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


Recommended Posts

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)

 

  • Like 1

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!)

 

 

  • Like 1

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

 

 

 

  • Like 2

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...

  • Love 1

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 :)

 

 

 

 

  • Like 1
  • 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...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • OpenAI announces GPT‑5.6 Sol, its next-generation flagship model beating Claude Mythos 5 by Pradeep Viswanathan Credit: OpenAI OpenAI today announced a limited preview of its new GPT-5.6 model series, which includes the Sol, Terra, and Luna models targeting different price points. GPT-5.6 Sol is the flagship model targeted at demanding reasoning and agentic workloads. GPT-5.6 Terra is positioned as a balanced model for everyday work, featuring performance competitive with GPT-5.5 while being half the cost. GPT-5.6 Luna is the fastest and most affordable model, delivering strong capability at a lower price point. Unlike previous model releases from OpenAI, GPT-5.6 is starting with a limited preview for a small group of trusted partners due to U.S. government restrictions. As expected, OpenAI previewed its plans and the models' capabilities to the U.S. government ahead of launch, and the government asked OpenAI to limit the first wave of access to select partners. OpenAI also mentioned in the official announcement blog post that it does not believe this type of government access process should become the long-term default. OpenAI highlighted that GPT-5.6 Sol comes with a robust safety stack featuring improved protections for higher-risk activity, sensitive cyber requests, and repeated misuse. The company also spent several weeks pressure-testing the system and hardening it against real-world attacks. On the capability side, as expected, GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI’s strongest model yet. It delivers better results in agentic performance across coding, biology, and cybersecurity. On the Terminal-Bench 2.1 benchmark, which tests command-line workflows requiring planning, iteration, and tool coordination, GPT-5.6 Sol sets a new record with a score of 91.9%, beating Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5. Additionally, GPT-5.6 introduces a new "max" reasoning effort for even deeper reasoning. The new "ultra" mode uses subagents to accelerate complex work beyond what a single agent can handle. Pricing starts at $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens for Sol. Terra costs $2.50 for input and $15 for output, while Luna costs $1 for input and $6 for output. GPT-5.6 comes with more predictable prompt caching, including support for explicit cache breakpoints and a 30-minute minimum cache life. Sol will also launch on Cerebras in July at speeds up to 750 tokens per second for select customers. OpenAI plans to make GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna broadly available in ChatGPT, Codex, and the API in the coming weeks.
    • I'm not sure if you are trolling because I saw people saying this with the straight face, but there were no United States of America when industrial revolution started, just United Colonies 🤣 p.s. I'm not British, so I'm not offended.
    • Glad I uninstalled this incredibly buggy browser. Looking at that changelog, they clearly don't test their updates at all.
    • UniGetUI 2026.2.2 by Razvan Serea UniGetUI is an application whose main goal is to create an intuitive GUI for the most common CLI package managers for Windows 10 and Windows 11, such as Winget, Scoop and Chocolatey. With UniGetUI, you'll be able to download, install, update and uninstall any software that's published on the supported package managers — and so much more. UniGetUI features Install, update and remove software from your system easily at one click: UniGetUI combines the packages from the most used package managers for windows: WinGet, Chocolatey, Scoop, Pip, Npm and .NET Tool. Discover new packages and filter them to easily find the package you want. View detailed metadata about any package before installing it. Get the direct download URL or the name of the publisher, as well as the size of the download. Easily bulk-install, update or uninstall multiple packages at once selecting multiple packages before performing an operation Automatically update packages, or be notified when updates become available. Skip versions or completely ignore updates in a per-package basis. Manage your available updates at the touch of a button from the Widgets pane or from Dev Home pane with UniGetUI Widgets. The system tray icon will also show the available updates and installed package, to efficiently update a program or remove a package from your system. Easily customize how and where packages are installed. Select different installation options and switches for each package. Install an older version or force to install a 32bit architecture. [But don't worry, those options will be saved for future updates for this package] Share packages with your friends to show them off that program you found. Here is an example: Hey @friend, Check out this