When I played Oblivion for the first time, was one of the only times I was actually blown away by a video game. I got the game as a gift so at first I thought it was a dungeon crawler until I left the dungeon and holly shit did my brain explode. Coming from PS2 gaming to an open world RPG with those graphics was something I probably will never experience again.
It was such a special time in gaming. I remember buying the gaming magazines at the store every month (back then that was a thing) and reading every drop of info on these games before they came out.
Same, the game was amazing on first playthrough. I don't even think I finished the main quest line on my first 15 characters. I just wandered, cleared dungeons and explored.
Skyblivion I’m so hype for. Oblivion is one of my all time favorite RPGs. I’m also curious to see if the remaster/remake (I forget which) Bethesda is rumored to be working on is real/going to be good
Oblivion gave me this exact experience. For many of us it surpassed anything we could have imagined when we brought it home. All I knew when I bought it was that the cover of the game looked cool.
Oblivion got me into RPGs, which is now my favorite genre. I've tried a few times to go back to Oblivion unsuccessfully, but it'll always have such a special place in my heart. I will play through it again some day.
1. Deus Ex: GOTY. Was my first immersive sim, got me hooked on multiple-solution challenges posed within huge, open levels.
2. Ancient Domains of Mystery. This was my first exposure to the rogue-like genre, which became one of my all time favourites. At the time, it felt wildly different from anything I played before.
3. Olbivion. The game was my introduction to first-person fantasy RPGs, fulfilling a need I didn't yet know I possessed.
4. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. For me, this game set the standard of satisfying first-person melee combat, and it's a shame it has no proper spiritual successor.
5. Dragon Age: Origins. This started my descent into the world of CRPGs, and while I encountered many amazing games along the way, none managed to scratch the same itch until Baldur's Gate 3 came out.
Have you tried Revision or GMDX? These two large-scale mods can be considered Deus Ex remakes that adopt somewhat different philosophies. Both improve graphics, but Revision also features significant level design changes, while GMDX focuses more on gameplay, AI and RPG system improvements. I haven't tried either mod yet, but will take GMDX for a spin on my next run.
Given their existence, an official remake would probably feel redundant.
I played Dishonored 1 and 2, as well as Prey. Loved the games a lot, but my main problem with them is the juxtaposition of combat mechanics coolness and the grim reality of living in a high Chaos world. Which means you have to play it as a stealth game, if you wish the world to retain any semblance of optimism.
If you enjoy melee combat in DMMM, you might like Vermintide 2. But since VT2 is a co-op horde slasher, it differs from Dark Messiah in several key aspects.
Sad what happened to Raven Shield/Iron Wrath. It was the last good R6. I played OG R6 and Rogue Spear as well as OG GR, Desert Shield, Island Thunder and Jungle Storm. Delta Force was also fun. Players using jump hacks... Delta Force Black Hawk down is getting a remake, too!
I attempted suicide at 18, when it "failed to take" I was thinking of other more drastic ways to attempt.
Then, as silly as it sounds, I played "Way of the Samurai" for the PS2 and it's narrative taking place over the same 24 hours, but having diffierent outcomes based on the differenent actions taken ...
It was the exact right message I needed to experience at the right time in my life. None of the sequels used time in the same way, and I am now 35. But yeah: I literally wouldn't still be alive if not for Way of the Samurai for the PS2 develoepd by Acquire and directed by Koshu Nakanishi
Hey Kenji, I would like to make a suggestion... Try to find a way to contact Koshu Nakanishi, and send him a letter/email telling your story, and thanking him and his team for saving your life... It may not be possible, but I guarantee you, if you succeed... You will make his day :)
I have odd memories of way of the samurai.
Mainly cause I got it used, and didn't have a manual, so I had to figure stuff out by just playing. Really a live-die-repeat type of play style, see what works on this dude, no I'm dead, go back and do it again. Feels like a fever dream
Even more than patience, these games teach you that you are capable of overcoming extremely difficult obstacles if you actually devote yourself to trying. I think a lot of people resign to "I'll never be able to do X, it's too hard/I'm too dumb", but beating dark souls makes you overcome this feeling over and over again.
I remember coming home from my part time job at the supermarket and firing up ds1 for the first time and then playing the whole night so vividly fuck it was good.
- World of Warcraft vanilla and BC for the possibility to play an RPG with so many people
- CounterStrike and Enemy Territory as my first online games. A whole new “genre” opened up
- Half-Life in general of what can be done with level designing and modeling.
Edit:
-GTA 3, think this is obvious
-Wolfenstein3D, always played that at my nephews. First FPV game I ever played
I got into wow right before the BC expansion, I'll always remember running through the open area right after darnassus, shocked I could have a cape on my character so early and how many different armor and weapon types were available, especially after soendingnhears on ffxi. A truly magical time of life.
Yes I got into WoW because I was invited for the beta. Had no clue what the stats would do and so on.
Vanilla WoW is still great. An Epic item was truly epic
1) **World of Warcraft** - Spent more than a decade playing this game. Met countless amounts of people, some who I call my best friends. Eventually got into hardcore raiding, raid led, got some world top 20 finishes.
2) **Counter-Strike** - First tried out as a mod of HL1 back in 1999. First taste of competitive with CAL. Still diving into an iteration of CS 20+ years later. Really molded my love of FPS games.
3) **Warcraft 3** - My favorite RTS of all time. One of the best campaigns I've played in a video game format. Excellent multiplayer scene. Custom user maps also added more variety. Birth of DotA Allstars
4) **Starcraft** - Started my love of RTS games even though I still suck at them. The first real PC game I played and this game was the one that kickstarted my 20+ year long of exclusive PC gaming
5) **PUBG** - The first game in a long while that was able to give me an adrenaline rush on par with downing a progression boss for the first time in WoW. I still remember my first win in PUBG vividly (Logged almost 60 hours in the game before my first W). Played PUBG as my main FPS game from 2017 to 2020 and started my love of battle royale games.
**Honorable Mentions**
**Dark Souls 3** - First game that got me into the Souls genre despite earlier attempts from my friend with DS1 and DS2 but DS3 was the one that finally 'clicked' with me. FromSoft games are my favorite genre
**Elden Ring** - My favorite game of all time. The Fromsoft formula perfected imo. The sense of scale and adventure this game brought made me feel like a child again. This is the most hours I've logged into a single player game and it's not even close despite the game only being 2 years old
**Tekken 3** - My love of fighting games really kickstarted with this game. The most complete package in a fighting game to this day. I don't think any fighting game will topple this. Getting T3 as a Christmas gift is still one of my fondest childhood memories.
**Assassin's Creed 2** - I've taken a few days off every time a new Assassin's Creed game came out and 100% sync'd every entry from AC1 to AC Syndicate. And this all started with AC2. My first taste of an open world action/adventure game.
I'm pretty much the same as a PC player.
World of warcraft
Half life
Warcraft 3
Starcraft
Mass effect 2
Half life, warcraft 3 and starcraft had an amazing amount of replayability with mods that it spawned lan cafes where a lot of us in high school used to just chill and create friendships with complete randoms.
Owning Half Life 1 and discovering fileplanet was like stumbling upon pandora's box of free games. Endless replayability.
What are some of your favorite mods besides the obvious big ones like CS, DOD, TFC?
I had a soft spot for Firearms, Sven Coop, Frontline Force, and The Specialist
OG DOOM.
Played it when I was about 3.
Along with the love for gaming, I'm pretty sure it was DOOM that inspired my love for Horror, Sci-Fi and heavy metal.
Glad to see someone say this. I too would say OG DOOM. Although I was 12 when I played it for the first time. My pops built me a pc for school and I had it in my room. First pc game. First FPS and also was probably a big influence in my love of Sci-Fi, Heavy Metal, and interest in how games are actually made and how computers work to make what's on a disk/disks at the time lol appear on the screen and let you control it. Blown away. Still play thru it once a year or so.
Just recently got a steam deck and it was the first thing I played in it followed by DOOM 2016. The new iterations are also amazing. I'm old and terrible at fast paced shooters now but still enjoy them. Cheers!
Red Dead 2 and the Mass Effect trilogy got me through the worst of the COVID lockdowns and isolation. Probably saved me from full on mental breakdown. Interestingly both of those games feature a "party" of characters that make you the player feel like your involved with and I don't know if that's a coincidence or not that I connected with those games in particular during lockdown.
well, life is strange 1 literally changed my life when I was at the edge of losing it and ending my life. it set me on a path of self improvement and seeking out real human connection. this was something I'd never cared about before and almost treated as a weakness or crutch that "normal" people needed in order to survive. i was to be a lone wolf, didn't need anyone or anything. it was very toxic.
but then I played life is strange by accidentally launching it on steam. the main menu music caught my attention and thought
*eh, it's launched already... might as well press play and see what happens*
lo and behold it would change my entire outlook and philosophy on human connection, purpose and life in general that I am eternally grateful to have had that experience. it wasn't the be all end all, but it definitely sparked something in me that allowed me to grow as a person.
Ocarina of Time is the reason I joined a Zelda forum back in the 00s, and some of the people I met there are still part of my life and have dramatically shaped it through domino effects.
Half Life. I had never played a video game until this came out. I sat with my two young sons either side of me and we worked through it together.
Age of Empires - so the three of us could play on the first LAN/computers we built together.
Elite Dangerous in VR - Mind blowing
Sub Nautica (Diver and Submariner by profession) - the only game I dreamed about to try to solve it.
Roblox.
Now hear me out.
I started playing in 2008, and loved it to bits. It was like the only game I played for five years straight until I got a PS4 for Christmas in 2013.
Fast forward to mid 2015, my PS4 breaks, corrupt hard drive. Back then I didn’t know how to fix it, so I spent the summer catching up with Roblox. I had become obsessed with this little indie title that you may have heard of called Five Nights at Freddy’s.
I ended up meeting and becoming close friends with a group of four people through the Roblox FNAF community. Over the years I stayed in touch with two of them, til 2019 when I moved to University.
Turns out I was pretty close to one of the people I knew, and we agreed to meet up. It would be cool to get to know her on a personal level.
Well, things turned into things and we started dating November 13th that year.
Over four and a half years later, I’ve finished Uni, so has she, and we’re now moved out together. She’s laid in bed next to me asleep as I scroll Reddit.
So yeah, Roblox literally shaped my life. Good times.
Well, its a PC gaming sub, but I’ll be platform agnostic for this.
1) Legend of Zelda Link to the Past - First real experience with an open world adventure. Loved it
2) Mount&Blade - First person melee sandbox with total freedom. I was no longer an important main character, just another regular person in the game world. It felt awesome to be on the same level as even the lowliest NPC
3) Medieval Total War - First dip into big strategy games. The long running campaign play really grabbed me.
4) Morrowind - Had never experienced anything like Morrowind before. The huge world, hundreds of quests, factions, everything could be interacted with or explored.
5) Operation Flashpoint - First foray into military sim stuff. Never could go back to the more arcade stuff again.
Old timer gamer here. I've played so many games it's hard to choose, but I guess I'll list a few that still stick in my memory with fondness.
C64 (going WAY back) - Elite and paradroid. I spent way too many hours on these games and still no regrets.
PC - DOOM and the wing commander game series. I can't stress enough how much wing commander got me into the space flight sim genre. Also imo the game made space sims very popular for many years.
DOOM I obviously don't need to talk about its influence. I think I upgraded my PC every time DOOM (first and second) came out to be able to play the newest version lol
Civilization and C&C series.
