The Video Game Genre Tier List

And picking on Uncharted

I recently sat down to rank some video game genres off the top of my head. I went into this completely biased, merely planning on investigating my own preferences.

After making the list and playing around with it a bit, I realized that my love of a video game genre is perfectly negatively correlated with how much that genre overlaps with other real-world activities:

• F Tier

  • Idle/Clicker - posting on Instagram, getting likes

• D Tier

  • Simulation Sports - fantasy football, watching the game

  • Ubisoft-Style Map Games - scrolling your feed, watching Netflix, just chilling

  • Cozy Games - ASMR, popping bubble wrap, watering plants

  • Cinematic Narrative Adventure - film

• C Tier

  • Hardcore PC RTS/MMO/CRPG - trading stocks/crypto, running a business, arguing and amassing a following on Twitter

  • Battle Royale - group chat, hanging out on Discord

  • MOBA - team sports

• B Tier

  • Fighting, Arcade Sports - martial arts, individual sports

  • Horror - haunted houses, horror movies

  • JRPG - fantasy novels, D&D, programming, classical music

  • Turn-Based Strategy - chess, war, business

• A Tier

  • Arcade - juggling, toys

  • Action - parkour, bouldering, extreme sports

  • Rhythm - dancing, drumming

  • Puzzle - crosswords, riddles, mathematics, puzzles

• S Tier

  • Action-Adventure - ???

How come I don’t like Madden? Because it’s less fun than fantasy football in nearly every way. D tier.

Fighting games get a B. Their emphasis on long-term skill-building overlaps with martial arts a lot while lacking the deeply rewarding physical aspect, but they still bring a lot of imagination to the table that you can’t get from real-life sports (and let’s face it, some of us are clumsy).

The only genre I gave an S is action-adventure, and sure enough, this doesn't have any great real-world correlates—the closest I could come up with was exploring Disneyland.

When I refer to action-adventure here, I’m talking about the Zelda/Dark Souls/Super Mario 64 style of quiet exploratory mechanics-focused games, not the God of War/Spider-Man/Assassin's Creed style of cinematic set piece games, which I've categorized as "Cinematic Narrative Adventure." With apologies to every other genre whose fans I’ve offended with low rankings and am now quickly moving past, let me pick on Cinematic Narrative Adventures in particular.

I gave this genre a D because it doesn’t add value on top of what the medium of film already provides. HBO’s The Last of Us became one of the most critically acclaimed TV shows of all time by freeing the game’s plot from its prison of ladder puzzles and allowing it to be the movie it was destined to be. It’s no wonder it beat The Super Mario Bros. Movie for Best Adaption at The Game Awards. Mario is at home in video games—Joel and Ellie are only held back by them.

At best, cinematic action games trap great stories in the wrong medium. At worst, they fail to contain great stories period. Despite what IGN will tell you, Grand Theft Auto IV does not have “Oscar-caliber drama.” If you genuinely believe that Mass Effect 2 is really smart sci-fi, I won’t tell you your preferences are wrong, but I find it very likely that you’re doing yourself a major disservice by not having read a lot of novels that you’d really love.

Uncharted is a worse movie than Indiana Jones, it’s a worse shooter than Gears of War, and it’s a worse platformer than Jak and Daxter. To the extent that there’s something to be said for the skillful blending of disparate genres—well, it’s earned them a bump up from F Tier. Uncharted is not a poorly-made product, but it is an abomination that has no right to exist perhaps not the Platonic ideal of game narrative design.