A gaming masterpiece is not faultless, no matter what the game.
Castlevania: SOTN is the finest entry in the Castlevania series, but it suffers from being too easy. However, the game makes up for it with its large open world where the player never lacks for things to do, as well as being bloody awesome. Its voice acting and dialogue is so bad its highly hilarious.
Lords of Midnight successfully managed to blend adventure with war gaming, in a world similar to Lord of the Rings. It proved the completely underpowered ZX Spectrum could still produce a timeless gaming experience suited to the machine's unique visual style. Sadly, its lack of a map could leave the player in the dark as to where they were in the game's world.
Tie Fighter is undoubtably one of the finest space combat sims of all time, but some of its levels were broken under certain circumstances, which could stop you from meeting that bonus mission requirement. Its story, told from the Empire's perspective was not to every Star Wars fan's taste, and the arms race of more powerful craft could feel too distant from its source material and would take away the strategic value of more traditional ships such as the standard Tie Fighter and Y-Wing.
Super Metroid is considered the definitive Metroid game and one of the greatest games of all time, but its not always obvious where to go next. Sometimes the controls can be a little too fiddly in certain spots - the wall jump for example.
Doom obviously conquered the gaming world for all time, but despite being amazing, there were signs that id was beginning to slide away from the "cheerful fun" found in previous id games such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein3D. "Colourful, fast and fun" was now starting become "desolate, cautious and nasty". Needless to say Doom will always be one of the greatest landmarks in games history( probably the most significant ), but this direction would lead to increasingly slower and duller id games by placing technology over design.
I personally think Super Mario Bros( actually, lets just say every traditional Mario game ) has dreadful controls and is an experience in frustration resulting in joypads being launched across the room. The remaining population of planet Earth think I'm a heretic and have already set alight a bonfire with my name on it. Hold on, theres the sound of people shouting and blood hounds yapping outside my front door...I guess Mario games are masterpieces after all!
Anyway, a "masterpiece" is a smooth blend between visuals, audio, gameplay and design. It doesn't always have to push the boundries of a machine or be original, just needs to be a damn good overall experience, enough so where the player is more than happy to overlook its faults..