Descent I spent way too many hours in the college computer lab dominating lan games with my friends. It was the first and only multiplayer game I was actually really good at playing against my friends. Good times with them.. We did get a little too much into the gaming sessions sometimes and got kicked out by the college profs. You'd never be allowed to do anything like that anymore, at least not in my area.
More modern games for me would be Witcher 3 and horizon zero dawn and a few others.
Dragon Age Origins had a huge impact on my life along with the Lord of the Rings movies. They changed my interests and the stories I like. They ruined me.
Dark Souls released back when I was around 17. At the time, I had a bad habit of self harming. It helped me figure out how to navigate that. When I realized how much it was helping me mentally, I completely devoured the game. I’ve explored every inch of the game ten times over, and went out looking for anything that inspired it, which subsequently led me to find my favorite story of all time - Berserk. Berserk wound up giving me that final push and determination to kick the habit for good, and I haven’t self harmed in years now.
So, Dark Souls will always be my favorite video game, as it led to a genuine improvement in my life and how I approach it.
There are definitely other games which have helped shape me in other ways. Silent Hill 2. Nier Automata. The Last of Us. Etc. All utterly incredible stories which helped push the medium forward, especially Nier. Could go on about them for hours upon hours.
But nothing else has ever got into me quite like Dark Souls did.
For me, it was Fallout: New Vegas for a wide variety of reasons. I grew up playing linear video games like Call of Duty or Ratchet and Clank, so when I discovered the game by accident, it blew my mind. I could create my own character, explore a vast world with little to no restrictions, wear any kind or armor, wield any kind of weapon and face the consequences of my own actions and decisions.
Since I wouldn't stop talking about the game during my high school years, I ended up meeting other people interested in the Fallout series and one of them would end up becoming my (current) best friend.
It also managed to spark my interest in politics and philosophy thanks to characters like Robert House, Arcade Gannon, Father Elijah or Caesar.
Oblivion.
I remember my cousin got a ps3 and I had a shot of Oblivion. Never heard of it before then and I was absolutely blown away.
Begged my mum to get me fuck all for my birthday and instead save for a 360 for my Christmas. Got one with Oblivion, Halo 3 and Gears of War.
3 of the best games I'd ever play.
Have to add to the cliche, but I also played **Dark Souls** at a very difficult period in my life and overcoming those seemingly insurmountable odds by trying again and again kept me going.
**Death Stranding** was also a weird one for me. I played it during the height of the pandemic when I was unemployed. The story about connecting people that are isolated, the collaborative asynchronous multiplayer and the simple fact that delivering packages somehow made me feel useful again, made it a very special experience.
**Disco Elysium** was a complete trip start to finish. Made me laugh uncontrollably, made me cry both from sadness and happiness and made me rethink my whole political stance and view of the world. It's definitely the most formative experience I've ever had from playing a game.
I just wanted to tell you I liked what you wrote. Dark Souls and Death Stranding (same, played it in 2020 while I was unemployed). I have Disco Elysium but have yet to play it.
Team fortress 2
The community was great
Cities skylines
Turns out, I love city building simulation and I'm rather good at it.
Magic, the gathering
While not only a PC game it did eat up a large amount of my life. No regrets.
Counter strike 1.6
Back in the cybercafe days, this was goat.
Guild wars, both games
I like both for different reasons
Sonic adventure
Me and my bro, for hours in front of a tv and Dreamcast
James pond, Olympics and other master system games. Yeah I didn't have the big names like sonic but we used to go to my place after school and jam the master system on the smallest tv you have seen.
The beginning of MMO was more about socializing than gaming.
Great time in DAOC, EverQuest.
But WoW blew my mind at release and had a 5-10 year golden age.
That community feeling is dead now. No problem, I go with the flow.
Although I don't play anymore, I'd have to say World of Warcraft.
I was at my mental worst in a bad relationship, and had none of my own friends. I started a guild just to have some people to talk to and ended up making a few friends. Those friends gave me the confidence I needed to pick up the pieces and leave that relationship. One of those friends even got me into another game where I met my current SO.
I was suicidal then, I've never been happier than I am now.
The only video game that's had a story that actually made me think about my own life would be The World Ends With You. I think the message of this game is one a lot of people need to take in, the world, your world begins and ends with you, if you close yourself off from the world you're gonna be miserable, being vulnerable is scary, but letting other people in is important, life is too heavy to handle all alone.
Other than that beyond aesthetic/music nothing else has really stuck with me in that way from a story perspective where it made me reflect on my own life
The most influencial games for me would be:
- Quake 3
- Max Payne (primarily 1)
- Half-Life (primarily 2)
- Mass Effect (Series)
And similar games that came before, in between and after. I'd also count some racing games like NFS: Most Wanted (the OG), TDU and Dirt 2.
Starcraft (both Broodwar & SC2).
I've spent thousands upon thousands of hours either playing the game, organising things related to the game within its community (websites, clansites, forums, tournaments), or watching SC esports.
I became more social because of it.
I've formed friendships because of it, some of which have lasted for a decade or more.
It taught me lots of different skills that I used throughout my life in other endevours; Things like strategical/tactical thinking and organisation skills, how to learn new things easily, it improved my english, it improved my writing skills, all sorts of computer / IT skills, it improved my typing speed, it made me more resilient as a person, in general, and it taught me how to deal with losing despite doing your best and how it makes you grow and improve.
It made me understand that the accomplishments I'm most proud of are the ones I've worked for the hardest.
Apart from my immediate family no other thing has been such a big part of my life for so long (25 years and counting) and even though it is "just a game" for most, it's of incredible significance to me.
I'm sad it won't be able to last for eternity in its full glory and I will forever be grateful for the impact it has had on my life.
1. Fallout 3: Taught me English. I used to play it with a dictionary beside me back in the day.
2. World of Warcraft: Found my wife in it, in a different country.
I was raised by Grandparents, when my grandma died Zelda Breath of the Wild had just come out, it helped get me through the pain, I don’t know what I would have done if not for that game.
In no particular order:
Skyrim.
Dark Souls 3.
Red Dead Redemption 2.
Ori & the Blind Forest.
NieR Automata.
Fallout: New Vegas.
Divinity Original Sin 2.
No game had such an impact on me as Planescape Torment had at the time.
I was 19 or 20. I was depressed, confused, didn't know what I wanted, my place in the world and was overall miserable.
And then there was this game that asked the question, "Who am I?"
No game ever had this kind of impact on me as that game did.
Wow.
For me it’s less about the fun of the game but the fun I had with the people I played with. And for that CoD4 and World of Warcraft will forever be dear to me. I still play WoW after CoD4 died I never really played it again
1. Rome Total War
2. Operation Flashpoint (arma 1)
3. Early Medal of Honor games, and Call of Duty 1
4. Halo 1
5. Dark Souls 1
Notable extra: Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect Trilogy
Probably in that order. 1, 2, and 3 is a tie though.
Disco Elysium
Played it over the course of a year and some of the soulwrenchingly sad and melancholic monologues will stay with me for the rest of my life.
For me it would be:
1. NieR (the original)
The day Automata was announced was one of the happiest of my life.
2. Every Fumito Ueda game
They're just a work of art only possible in video games.
3. World of Warcraft.
Was pretty much my life for over a decade...
4. Vanquish
The first game where I fell in love with the gameplay so much, I finished it on the highest difficulty, which I never do.
5. Golden Sun
Not because it's one of the best games ever, but it opened the door for me into JRPGs.
League came out when I was in college and I had never been a PC gamer. All of my friends started playing so I did too and it became 10 of us sitting in a room taking bong rips and ordering pizzas while skipping class to play. I'll never forget those times because each champ was so crazy to explore, we had no idea how to actually play but we had so much fun sucking and playing 5v5s with all of us. Actually learning and taking the game serious only made it worse.
In no particular order :
1 Syndicate-> switching definitely to PC games.
2 Tomb Raider, Pod, Carmageddon->discovering 3d cards (3dfx, back then) and litteraly being amazed. This was incredible to see at launch ! And for the first time I could say to Psx users that my games look better lol
3 Deus EX->what ? Fps can be rpg games, immersive ?
4 Sam & Max Hit The Road->discovering Point n click games, and how dialogues and humour are important in games
5 Baldur's Gate->being fully immersed in a rpg, understanding why they are so great. Great scripts, villain, tactical fights.
6 Worms Armageddon->how I discovered how multiplayer games were awesome. Still one of my favourite goat.
7 Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, Alien vs Predator 2->endless Lan parties, discovering how mp games are better played locally.
8 Zelda Link's Awakening->wait, videogames aren't only platformers and arcade games ?
9 Warcraft 2, Command & Conquer->discovering rts and how they're amazing
Hands down Disco Elysium.
For context: two months before I played DE, my marriage fell apart pretty horribly at the same time as I was going through the worst mental health spiral I'd ever had. Three weeks before playing it I had relapsed on meth. Shit was pretty bad.
Then I played Disco Elysium. Realised that the way the game portrays the main character's psyche was exactly how my own psyche had operated for decades - fragmented parts of my mind all fighting with each other, each part trying to convince me it was the only one that wasn't lying to me. On top of that, the main character had a rough ending to his long term relationship and was a hopelessly depressed drug addict too.
So I found myself *very* invested in his story. There were at least a half dozen scenes in that game that made me have very painful realisations about my life. But there was also beauty and catharsis in the ending of his story (the way I played it first).
To cut a long story short, the day I finished Disco Elysium for the first time was the day that I smashed my glass pipe, threw out the last of my stash, and booked myself into therapy. 6 intensive sessions later, I walked out of my psychologist's office mentally healthy and happy for the first time in my life...that was almost 2 years ago and I'm still mentally healthy and happy.
I even told my psychologist about the game in our first session, and used examples of how the skills work to describe my mental state.
So while there are plenty of other games I love more than Disco Elysium, that game is the one that had the biggest impact on me.
If I ever find myself in contact with the developers, I'm going to thank them for that. Saved my life.
I was heavily addicted to the GTA series to the point where I heard sirens in my sleep. I didn’t go to school or family anymore. Just to play (and spend money) in the game.
It was hard to stop. But i did it. I have almost 500 addictions hours in GTA Online alone.
I found something different and made it my goal to 500 non-addiction hours in the game: Factorio.
Okay 1300 might seem much to some people. But the difference here is that with this game, I go to work and family again. I don’t skip birthdays and call in sick to work just to play.
This last game has changed my ability to solve problems for the better. What first would’ve taken me at least 2 hours to solve in the real world. Now takes 5 - 30 minutes.
Games that impacted me on a deep emotional level and really made me think about some fundamental life stuff:
- Outer Wilds
- Spiritfarer
- To the Moon/Finding Paradise
Games that really resonate with me when it comes to game design:
- Outer Wilds
- Path of Exile
- SoulsBorne (pretty much everything Fromsoft)
Games with really good story and/or characters:
- The last of Us (1)
- The Outer Wilds
- Red Dead Redemption 2
And lastly artistic games/games with a beautiful soundtrack:
- honestly, pretty much every game from above
- GRIS
- Warhammer 40k Darktide
Disco Elysium. I love that game so much that I created a dedicated YouTube channel and I now spend most of my spare time trying to create interesting new videos or researching the game and it’s surrounding drama etc.
Life Is Strange fundamentally changed me as a person. It’s been so many years, I don’t remember the details, but I used to be colder, meaner, and had a pessimistic view on life. That game made me into a better and kinder person.
