Games that left lasting impressions on you.

[RokstaEnSweden]

I feel like each generation of consoles carries with it at least one game that leaves a lasting impression on me and delivers that "wow" factor. There are a couple that come immediately to mind though.

Final Fantasy VI was by far one of the most mind-blowing and influential games my younger self would ever play. Granted, I hadn't played a real JRPG prior to it so everything was brand new to me and larger than anything I had played previously. Still, that game sucked me in with it's world and characters, and shaped my future library of games. It was one of those games where I didn't just play it, I daydreamed about it in class.

Likewise, Shadow of the Colossus was one of the most mind-blowing games my older self would ever play. The whole concept of that open, empty and surreal world populated with incredible monsters that you had to essentially solve a puzzle while platforming to beat; it was just crazy. I've never found a game I like more, and I still go back and play it constantly just to slay some colossi.

[turbolegs]

I don't know if I just get too emotionally attached to games...

Metal Gear Solid 1-3
Final Fantasy 7, 8 & 10
Resident Evil 1-3 & CV
Shenmue 1 & 2
Mafia
Bioshock
ICO & SotC
OOT
Snatcher
Silent Hill 1 & 2
Tomb Raider 1 - Truly a phenomenal game.

I think thats a pretty comprehensive list, although there could potentially be many more.

[trdbglr]

Um...

Half Life 1
It was like a crazy action movie. The most amazing day-in-the-life-of story ever. Just, the whole thing. It was like, more real than real life. HL2's hamfisted storytelling doesn't work on me.

The Specialists
Just woke me up to the possibilities of the multiplayer first person shooter, it can be, like, better than life. I had orgasm-like physical feelings on this game a few times. Oh, and the style on this game? Sick. And, it's not the kind of style that hits you like a mallet, it takes a while to sink in.

Super Smash Bros
The multiplayer platform game. So many things to keep track of, thinking without thinking, feints within feints. Gets me so wound up, I love it.

OH!
Grand Theft Auto 3
Jesus this game was amazing. Just, like so much FREEDOM!!! I remember driving at night through Staunton in a Banshee to Fade Away; street lights, skyscrapers, so beautiful. So sensual.

[SplashChick]

Spyro the Dragon: PS1
My first video game ever. Childhood nostalgia. The reason why platformers is my favorite video game genre.

Star Fox Command: DS
The vast amount of endings. A few of them being surprisingly emotional.

Super Metroid: SNES
The best game I have ever played so far. Once I beat Ocarina of Time, it will probably take its place.

I havent really played many emotionally driven games so far. I need to go get more.

OoT is overrated. It's a great game, but it's no "best game ever". Super Metroid is definitely better.

[Original_Name]

My internet job is constructing walls. Walls of text.

Double Dragon - Wouldn't be all that noteworthy were it not the first video game I ever played. See, my father is a huge comics nerd and the comics shop we regularly went (The Gamekeep) was sold out of the comic he was after (I believe it was an issue of Swamp Thing, but that may be a fabricated memory) and the other comics shop we went to had a Double Dragon cabinet which I played while he picked up his comic. It kicked my fucking ass, I remember that much. It wasn't until a few years ago that I figured out what game it was - my friend Harold was playing it on his NES, and I recognized it because I remembered the girl being punched in the stomache and flung over that guy's shoulder. So there you have it, my first gaming memory: gang-violence directed towards a scantily-clad woman.

DOOM - Although not my first video game ever, DOOM might as well have been. This is the game that my father weened me on at four years of age. He'd clear out the corridoors of the various demons and let me run around and explore. I would scamper around the twisted little world of DOOM for hours - actually showing my father where to get the chainsaw (he'd never thought to turn around at the beginning of the first stage) which made me feel rather useful. Eventually I mustered up the courage to kill off the monsters myself, and thus I grew my wings. *0* Oh, and playing the game online with my father was really cool. The people were outstandingly nice, and let my father show me around (we had multiple computers in the house because he was just starting out his animation business) while they blasted the shit out of eachother. My father then told them that we were free-game. They obviously went a little bit easy on me, but I got killed plenty, got a few kills in myself, and had a blast doing it.

