"Discounting Elden Ring as a good narrative because you need YouTube videos to understand is kinda telling on yourself. It’s like saying James Joyce shouldn’t be considered the greatest 20th century author because you didn’t understand “Ulysses.”"
"Critics have been asking when video games would “grow up” for years. The real question is this: when will films catch up with video games like The Last of Us Part II?"
"In a medium where everything is John Wick, The Last of Us Part 2 is Schindler’s List."
"When the Anthem team started development back in 2012, they hoped to make the Bob Dylan of video games, one that would be referenced and remembered for generations."
"[N]o matter what video games mean to you or how good a game might be, so much of the magic happens in your head, and to everyone else you’re someone sitting on a couch fiddling with some oddly-shaped plastic, and that’ll never not look goofy—even if you’re playing the Citizen Kane of video games. Which, by the way, is the other reason you might have heard of Shadow of the Colossus: It’s kind of the Citizen Kane of video games."
"Still, [Prey is] just a game you might say, and you’d be right. It is just a game. Citizen Kane is just a film. 1984 is just a book. Beethoven’s 9th is just a symphony. The Mona Lisa is just a painting, and the Taj Mahal is just a building. The point is that great art, no matter its form, has the power to inspire awe and contemplation."
"The Nintendo Entertainment System is the most important console Nintendo has ever made. It saved the industry after the 1982 Atari crash, and it delivered 8-bit foundational texts for the future of the medium. I argue that the original Super Mario Bros. is still the Citizen Kane of video games."
"Life is Strange: Before the Storm is not the Citizen Kane of video games, but if Citizen Kane were a video game, it would probably look more than a little like Before the Storm."
"Now that I’m looking at these games through the eyes of a critic, I’m even more impressed. They’ve aged, sure, but in the same way classic films such as “Citizen Kane” and “Casablanca” have. Those beautiful black-and-white visuals still pop 80 years later, just like the striking, two-dimensional pixel art of these Super Nintendo games. The games’ simplistic story-telling is still charming, much like the broad over-acting in “Citizen Kane.”"
"Casey Hudson […] would start a new team at BioWare Edmonton to work on a brand new intellectual property, which they gave the code-name Dylan. (That new IP’s code-name, a source said, came because Hudson and team wanted to make the Bob Dylan of video games—one that would be referenced for years to come.)"
— Kotaku
"
Some people have said that video games have yet to have their version of “Citizen Kane” yet, and I don’t know if that’s true. Undertale was incredibly clever and emotionally affecting, and the best game of last year because of it. The Stanley Parable dove deeper into its own genre than most films have ever dared. Dark Souls visualised an incredible, mournful world dripping with atmosphere and entropic, existential ideas of time and passing.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all games are art.
""Well, I’m here to tell you that, as much as Alien is essential to any lover of sci-fi movies, Duskers is just as essential to any lover of sci-fi games. We’ve been looking for the Citizen Kane of videogames all these years, when really we should have been looking for the Ellen Ripley of videogames. Anyway, don’t worry, we’ve found her."
"Hideo Kojima Is the Jonathan Franzen of Video Games"
"
You might have played the Citizen Kane of games, but you probably ignored it.
[…]
The Citizen Kane of games is a game that is at best considered a “cult” game at the moment. It’s a game that the critics were ambivalent about on release, and it’s a game that wasn’t a commercial success (so that people can discover it, naturally).
I have my theories about games that would be candidates for that title (Nier, basically), but I’m not making predictions.
"