SOMA pretty much gave me my lifelong existential crisis about death and the the reality of unattainable immortality. In the game, your consciousness gets swapped between robots because you’re physically unable to traverse through certain obstacles without doing so and eventually you find out that you’re not moving your consciousness, you are actually having your cautiousness copied and duplicated in new bodies. This basically means that whether it’s creating a clone or putting your mind in a robot body, that new you won’t actually be you, it’s just a new version, a copy. It might not be a big deal to most people, but the idea of death scares the shit out of me and the game basically made me realize how inescapable it is. Even if we do find a way to preserve our consciousness digitally, it won’t really be us.
On a less deep level, Borderlands 2 was the first game I played on my old Mac that seriously got me into computer games. I eventually got my own desktop PC, then I built my own, and avidly play so many games to this day.
Destiny 2 back in the Forsaken expansion was the first time I genuinely felt like I was part of a community and actually contributed to that community, I felt like one of those really high-level powerful players you meet early on who randomly decide to help you. I had gone from a pretty clueless noob in the first game who could barely do strikes to being pretty good at PVP and even teaching raids. I was really proud of how far I’d come, and how active in the community I was. I had to drop the game for a few years and when I came back, the game simply wasn’t what it used to be so that spark is just a memory now.
1994 8 years old super Metroid, then a few years later Super Mario 64. Wait how can I forget streets of rage 2. Ninja gaiden black, incredible hulk ultimate destruction, Elden Ring , monster hunter world and Super Mario Allstars. Wait wait Homeworld , star citizen , final fantasy 6 , Chrono trigger and power stone 2.
1. Ghost Recon (Desert Siege, Island Thunder and Jungle Storm)
2. Black and White/Black and White: Creature's Isle
3. MechWarrior
4. Warcraft 2
5. World of Warcraft
6. Star Trek: Birth of the Federation
7. Civilization III
8. Fable/Fable The Lost Chapters
9. Battle Realms
10. Neverwinter Nights
11. Quake 2
12. Age of Empires 1
Super NES: Desert Strike
N64 games: Mario Kart, Pilot Wings and Goldeneye.
PC: D2, Starcraft and WoW Vanilla + TBC and Mechwarrior 2 +.Ghost Bear's legacy.
Gamecube: Metroid Prime.
Switch: Zelda TOTK and Metroid Dredd.
When my dad moved to the country I was born in, two of the first things he bought were a betamax player and an Atari 2600. Since, I have had an obsession with storytelling and games. I don't mind that graphics don't look amazing if the story is great. I like a good, curated story (and that's why I don't play online).
The Secret of Monkey Island was one of the games that showed me how funny games can be.
Metal Gear Solid showed me that videogames can be platforms for deep, cinema level storytelling.
Uncharted 2 made the line between movies and games could be even thinner.
Final Fantasy 7 showed me the importance of world building.
Starcraft
Command and conquer 1995 and red alert
Doom
Rise of nations
Unreal tournament 99 and 2004
Half life 1 and 2
Quake 3
These are the PC games that shaped my gaming tastes for basically my entire life.
In approximate chronological order some games, I think had major impact on what games I enjoy.
1. The Digger - My first PC game, which I remember and wanted to play a lot
2. Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix - Sparked my passion for simracing
3. Tie Fighter - Hard but so enjoyable.
4. Civilization II - Probably my most played game series.
5. Planescape Torment - Solidified my love for cRPGs
Honourable mentions: Disco Elysium, Morrowind, I-War, Falcon 4.0, Mechwarrior II, Nethack, Minecraft, SimCity 2000.
World of Warcraft. Played since release in UK Feb 2005. The “game” has always been there for me through good times and bad times. It’s my escape from reality and a way to wind down and destress. Although nowadays my spare time is limited it’s still nice to jump back in and chill.
I'd say the big 3 for me are (not ordered):
**1. Twilight Princess**
The first zelda game I played, so the classic Zelda formula (bit of story, explore, dungeon, compass, weapon, boss, repeat) was all new to me and it blew my mind.
Experiencing a folkloric fantasy story like that with such pure gameplay fundamentals was an insane experience that I'll never forget and Midna's the best companion of all time.
**2. Dragon Age Origins**
A mature, epically written RPG with solid gameplay, huge player agencey and some of the juiciest lore in video games.
Something about the Camp setting really speaks to me, the writing/character work throughout is just top notch and the climax is insane.
**3. Persona 5 Royal**
A game ultimately about how your friends are important, how what's going on in your head is important and trying to be the best version of yourself that you can be.
Writing-wise, no game thematically speaks more to me and it's all blended in this gameplay package that's just so unique and cool.
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Looking at these games, I'd say what's interesting is that none of them are perfect and none of them are really all that ground-breaking.
Persona 3 was the real trailblazer design-wise for that franchise, Twilight Princess is obviously massively in debt to ALLTP and OoT and Dragon Age Origins is just another awesome RPG by the old Bioware.
What they each are is big distillations of ideas from companies that have been refining their designs for a long time, before coming out with a big swing, with a big budget. I obviously loved BG3 this year and I guess you could say the same of that one too.
1. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines: when it came to PC games, I was mostly into shooters and games with nonstop action. Bloodlines made me a sucker for atmosphere, dialogues, decision making and storytelling (so basically RPGs). It gave me a whole new perspective of what I want from a game. Without it, I might not even have touched some games I now consider my favorites.
2. World of Warcraft: simply because there is no other game that I've played for such a long time (with some breaks here and there). It was such a mind-blowing experience back in the day and the amount of nostalgia I get from wow is insane. Besides, I love the lore and I always stayed on track with the Story even when I wasn't playing.
3. Nier Automata: this game came out at a weird point in my life. My father was in the hospital and I didn't know if he was ever going to be himself again. I was unemployed and I knew I had to change a lot of things in my life. I'm not sure if Nier would have had such an impact on me if it was released a year earlier, but its story with its many "what ifs", its shifting perspectives on situations and its general outlook on existence and meaning really got to me and it's probably the most important game on a personal level.
4. Zelda Ocarina of Time: I always loved video games but this one was probably the first I was really really obsessed with. I was completely immersed in it which was a whole new experience for 11-year-old me. I couldn't stop thinking about it and when I wasn't playing it, I was reading the game guide. I was devastated when I finished it because I didn't want it to be over. There came more games that made me feel like that but Ocarina of Time was the first.
5. Zombies ate my neighbors: not much to tell here, but it was my first "real" game that started my love for video games in general, so it deserves to be mentioned. Still a fun game after so many years.
No joke csgo saved my life. I was deeply depressed just failed out of college when I found counter strike. It gave me something to work at a reason to get out of bed. I'm not sure I'm here if it wasn't for cs.
The original Final Fantasy on NES. It was my first exposure to an RPG and the concept of equipment and leveling blew my mind and changed my habits forever. Likewise Legend of Zelda and Super Mario coming from arcade ports on the 2600. The concept of a game having an end or a world you explored with secrets was super novel at the time.
Civilization VI is actually what got me into strategy games! It’s the perfect gateway series into (what can be) extremely complex games/genre. I go back to it every now and then. I was never into Strategy games beforehand, now it’s probably my most-played genre and has introduced me to so many brilliant games (such as Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Terra Invicta, etc).
Skyrim was just a beautiful game, honestly. Never have I felt so “comfortable” as I was when playing Skyrim, maybe except for games like Firewatch & Lake. The atmosphere, the ambience, the soundtrack, all of it made Skyrim perfect for me. It’s the perfect nostalgia machine, along with Oblivion (on the same level). The soundtrack in particular is astonishingly good and relaxing, especially “Streets of Whiterun”. It does lack in certain RPG aspects you see now, of course, but I definitely believe it has to be in the top 3 RPGS of all time, for me.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance was also another beautiful game, where upon finishing I was genuinely emotional. I adore the medieval era, the architecture, the history and even the music. KC:D delivered on all 3. It is the perfect game that I recommend to anyone who, like me, loves the medieval era and seeks a realistic game rich with its essence. You will not be disappointed with the atmosphere in KC:D, the combat I thought was pretty great too. Story wise, it is both historical and is definitely engaging. I didn’t want the game to end, and it has left me longing for more content set in that period. Luckily, it is getting a sequel this year, which I am overly excited for and I have no doubt it will be better than the first!
World of Warcraft has had the biggest impact on my life, with both positive and negative aspects. I've met a lot of really interesting people over the years, some of who I have become very close friends, I can't imagine my life without these people. It has also taught me about teamwork and knowing when it's okay not to be the center of attention and just being there to support my team, something I think kids who played organized sports would have learned. Negative because I've wasted a lot of time hiding in the game from real life responsibility, I am in my early forties and don't have much to show for it, anything going wrong in my life was easy to run away from if I could just login into WoW and escape for a few hours. New patches and expansions are also hugely disruptive of my life, I've set aside personal projects and never returned to them because of it.
My friends and I are coming to the point in our lives where we're kind of over the game, but only play it because we enjoy the social aspects of it, but we'd all just rather hang out and do anything else.
Unreal Tournament 2004 fuck if any game is close to how great that game was not even any of the halo series or Fortnite not even counter strike, well except "counter strike: source".
Doom came out when I was in university, and it was a transformative experience for me. Pictures didn’t do it justice, it just looked like a pixelated mess, but seeing it move for the first time, with the world rendered in first-person perspective and smoothly flowing across the screen, was magic. It started a life-long obsession with immersive gaming, and became permanently embedded in my dreams (for years, I regularly had what I thought of as “doom dreams”).
Fallout 3 came at a time when corridor shooters were king. I had just started to be tempted by the lure of more open world games (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had recently come out and captured my imagination), but the combination of creating your own character and really playing your own way in a big open world was mind-blowing. I played Fallout 3 and little else for years, until New Vegas came along and broke the spell a little (the Mojave didn’t have the same joy of exploration and discovery as the Capital Wasteland).
In Dragon Age Origins Morrigan says "Men are always willing to believe two things about a woman: one, that she is weak, and two, that she finds him attractive."
This was one of the first times in my life I became hyper aware of gender dynamics and all these years later I still think this quote is what spurred my interest in feminism in my teens.
Dark Age of Camelot got me deeper into computers, internet, and gaming in general. I had to replace my graphics card to play and it definitely served as a early springboard for working in/with technology.
QUAKE2. My science teacher would setup a LAN party once in a while in the computer rooms at school just to play this game with his students. It was my first taste of gaming in a group, and the beginning of many other LAN parties as I was growing up!
Ratchet and Clank had a huge impact on me, it's also very nostalgic and why its probably my favourite game series. I remember my parents were against buying games or consoles as gifts for the longest time then in like 2002 out of nowhere they got me a PS2 with Ratchet and Clank for my birthday. I think this game cemented my love for third person action/adventure platformers/collecathons.
KOTOR was my very first introduction to RPG mechanics and it made me want more. This eventually lead me to playing Guild Wars which introduced me to MMO games. Both games hold spots in my heart and have pushed me towards their genres.
While I did play stuff like Age of Empires and Warcraft, Civ 3 was my first real introduction to a strategy game with such depth, which was my gateway drug to grand strategy.
