request.

The Galaxy games.

Ver 1.3 and the framerate still lags bigly in cities, hyrule castle, kokiri forest, etc in the Wii U version.

generally any game by nintendo. breath of the wild was a bit of a slip up with performance problems (especially on the wiiu) but generally im confident to buy a nintendo game day 1 and know that it will work.

also, surprisingly, a PC game: freelancer. i think there was 1 minor patch released for it for some obscure MP related bug. in my multiple playthroughs of the game back in the day it just worked out of the box.

DooM

Most of the top-tier arcade and console games released after the NES and before the Xbox.

During that era, it was unforgivable for console games to release in the shoddy states they get released in today.

Doom with Vulkan. 70-100fps on an r9 380 and max settings is nothing short of amazing

@osan0: playing it on switch and its pretty damned polished... I think it's the most beautiful game this year by a wide margin too. It's so damn inviting. With a living breathing canvased world to explore like none we've seen, with the physics and systems at play... I can forgive a little pop-in when flying in my glider.

It makes developers who prioritize draw distance visuals over gameplay development across an open world look really really bad...

Like if I'm Bioware, after andromeda, I'm hoping the ceo of Ea doesn't play breath if the wild because there would be a ton of firings.

Uncharted 4

@funsohng: didn't felt it was badly balanced or it had any glitch. I just played it and it was nice.

Same thing with Tactics, the ennemies had the same levels as your caracters. Fine by me.

Pretty much anything released by Naughty Dog.

My vote goes to Super Mario Galaxy 2.

@TheEroica: it took 2-3 patches in the switch to do that though and the wiiu version wont be fixed. the game launched with performance issues. yes there are many reasons one could argue for it. the ambition. the scale of it etc. the most ambitious games are rarely polished (though thats not to say that an unpolished game is always ambitious).

dont get me wrong: BOTW is a brilliant game. i cant see anything knocking it off GOTY for me this year. but we are talking about polish. polish is no obvious bugs, well balanced and consistent performance. basically the gold standard is that once the game is out it shouldn't need any patches. i couldnt say BOTW is the most polished game ever.

mario odyssey will probably be the most polished game released this year. early analysis from E3 shows a very steady framerate. thats unlikely to get worse before launch (not nintendos MO). that combined with nintendo not doing bugs too often and their generally excellent track record with mario platformers are all pointing to it.

@osan0: So what game is more polished than Breath of the Wild? Pong? Lol. I have over 300 hours in Zelda and zero frame rate issues. Nintendo be ballin on these silly fanboys.

The original PS2 version of: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of liberty.

Simply the most meticulously detailed and flawlessly crafted video game I"ve ever played.

The fact that this was created in 2001 makes it more impressive than anything that has released since. As a complex and technically impressive project, from start to finish MGS2:SOL is flawless!

Pretty much most of Nintendo's first party games. There are a few here and there that needed fixes but in general most of their games are flawless on release.

LOL at BotW being well optimized. First off, the game runs at 30fps, which is shit for starters. Then it has noticeable slowdown which is easily reproduced in unoptimized areas. The game also crashed on me a few times. Might as well say that Bloodborne is well optimized going by those shit standards.

Pong

@TheEroica: Pretty much anything made by Nintendo in the early days, post Atari 2600/ET crash.

Squaresoft actually USED to be like this too. Oh how low the mighty have fallen.

edit: Oh yeah, and DOOM.