RetroGaming

Being in the zone, utterly focused at defeating ~~glock~~ Sword Saint Isshin. Doing it so many times that trouncing Genichirou pre-Ishin was a given, a warm up even, before going for the main dude.

Nine balls and more nine balls and more nine balls in Armoured Core Q_Q.

Penetrator from Demon Souls.

Malenia.

Great thread! My moment comes from Deus Ex. There was a mission near versalife in Hong Kong, and I took the wrong door at some point and veered off path. I did not have to do it, but I got lost and I did, i cleaned all security from the entire building. After I got out, i read on one of those news screens.. it had an article about a terrorist attack massacre on the versalife offices 97 dead… I realized they wrote about me - clever bit of cause-effect-scripting there!

Nothing has ever topped Ultima Online for me. The right amount of complexity, with the right amount of players who actually immersed themselves in the game and acted like their character made it a true alternative world.

Grand Theft Auto 3.

Going into that for the first time was mind blowing. A true generational leap over everything before. Now you just get slightly nicer reflections and loading times and pay £500+ for the privilege.

Halo 3 Multiplayer before system party calls were a thing

Katamari Damacy

EDIT: I could add a few more--

The original Legend of Zelda

Final Fantasy IV and VI; I was one of those people who bounced off of VII because of battle load times (I tried twice and both times that was what drove me from it)

A now-obscure Atari arcade game called Rampart

Another arcade game, an action RPG from Taito called Cadash, which could be played by four players on two linked cabinets (no emulation, even official ones, currently support this mode)

TFC "Sillyzone" server. so many fun mods and oddities like the dj/lightshow nights.

Sitting on a couch in the basement, table thing in front of it, little CRT on top, PS2 plugged in, playing Star Wars Battlefront ( either 1 or 2 ).

Either that, or being on a different couch in the same basement and playing Sonic Mega Collection, the game that turned me into the big Sonic fan I am today. That game, specifically if there is a marathon of one of my all time favorite shows on TV that I can switch from game to cable and back. Well, we had a weird CRT with radio, so press the button twice for game or whatever else you had plugged in, but that was a very minor thing. Happened once during a pokemon marathon middle of the day middle of summer vacation and never again since.

Definitely a tie between those for me. I don't necessarily try to reach that high because I know I'll never be able to recreate it unless I can find those exact couches, design wise, those exact TV models, and buy my childhood house and remodel it to make the basement look exactly like I remember it. That, or get a replica that is uncannily close to my memories.

The first game I ever sat down and played for extended periods of time and the first game I ever completed was Majora's Mask on the N64. It was and still is such a weird game from the town and the people living in it, to the masks, the Moon, and Skull Kid. I loved every little piece of this world, but the constant counting down to the end of the world and the reactions of all the characters when the end was near scared me. It made me anxious, stressed, and fucking terrified, but I would always go back to it. I honestly don't remember how long it took me to finish it, maybe a couple months, maybe the better part of a year, but eventually I did finish it. And it literally felt like the weight of the Moon was lifted from my shoulders, I was excited and relieved and... I literally cannot explain the mix of emotions lil 6 year old me felt in that moment, but it's what really made me interested in video games.

A couple of years later, a cousin gifted me a copy of Halo CE. Instantly became obsessed with it. My parents' computer at the time was absolute dogshit (we didn't really have much use for a computer anyway) and we only had dial up internet for maybe 2 years (we didn't have much use for the internet either lol) but that didn't stop me from playing both the single player and multiplayer as much as I could. Fast forward about 2 decades, and in college one of my friends starts playing Halo CE out of nowhere. It was also a cracked copy of the game so it very quickly got floated around to everyone in our friend group. We would have little lan parties to play games and in Halo we would play 3v4 or 3v3 matches, but everyone quickly started to see a pattern. Whoever played on a team with me would win, and I would always be on the top of the scoreboard by like 10 kills. Everybody decided to do me a favor (gang up on me) and humble me (wipe the smug look off my face) by tricking me into a 5v1 match. I won. We played two more games like that, cuz the first one had to be a fluke. I won those as well. I don't know if I held onto those Halo skills and muscle memory for that 2 fucking decades, but at the time I was also feeding a pretty bad CSGO addiction, but ya know. It's what it's. And that's why I can't play fps games against my friends, because I was playing at a completely different skill level and it felt like I was bullying them 💜

As a '90s kid, I was a little old for Pokemon, so I did need the explanation.

I guess for me it would be finally beating The Legend of Zelda, mostly because you had to start over again so many times after your saved game got wiped.

Finishing street fighter 3 on one coin in the arcade. Still play street fighter 6 daily but I'm not as good as an adult as I was back then.