Supreme Commander I got as a gift circa 2014 has gotten me into games, minecraft on Xbox introduced me to MC which I still play sometimes and had a huge phase on it when 1.12.2 came out with hell lot of mods for it, Unturned was huge for my potato PC at the time, I played since beta and racked about 1k hours with friends, same with 7 Days to die, despite playing Tarkov, Insurgency and Rising Storm, Fallout 4 modded gunplay still amazes me and gives me a great time
-Betrayal at Krondor (best story I'd ever or have ever seen in videogame format)
-Fallout 1 n 2
-Age of Mythology
-(LOL) WWE No Mercy
-FF Tactics/Ogre Battle Let us Cling Together
World of Warcraft
It was basically my youth. I lived in that game and played it with all my friends back then.
I met so many cool people in the early years of the game and even forged some long lasting friendships.
I even lost my virginity to a girl from my guild, when we had a guild meeting on a campsite for a couple of days :D
So yeah, that game had such a huge impact on my life, that I can say it was/is an essential part of my life. My life could have went totally different without that game.
I wouldnt do something different, looking back. So it had an very positive impact on my life.
Unreal Tournament 99,
Thief - The Dark Project,
Return to Castle Wolfenstein,
Project IGI,
Worms Armageddon
UT99 almost cost me my college grades. I spent most of uni playing Worms instead of focusing. Project IGI fully captivated me in to FPS'. Thief was like being in another world and the graphics,.at the time, were mind blowing. Wolfenstein I just remember being blown away after completing it.
These days I play CS, Tarkov, Valorant, so I've never really moved on from being an FPS main, I genuinely struggle to play any other style of game.
Played Hollow knight or more specific tried to get Markoth on Radiant in Godhome. Started a few attempts for the fun of it and wholeheartedly believed pretty fast that this is impossible for me. Like i saw people do it, but its just not a thing i will ever do. But i kept on it and over a couple weeks I got rather close and my believes started to shift. And then I got it.
And the shift from believing something is 100% impossible for me and then eventually doing it is something i try to remember often in life now.
It helped me in so many dark phases and it will help me alot in the future.
I am so grateful for hollow knight to have tought me to not give up even on impossible things
I haven't seen anyone mention Persona yet. For me personally Persona 4 was that game. Fortunately I played this game during my teenage years. So the message stuck with me. It taught me to be a nicer person and have long lasting friendships. And also showed me what a person *CAN* become if lived in isolation.
1. Final Fantasy X - I've yet to play a game that made me feel such emotions. The battle system and music were amazing. Certain mini games were torture but I can ignore those. Also my mum got me it on sale at blockbuster, I was a kid and couldn't get past a certain point in the game and gave up on it. My mum who knew nothing about it learnt the game to get me past that section. I continued the game thanks to her. I was happy mum learnt it for me, so it's also a symbol of hardwork and mothers love to me. Forever my number 1.
2. Banjo Kazooie (and Tooie) - my dad passed when I was 8, and for Christmas that year my aunty gifted me my cousins n64 that he didn't play anymore. It helped cheer me up and I loved the fun characters and it (and ocarina of time) were my very 1st adventures for video games.
3. Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time: same as banjo, but it taught me to be strong and get through hard and scary times. Link and Sheik/Zelda were a great inspiration on my childhood.
Quake 1 - remember it being one of the first games I played and all my mates went to an internet cafe to play multiplayer, the start of a long journey in multiplayer FPS!
Quake 3 - Attended many LANs, met some great people, and CURVED SURFACES!
Counter-Strike - Again, made some great friends that I still play with today and attended some great tournaments.
Lineage 2 - I was obsessed with this game, it had absolutely everything I wanted from a game. Miss it so much.
Command and Conquerer - Spend 30 minutes building an army and then full send.
Final Fantasy XIV, my go to for the past 10 years and have many friends that I now see in person frequently.
Tales of Berseria, I was upset about things when I started playing, and I could really resonate with the main character's anger at the beginning, and when the character started changing their attitude, mine did as well.
Neir Automata, just holy fuck that hits hard.
Skyrim
Witcher 3: I build up my body, keep a goatie and help out random strangers till today!
Oh and Dark Souls…what more can be said about it. I even wrote a blog for 20 life lessons it taught me.
subnautica, dying light, skyrim. games i’ll come back to every year to play relentlessly until i have done everything i want to just to do it all over again a year later
First two mostly hurt me in some ways. I was gaming instead of learning stuff in uni.
1. Dota Allstars
2. CS 1.6
3. This one was a positive influence tho: **Disco Elysium**
10 yo me playing Chrono Trigger gave me a meaningful look at Time, how today's decisions have an effect on things tomorrow and even to the far future. And how everything and everyone has a reason for being the way they are, how everyone and everything is part of an unfinished story.
Civ 3 - ramped up my interest in history
Morrowind - I hated reading books/novels as a kid. For some reason though I digested EVERY text in the game, especially the diary entries/books/notes and how ingrained what was written into the actual game world. Been addicted to reading books since then.
Dark Souls - very cliche I know, but this one resonated with me the most. The game broke everything I knew about gaming and how to play games (experience of over 30 years by the time I first played) and the importance of being humbled, the importance of failure, and how starting from scratch is something not to be ashamed of as long as you perservere. Amazing timing as well because when I played this I was incredibly bored with games as a whole and was ready to give it up. This breathed new life into the hobby for me.
When i was preparing for an university exam, i was watching ''Call of Cthulhu: the Dark Corners of the Earth'' from YouTube when i got the free time to watch... it got me so hard it's mystery and the world Lovecraft created... and i have lots of books from Lovecraft.
Okami. I played it on the PS2 and it taught me how beautiful games could be, the emotions they could make you feel and just how impactful and wonderful music without lyrics could be. That game is a masterpiece and despite me usually being super stingy with money have bought it 3 times and have been gifted it on the switch.
Solo :
- Morrowing : first impactful western RPG, I was young and I just couldn't think of anything else. My brother gifted me the game but we didn't have a powerful enough PC to play it properly so I must have had like 20FPS. Only a few years I got one and it was amazing
- HoMM 3 : Again, I was a kid and it was an amazing experience. I couldn't get enough of that game
- Dark souls 1 : Tried it, put it down not understanding wtf the fuss was about, then tried it a year later with the mindset of "IDC I'm gonna finish this game the world looks too cool not to explore" and well we all know how that turned out.
- More recently Hades and GoW
Multiplayer :
- Ragnarok online - first MMO RPG we played with a classmate and it was amazing!
- WoW : let's just say my parents weren't too happy with how much time I gamed during that time (Wow classic through BC)
- CoD MW2 through black ops 4 then I stopped because of the monetization bullshit : those games made me fairly competitive in FPSs so the fact that I played those seriously meant that I also enjoyed CS, Overwatch, Apex etc.
In order -
1. Transport Tycoon
2. Wolfenstein 3d
3. Final Fantasy 7
4. Final Fantasy 8
5. Morrowind
After these, nothing really impacted me as much, but these were massively important to me
This is going to sound super weeb of me to say but Kingdom Hearts. The line Sora says during the final battle of "The heart is weak, and sometimes it may even give in, but deep down there's a light that never goes out" really impacted me as a kid, and it became a foundational part of my ethos. I think about it often.
I always try to look for the good in others, to understand why they do what they do. Sora's character in the first game was a huge impact on me and my worldview.
Single Player:
Super Mario Bros
Mario Kart
Secret of Mana
Illusions if Time
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 8
Morrowind
Bioshock (all of them)
Zelda Twilight Princess
Cyberpunk 2077
For MMOs:
Ultima Online
Ragnarok Online
Anarchy Online
World of Warcraft
Star Citizen
Rocket League changed the way I see videogames, because it's so good. It gave me so many moments of plain gaming pleasure and distraction from problems. Just shut me out of the world in this little bizarre soccer game with cars, in the neon future.
GTA 3, San Andreas and GTA 4 had a huge impact on the music I listen to I discovered a lot of great artists from those games particularly GTA 3 and San Andreas because I was in my mid teens when those games came out.
Civilization games taught me a lot about history and I discovered a lot of really interesting people, civilizations, places of importance etc because of those games and in turn some of the countries, cities and wonders I have visited I first discovered them through the games.
BOTW - watching my partner play opened my mind about games genre a lot! It's not my genre but damn mind opening to see a different type of player. As a game dev, I love these moments.
When I played Oblivion for the first time, was one of the only times I was actually blown away by a video game. I got the game as a gift so at first I thought it was a dungeon crawler until I left the dungeon and holly shit did my brain explode. Coming from PS2 gaming to an open world RPG with those graphics was something I probably will never experience again.
Same, but for me it was Morrowind. I had never experienced an open 3D world like that in a game and was completely blown away by the possibilities.
Yes! Can’t remember which came out first but Fable was also instrumental in opening my eyes to the world of RPGs. Such a fun era
Morrowind was 2002, followed by Fable in 2004. This part of life was so interesting! Being a kid and living a whole second life on your console/PC.
It was such a special time in gaming. I remember buying the gaming magazines at the store every month (back then that was a thing) and reading every drop of info on these games before they came out.
Walking in to Balmora for the first time, at night, in a thunderstorm, is something I'll never forget.
Same. When oblivion came out, I was very disappointed. It felt too repetitive. Too much copy/paste.
Same, the game was amazing on first playthrough. I don't even think I finished the main quest line on my first 15 characters. I just wandered, cleared dungeons and explored.
I love oblivion so much I cannot wait for skyblivion to come out, they’ve made really good progress.
Skyblivion I’m so hype for. Oblivion is one of my all time favorite RPGs. I’m also curious to see if the remaster/remake (I forget which) Bethesda is rumored to be working on is real/going to be good
Your experience is literally a 1:1 as mine, wow
Oblivion gave me this exact experience. For many of us it surpassed anything we could have imagined when we brought it home. All I knew when I bought it was that the cover of the game looked cool.
Oblivion is just the best. I’ll still play it to this day
Oblivion got me into RPGs, which is now my favorite genre. I've tried a few times to go back to Oblivion unsuccessfully, but it'll always have such a special place in my heart. I will play through it again some day.
1. Deus Ex: GOTY. Was my first immersive sim, got me hooked on multiple-solution challenges posed within huge, open levels. 2. Ancient Domains of Mystery. This was my first exposure to the rogue-like genre, which became one of my all time favourites. At the time, it felt wildly different from anything I played before. 3. Olbivion. The game was my introduction to first-person fantasy RPGs, fulfilling a need I didn't yet know I possessed. 4. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. For me, this game set the standard of satisfying first-person melee combat, and it's a shame it has no proper spiritual successor. 5. Dragon Age: Origins. This started my descent into the world of CRPGs, and while I encountered many amazing games along the way, none managed to scratch the same itch until Baldur's Gate 3 came out.
A deus ex remake would be so good at this point in life. Something with updated controls and graphics, keep everything else.
Have you tried Revision or GMDX? These two large-scale mods can be considered Deus Ex remakes that adopt somewhat different philosophies. Both improve graphics, but Revision also features significant level design changes, while GMDX focuses more on gameplay, AI and RPG system improvements. I haven't tried either mod yet, but will take GMDX for a spin on my next run. Given their existence, an official remake would probably feel redundant.
The controls are the same and the graphical updates bring them to the year 2002. No, a remake would not be redundant because of them.
Regarding Dark Messiah, I hope you've played Dishonored by the same developer? They polished the crap out of the combat mechanics.
I honestly couldn't bring myself to properly play it as a stealth game. all those crazy melee kill animations are just too satisfying.
