The Talos Principle for sure, and now i hear they're coming out with a sequel!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_II:_The_Doomsday_Papers

I printed out the certificate it gave me for finishing the game and proudly hung it on my bedroom wall. I guess that makes me an officially certified hacker.

I have two that are forever up in the ranks. First is probably Street Fighter II for NES. Yeah, there was Mario and other classics, but SF2 was probably the first video game where I wanted to strive my damned hardest to get better. After getting wrecked over and over by older kids, I was determined to be good at this game and it was a ton of fun in the process. Thus began my lifelong love of video games.

Second is TMNT: turtles in time for SNES. It was probably the first time I enjoyed an activity with my father. He wasn't around much but on the rare occasion he was, we would play the crap out of this game. He used to play with me until his thumbs cramped up. It's always been a loving core memory of my father for my entire life.

In terms of nostalgia, ffvii, but the most moving experience I've ever had with a video game is mother 3.

Definitely Lego Star Wars (original trilogy of course). My brother and I played it almost endlessly on our PS2 when we were children. Later on we got it on both PS3 and 4, and I even bought it in steam a few years ago for the nostalgia. On the computer I naturally use my PS4 controller for it.

Freespace 2, and particularly the Freespace Open mod Blue Planet. Fantastic gameplay and the story/characters/mission design in the Blue Planet mod take a 90s game and make it better than most current ones.

Marathon.

MYST. I still think about this game and the sequels weekly. I would sit next to my dad and explore, take notes, read books, and become completely immersed in the worlds of MYST.

For some reason, Adventure Quest, yes that old flash game :p.It got me hooked when I was 7yr old and I find myself coming back every now and again.

Secret of Evermore (SNES). The atmosphere, the gameplay, the characters.. It's an absolutely awesome game.

So many.

Doom, the og, first FPS... we had Wolfenstein 3D before that but it always felt like it was a demo of something to come for me. Doom felt like it stood on its own. I couldn't play it at home, had to go to a friend's house to play, for two reasons. 1. I couldn't run it, and 2. My parents were kinda uptight... they loosened up over the years, but it kept me from a lot of good stuff.

Quake was the next one up really land at least on PC.... we had a lab of Pentium computers at school that were all networked with what I now know is called 10Base5 or 10base2 (not sure which)... it was the first "real" network we experienced, and it was great. At the time those premiums were basically brand new, state of the art machines..... the teacher was cool enough to let us use the lab to play quake over the lunch hour sometimes... so we had quake LAN parties over lunch.

On PC, there were a lot of greats, but nothing too groundbreaking until half-life... but I'm guessing most people experienced that. I'll give an honorable mention to unreal and unreal tournament as well (every version). Bluntly, UT was significantly better than quake arena.

We had a short list of consoles over the years. But I have to take my hat off for final Fantasy (either 3 or 6, whatever you want to call it, the one on the SNES)... which I was obsessed with for a while there. We only had three consoles over the years that I recall... the NES, SNES, and genesis. After that, we couldn't continue to convince my parents to keep buying consoles. I eventually picked up a PlayStation, but that was a long time later.

Let's see... Mario Kart Wii, Pilotwings Resort, the Forza Horizon series, and New Super Mario Bros.

Ya'all too young. LOL.

The game that holds a special place in my heart was Destiny of an Emperor. It was a little-known RPG that came out in the late 80's. It's not entirely obvious from the name, but it was my first introduction to the Romance of Three Kingdoms. I was a little spoiled brat of a kid. Over the years, I racked up about 50 NES games (sure, most were flea market finds, but that didn't make me feel less badass nerdy)... But the one I kept going back to again and again was Destiny. It's what immersed me in story-first RPGs when (oddly) Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior 1-3 didn't scratch that itch.

If you're willing to try an NES RPG, and you haven't, definitely check out Destiny of an Emperor.

King's Quest III

It was the first game I remember playing solo without help, I really sunk my teeth into it. I was 8 and it had been released a few years prior, so it was also the first game I bought with my own money when I found it in a bargain bin at a computer convention show in the late 80s.

My Dad was busy and couldn't install it for me right away, so it was also the game that got me started using MS DOS (everything I ran prior was installed by my Dad and launched via [IIRC] WordPerfect Shell).

Yes, I'm old.

Freelancer. Exploring through the jump holes and all the beautiful systems in-game was very satisfying. Nothing else has really hit the spot.

Baldur's Gate 1. It was my childhood game, i played it when i was 12 years old and it was amazing and very hard. I haven't progressed beyond the first chapter with the kobold's mine and Boo's quest but i enjoyed replaying it every summer, at the beggining.

And i finished it once for all when i was a student. The game was amazing. Time pause, speech, character creation...

And the second is the mmo Dofus, very cool turn based strategy game. :)

Rainworld.

An animal survival simulator with trippy buddhism lore/story

The Longest Journey. Wonderful story, great voice acting, beautiful environment.

Crash bandicoot

Grew up playing crash. Helped me connect with my siblings and it is still a comfort game for me despite being hard on players.

Bioshock

I had the wrong perception that fps games were dull and wasn't good for single player experience until I played bioshock.

Last of Us Had a big impact on me and made me realise writing is an important part in any medium.

Saints Row 2 and 3 I loved saints row because of how much it had to offer with clothes, vehicles and gameplay elements like melee, weapon and ability to taunt. I loved 3rd and liked the tone shift but was slightly disappointed by how much it lacked quality of life features like it's predecessor.

Ace Attorney trilogy, Hotel Dusk and its sequel and Time Hollow, visual novels are really an underrated genre.

Suikoden 2. That game was just amazing. I think there is a remaster on the way..

It's hard to really pinpoint just one game...but I would argue Skyrim is my nearest and dearest. 10k hours of playtime since release, haven't played for nearly 2 years but I still keep tabs on mods in the event I go back (I will).

I was maybe 12 when I first played Skyrim, roughly a year after it was released and I was enthralled by it. By that age the most "expansive" game I'd played was maybe Minecraft (Beta 1.7.3). I think it might've been my first open world game?

Either way, the music, the questing, the exploration and detail in the worlds always held my ADHD brain's attention well. I saw the flaws, sure. However I thoroughly enjoyed that janky buggy game more than any other thing out there for a long long while.

Right behind Skyrim would have to be Dishonored. It's actually one of the only two games I've gotten a physical PC copy for. But the lore, story, and vibes of the game were genuinely so cool to me. I replayed that and the games sequels several times now.

Minecraft holds a close place in my heart too, I generally come back to it once a year for a nice, lightly modded hardcore playthrough. It especially helps me with creativity, since I get to build something without it feeling like work.

But yeah, Skyrim will always hold a place in my heart, and to a level it even influenced parts of my younger personality.

I'm old and have enjoyed many, many games over the years. However, the one that hit me hardest in the feels was The Witcher 3. The ending where Geralt realizes that he has to let Ciri make her own decisions, scary as they are... wow, it was so well done. It's one of the best examples of how a game can become art on the same level as cinema and literature.

Edit: I want to add another. The first game that made me feel actual dread was the original Quake, especially when played in a dark room. The soundscape was incredibly immersive. I remember literally moving my own head to try to peer around corners.

There’s a lot, but similar to yours, probably the original Killer Instinct arcade version. My parents were in a bowling league every year and I’d go when I was younger. It was on Friday/Saturday nights. They’d give me money for the arcade every time. Plenty of nights where I got to play for a long time only paying once cuz I had got so good at the game. There was only one other kid that could take me down.