DUSK was the game where shooters finally clicked with me, I’ve played many of them before, whether it was CoD, Serious Sam or DOOM but DUSK is where it finally all clicked and I started to enjoy them. Chrono Trigger completely changed my outlook on RPGs from boring grindfests with pointless texts where you get confused every second to making it my fav genre and finally Yakuza and Zelda BotW completely changed how I viewed open world for better or for worse
Nothing has shaped how I view games more than Dark Souls.
Halo comes to mind straight away. The way the enemies react, dodging out the way or charging towards you was something special. Also the music score and freedom it gives you in the semi-open levels to play differently.
I like that sometimes taking your time is not the best strategy. Sometimes you need to be aggressive and push the attack relentlessly otherwise you’ll just get blown to pieces.
Ocarina of Time is my GOAT. Finishing it as a kid and realizing that games could be more than just killing time, that they could be epic journeys with satisfying endings, that they could be a whole art form was really transformative.
In case you’re not aware, check out Ship of Harkinian, an updated PC engine for OoT. Grab a proper controller if you have the cash.
OoT in 2K at 200fps is wild.
Hey, hope you don’t mind my asking but maybe you could help me with a question about those controllers - they also sell a DIY kit, how is that in comparison?
No problem! Unfortunately I haven’t tried their DIY kits, but I’ve bought several things from them and they’ve all been solid, so I imagine they’d be good.
Questions like these always reveal the core audience of millennials and older Gen Z.
Caught me, I’m a CIA plant doing statistical anilisis on the fediverse
- Halo
- Life is Strange
- Final fantasy VIII
- World of Warcraft
- Expedition 33
None of them are perfect but they all made me think about games in a different light and keep me wanting to play.
Life is Strange was perfect.
I also went to Arcadia Bay in real life, and found the most sleepy, boring town with a really good fish and chips joint. Aside from the good food, I came to appreciate more why Max and Chloe yearned to leave.
Super Mario Bros 1, 2 & 3
Super Mario World
Mortal Kombat 1 & 2
Wolfenstein 3D
DOOM
Commander Keen
Starcraft
Diablo 1 / 2
Unreal Tournament 2003/4
Counter-Strike
Half Life
Everquest
World of Warcraft
The Secret of Monkey Island
Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis / Last Crusade
LOOM
Resident Evil 1 & 2
Legend of Zelda 1
Ocarina of Time
Mario Kart (SNES & 64)
Ogre Battle 64
WCW/NWO Revenge
Portal 1 & 2
Grand Theft Auto 2, 3 and 5Yeah I’m old. Some modern ones:
Breath of the Wild
Valheim
Outer WildsYour not old, your me!. Most of these plus some others definitely, plus a bunch of modern ones as well. Shocked you only liked Half-Life 1 and not 2. I thought 2 was mind blowing at the time and still feel like it’s the first game to bring us into the modern era of games to this day.
Here is my Quality Slop list (I only like them because they are good):
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- Metal Gear Solid
- NieR Gestalt
- Test Drive Unlimited 2
- Halo Combat Evolved
- Dark Souls
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
- Half-Life: Opposing Force
- Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
- Silent Hill 2 (the original, not the remake)
- Super Metroid
- Need for Speed Underground 2
- Shenmue 1, 2, and 3 (Shenmue 3 is probably the worst game on this list, but its still pretty good regardless)
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2
- Age of Empires II
- Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour
- Policenauts
- Panzer Dragoon Orta
Each of these have contributed to my high bar of expected quality for games. Most of these games were made on a very tight budget and schedule, with pretty harsh hardware limitations, usually with a small team of less than 100 people, and are the greatest games of all time. Modern game studios have no excuses for the awful quality they launch games in today with more time, money, more people on the dev team, and lack of hardware limitations.
I’m really intrigued by your one and only C&C entry being generals? Not red alert 2?
I liked it more. Red Alert 2 was good but I just prefer Generals Zero Hour.
RA2 isnt bad, I just wanted to really limit the list to not repeat a bunch of games from the same series if they werent equally as good IMO (which is why Danganronpa 2 is the only one in its series, for example). I just had more fun with Generals Zero Hour.
Can’t really argue with that, RA2 was just such an icon and a mainstay whereas I feel like the C&C brand was largely on the way out by the time of generals, personally
Its hard to argue with Russian Tim Curry. He was such a fun pick for that role.