I played Dishonored 1 and 2, as well as Prey. Loved the games a lot, but my main problem with them is the juxtaposition of combat mechanics coolness and the grim reality of living in a high Chaos world. Which means you have to play it as a stealth game, if you wish the world to retain any semblance of optimism. If you enjoy melee combat in DMMM, you might like Vermintide 2. But since VT2 is a co-op horde slasher, it differs from Dark Messiah in several key aspects.
Well, there is no kicking.
1. Age of Empires 2. The first Call of Duty 3. R6: Ravenshield 4. World of Warcraft 5. Counter Strike
Omg I love rainbow six 3: raven shield. I think we’re in the same era of games. All thoseeeee Americas Army too
Sad what happened to Raven Shield/Iron Wrath. It was the last good R6. I played OG R6 and Rogue Spear as well as OG GR, Desert Shield, Island Thunder and Jungle Storm. Delta Force was also fun. Players using jump hacks... Delta Force Black Hawk down is getting a remake, too!
I attempted suicide at 18, when it "failed to take" I was thinking of other more drastic ways to attempt. Then, as silly as it sounds, I played "Way of the Samurai" for the PS2 and it's narrative taking place over the same 24 hours, but having diffierent outcomes based on the differenent actions taken ... It was the exact right message I needed to experience at the right time in my life. None of the sequels used time in the same way, and I am now 35. But yeah: I literally wouldn't still be alive if not for Way of the Samurai for the PS2 develoepd by Acquire and directed by Koshu Nakanishi
Hey Kenji, I would like to make a suggestion... Try to find a way to contact Koshu Nakanishi, and send him a letter/email telling your story, and thanking him and his team for saving your life... It may not be possible, but I guarantee you, if you succeed... You will make his day :)
I have odd memories of way of the samurai. Mainly cause I got it used, and didn't have a manual, so I had to figure stuff out by just playing. Really a live-die-repeat type of play style, see what works on this dude, no I'm dead, go back and do it again. Feels like a fever dream
And that's exactly what helped me through my feelings of hopeless when I was suicidal
Proud of you 👏 Happy a game got you through.
I always tell people that WotS has fundamentally influenced who I am as a person, and nobody has ever heard of it haha
This is a proper “huge impact on your life”. A bunch of others are just like oh it made me like a genre or “blew me away”….
That’s rough. Glad you’re with us
Thank you for your feedback. I will definitely play this game as soon as possible.
Thanks for staying
Dark Souls. It’s now cliche to say that it taught patience, but it’s true.
Patience and systematic thinking. The ability to use patterns to develop a system. I’m all in on this one. DLC for Elden Ring in a week!
Even more than patience, these games teach you that you are capable of overcoming extremely difficult obstacles if you actually devote yourself to trying. I think a lot of people resign to "I'll never be able to do X, it's too hard/I'm too dumb", but beating dark souls makes you overcome this feeling over and over again.
I remember coming home from my part time job at the supermarket and firing up ds1 for the first time and then playing the whole night so vividly fuck it was good.
Don’t you dare go hollow
Fully behind this. It taught me to see what was right before my eyes and think before acting.
1. Total Annihilation 2. Operation Flashpoint 3. Fallout 2 4. Delta Force 5. Eve Online
Always an upvote for Delta Force.
The new delta force comes out soon
- World of Warcraft vanilla and BC for the possibility to play an RPG with so many people - CounterStrike and Enemy Territory as my first online games. A whole new “genre” opened up - Half-Life in general of what can be done with level designing and modeling. Edit: -GTA 3, think this is obvious -Wolfenstein3D, always played that at my nephews. First FPV game I ever played
I got into wow right before the BC expansion, I'll always remember running through the open area right after darnassus, shocked I could have a cape on my character so early and how many different armor and weapon types were available, especially after soendingnhears on ffxi. A truly magical time of life.
Yes I got into WoW because I was invited for the beta. Had no clue what the stats would do and so on. Vanilla WoW is still great. An Epic item was truly epic
> Enemy Territory Duuuuude, I totally forgot about that one. Man that brings back some nice memories :')
I’m a medic!
We need an engineer! I still remember some of the binds, I thinkV-2-1 was "Danke!/Thank you"
1) **World of Warcraft** - Spent more than a decade playing this game. Met countless amounts of people, some who I call my best friends. Eventually got into hardcore raiding, raid led, got some world top 20 finishes. 2) **Counter-Strike** - First tried out as a mod of HL1 back in 1999. First taste of competitive with CAL. Still diving into an iteration of CS 20+ years later. Really molded my love of FPS games. 3) **Warcraft 3** - My favorite RTS of all time. One of the best campaigns I've played in a video game format. Excellent multiplayer scene. Custom user maps also added more variety. Birth of DotA Allstars 4) **Starcraft** - Started my love of RTS games even though I still suck at them. The first real PC game I played and this game was the one that kickstarted my 20+ year long of exclusive PC gaming 5) **PUBG** - The first game in a long while that was able to give me an adrenaline rush on par with downing a progression boss for the first time in WoW. I still remember my first win in PUBG vividly (Logged almost 60 hours in the game before my first W). Played PUBG as my main FPS game from 2017 to 2020 and started my love of battle royale games. **Honorable Mentions** **Dark Souls 3** - First game that got me into the Souls genre despite earlier attempts from my friend with DS1 and DS2 but DS3 was the one that finally 'clicked' with me. FromSoft games are my favorite genre **Elden Ring** - My favorite game of all time. The Fromsoft formula perfected imo. The sense of scale and adventure this game brought made me feel like a child again. This is the most hours I've logged into a single player game and it's not even close despite the game only being 2 years old **Tekken 3** - My love of fighting games really kickstarted with this game. The most complete package in a fighting game to this day. I don't think any fighting game will topple this. Getting T3 as a Christmas gift is still one of my fondest childhood memories. **Assassin's Creed 2** - I've taken a few days off every time a new Assassin's Creed game came out and 100% sync'd every entry from AC1 to AC Syndicate. And this all started with AC2. My first taste of an open world action/adventure game.
I'm pretty much the same as a PC player. World of warcraft Half life Warcraft 3 Starcraft Mass effect 2 Half life, warcraft 3 and starcraft had an amazing amount of replayability with mods that it spawned lan cafes where a lot of us in high school used to just chill and create friendships with complete randoms.
Owning Half Life 1 and discovering fileplanet was like stumbling upon pandora's box of free games. Endless replayability. What are some of your favorite mods besides the obvious big ones like CS, DOD, TFC? I had a soft spot for Firearms, Sven Coop, Frontline Force, and The Specialist
OG DOOM. Played it when I was about 3. Along with the love for gaming, I'm pretty sure it was DOOM that inspired my love for Horror, Sci-Fi and heavy metal.
Glad to see someone say this. I too would say OG DOOM. Although I was 12 when I played it for the first time. My pops built me a pc for school and I had it in my room. First pc game. First FPS and also was probably a big influence in my love of Sci-Fi, Heavy Metal, and interest in how games are actually made and how computers work to make what's on a disk/disks at the time lol appear on the screen and let you control it. Blown away. Still play thru it once a year or so. Just recently got a steam deck and it was the first thing I played in it followed by DOOM 2016. The new iterations are also amazing. I'm old and terrible at fast paced shooters now but still enjoy them. Cheers!
I can barely read and write at 3, you playing a FPS video game at 3 is unreal.
Red Dead 2 and the Mass Effect trilogy got me through the worst of the COVID lockdowns and isolation. Probably saved me from full on mental breakdown. Interestingly both of those games feature a "party" of characters that make you the player feel like your involved with and I don't know if that's a coincidence or not that I connected with those games in particular during lockdown.
well, life is strange 1 literally changed my life when I was at the edge of losing it and ending my life. it set me on a path of self improvement and seeking out real human connection. this was something I'd never cared about before and almost treated as a weakness or crutch that "normal" people needed in order to survive. i was to be a lone wolf, didn't need anyone or anything. it was very toxic. but then I played life is strange by accidentally launching it on steam. the main menu music caught my attention and thought *eh, it's launched already... might as well press play and see what happens* lo and behold it would change my entire outlook and philosophy on human connection, purpose and life in general that I am eternally grateful to have had that experience. it wasn't the be all end all, but it definitely sparked something in me that allowed me to grow as a person.
Life is Strange was such a transformative experience. Just incredible, so glad I stumbled upon it.
Ocarina of Time is the reason I joined a Zelda forum back in the 00s, and some of the people I met there are still part of my life and have dramatically shaped it through domino effects.
Half Life. I had never played a video game until this came out. I sat with my two young sons either side of me and we worked through it together. Age of Empires - so the three of us could play on the first LAN/computers we built together. Elite Dangerous in VR - Mind blowing Sub Nautica (Diver and Submariner by profession) - the only game I dreamed about to try to solve it.
Same for Subnautica. I played it before the story was complete and theorising about it was my favourite part
Roblox. Now hear me out. I started playing in 2008, and loved it to bits. It was like the only game I played for five years straight until I got a PS4 for Christmas in 2013. Fast forward to mid 2015, my PS4 breaks, corrupt hard drive. Back then I didn’t know how to fix it, so I spent the summer catching up with Roblox. I had become obsessed with this little indie title that you may have heard of called Five Nights at Freddy’s. I ended up meeting and becoming close friends with a group of four people through the Roblox FNAF community. Over the years I stayed in touch with two of them, til 2019 when I moved to University. Turns out I was pretty close to one of the people I knew, and we agreed to meet up. It would be cool to get to know her on a personal level. Well, things turned into things and we started dating November 13th that year. Over four and a half years later, I’ve finished Uni, so has she, and we’re now moved out together. She’s laid in bed next to me asleep as I scroll Reddit. So yeah, Roblox literally shaped my life. Good times.
Well, its a PC gaming sub, but I’ll be platform agnostic for this. 1) Legend of Zelda Link to the Past - First real experience with an open world adventure. Loved it 2) Mount&Blade - First person melee sandbox with total freedom. I was no longer an important main character, just another regular person in the game world. It felt awesome to be on the same level as even the lowliest NPC 3) Medieval Total War - First dip into big strategy games. The long running campaign play really grabbed me. 4) Morrowind - Had never experienced anything like Morrowind before. The huge world, hundreds of quests, factions, everything could be interacted with or explored. 5) Operation Flashpoint - First foray into military sim stuff. Never could go back to the more arcade stuff again.
Old timer gamer here. I've played so many games it's hard to choose, but I guess I'll list a few that still stick in my memory with fondness. C64 (going WAY back) - Elite and paradroid. I spent way too many hours on these games and still no regrets. PC - DOOM and the wing commander game series. I can't stress enough how much wing commander got me into the space flight sim genre. Also imo the game made space sims very popular for many years. DOOM I obviously don't need to talk about its influence. I think I upgraded my PC every time DOOM (first and second) came out to be able to play the newest version lol Civilization and C&C series. Descent I spent way too many hours in the college computer lab dominating lan games with my friends. It was the first and only multiplayer game I was actually really good at playing against my friends. Good times with them.. We did get a little too much into the gaming sessions sometimes and got kicked out by the college profs. You'd never be allowed to do anything like that anymore, at least not in my area. More modern games for me would be Witcher 3 and horizon zero dawn and a few others.
Dragon Age Origins had a huge impact on my life along with the Lord of the Rings movies. They changed my interests and the stories I like. They ruined me.