I worked waiting tables so got lots of change. Some I would spend or cash in. Some was kept purely for arcade time.

When I was a young kid, I didn't understand that the NPCs and game world were essentially fixed. I genuinely believed they were just as alive as I was, and was participating in their world.

I would go around following NPCs, try talking to them and felt like I was really helping someone when I would do quests and such. The games I remember that feeling the best was Zelda OOT & Majora's Mask. Doing the couples mask quest line all on my own* and my little notebook I kept track of what people needed was wild. Man I wish I didn't lose that book so I could look at it again.

*Edit: My much older cousin would help me if I got really stuck. But he didn't pop my bubble.

the very first Call of Duty and Tribes 2 on PC way back in the early 00s.

I used to be fairly "known" on the old "Planets" websites (PlanetQuake, PlanetTribes, etc) that were hosted via gamespy. I was popular, on a few of their camportals that were invite only and I worked on a couple of the gaming news sites providing art, writing reviews, and doing web dev stuff. I was friends with some very early internet celebs which really just consisted of guys that made webcomics or had their own websites. Friends with Mike and Jerry at Penny-Arcade, etc.

So anyways about once a week we'd all get together, Jerry from PA, myself, couple of gamespy guys, and a few other close mutual online friends and we'd play CoD, Tribes 2, etc. We started playing CoD fairly frequently. One guy on our team, Porkfry, had a thing about not playing as the Nazi's so if we got into a game that put is on the Nazi side we'd always have to leave and find another server until we were Americans.

It was funny, we joked about it. just one of his many quirks.

Now on one map in CoD there was this german truck that had a raised flatbed. there was NO WAY to normally get in it but Porkfry had figured out that if you jumped at the rear of the truck at a certain angle you could get inside, duck down, and you'd essentially be hidden. So we did that. We would hide in the back of this truck and while the enemy team was frantically searching for us we would stop crouching and just blast them when they got nearby. We'd do this constantly and just howl with laughter over vent or teamspeak or whatever we were using. That's what we did, just silly stuff like that. Or we'd be playing Tribes 2 and one of us would act like a disgruntled bus driver when flying the troop transport. We'd just do dumb shit in the games we'd play to keep us all entertained and make each other laugh.

I really miss those pure early internet days.

The first time I made it through Winter in Rimworld.

For me it's probably playing online games like BF2, Day of Defeat Source, TF2 and Live for Speed in about 2005-07. Communities and community servers back then were different and now sorely missed.

13 All Clear

Vampire the masquerade bloodlines (god, what a mouthful of a title) is still the best rpg ive played to date. Troika games created a masterpiece here, even if it needed an unofficial community patch to be playable. The story is engaging and it is very easy to get immersed into the game world. It is a shame it does not get mentioned more often.

As for a more mainstream fantasy rpg, yeah I am with everybody on Oblivion. The first time you exit the dungeon, with the whole world right there for you to explore, was truly magical.

Halo : CE was the first game I split screened with my dad, and we spent hundreds of hours on it together. I remember the first time we beat the game on legendary, that final car ride was really something. Only wish I can someday share that feeling with my offspring.

Edit: typo, must have been thinking of Requiem as bloodlines 1.

So just shy of 10 years ago me and the dudes were playing a lot of Dota 2, we had played since early Beta. At this point in time the game was still young and hip so the ratio of casuals to sweaty mlg was much more forgiving, which was great because it put me and the dudes in the upper bracket especially when combined with shenanigans, nowadays we'd probably only be in the top 60 percentile at best.

Very few people knew about this or utilized it but you could put your level into stats instead of an ability, so I would find weird builds to focus on only 1 skill and stats. We discovered this build called Sand King Jesus where you could use a character called Sand King to sit, invisible, in sand storm AoE DoT effect on the lane and just never leave but the tradeoff was the inability to move without cancelling, items focusing on regen and armor items as well as utilizing another little known mechanic where you buy 2 stout shields: they used to have a 50% chance to reduce damage by 20 (almost all damage a creep can do) and it would run that 50% check for each individual shield. At the time there was an exploit where if you move, cancelling the Sandstorm ability, but recast it before the particle effect dissipated... Uh Oh! The particle stays put but the Sand King and the AoE radius both moved. That made him not immune to non-targeted stuns or hooks but it did make him extremely hard to hit with them. It also made it difficult to avoid the DoT if you couldn't see where it was. Now there is an immortal, invisible, constantly damaging enemy on the lane, but sure you can still buy wards or keep firing shots in the dark until something hits: but Sand King has another ability called Burrowstrike. Burrowstrike is suppose to be used to instantly travel in a straight line towards enemies and stun them momentarily. But instead, you can burrowstrike away from enemies and then cast Sand Storm as soon as it comes off cooldown, and this ability allows travel up and down ledges and past trees. All of this culminates in "Sand King Jesus" because much like the mythical Jesus it would take forever to try and kill him and often still fail.

