I'm not sure how LttP is the worst Zelda when Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword exist. Or any handheld Zelda other than Link's Awakening.
I can see an argument that it's just a Zelda 1 upgrade and doesn't do anything revolutionary, but it did everything Zelda 1 did so much better that it kind of proved that the 2D top down adventure works as a genre and that Nintendo were kings at it. It also established the template Nintendo built OoT built on. (3 dungeons, world change, 7 dungeons, gannon) I can't remember if LttP was the first Nintendo game to utilize the mirror world mechanic (I guess SMB2 USA would be earlier if that counts) but they've returned to that over the years, particularly with Zelda.
I can't comment on Max Payne since it's not really my genre, but as an outsider I don't remember getting the sense that it was particularly noteworthy outside of implementing bullet time.
I think older games dominate in these kind of events because older games have the nostalgia buff, they are more likely to have been recognized as influential instead of just being a GOTY 20XX, and younger users are less interested because they don't have the history to get too invested in a "best game ever" discussion. If I started gaming on the PS3 I'm not sure I'd have much to say here because the landscape hasn't been transformed much since those days (and it if it has, it's been distribution, not gameplay).
The reverse/inverted castle is something that's incredibly memorable and makes the game stand out a lot as well. It's not the first game by any means to do something like a light/dark world, but it's one of the more unique takes on it. Even the awful voice acting has a certain charm to it.
SOTN was significant for its time because it did something that is incredibly difficult - it reinvented an iconic series in a way that was completely unexpected (even if you could trace some of the instinct to CV2), it made full use of the Playstation without running head first into 3D like most other big names of the time, and almost no one complained about losing the traditional format. It's janky in a lot of ways (once the delight of the idea of the second castle fades, it's not actually fun to explore or play) but it came out really well and very few 2D games have matched its pixel art.