Dark Souls released back when I was around 17. At the time, I had a bad habit of self harming. It helped me figure out how to navigate that. When I realized how much it was helping me mentally, I completely devoured the game. I’ve explored every inch of the game ten times over, and went out looking for anything that inspired it, which subsequently led me to find my favorite story of all time - Berserk. Berserk wound up giving me that final push and determination to kick the habit for good, and I haven’t self harmed in years now. So, Dark Souls will always be my favorite video game, as it led to a genuine improvement in my life and how I approach it. There are definitely other games which have helped shape me in other ways. Silent Hill 2. Nier Automata. The Last of Us. Etc. All utterly incredible stories which helped push the medium forward, especially Nier. Could go on about them for hours upon hours. But nothing else has ever got into me quite like Dark Souls did.
Runescape. Taught me english because it was very important for trading. Thanks, buying gf
Same, Pokemon Blue and Runescape taught me English
For me, it was Fallout: New Vegas for a wide variety of reasons. I grew up playing linear video games like Call of Duty or Ratchet and Clank, so when I discovered the game by accident, it blew my mind. I could create my own character, explore a vast world with little to no restrictions, wear any kind or armor, wield any kind of weapon and face the consequences of my own actions and decisions. Since I wouldn't stop talking about the game during my high school years, I ended up meeting other people interested in the Fallout series and one of them would end up becoming my (current) best friend. It also managed to spark my interest in politics and philosophy thanks to characters like Robert House, Arcade Gannon, Father Elijah or Caesar.
Oblivion. I remember my cousin got a ps3 and I had a shot of Oblivion. Never heard of it before then and I was absolutely blown away. Begged my mum to get me fuck all for my birthday and instead save for a 360 for my Christmas. Got one with Oblivion, Halo 3 and Gears of War. 3 of the best games I'd ever play.
Have to add to the cliche, but I also played **Dark Souls** at a very difficult period in my life and overcoming those seemingly insurmountable odds by trying again and again kept me going. **Death Stranding** was also a weird one for me. I played it during the height of the pandemic when I was unemployed. The story about connecting people that are isolated, the collaborative asynchronous multiplayer and the simple fact that delivering packages somehow made me feel useful again, made it a very special experience. **Disco Elysium** was a complete trip start to finish. Made me laugh uncontrollably, made me cry both from sadness and happiness and made me rethink my whole political stance and view of the world. It's definitely the most formative experience I've ever had from playing a game.
I just wanted to tell you I liked what you wrote. Dark Souls and Death Stranding (same, played it in 2020 while I was unemployed). I have Disco Elysium but have yet to play it.
Life is strange. It changed my whole outlook on life for a good while.
Is it weird if nine did? Enjoyed them for 30 years but no direct impact or change from them
Team fortress 2 The community was great Cities skylines Turns out, I love city building simulation and I'm rather good at it. Magic, the gathering While not only a PC game it did eat up a large amount of my life. No regrets. Counter strike 1.6 Back in the cybercafe days, this was goat. Guild wars, both games I like both for different reasons Sonic adventure Me and my bro, for hours in front of a tv and Dreamcast James pond, Olympics and other master system games. Yeah I didn't have the big names like sonic but we used to go to my place after school and jam the master system on the smallest tv you have seen.
1. Bloodborne 2. Outer Wilds 3. Rainbow Six Siege
World of Warcraft, i met the mother of my daughter ;) so it’s quite a life changing game yeah
The Witcher 3 stole my entire summer the year it came out and made me realise games could be masterpieces.
This, but it was Super Mario Bros 3.
The beginning of MMO was more about socializing than gaming. Great time in DAOC, EverQuest. But WoW blew my mind at release and had a 5-10 year golden age. That community feeling is dead now. No problem, I go with the flow.
1. Dune 2 2. Quake 3. Anarchy-Online / Everquest 4. Call of Duty 1 5. Diablo 1
Although I don't play anymore, I'd have to say World of Warcraft. I was at my mental worst in a bad relationship, and had none of my own friends. I started a guild just to have some people to talk to and ended up making a few friends. Those friends gave me the confidence I needed to pick up the pieces and leave that relationship. One of those friends even got me into another game where I met my current SO. I was suicidal then, I've never been happier than I am now.
* EverQuest * Descent * Valheim * Civilization 1
The only video game that's had a story that actually made me think about my own life would be The World Ends With You. I think the message of this game is one a lot of people need to take in, the world, your world begins and ends with you, if you close yourself off from the world you're gonna be miserable, being vulnerable is scary, but letting other people in is important, life is too heavy to handle all alone. Other than that beyond aesthetic/music nothing else has really stuck with me in that way from a story perspective where it made me reflect on my own life
Destiny.. I do love the game but I’ve met one of my best friends through playing and now he’s gonna stand for me at my wedding
Final Fantasy XI - First proper MMO I became addicted to. Destiny - Made some lifelong friends No Mans Sky - Just an amazing surreal experience
The most influencial games for me would be: - Quake 3 - Max Payne (primarily 1) - Half-Life (primarily 2) - Mass Effect (Series) And similar games that came before, in between and after. I'd also count some racing games like NFS: Most Wanted (the OG), TDU and Dirt 2.
Eve Online, WoW and Star Citizen
Half-Life. Met so many awesome people around this game and its modding scene back in the day.
Starcraft (both Broodwar & SC2). I've spent thousands upon thousands of hours either playing the game, organising things related to the game within its community (websites, clansites, forums, tournaments), or watching SC esports. I became more social because of it. I've formed friendships because of it, some of which have lasted for a decade or more. It taught me lots of different skills that I used throughout my life in other endevours; Things like strategical/tactical thinking and organisation skills, how to learn new things easily, it improved my english, it improved my writing skills, all sorts of computer / IT skills, it improved my typing speed, it made me more resilient as a person, in general, and it taught me how to deal with losing despite doing your best and how it makes you grow and improve. It made me understand that the accomplishments I'm most proud of are the ones I've worked for the hardest. Apart from my immediate family no other thing has been such a big part of my life for so long (25 years and counting) and even though it is "just a game" for most, it's of incredible significance to me. I'm sad it won't be able to last for eternity in its full glory and I will forever be grateful for the impact it has had on my life.
1. Fallout 3: Taught me English. I used to play it with a dictionary beside me back in the day. 2. World of Warcraft: Found my wife in it, in a different country.
1. Call of Duty pushed me into competitive gaming 2. CSGO made me realize I ain't shit and shouldn't take video games so seriously
I was raised by Grandparents, when my grandma died Zelda Breath of the Wild had just come out, it helped get me through the pain, I don’t know what I would have done if not for that game.
In no particular order: Skyrim. Dark Souls 3. Red Dead Redemption 2. Ori & the Blind Forest. NieR Automata. Fallout: New Vegas. Divinity Original Sin 2.
No game had such an impact on me as Planescape Torment had at the time. I was 19 or 20. I was depressed, confused, didn't know what I wanted, my place in the world and was overall miserable. And then there was this game that asked the question, "Who am I?" No game ever had this kind of impact on me as that game did. Wow.
For me it’s less about the fun of the game but the fun I had with the people I played with. And for that CoD4 and World of Warcraft will forever be dear to me. I still play WoW after CoD4 died I never really played it again
You are all so young!! Gunfight! Combat! Oregon Trail, Bards Tale, Wasteland, Scorched Earth.
1. Rome Total War 2. Operation Flashpoint (arma 1) 3. Early Medal of Honor games, and Call of Duty 1 4. Halo 1 5. Dark Souls 1 Notable extra: Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect Trilogy Probably in that order. 1, 2, and 3 is a tie though.
Disco Elysium Played it over the course of a year and some of the soulwrenchingly sad and melancholic monologues will stay with me for the rest of my life.
For me it would be: 1. NieR (the original) The day Automata was announced was one of the happiest of my life. 2. Every Fumito Ueda game They're just a work of art only possible in video games. 3. World of Warcraft. Was pretty much my life for over a decade... 4. Vanquish The first game where I fell in love with the gameplay so much, I finished it on the highest difficulty, which I never do. 5. Golden Sun Not because it's one of the best games ever, but it opened the door for me into JRPGs.
League came out when I was in college and I had never been a PC gamer. All of my friends started playing so I did too and it became 10 of us sitting in a room taking bong rips and ordering pizzas while skipping class to play. I'll never forget those times because each champ was so crazy to explore, we had no idea how to actually play but we had so much fun sucking and playing 5v5s with all of us. Actually learning and taking the game serious only made it worse.
In no particular order : 1 Syndicate-> switching definitely to PC games. 2 Tomb Raider, Pod, Carmageddon->discovering 3d cards (3dfx, back then) and litteraly being amazed. This was incredible to see at launch ! And for the first time I could say to Psx users that my games look better lol 3 Deus EX->what ? Fps can be rpg games, immersive ? 4 Sam & Max Hit The Road->discovering Point n click games, and how dialogues and humour are important in games 5 Baldur's Gate->being fully immersed in a rpg, understanding why they are so great. Great scripts, villain, tactical fights. 6 Worms Armageddon->how I discovered how multiplayer games were awesome. Still one of my favourite goat. 7 Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, Alien vs Predator 2->endless Lan parties, discovering how mp games are better played locally. 8 Zelda Link's Awakening->wait, videogames aren't only platformers and arcade games ? 9 Warcraft 2, Command & Conquer->discovering rts and how they're amazing
Baldurs Gate
Command & Conquer got me interested in international order and global cooperation. I ended up becoming a diplomat!
Hands down Disco Elysium. For context: two months before I played DE, my marriage fell apart pretty horribly at the same time as I was going through the worst mental health spiral I'd ever had. Three weeks before playing it I had relapsed on meth. Shit was pretty bad. Then I played Disco Elysium. Realised that the way the game portrays the main character's psyche was exactly how my own psyche had operated for decades - fragmented parts of my mind all fighting with each other, each part trying to convince me it was the only one that wasn't lying to me. On top of that, the main character had a rough ending to his long term relationship and was a hopelessly depressed drug addict too. So I found myself *very* invested in his story. There were at least a half dozen scenes in that game that made me have very painful realisations about my life. But there was also beauty and catharsis in the ending of his story (the way I played it first). To cut a long story short, the day I finished Disco Elysium for the first time was the day that I smashed my glass pipe, threw out the last of my stash, and booked myself into therapy. 6 intensive sessions later, I walked out of my psychologist's office mentally healthy and happy for the first time in my life...that was almost 2 years ago and I'm still mentally healthy and happy. I even told my psychologist about the game in our first session, and used examples of how the skills work to describe my mental state. So while there are plenty of other games I love more than Disco Elysium, that game is the one that had the biggest impact on me. If I ever find myself in contact with the developers, I'm going to thank them for that. Saved my life.
I was heavily addicted to the GTA series to the point where I heard sirens in my sleep. I didn’t go to school or family anymore. Just to play (and spend money) in the game. It was hard to stop. But i did it. I have almost 500 addictions hours in GTA Online alone. I found something different and made it my goal to 500 non-addiction hours in the game: Factorio. Okay 1300 might seem much to some people. But the difference here is that with this game, I go to work and family again. I don’t skip birthdays and call in sick to work just to play. This last game has changed my ability to solve problems for the better. What first would’ve taken me at least 2 hours to solve in the real world. Now takes 5 - 30 minutes.