An absolute joy to watch, as always
Fallout New Vegas set my expectation for quest choice and faction interactivity. I could go on about that, but everyone knows what people think about New Vegas.
Last year, I beat Dark Souls. That’s now set my standard for RPG gameplay. There’s bullshit, same as any game, but I don’t think I’ve ever played another RPG where I’ve felt my skill going up alongside my in-game stats. Then you get to the Bed of Chaos, and that kinda goes out the window…
When I was 6 I was so excited to get a SNES. I wanted the bundle with super Mario World but it was sold out. So my parents gave me the option of waiting of getting this other bundle with this Zelda game. That sounded kind of girly to me being 6 and knowing nothing, but I was also 6 and had no patitience so Zelda it was.
I got home and started playing and was immediately hooked. I spent the next few years exploring every inch of Hyrule and the Dark World.
To this day I still don’t have Super Mario World and have only played a few levels but I have played every Zelda since.
I’ve played dozens or hundreds of games since thrn, many that were absolutely amazing but nothing until Breath if the Wild gave me that same magic of wanting to discover every nook and cranny of the world just to see what’s there.
ITT: A bunch of people misunderstanding the question
As expected. Many people just see it as an opportunity to talk about their favorite games. That’s okay.
Honestly I love reading about peoples favourite games! I thought it was funny in this thread
But I mean aren’t our favorite games naturally the ones that have most influenced us and our views on gaming?
In a way, I see it more as a square/rectangle situation. A game that helps to shape you is probably a favourite one, not necessarily the other way around. It’s a good thread either way.
When I was younger, my friends used to play the usual shooters and competitive titles. I never enjoyed that. What got me more into gaming was the original Life is Strange. The game has its weaknesses, but at the time I just connected with the characters and felt emotions I didn’t expect to feel in a video game. Still love this kind of story driven and (somewhat) decision based games. Another one is Detroit become human. Still need to find something that matches the impact the player’s decisions have in that game.
Spyro the Dragon:
This is basically the pinnacle of game design to me. It is a collect-a-thon of course, but the gems always sparkle no matter how far you are from them so that if you are in line of sight you will know that they are there making it easy to find them.
Far off sections of the map are basically always reachable and rewards you for trying to get there and utilizing uncommon paths through the map.
When you beat the game to 100% it rewards you with extra stuff and a little more game to show it had fun being made as much as you hopefully did playing it.
All with a fun story that wraps it up and doesnt require anything special to jump in. I want to see games that have thoughtful level design and world building while using the game mechanics in fun ways. The fact that you jump into levels directly and the loading screen is akin to you actually flying to the world is all engrossing to the world.
fallout 3 and then skyrim changed my life. it was incredible i could just go anywhere i wanted. i could kill (almost) any npc i wanted to for any reason. i never felt more immersed in a world in my life
I came here to say this. Plus, when I got the PC version it opened up a whole new world. The nexus was a dazzling place I never knew.
World of Warcraft. After it, a lot of player retention mechanics became super obvious in other games for me, especially because a lot of said games were copying “the king of MMOs”
Dwarf Fortress is my main go-to example of procgen done right. Whenever there’s discussions of “game X sucks and is lifeless because it’s mostly procgenned”, I look back at DF. Lazy procgen is the problem.
I know at some point I saw a game with absurdly high damage and health numbers, I can’t remember which one it was, whether a mobile thing around 2014 or a korean mmo, but that was the point where I very easily understood “big number better” is total bullshit
Elder Scrolls Morrowind was the first game I’ve played that gave almost complete freedom to the player, with lots of things carrying consequence, especially in relation to NPCs. That shopkeeper you killed? Still dead. This essential NPC that is a literal demigod? Yeah, you can kill him, have fun in this broken timeline you just created where you can no longer advance the main quest.
There’s actually an official “back path” for the Morrowind main quest if you killed Vivec. You need to take an item from his corpse to Yagrum Bagarn, but you also need a high reputation. If you muck up the back path, too, you can brute force the main quest by completing the final step anyway, but good luck figuring out how to do that without a quest pointing you to what you need.
I wonder if that MMO with big damage numbers was Shaiya Online?
Doesn’t look like it goes into the millions of damage per hit, which is what I recall seeing back then
Maplestory?
