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Logo uses joystick by liftarn
The pacifist route on Undertale is refreshingly wholesome and you just don't get that with many videos games.
Also, I loved Hi-fi Rush's music-based combat and fun characters.
I loved the world-building in Transistor. It felt like a more fleshed-out and artistic Tron setting.
Most recent: Death Stranding 2
I love that wild shit, and the story is very touching.
The one before that: Xenoblade Chronicles 3
There's so much emotion in that game. Of all the games I have played in the last 37 years or so, I cried more in XC3 than I think I have in any other game. So good.
Just some of them: Hollow Knight, Undertale, Ori and the Blind Forest, BioShock, Dead Space, Max Payne, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.
This question has two answers.
the game that practically changed your life in terms of how it affected you.. and the game that made you change the way you think.
For practicalitys sake, the game that had the most change and influence on my life was, ironically, Second Life. Just through the people I met and experiences I had over the course of the 15-16 years I played it.
I cant really tell you what one had the most profound impact psychologically, I was going to say the Sims or Fallout for the impact they had on like, how I see people vs how I see society. but Im gonna cop-out and go with Mass Effect 2 and 3. since The story is such an "epic" in that it tackles so many philisophical and existential questions, Mainly revolving around what living beings, and in some cases, individual heroes do in the face of death. the whole story is a broad tale of Machines vs Organics, but its done in a very doomsday/armagedon tone. stretched across a sci-fi galaxy instead of just talking about humanity.
I've always played video games one way or another, so I consider them all to be life changing. In a general sense, because getting games in my country wasn't easy in the 80's and 90's, and most would bring them from the US, so I learned English through the games, which opened the possibility to hang out (online) with people from around the world.
But I think there's two games that marked me:
Vampire the Masquerade Redemption, because until then I hadn't played any story-driven true RPG. And after I finished it, I moved on to games like Fallout and Dragon Age, which led me to learn about modding, communities, etc.
The Last of Us, because until then no game (no matter how much I loved it) made me feel so intensely. I played it in several days, and each day I was emotionally exhausted. The ending left me speechless. I would wake up every day feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, for about a week or two.
Dark Souls.
I used to play mostly FPS. Now it's all soulslikes and practically nothing else.
Homeworld. The end credits were so beautiful. It still gives me frisson thinking about it.
Mass Effect.
3’s ending didn’t quite stick the landing, on launch, but was fixed a few months down the line with the Extended Cut DLC.
1 and 2 were amazing. 1 especially had a great ending.
It wasn't the story of the game that was life-changing, but I met people on PSO that encouraged me to pursue a different career. Without them, I don't think I'd be the person I am today.
Nothing has ever hit me harder than Disco Elysium, and I don't think anything else ever will. Everything from its themes of failure and depression and addiction and clinging to the past to its surprising message of hope in the face of unrelenting nihilism resonated with me on a molecular level. And the Final Dream is just the single most impactful, emotional and heart-rending moment I've had in any game ever. The culmination of the entire game distilled into one scene, and even the whole pathos of that one scene concentrated into three closing words:
spoiler
"See you tomorrow"
One that should get way more attention: Little King's Story. It presents as a cutsie Pikmin-like, but is actually a dark, metaphorical tale about abuse and trauma.
Most recently, the final choice in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 gutted me.
Spiritfarer was one for me. Idk what it was about it, because the character development for the spirits you're carrying was pretty meh, and the twist at the end was ruined by the achievements early in the game, but that shit had me almost in tears when each person was dropped off at the gate.
The first time I finished all the left 4 dead campaigns felt epic
Enderal and its not even close. It shows a world that is in a deep decline and an apocalypse that is all but inevitable but manages to still feel hopeful in a way. Throughout the game there is this theme of how even if everything might fade at some point your interpersonal actions are still meaningful. The Rhalata sidequest alone easily outmatches most games that where published by "real" game studios and the main story just seals the deal.
Civ 1 was what got me into gaming, and influenced a lifetime passion of history and studying, as well as strategy/4x/gsg gaming.
Signalis
How it affected me: Mr Wobbly Hides His Helmet. Many, many hours of enjoyment. But it also got me into trouble on a few occasions.
The game that changed the way I think: Go. I even got my first great job because I beat someone at Go, so he thought that meant I was smart. He was the hiring manager for a project that required international travel and which gave me high visibility within the company. But what it really meant was just that he wasn't a particularly strong Go player. I'm still an OK player, though one of my sons now plays at master level (which, he says, means that not all 12-year-old Koreans can beat him).