Which 5 Video Games blew your mind when you first played them?


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This is going to be a mixed bag as age of player will be relevant.

 

I'm 54 years old so the games that wowed me are,

 

Elite (1984) played on Acorn Electron

Geoff Crammonds F1 Grand Prix(Amiga 500)

SimCity 2000(PC I think)

Doom 2 (486 DX4 100 PC)

Quake 2 (PC first online experience)

 

  • Like 1

 

Cyberia (On of the only computer games I owned) (PC)

Doom (shareware) (PC)

Mario 64 (rented) (The moment he jumped out of the pipe...wow) (N64)

Donkey Kong Country (Rented) ...That music. (n64)

Far Cry (was at a customer's house and played it with some Logitech Z speakers, and i'll never forget getting up on top of the vehicle and using the gun and the base that came out of the speakers. (PC)

 

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Ahh for me it was:

  • Spear of Destiny (1992)
  • Max Payne (2001) (bullet time)
  • Kingpin: Life of Crime (1999) (for the story)
  • Quake 3 & Unreal Tournament (1999) (for the multiplayer)
  • Quake Champions (2017) (got me back into gaming)
  • Forza series on Xbox (2018-) (pretty fun)

Not a huge gamer..

Ah many more than 5 but never mind:

- Netrek in 1994 (The idea that you were playing online at that time seemed amazing)

- Frontier Elite 2 - Exploring the vast map of the solar systems

- Actraiser - Great mix of god sim and arcade action with what I think is the best music on the snes

- Myst - Intro blew me away, and loved the artwork with detailed world.  I'd love to visit Cyan Studios someday

- Quake (The 3D and early online and LAN games were just amazing at the internet cafe where I worked. Great to see the formation of clans and various gameplay types like CTF, Rune Quake and Clan Area)

- Deus Ex (Immersive feel in an FPS Game, and I enjoyed the choices)

- World of Warcraft (Again loved the online feel with others, combat felt good and a fun world to explore at the time)

- Witcher 3 (Just loved doing side quests - I can't say that about any other game!)

 

 

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SimCity (All of them) (SNES/PC) -  it's actually whats inspiring me to get into game dev

Halo (PC - It's what got me into FPS)

Guild Wars 1 & 2 (PC) - The lore 

Donkey Kong Country (SNES)

Assassins Creed Origin (X|S) - Tis the first AC game I could actually get into and the lore.

 

Runners up:

Forza franchise

Need For Speed

The Sims franchise

 

 

 

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Portal.  Puzzles, graphics, snark, so much to love.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  It's a game.  On a computer.  I don't care if it didn't have graphics.  :)

Doom.  Yeah, repeated a lot here, but massive id nerd as I lived in Dallas at the time.  So smoooooth and fun!

Dungeons of Daggorath.  If you know, you know. 

All the flight sims as they got better over the years...

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Its hard to get this down to just 5. 

 

Star Fox SNES- I was still seeing the 3D objects coming at me when closing my eyes.

Mario 64 N64- Incredible at the time.

Star Fox 64 N64- First experience with crude force feedback and the gfx/presentation

Halo XBOX- The atmosphere, the gfx, the story.

Titanfall 2 PC- Same reasons as Halo.

 

Just about everything on the Dreamcast wowed me but that won't fit here :)

 

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Quake 3 arena(movement skill ceiling was insane)
Bioshock(for some reason I was really scared of that game :D )
Amnesia(remember having actual nightmares over it)
Fallout 1(my first isometric RPG, I don't wanna talk how many hours I've spent playing it)
HoMM3(once again, hundreds of hours, I'm starting to notice a pattern...)

  • 2 months later...

Depends on how we define this stuff. but if it's the 'overall experience' or 'graphics'...

---Graphics...

-Quake (OpenGL version obviously as that was one of the few times I was 'wowed' by graphics. this was played on my first quality GPU for the PC... 3DFX Voodoo 4MB (Diamond Monster 3D), which I still have this GPU to this day as I kept it for nostalgia sake)

-DooM3 (the alpha demo that leaked in Nov 2002 was definitely 'wow' level as it was quite a bit ahead of other games visually at the time. but by the time it was officially released in about mid-2004, while it's graphics were still top notch, it lost some of it's 'wow' effect by then as other games closed the gap some)

etc etc.

---Overall experience of the game itself...

1)Mafia (2002) (on PC) (it's still my #1 video game experience to this day as I first played it when it was new in Aug/Sep 2002 and quite a few times over the years since (mostly recently in Sep 2022) and it never fails to deliver a top notch experience and it's ending seals it's masterpiece (a word I rarely use) status)

etc etc.

p.s. I realize I did not really list five, but close enough for now as those are the immediate things that came to mind when I think 'graphics' and then 'overall game itself'.

Doom for Win95 (1st multiplayer experience for me)

Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

Delta Force

Rainbow 6 Ravenshield

Call  of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)

 

I really don't game enough to put five titles in my list. I can only think of 2 games that really blew me away:

Half Life 2 and Crysis (original one). Maybe Far Cry 2 as well in some aspects, so that makes it 3.

On 25/01/2023 at 14:39, hellowalkman said:

I really don't game enough to put five titles in my list. I can only think of 2 games that really blew me away:

Half Life 2 and Crysis (original one). Maybe Far Cry 2 as well in some aspects, so that makes it 3.

I guess it depends on age, Im old enough to be around when gaming changed from something really basic to something like Doom, that was mind blowing to me.

Edited by SnoopZ
  • Love 1

In no particular order:

  • Ghost Recon - The great (for the time, at least) team tactics, the different environments, the fact that you were just as vulnerable as the enemy...it was such fun! I played through all of the campaigns and even got into the modding scene to create my own missions.
  • Journey - The colours, the music, and the lack of hand-holding that really made it feel like you were experiencing your own journey. I still play through it every year or so.
  • Portal - I'm not sure if it was mind-blowing or mind-bending with its puzzles. Probably both. I started playing Portal Reloaded but I got stuck somewhere along the way. The added time-shift factor made things really confusing. :laugh:
  • The Stanley Parable - I'm the type of gamer where if it tells me to go right I'll go left first. So the fact that the developers seemed to have planned for every single eventuality was crazy.
  • Star Wars Galaxies - I was a doctor/smuggler in the Star Wars galaxy! I had a house in a village on Tatooine, my friend and I had a Spice factory on Dantooine (I think it was Dantooine) and all of us in the village would go on great adventures. I didn't have a real social life while I was playing that game, my plans all revolved around things in a galaxy far, far away...

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