Genesis 6-Pak - This one is HUGE for me! My grandfather gave me a Sega Genesis for my fifth birthday, and this was the glorious pack-in. I've gone over this briefly in another topic, but I basically don't have a visual imagination, so things like action figures were beyond me, and not being able to read anything remotely complex, playing Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, and Revenge of Shinobi for the first time were like portals into the minds of highly-imaginative artists. Although the Sega Dreamcast is my favorite system, the Genesis introduced me to the fantastic worlds of Sonic the Hedgehog, Ecco the Dolphin, Vectorman, ToeJam & Earl, Ristar, Earthworm Jim, Comix Zone, Shinobi, Golden Axe, and Streets of Rage - and my life as a video gamer truly started with the 6-Pak.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles - I owned and beat Sonic the Hedgehog 3. I was later gifted Sonic & Knuckles. I locked them together and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! The already incredibly fun Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was now an epic adventure spanning more stages than my 5-year-old attention span cared to count! I was really sucked into the world, and the story - sparse as it may have been - captivated me! I thought Knuckles the Echindna was just about the coolest character ever, and learning the truth behind his mystery really kept me going (as if I needed a story to galvanize me through all those twisting, colorful stages with the fucking GODLY music). When I finally completed the game (I did it without all the emeralds the first several times, then about two years ago I fully completed it) I felt like I had been everywhere and done everything; I was completely satisfied. I miss the old Sonic experiences, but S3&K gave me more than enough closure. The first time I saw the credits I threw up my controller in relief and exclaimed, "There it is! I beat it! My favorite game of all time!"

NiGHTS into Dreams - If the likes of Streets of Rage fascinated me for the imagination it showcased, imagine what NiGHTS into Dreams did for me! I loved flying around as the androgynous jester as much as the next guy, but what truly kept me enthralled was running around the stages on foot, seeing all the wondrous sights and escaping the goddamned alarm clock. The concept of that really struck home with me because the only time I can really step into my imagination is when I'm unconscious (read: asleep; dreaming), and waking up always used to frustrate me alot when I was little because I couldn't just step back into what I was imagining. With a Sega Saturn though, I could just reset the console and POOF, I was back.

Final Fantasy VII - IT TAUGHT ME HOW TO READ. I cannot thank Squaresoft enough for sucking me so deep into this world and blessing me with an advanced vocabulary which confused the hell out of my peers. I played through this when it first came out in 1997 on my dad's PlayStation and it captivated me so much that I would sit in front of the television screen for hours on end, slowly plodding through the text-boxes and occassionally requesting help from a family member on words which consfused me while I re-tried boss fights over and over while deciphering the "bewildering" Materia system until I finally defeated Safer Sephiroth, threw up my controller in relief, and exclaimed, "There it is! I beat it! My favorite game of all time!"

Half-Life - I was surprised when my father brought this one home. We'd both been sharing our 32-bit bliss on the PlayStation and Saturn for so long that I'd all but forgotten about PC gaming, outside of a few dabbles in Quake a couple of years back. But when I initiated the resonance cascade all the way to my final battle with the giant, levitating, whatever the fuck it was, DEAR GOD. I never underestimated the ol' PC ever again. A truly engrossing experience on all levels, fully deserving of the 50-some Game of the Year titles it garnered.

Shenmue - Sonic Adventure and Soul Calibur had massive impact on me for graphical value alone, but when Shenmue came along I could hardly believe I was playing a video game. I would literally forget I was looking at a television screen at all. I WAS Ryo Hazuki, and I HAD to find my father's murderer... after I bought another fifty toy capsules... and drank another soda... and played some Space Harrier... and listened to Hip De Hop on Tom's boom box... and got sweaty. Unfortunately, it's a game that you almost had to have played at the time, and almost have to have a particular mindset in playing. It makes for a rather shoddy kung-fu action drama, but what it really is is a life-simulator - and the life it's simulating is far more exciting than yours. As Ryo Hazuki's boat to Hong Kong drifted away I threw up my controller in relief and exclaimed, "There it is! I beat it! My favorite game of all time!"