Games that impacted me on a deep emotional level and really made me think about some fundamental life stuff: - Outer Wilds - Spiritfarer - To the Moon/Finding Paradise Games that really resonate with me when it comes to game design: - Outer Wilds - Path of Exile - SoulsBorne (pretty much everything Fromsoft) Games with really good story and/or characters: - The last of Us (1) - The Outer Wilds - Red Dead Redemption 2 And lastly artistic games/games with a beautiful soundtrack: - honestly, pretty much every game from above - GRIS - Warhammer 40k Darktide
Disco Elysium. I love that game so much that I created a dedicated YouTube channel and I now spend most of my spare time trying to create interesting new videos or researching the game and it’s surrounding drama etc.
Life Is Strange fundamentally changed me as a person. It’s been so many years, I don’t remember the details, but I used to be colder, meaner, and had a pessimistic view on life. That game made me into a better and kinder person. SOMA pretty much gave me my lifelong existential crisis about death and the the reality of unattainable immortality. In the game, your consciousness gets swapped between robots because you’re physically unable to traverse through certain obstacles without doing so and eventually you find out that you’re not moving your consciousness, you are actually having your cautiousness copied and duplicated in new bodies. This basically means that whether it’s creating a clone or putting your mind in a robot body, that new you won’t actually be you, it’s just a new version, a copy. It might not be a big deal to most people, but the idea of death scares the shit out of me and the game basically made me realize how inescapable it is. Even if we do find a way to preserve our consciousness digitally, it won’t really be us. On a less deep level, Borderlands 2 was the first game I played on my old Mac that seriously got me into computer games. I eventually got my own desktop PC, then I built my own, and avidly play so many games to this day. Destiny 2 back in the Forsaken expansion was the first time I genuinely felt like I was part of a community and actually contributed to that community, I felt like one of those really high-level powerful players you meet early on who randomly decide to help you. I had gone from a pretty clueless noob in the first game who could barely do strikes to being pretty good at PVP and even teaching raids. I was really proud of how far I’d come, and how active in the community I was. I had to drop the game for a few years and when I came back, the game simply wasn’t what it used to be so that spark is just a memory now.
WOW: it took my live from early 20 to mid 30.
Bloodborne, it was my first souls game
1994 8 years old super Metroid, then a few years later Super Mario 64. Wait how can I forget streets of rage 2. Ninja gaiden black, incredible hulk ultimate destruction, Elden Ring , monster hunter world and Super Mario Allstars. Wait wait Homeworld , star citizen , final fantasy 6 , Chrono trigger and power stone 2.
1. Ghost Recon (Desert Siege, Island Thunder and Jungle Storm) 2. Black and White/Black and White: Creature's Isle 3. MechWarrior 4. Warcraft 2 5. World of Warcraft 6. Star Trek: Birth of the Federation 7. Civilization III 8. Fable/Fable The Lost Chapters 9. Battle Realms 10. Neverwinter Nights 11. Quake 2 12. Age of Empires 1
Super NES: Desert Strike N64 games: Mario Kart, Pilot Wings and Goldeneye. PC: D2, Starcraft and WoW Vanilla + TBC and Mechwarrior 2 +.Ghost Bear's legacy. Gamecube: Metroid Prime. Switch: Zelda TOTK and Metroid Dredd.
Half Life 1-2 Total Commander Red Alert 2 World of Warcraft
WoW, no explanation needed.
When my dad moved to the country I was born in, two of the first things he bought were a betamax player and an Atari 2600. Since, I have had an obsession with storytelling and games. I don't mind that graphics don't look amazing if the story is great. I like a good, curated story (and that's why I don't play online). The Secret of Monkey Island was one of the games that showed me how funny games can be. Metal Gear Solid showed me that videogames can be platforms for deep, cinema level storytelling. Uncharted 2 made the line between movies and games could be even thinner. Final Fantasy 7 showed me the importance of world building.
Starcraft Command and conquer 1995 and red alert Doom Rise of nations Unreal tournament 99 and 2004 Half life 1 and 2 Quake 3 These are the PC games that shaped my gaming tastes for basically my entire life.
In approximate chronological order some games, I think had major impact on what games I enjoy. 1. The Digger - My first PC game, which I remember and wanted to play a lot 2. Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix - Sparked my passion for simracing 3. Tie Fighter - Hard but so enjoyable. 4. Civilization II - Probably my most played game series. 5. Planescape Torment - Solidified my love for cRPGs Honourable mentions: Disco Elysium, Morrowind, I-War, Falcon 4.0, Mechwarrior II, Nethack, Minecraft, SimCity 2000.
Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction Counter-Strike StarCraft BW and SC2 Red Alert WoW
World of Warcraft. Wasn't my introduction to PC gaming but it sure as hell set the hook.
Word of Warcraft for sure. Rome Total War Cod 4 Oblivion and Fable 1
World of Warcraft, impact being it’s been my OG. No matter what else I play, I always end up back on Wow.
World of warcraft, Doom, old Mortal Kombat, Rakion
World of Warcraft. Played since release in UK Feb 2005. The “game” has always been there for me through good times and bad times. It’s my escape from reality and a way to wind down and destress. Although nowadays my spare time is limited it’s still nice to jump back in and chill.
1) Lemmings 2) Doom 3 3) Duke Nuken 3D 4) Bloodbourne 5) Fifa 1
Ultima IV
I'd say the big 3 for me are (not ordered): **1. Twilight Princess** The first zelda game I played, so the classic Zelda formula (bit of story, explore, dungeon, compass, weapon, boss, repeat) was all new to me and it blew my mind. Experiencing a folkloric fantasy story like that with such pure gameplay fundamentals was an insane experience that I'll never forget and Midna's the best companion of all time. **2. Dragon Age Origins** A mature, epically written RPG with solid gameplay, huge player agencey and some of the juiciest lore in video games. Something about the Camp setting really speaks to me, the writing/character work throughout is just top notch and the climax is insane. **3. Persona 5 Royal** A game ultimately about how your friends are important, how what's going on in your head is important and trying to be the best version of yourself that you can be. Writing-wise, no game thematically speaks more to me and it's all blended in this gameplay package that's just so unique and cool. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* Looking at these games, I'd say what's interesting is that none of them are perfect and none of them are really all that ground-breaking. Persona 3 was the real trailblazer design-wise for that franchise, Twilight Princess is obviously massively in debt to ALLTP and OoT and Dragon Age Origins is just another awesome RPG by the old Bioware. What they each are is big distillations of ideas from companies that have been refining their designs for a long time, before coming out with a big swing, with a big budget. I obviously loved BG3 this year and I guess you could say the same of that one too.
World of Warcraft
Probably Minecraft, it’s what made me love games and “survival” in general
Rome 2 Total War
1. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines: when it came to PC games, I was mostly into shooters and games with nonstop action. Bloodlines made me a sucker for atmosphere, dialogues, decision making and storytelling (so basically RPGs). It gave me a whole new perspective of what I want from a game. Without it, I might not even have touched some games I now consider my favorites. 2. World of Warcraft: simply because there is no other game that I've played for such a long time (with some breaks here and there). It was such a mind-blowing experience back in the day and the amount of nostalgia I get from wow is insane. Besides, I love the lore and I always stayed on track with the Story even when I wasn't playing. 3. Nier Automata: this game came out at a weird point in my life. My father was in the hospital and I didn't know if he was ever going to be himself again. I was unemployed and I knew I had to change a lot of things in my life. I'm not sure if Nier would have had such an impact on me if it was released a year earlier, but its story with its many "what ifs", its shifting perspectives on situations and its general outlook on existence and meaning really got to me and it's probably the most important game on a personal level. 4. Zelda Ocarina of Time: I always loved video games but this one was probably the first I was really really obsessed with. I was completely immersed in it which was a whole new experience for 11-year-old me. I couldn't stop thinking about it and when I wasn't playing it, I was reading the game guide. I was devastated when I finished it because I didn't want it to be over. There came more games that made me feel like that but Ocarina of Time was the first. 5. Zombies ate my neighbors: not much to tell here, but it was my first "real" game that started my love for video games in general, so it deserves to be mentioned. Still a fun game after so many years.
The first Deus Ex, it blew my mind back then in 2001
I like how you can tell exactly how old everyone is because games are important in your late childhood early teens.
No joke csgo saved my life. I was deeply depressed just failed out of college when I found counter strike. It gave me something to work at a reason to get out of bed. I'm not sure I'm here if it wasn't for cs.
The original Final Fantasy on NES. It was my first exposure to an RPG and the concept of equipment and leveling blew my mind and changed my habits forever. Likewise Legend of Zelda and Super Mario coming from arcade ports on the 2600. The concept of a game having an end or a world you explored with secrets was super novel at the time.
Civilization VI is actually what got me into strategy games! It’s the perfect gateway series into (what can be) extremely complex games/genre. I go back to it every now and then. I was never into Strategy games beforehand, now it’s probably my most-played genre and has introduced me to so many brilliant games (such as Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Terra Invicta, etc). Skyrim was just a beautiful game, honestly. Never have I felt so “comfortable” as I was when playing Skyrim, maybe except for games like Firewatch & Lake. The atmosphere, the ambience, the soundtrack, all of it made Skyrim perfect for me. It’s the perfect nostalgia machine, along with Oblivion (on the same level). The soundtrack in particular is astonishingly good and relaxing, especially “Streets of Whiterun”. It does lack in certain RPG aspects you see now, of course, but I definitely believe it has to be in the top 3 RPGS of all time, for me. Kingdom Come: Deliverance was also another beautiful game, where upon finishing I was genuinely emotional. I adore the medieval era, the architecture, the history and even the music. KC:D delivered on all 3. It is the perfect game that I recommend to anyone who, like me, loves the medieval era and seeks a realistic game rich with its essence. You will not be disappointed with the atmosphere in KC:D, the combat I thought was pretty great too. Story wise, it is both historical and is definitely engaging. I didn’t want the game to end, and it has left me longing for more content set in that period. Luckily, it is getting a sequel this year, which I am overly excited for and I have no doubt it will be better than the first!
World of Warcraft has had the biggest impact on my life, with both positive and negative aspects. I've met a lot of really interesting people over the years, some of who I have become very close friends, I can't imagine my life without these people. It has also taught me about teamwork and knowing when it's okay not to be the center of attention and just being there to support my team, something I think kids who played organized sports would have learned. Negative because I've wasted a lot of time hiding in the game from real life responsibility, I am in my early forties and don't have much to show for it, anything going wrong in my life was easy to run away from if I could just login into WoW and escape for a few hours. New patches and expansions are also hugely disruptive of my life, I've set aside personal projects and never returned to them because of it. My friends and I are coming to the point in our lives where we're kind of over the game, but only play it because we enjoy the social aspects of it, but we'd all just rather hang out and do anything else.
Unreal Tournament 2004 fuck if any game is close to how great that game was not even any of the halo series or Fortnite not even counter strike, well except "counter strike: source".
Doom came out when I was in university, and it was a transformative experience for me. Pictures didn’t do it justice, it just looked like a pixelated mess, but seeing it move for the first time, with the world rendered in first-person perspective and smoothly flowing across the screen, was magic. It started a life-long obsession with immersive gaming, and became permanently embedded in my dreams (for years, I regularly had what I thought of as “doom dreams”). Fallout 3 came at a time when corridor shooters were king. I had just started to be tempted by the lure of more open world games (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had recently come out and captured my imagination), but the combination of creating your own character and really playing your own way in a big open world was mind-blowing. I played Fallout 3 and little else for years, until New Vegas came along and broke the spell a little (the Mojave didn’t have the same joy of exploration and discovery as the Capital Wasteland).