program! Export custom lists of packages to then import them to another machine and install those packages with previously-specified, custom installation parameters. Setting up machines or configuring a specific software setup has never been easier. Backup your packages to a local file to easily recover your setup in a matter of seconds when migrating to a new machine Devolutions UniGetUI 2026.2.2 changelog: This release marks the completion of UniGetUI's migration from WinUI to Avalonia. With the remaining WinUI components and dependencies now removed, UniGetUI is fully powered by Avalonia. This update also brings Windows 11 Snap Layouts support, refined styling throughout the application, improved log viewing, new illustrations, and significantly smaller release packages. Highlights Further refined the Avalonia user interface to better match WinUI styling and behavior across package lists, navigation elements, dialogs, and controls. Added support for Windows 11 Snap Layouts when hovering the maximize button, matching the behavior of native Windows applications. Added illustrations for empty and loading package list states, improving visual feedback throughout the application. Improved the operation log window so automatic scrolling no longer interrupts users when reviewing previous log entries. Reduced installer and application package sizes, resulting in smaller downloads and a significantly leaner Windows distribution. User Interface Improvements Improved package list styling, column headers, backgrounds, hover states, and selection indicators for a more polished and consistent experience. Refined sidebar navigation and segmented controls to better align with modern Windows design patterns. Improved package tag badges and icon presentation throughout the application. Updated several labels, placeholders, and interface elements for improved clarity and consistency. Removed the remaining WinUI-specific styling dependencies, further consolidating the application around Avalonia. Windows Improvements Added native Windows 11 Snap Layouts integration for the maximize button. Improved maximize button hover and pressed visual states to more closely match native Windows behavior. Performance & Reliability Reduced the size of Windows release packages by removing unnecessary runtime dependencies and optimizing published builds. Reduced installer size through improved compression settings. Simplified application dependencies and reduced overall maintenance complexity. Fixes Fixed log output auto-scrolling behavior when manually reviewing previous entries. Resolved various UI inconsistencies and styling issues across the Avalonia interface. Addressed several minor issues and edge cases throughout the application. Other Changes Dependency cleanup and project maintenance. Internal code refactoring and infrastructure improvements. Additional test coverage and build pipeline optimizations. Download: UniGetUI 64-bit | Portable | ~90.0 MB (Open Source) Download: UniGetUI ARM64 | Portable Links: UniGetUI Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • The best controller for XBOX and PC is down to the lowest price by Taras Buria Image via Neowin The GameSir G7 Pro is a fantastic controller for XBOX and PC. Officially certified, it works with Microsoft's consoles, mobile devices, and PCs, giving you a universal controller for any kind of gaming machine. And right now, you can save 20% on it, thanks to the latest deal during Prime Day 2026 (purchase link below). The G7 Pro has the classic XBOX layout, complemented by a couple of extra elements, such as the M button for changing various settings and four additional remappable buttons. It also has trigger locks and TMR sticks that eliminate drifting issues, giving you a reliable, long-lasting gamepad. The controller is powered by a built-in battery, which charges via a USB Type-C cable or the bundled dock station. The G7 Pro supports wireless (XBOX Wireless, proprietary dongle, or Bluetooth) and wired connectivity. In addition to software customization (you can remap multiple buttons to different actions), it lets you personalize the look by swapping the faceplate or grips, enabling multiple design combinations. Other features include a 1,000Hz polling rate, an audio jack for your headphones, Hall Effect triggers, and a swappable D-pad (two extra are included). The controller is also available in four color variants, and all of them are now discounted. Thanks to quality materials, reliable components, rich customization, universal compatibility, and an affordable price tag, the G7 Pro received very high praise in our review. It is certainly among the best controllers you can buy. GameSir G7 Pro - $63.99 | 20% off with Prime Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      tuben earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • First Post
      OffsetAbs earned a badge
      First Post
    • Reacting Well
      OffsetAbs earned a badge
      Reacting Well
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      440
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      196
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      154
    4. 4
      FloatingFatMan
      71
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      67
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!