For me it was definitely DOOM 2! Miles ahead of anything else I had played before.
Morrowind, by far. I still remember the sense of freedom and exploration I got
Also Morrowind. The systems of that game blew my young mind, and I was far too dumb to notice most of the jank.
I was too young for Morrowind and started at Oblivion, but yeah, it’s the Elder Scrolls games 100%. At the time, to me (age ~9), gaming was jumping and gunning around blocky worlds full of fake doors and imagining how cool it would be if GTA felt like an actual world instead of a blocked-out setpiece full of people whose only thoughts were to walk around, drive, or fight each other.
I started Oblivion and it was insane. I could go in nearly every house, I could have conversations with everyone, I could walk around picking up whatever objects and stealing stuff, then break out of jail when I got caught, I could get inducted into an assassination cult (even if I was really bad at lockpicking and struggled to get in the front door), etc. It was mindblowing and those sorts of features are why I prefer Bethesda titles even to these major titles everyone loves like Witcher 3.
This is 100% my experience too. My mind was blown when I saw what you could do in oblivion.
Same. One of my friend’s dad played all the old school DnD games and what not. I remember going over one day and seeing him play that, and when I asked him he was showing me a bunch of things with the open world and the characters. As soon as I was able to get it, I did, and I put in so much time into that game.
World of Warcraft.
It was my first online game after trying Habbo Hotel.
It blew my brains out. Such good times.That’s a tough question! I would have to say it’s a toss up between MechWarrior 2 and the original Half Life. I spent so many hours customizing mechs and tearing stuff up. There was something magical about the first Half-Life game though. So good and led to so many mods that I played for such a long time (CS, TFC/2, DoD).
the first half life blew my mind, so far off anything i had experience. IT WAS AN FPS WITH ACTUAL STORY!
I’m gonna go with world of warcraft. The idea of a persistent online MMO was entirely new at the time (at least for me and most people I think) and it just blew me away that it was basically just a virtual world that was going 24/7, entirely 3D too. I got into mmos a bit after that and got really into ragnarok online which is now a fond memory for me.
Everquest. Man that was revolutionary.
I was a console gamer until the late 00s so by the time I was on PC we’d already had our major mind blowing landmarks.
I guess Bioshock was one of those games of the late 00s that was gorgeous. one of the best looking games at the time and it had a story and setting that matched the visuals.
Road Rash was the first game that made me love games then it was Need for Speed II I could replay those games for hours. nowadays the only game that gave me good replayability was Hades and live-service games like Valorant.
STALKER. The A-Life AI system is something else, and the open-ended survival gameplay and atmosphere are really in a league of their own. Similarly, as a latter-day choice, INFRA. That’s a Source engine total conversion that has a similar uncanny and immersive atmosphere where you are just blown away at the total package, map design, and the thought process that went into it. Those are easily the two most immersive games I’ve played.
Chuck Yeager Air Combat…there were torque curves and stall vector charts for all the aircraft and I had no idea what those stupid lines meant…it was amazing lol!
Unreal. The graphics and the large open levels were jaw dropping when I played it as a kid.
definitely!
Deus Ex. I was 14, didn’t really play or like first person shooters and only played it because it was in the pile of old games someone essentially dropped off on me. But I understood rather quickly that this game was something special, especially with the player’s choices actually making a difference. I remember a moment when I was playing around with cheats and at one point spawned a Paul Denton next to his dead body in the lab under UNATCO just to be funny and when he started talking to me as if he hadn’t died, a quick online search revealed that I didn’t even know how deep your influence truly went.
I still don’t really like or play first person shooters, but that’s now mostly because Deus Ex has set my standards very, very high!
Î was going to mention this one. Just the flexibility of approaches it permitted was revelatory to me.
On a more dubious note, it also unlocked sides of me that I wasn’t aware of before.
Honorable mention to the first civ which was, for me, what the Risk boardgame had prophecied.
Deus Ex touched on a lot political issues. Another game from that era with a similar feeling of having to fight against the government is Nomad Soul. It’s not as good as Deus Ex, but it features David Bowie which is a plus.
Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the USA)
That game made me feel things in a way that no other game had made me feel before that. The deep emotional story telling in that game was leagues beyond anything I had played before it. I played it once a year for a while.
Porom and Palom hit me hard as a kid. FF4 was definitely a gateway into a life long enjoyment of deep RPG stories.
You spoony bard!
Thief: The Dark Project is probably the first time I spent an entire game going “I didn’t know games could be like this!”
Gonna date myself a bit, but the Original Descent and MechWarrior 2. The seemless use of a z-axis in a shooter was for some reason mind blowing, and the combination of resource balancing and evaluating pros/cons for how to approach a mission was amazing. TIMBERWOLF is the real Og.
Duke Nukem 3D.
Yeah, Wolfenstein 3d and DOOM were great but Duke 3D was some next level shit. Being able to take a leak at the urinal was so cool.
Shake it baby. Wanna dance?
