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Best video games of the 21st century: San Andreas, Minecraft or Elden Ring?

20 October 2026 · Games

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In 2019 The Guardian marked twenty years of the century with a list of its 50 best video games, chosen by its critics. On GOATvs there is no jury: every game is picked or passed over one face-off at a time, by everyone, and the box above shows where the century's biggest games stand today in the world's list of the best video games of all time. We count only games released in 2000 or later. That leaves out Tetris, Super Mario Bros. and Ocarina of Time, but the century's games hold their own against them, and a surprising number of them share one idea: a huge world you are free to wander.

Rockstar built three of the eight. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas arrived on the PlayStation 2 in October 2004, a whole state with three cities, countryside and desert, and the story of Carl Johnson coming home to Grove Street. It became the best-selling game on the console. Grand Theft Auto V (2013) split its story between three men, Michael, Franklin and Trevor, and is still being played on a third generation of consoles. Which GTA is the best has a story of its own. Then came Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018: Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang riding through a West that is ending around them, in one of the most detailed worlds ever built for a game.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has a rival from the same years. CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) sent Geralt of Rivia across a war-torn continent to find his adopted daughter Ciri, and its side quests, like the Bloody Baron's, were written with the care of a main story. It was Game of the Year at The Game Awards in 2015. Arthur Morgan against Geralt is the second pair above.

Two later games changed what an open world could be. Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched with the Switch in March 2017 and let players climb almost anything and solve problems in ways its designers had not planned. Five years later FromSoftware's Elden Ring (2022), directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with world-building by George R. R. Martin, opened the studio's punishing style to a much larger crowd. Both won Game of the Year at The Game Awards. Elden Ring against Breath of the Wild is the first pair.

Then there is the game with no story at all. Minecraft, made by Markus Persson and first released to the public in 2009, gave players blocks and nothing else to do with them but build. It became the best-selling video game of all time, Microsoft bought its studio Mojang in 2014, and a generation learned to play on it. Its closest relative is Roblox, launched in 2006, where the players make the games themselves. Minecraft against Roblox is the third pair. The box closes with Naughty Dog's The Last of Us (2013), the story of Joel and Ellie crossing a ruined America, which HBO turned into a series in 2023.

Close behind are The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, God of War (2018), Baldur's Gate 3 and Portal 2. Pick your side above: Elden Ring or Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3, Minecraft or Roblox. Then see how this century compares with Tetris and Mario in the Games Top 100, ranked by everyone.

Vote: Elden Ring vs The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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