The Last of Us Tops the 100 Greatest Games List: The Argument Is About the Ruler, Not the Crown

The list went up, and within minutes the comment section split three ways. One group held The Last of Us at number one. A second pushed The Last of Us Part II ahead of its predecessor, citing combat systems and level design. A third simply left, taking a different name with them and offering no explanation. None of the three groups argued about how good the game actually is. They argued about what you are allowed to measure it with.

Kinda Funny Games published a list of the 100 greatest games in history, placing The Last of Us — developed by Naughty Dog, released in 2026 — at number one. Its sequel, The Last of Us Part II, released in 2026, also appears on the list. The framing of the piece is unambiguous: open with the controversy, then reveal the ranking, then quote both sides.

Both arguments are given room. The defence holds that The Last of Us is a milestone the industry cannot skip past, proof that cinematic language could carry an AAA product. The opposition holds that greatness must be measured by gameplay systems, and by that ruler a purely mechanical title like Sekiro stands higher.

The list runs across a hundred titles, from early products like Pong to recent releases. It closes on a line that reads almost as a disclaimer: choosing the greatest game of all time has never been easy. That line reveals that the writer knows the ranking stands on uneven ground.

Inside the piece sits a question that is raised and then abandoned: does this list judge by gameplay quality, by popularity, or by historical influence? No weighting, no published criteria, no methodology.

Behind all of it, the evidence for a wave of controversy is limited to phrases like one player said, many people feel, and some gamers. No figures, no platform, no time window. The dispute is real, but it is asserted rather than measured.

I have followed rankings like this for six years, and the pattern repeats: people argue at length about the order and almost never about the ruler. The ruler decides the order, and it is always chosen before the argument starts.

A ranking that withholds its criteria generates controversy by design, not by oversight. When the criteria are vague, everyone can be right. The history camp is right because The Last of Us genuinely is a milestone. The systems camp is right because Part II genuinely has deeper combat. The Sekiro camp is right because Sekiro genuinely demands more skill. Three people are right, three rulers are different, and nobody has to concede anything.

In esports this mechanism is so familiar it has become instinct. When a community argues over the greatest player in history, the answer changes entirely depending on whether you count titles, time at the top, or influence on how an entire generation plays. Three rulers, three champions. None of the rulers is wrong. One of them simply goes unspoken.

The safe versus ambitious pairing between the two Last of Us games works the same way. Part one is the refinement of a proven formula. Part two is a bet on fragmented storytelling and choices designed to discomfort. Anyone who has watched esports recognises the pair instantly: the team playing the verified meta, and the team playing something nobody has tried. People praise the second in words and pick the first in action.

There is an obvious paradox for Vietnamese readers. We follow esports through a different frame of reference, one where greatness is measured by what can be counted: trophies, finals reached, years at peak form. Stepping into games criticism, the same people are asked to argue from feeling. That switch is never announced, and it produces most of the heat.

One detail the original piece gives away without meaning to. Its sweep of industry history from Pong to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 treats each title as a line of dialogue in a millennium-long play, then selects the last line as the ending. That is the familiar canon method: pick an endpoint, then arrange the past so it leads there. The Uncharted-to-The Last of Us lineage is likewise told as the story of one studio rather than one industry.

I am not dismissing The Last of Us. A game that sold, that is remembered, that has been rebuilt several times and still generates argument after more than a decade is a real achievement. But real achievement and the number one slot are two different stories. One belongs to the product. The other belongs to whoever drew up the list.

The easiest thing to romanticise here is the opposition. People want to believe a demanding community is defending the integrity of the art form. Look closer and the opposition is bounded: the dissenters themselves concede The Last of Us is one of the most outstanding games ever made. The disagreement is about first place, not about worth. A narrow argument, presented as a great rift.

One thing the analysis circuit rarely says out loud: most greatest-of-all-time arguments are about the right to make the list rather than about the quality of the product. Who gets to declare canon, from which cultural centre, by which criteria, for which audience. A list assembled by a Western outlet and then described as history is in fact the critical consensus of one region, presented as universal truth. The list still stands. It is simply narrower than it looks.

The empty chair says nothing, and tells the longest story. Here the empty chair is the criteria sheet, the thing that should have been seated at the centre of the table and is not there.

One small signal worth holding. The related-content block on the page that carried the list includes headlines about the LCK, about the VCT, about GAM Esports and VCT Pacific 2027, about MLBB Vietnam. None of them carries figures, so I file them in a verification queue rather than use them as evidence. Their existence says something anyway: a general gaming outlet now treats esports as a standing vertical. Two comment spaces are drawing on the same audience. When audiences merge, argument styles travel with them.

Next time an all-time ranking appears and the comment section heats up, the useful question sits somewhere else: who wrote the ruler, and why was the ruler not printed alongside the result.

We call it randomness; the universe calls it a script. A list that withholds its criteria operates as a deliberate script, in which the villain's role is assigned in advance to anyone who dares rank it differently.