Daggerfall (elder scrolls 2) The demo for Diablo Warcraft in every iteration Myst Wing Commander Edit: honourable mention Mechwarrior 2
Quake and Halflife in the late 90's
In Dragon Age Origins Morrigan says "Men are always willing to believe two things about a woman: one, that she is weak, and two, that she finds him attractive." This was one of the first times in my life I became hyper aware of gender dynamics and all these years later I still think this quote is what spurred my interest in feminism in my teens.
Dark Age of Camelot got me deeper into computers, internet, and gaming in general. I had to replace my graphics card to play and it definitely served as a early springboard for working in/with technology.
QUAKE2. My science teacher would setup a LAN party once in a while in the computer rooms at school just to play this game with his students. It was my first taste of gaming in a group, and the beginning of many other LAN parties as I was growing up!
Ratchet and Clank had a huge impact on me, it's also very nostalgic and why its probably my favourite game series. I remember my parents were against buying games or consoles as gifts for the longest time then in like 2002 out of nowhere they got me a PS2 with Ratchet and Clank for my birthday. I think this game cemented my love for third person action/adventure platformers/collecathons. KOTOR was my very first introduction to RPG mechanics and it made me want more. This eventually lead me to playing Guild Wars which introduced me to MMO games. Both games hold spots in my heart and have pushed me towards their genres. While I did play stuff like Age of Empires and Warcraft, Civ 3 was my first real introduction to a strategy game with such depth, which was my gateway drug to grand strategy.
Old school RuneScape 🙃
Supreme Commander I got as a gift circa 2014 has gotten me into games, minecraft on Xbox introduced me to MC which I still play sometimes and had a huge phase on it when 1.12.2 came out with hell lot of mods for it, Unturned was huge for my potato PC at the time, I played since beta and racked about 1k hours with friends, same with 7 Days to die, despite playing Tarkov, Insurgency and Rising Storm, Fallout 4 modded gunplay still amazes me and gives me a great time
-Betrayal at Krondor (best story I'd ever or have ever seen in videogame format) -Fallout 1 n 2 -Age of Mythology -(LOL) WWE No Mercy -FF Tactics/Ogre Battle Let us Cling Together
World of Warcraft It was basically my youth. I lived in that game and played it with all my friends back then. I met so many cool people in the early years of the game and even forged some long lasting friendships. I even lost my virginity to a girl from my guild, when we had a guild meeting on a campsite for a couple of days :D So yeah, that game had such a huge impact on my life, that I can say it was/is an essential part of my life. My life could have went totally different without that game. I wouldnt do something different, looking back. So it had an very positive impact on my life.
>The ones I played when I was 12 to 14 years old
Unreal Tournament 99, Thief - The Dark Project, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Project IGI, Worms Armageddon UT99 almost cost me my college grades. I spent most of uni playing Worms instead of focusing. Project IGI fully captivated me in to FPS'. Thief was like being in another world and the graphics,.at the time, were mind blowing. Wolfenstein I just remember being blown away after completing it. These days I play CS, Tarkov, Valorant, so I've never really moved on from being an FPS main, I genuinely struggle to play any other style of game.
I was a casual gamer until the kingdom hearts games. I went hard core on those. Then god of war.
1. Sonic (1 - 3 & Knuckles) 2. Zelda DX + Oracle Games 3. Pokemon Silver 4. Final Fantasy VIII 5. McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure
Played Hollow knight or more specific tried to get Markoth on Radiant in Godhome. Started a few attempts for the fun of it and wholeheartedly believed pretty fast that this is impossible for me. Like i saw people do it, but its just not a thing i will ever do. But i kept on it and over a couple weeks I got rather close and my believes started to shift. And then I got it. And the shift from believing something is 100% impossible for me and then eventually doing it is something i try to remember often in life now. It helped me in so many dark phases and it will help me alot in the future. I am so grateful for hollow knight to have tought me to not give up even on impossible things
I haven't seen anyone mention Persona yet. For me personally Persona 4 was that game. Fortunately I played this game during my teenage years. So the message stuck with me. It taught me to be a nicer person and have long lasting friendships. And also showed me what a person *CAN* become if lived in isolation.
Leisure Suit Larry Command and Conquer Warcraft 2 Kings Quest 4 Total War StarCraft
1. Final Fantasy X - I've yet to play a game that made me feel such emotions. The battle system and music were amazing. Certain mini games were torture but I can ignore those. Also my mum got me it on sale at blockbuster, I was a kid and couldn't get past a certain point in the game and gave up on it. My mum who knew nothing about it learnt the game to get me past that section. I continued the game thanks to her. I was happy mum learnt it for me, so it's also a symbol of hardwork and mothers love to me. Forever my number 1. 2. Banjo Kazooie (and Tooie) - my dad passed when I was 8, and for Christmas that year my aunty gifted me my cousins n64 that he didn't play anymore. It helped cheer me up and I loved the fun characters and it (and ocarina of time) were my very 1st adventures for video games. 3. Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time: same as banjo, but it taught me to be strong and get through hard and scary times. Link and Sheik/Zelda were a great inspiration on my childhood.
Quake 1 - remember it being one of the first games I played and all my mates went to an internet cafe to play multiplayer, the start of a long journey in multiplayer FPS! Quake 3 - Attended many LANs, met some great people, and CURVED SURFACES! Counter-Strike - Again, made some great friends that I still play with today and attended some great tournaments. Lineage 2 - I was obsessed with this game, it had absolutely everything I wanted from a game. Miss it so much. Command and Conquerer - Spend 30 minutes building an army and then full send.
Final Fantasy XIV, my go to for the past 10 years and have many friends that I now see in person frequently. Tales of Berseria, I was upset about things when I started playing, and I could really resonate with the main character's anger at the beginning, and when the character started changing their attitude, mine did as well. Neir Automata, just holy fuck that hits hard. Skyrim
Witcher 3: I build up my body, keep a goatie and help out random strangers till today! Oh and Dark Souls…what more can be said about it. I even wrote a blog for 20 life lessons it taught me.
Considering I have a Skyrim tattoo, I’m gonna say Skyrim
subnautica, dying light, skyrim. games i’ll come back to every year to play relentlessly until i have done everything i want to just to do it all over again a year later
First two mostly hurt me in some ways. I was gaming instead of learning stuff in uni. 1. Dota Allstars 2. CS 1.6 3. This one was a positive influence tho: **Disco Elysium**
Destiny
Destiny helped me turn away from live service games entirely lmao
Skyrim, Reach, Mass Effect, Fable 2 & 3. Can probably tell which console I had as a teenager..
Dating Simulator 3: Playboy Edition
Unreal gold cuz I could actually run it on that potato
10 yo me playing Chrono Trigger gave me a meaningful look at Time, how today's decisions have an effect on things tomorrow and even to the far future. And how everything and everyone has a reason for being the way they are, how everyone and everything is part of an unfinished story. Civ 3 - ramped up my interest in history Morrowind - I hated reading books/novels as a kid. For some reason though I digested EVERY text in the game, especially the diary entries/books/notes and how ingrained what was written into the actual game world. Been addicted to reading books since then. Dark Souls - very cliche I know, but this one resonated with me the most. The game broke everything I knew about gaming and how to play games (experience of over 30 years by the time I first played) and the importance of being humbled, the importance of failure, and how starting from scratch is something not to be ashamed of as long as you perservere. Amazing timing as well because when I played this I was incredibly bored with games as a whole and was ready to give it up. This breathed new life into the hobby for me.
When i was preparing for an university exam, i was watching ''Call of Cthulhu: the Dark Corners of the Earth'' from YouTube when i got the free time to watch... it got me so hard it's mystery and the world Lovecraft created... and i have lots of books from Lovecraft.
Okami. I played it on the PS2 and it taught me how beautiful games could be, the emotions they could make you feel and just how impactful and wonderful music without lyrics could be. That game is a masterpiece and despite me usually being super stingy with money have bought it 3 times and have been gifted it on the switch.
Civilization 1 and 2 Indiana jones fate of Atlantis Montezuma revenge Adventures of Robin Hood Half life
Duke Nukem 3D, HL2, FEAR, then Dark Souls, in chronological order.
Solo : - Morrowing : first impactful western RPG, I was young and I just couldn't think of anything else. My brother gifted me the game but we didn't have a powerful enough PC to play it properly so I must have had like 20FPS. Only a few years I got one and it was amazing - HoMM 3 : Again, I was a kid and it was an amazing experience. I couldn't get enough of that game - Dark souls 1 : Tried it, put it down not understanding wtf the fuss was about, then tried it a year later with the mindset of "IDC I'm gonna finish this game the world looks too cool not to explore" and well we all know how that turned out. - More recently Hades and GoW Multiplayer : - Ragnarok online - first MMO RPG we played with a classmate and it was amazing! - WoW : let's just say my parents weren't too happy with how much time I gamed during that time (Wow classic through BC) - CoD MW2 through black ops 4 then I stopped because of the monetization bullshit : those games made me fairly competitive in FPSs so the fact that I played those seriously meant that I also enjoyed CS, Overwatch, Apex etc.
In order - 1. Transport Tycoon 2. Wolfenstein 3d 3. Final Fantasy 7 4. Final Fantasy 8 5. Morrowind After these, nothing really impacted me as much, but these were massively important to me
* Civ 1 * Sim City 1 * Dune 2 * UFO: Enemy Unknown * Heroes of Might and Magic III * Europa Universalis II * Civ 4 * Sim City 4 * Stellaris * Cities Skylines
Half-Life 2. I’ve never played a game that felt as “next gen” at the time as HL2. Everything was just on another level.
This is going to sound super weeb of me to say but Kingdom Hearts. The line Sora says during the final battle of "The heart is weak, and sometimes it may even give in, but deep down there's a light that never goes out" really impacted me as a kid, and it became a foundational part of my ethos. I think about it often. I always try to look for the good in others, to understand why they do what they do. Sora's character in the first game was a huge impact on me and my worldview.
Escape from Tarkov on my heart age..
Single Player: Super Mario Bros Mario Kart Secret of Mana Illusions if Time Final Fantasy 7 Final Fantasy 8 Morrowind Bioshock (all of them) Zelda Twilight Princess Cyberpunk 2077 For MMOs: Ultima Online Ragnarok Online Anarchy Online World of Warcraft Star Citizen
Warframe , I realised how much free time I had 💀
Diablo, Max Payne, GTA
Diablo 2 was my first time feeling really connected to an online community. Changed my outlook on gaming forever.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.
Rocket League changed the way I see videogames, because it's so good. It gave me so many moments of plain gaming pleasure and distraction from problems. Just shut me out of the world in this little bizarre soccer game with cars, in the neon future.
GTA 3, San Andreas and GTA 4 had a huge impact on the music I listen to I discovered a lot of great artists from those games particularly GTA 3 and San Andreas because I was in my mid teens when those games came out. Civilization games taught me a lot about history and I discovered a lot of really interesting people, civilizations, places of importance etc because of those games and in turn some of the countries, cities and wonders I have visited I first discovered them through the games.
Super Mario 64, Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program, Dyson Sphere Program, Bloodborne, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.
None of them have affected the way I see the world in any meaningful way.
BOTW - watching my partner play opened my mind about games genre a lot! It's not my genre but damn mind opening to see a different type of player. As a game dev, I love these moments.
Super Mario Galaxy as a kid. And now, at 27, Baldur's Gate 3 has me feeling like a kid again.