I'm ashamed of myself and you should be too!
Why you ask?
Because I have not once in my life played The Legend of Zelda. I've also never played a Final Fantasy game, or Kingdom Hearts.
Now to be perfectly honest, I really don't give two shits that I've never played these games. They never really appealed to me. However, when I let people know that I have never played these games they react like I'm some kind of fraud.
'How can you call yourself a real gamer but never played these classic games?'
I'd call people out on this, except that I'm guilty of it myself. How for example can a gamer go through life without ever playing a game of Halo, Fable or Oblivion? Seriously, there are some poor souls who have never even played pokemon. And to me, that's just wrong.
So my questions to you are:
What are the classic games you never played that you feel other gamers will judge you for never having played?
What games do you think every serious gamer should try at least once in their life?
Finally, what do you think about this kind of judgement in the gaming community? Should gamers be allowed to play (or rather not play) whatever they want freely? Or are there certain games that all gamers need to try at least once?
I didn't play pretty much all the games you mentioned Even more, I've probably never played a lot of classic games that will come up in this thread I don't think there are such games that every serious gamer should try at least once, and tbh, I couldn't care less about what others play If they played the same games I had, good, we have something in common. If not, well, we may still have something in common that is not related to gaming
Didn't play Zelda, or the gameboy pokemon games, or Halo, or Team Fortress.
Not only that but there are games that are universally recognized as being the best (Half Life, WoW, a few others) and I completely despise those games and find them terrible even for their time.
Also I don't see how Kingdom Hearts is a "classic", there's many games that are way more revolutionary than that. Like the Tekken/Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat trio, the Mario games obviously, the early Gran Turismo, and so on.
I played Half Life, and it was terrible at the time. Nearly no soundtracks, repetitive gameplay (easily over 20 hours of the same repetitive thing), poor gameplay mechanics (moving around felt like moving on platforms of ice, everything was very slippery for no reason), little to no challenge at all when it came to boss fights.
Spyro, Rayman, Mario, Zelda, all those games came before Half Life and they were many times superior. Even if you wanna consider Half Life a shooter, Goldeneye 007 came before it and it was much better. Heck even Doom was a better game.
For me, "classic" begins with the N64. Before that I only played a bit of Batman, X-Men and Sonic on the Genesis. Final Fantasy never interested me until Tactics Advanced (which is a blast), and I never played Kingdom Hearts because I'm not a big fan of the concept. I don't think any of my close gamer friends have played FF either, so we're "out of the loop" together on that one. For the most part, if I haven't played it I've at least heard of it and know enough about the premise to have a conversation about it. In the TES community, though, Skyrim is the only one I've really played, but no one's ever like "tsk, tsk, go play the older ones!" I owned Oblivion for a little while, but never so much as completed the opening sequence.
The only time I ever got flak for not playing a game was when my last roommate found out I hadn't played Mass Effect, but completed ME2. He finally convinced me to change that, though, for which I'm grateful. #thanksgivingstuff
I've never been shamed, but I have been met with pity and disbelief. Most of it comes from never having beaten Ocarina of Time.
I usually advise people to play Bioshock, but my recommendations depend on what games they're serious about. For storytelling, Bioshock and Mass Effect.
Of course people should be free to play or not play what they want, but the judgment won't stop. There are games that come highly recommended, but no real necessary games.