Now this is silly at best but the true greatest gamer high for me was this one match where I used this strategy to dominate middle lane, cutting off the creep waves with a well placed sandstorm to both take out an early tower as my creeps poured in damaging either the enemy mid or the tower, chipping away, and I get all of the last hits uncontested, started roaming and ganking with the boys, and buying up hearts, assault cuirrass, vladmir's offering, refresher orb and for added AoE DoT a Radiance, and I became so tankie and my team had me covered on healing and providing DPS that I was able to enter the enemy fountain, where players respawn, and sandstorm in there for another 10 or 15 minutes before we had even taken down any towers before barracks. We were all laughing so hard at these real human beings on the enemy team reduced to NPCs unable to leave their own fountain and unable to do anything about it.

Awhile later they completely reworked the character.

When Myst first came out and then me and all my friends carrying our controllers around with us for spontaneous (but constant) quake 3 arena battles on the Dreamcast. Those were the days I'll always remember but never be able to relive.

The last time must have been when Valheim released. That shit got me hooked. Now I am waiting for the Deep North biome to finish development before I play it again.

Now that I think about it the last time was when Schedule 1 released.

The early days of Asheron's Call. One of the earliest MMORPGs with a 3d game world. It was cool being in a giant world with thousands of other people who were all trying to figure out the game and explore the world. There were monthly updates that were adding all kinds of new stuff all the time. I don't really care for MMOs any more but it was a cool experience at the time.

Xenogears. It was a life-changing game for me. The concepts and philosophy it introduced to my teenage brain tangibly altered my world view over time. It broke me out of a mold I didn't even know I was in. Nothing compares to it for me. As a game, it's well made, but has it's share of sticking points. But it did for me something no other game has.

I've had similar feelings of wonder and awe in other games but not the same life altering impact to my world view.

In a more light-hearted "omg such game, much amazing, very nostalgia" category though, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 1, HL1, Stalker, Morrowind, and Oblivion all hold special places in my memories.

Three more modern games that really brought a sense of wonder to me are Nier Automata, Mirror's Edge 1, and Outer Wilds.

The physics in Half Life 2 blew me away, I would stop every few meters pushing stuff around and then in the water bike part and the gravity gun my jaws would drop. No we just have shinier graphics but still waiting for sor something like that to blow my mind again.

Also the slowmo on Max Payne 2, can’t count the times I’ve replayed it because of that.

I still chase after the first playthrough experience of Okami. It was a time before novel ways of interacting with the game world were the norm. Everyone I knew at the time was playing CoD (some even just played Zombies mode and nothing else), Battlefield, Halo, GTA, Pokémon, Mario, Zelda… all titles that “everyone” played at the time.

When I saw Okami on a commercial, I knew I had to own it. There was nothing like it at the time and the way it pulled from Japanese culture was such a new concept to me. The way you can stop time at any point and paint shapes on the screen was just too cool to pass up. Not to mention, the almost hand-drawn aesthetic was still one of very few at the time.

I will admit, I can’t stand the experience on Wii. I can only enjoy it on controller because of how awkward painting with a 6-foot brush is.

Siralim Ultimate

You like Pokémon but could leave the anime? You like building decks in Magic or some such tinkering?

This might be the last game you need to buy for years, and it’s like $20ish.

Gaming my consciousness with shrooms and ket.

Man a lot of recent games have been amazing. God of War 2018. The return of Kratos in a whole new setting and gameplay style.

Elden Ring as my first souls game. Being an absolute souls noob, my build was shit. Every boss defeated truly felt amazing. The journey was long and hard to become Elden Lord. The environments, enemy design, it is truly and outstanding game.

Kingdome Come Deliverance 2. Has to be one of the best RPGs. It commits to what it is, and I have probably learned more about Bohemian history from the game than in school.

Baldur's Gate 3 as my first Baldur's Gate game. Nothing needs to be said about this absolute master piece. Except Laezel > Karlach > Shadowheart.

The Bayonetta franchise. What an amazing over the top experience. Especially Bayo 1 has this early playstation 1-2 vibes that tickles my monkey brain.

So many more games that I wish I could erase out of my mind to experience again for the first time.

LAN party 2012ish. Playing Farcry 2 team Deathmatch multiplayer on the Clear Cut map. First team to 100 kills win. I got 60 of the 100 kills to win and from that point forward I was no longer permitted to use the 50cal sniper rifle.