Rez - I recently played through this game, and I was completely reminded of why I love video games so much; not for their challenge, but for the experience they provide. Rez's accomplishments are largely possible in cinema, but the small level of interactivity does in fact add to the immersion, and gives you the feeling that YOU are the one hacking into this all-knowing computer main-frame. Despite the fascination I felt from experiencing the sights and sounds of Rez, the biggest thrill for me was the philosophical angle of the game. The credits thank Wasilly Kandinsky for his contributions to the arts. Curious, I looked up this artist and studied his theory of synesthesia (sensing stimulus in unorthodox manners; Kandinsky's catch-prhase was "Can you hear the colors? Can you see the sounds?") and lo and behold, was gifted a beautiful scientific explanation as to why human beings enjoy music and why it is the purest form of art (we are made up of atoms which are in a constant state of vibrating pulsation; music itself is transmitted through vibrating pulsation, therefore the enjoyment we receive is as much physical as it is mental), as well as a beautiful message after rebooting the mainframe causing her to feel free and uplifted, "She remains trapped within the system" (it is a statement about the human condition: living our lives without extra-vital stimulation we develop feelings of oppression under the weight of the monotonous and mundane; through stimuli such as the arts (synesthetic art in particular), love, and as many will jump to point out after playing Rez - intoxicants - we convince ourselves that we are attaining a higher order of being, although we still exist within the same mundane reality. ALL OF THIS IN A FUCKING RAIL-SHOOTER! After completing the game, then researching and pondering for another hour, I threw up my mouse and keyboard, then walked over to my Sega Dreamcast and threw up its controller in relief and exclaimed, "There it is! I beat it! My favorite game of all time!"

[weasels]

Final Fantasy VII - IT TAUGHT ME HOW TO READ.

THATS IT! THAT WILL BE THE WAY I TEACH MY KID (if i have one) to read. i can see it now. "can you say cloud", "red 13, that's a color and a number!" can you say one winged angle?..that right sephiroth!"

[Beak]

Golden Sun
Ogre Battle 64
Diddy Kong Racing
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Pokemon Red
Mario 64
Soul Calibur (DC)

All of these games blew my mind. I really look back on them fondly and I often don't feel anywhere near the excitement playing games these days; it seems like many games nowadays don't have that same charm, but I'm sure part of it is, now that I'm older, I'm just not impressed as easily.

[trdbglr]

wHOa!
Almost peed there. I don't think anyone has mentioned Goldeneye, but then again, someone must have right. Alright, we'll say that even if someone didn't, someone did, but I'll act as if someone didn't.

OK, it was too long ago, but that was the first fps experience that I got totally into. It must all be subconscious now, but Goldeneye 64 was a f*****g (can we swear more on this forum?) revelation, and was not topped until Halo came along in 2001. Just, I mean... this is where I learned what the fps was all about.

[Beak]

wHOa!
Almost peed there. I don't think anyone has mentioned Goldeneye, but then again, someone must have right. Alright, we'll say that even if someone didn't, someone did, but I'll act as if someone didn't.

OK, it was too long ago, but that was the first fps experience that I got totally into. It must all be subconscious now, but Goldeneye 64 was a f*****g (can we swear more on this forum?) revelation, and was not topped until Halo came along in 2001. Just, I mean... this is where I learned what the fps was all about.

Very true. I would have included it in my list but it slipped my mind!

[Weekend_Warrior]

"Black" on the PS2 and Xbox definitely left a lasting impression on me.

I had played first-person shooting games like Goldeneye 007, Half-Life, and Medal of Honor: Frontlines before I discovered Black. But I had never seen a fps quite like this before, one that looked and sounded so incredibly realistic. I became totally consumed with the game until I beat it. My interest in first-person shooters only grew from there. I then had to go out and buy a 360 so I could play all the new, ultra-realistic fps games on there, because you know.. there's an awful lot of them! Also, I did some research and went back to find some of the older games that I missed out on like Project: Snowblind and Cold Winter on the PS2. Good stuff