What Games Have Actually Affected You? 1557
FortKnox asks: "What games have affected you simply by playing them? What games immersed you so well into its environment that you actually felt different after playing it? For me, I'd have to go with System Shock 2. Basically the predecessor to Deus Ex, it was the only game that made me so afraid that the minute I heard a matron mother, I turned the other way and ran. What game scared you to death, or made you think after playing it?"
Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, now I look back and am embarassed at our reaction, but it did freak us out at the time. Not so sure it affected me forever or anything.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone happen to know if there's a disk image of this floating around on the Internet somewhere? Would love to check it out.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Balance of Power (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to play chess against a professor of mine every afternoon. One day I asked him to try BoP on the Mac SE in his office just to try something new. Once he realized that by escalating every time he could force me into either backing down and losing face in the game (thus lowering my score if memory seves me correctly) or ending the game via a nuclear war, it kind of lost it's fun factor.
That being said, there was something deeply satisfying about telling your opponent, "You'll have my response via the North Pole!"
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
I did better in Quake I, though...
Half Life (Score:5, Funny)
Afterwards I hard a hard time getting to sleep since there was a storm outside and it sounded like the headcrabs were coming to get me.
Re:Half Life (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Half Life (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Half Life (Score:5, Funny)
I'm stalking through dark corridors (2 am, of course), when there's this haunting "chanting" coming from everywhere in the game. I couldn't make out what it was saying, or where it was coming from. FREAKED the crap out of me. The alien game had suddenly gone all haunted and spooky... Scared me to death... All I heard were disembodied children giggling and singing.
Turns out what had happened was that my son had left his Reader Rabbit Toddler CD in the drive, and when HL went to fetch music, it pulled the audio tracks off of there. The in game music volume was low enough that I couldn't make out the words... Just the rhythm
Quake did that as well (Score:4, Funny)
Zork (Score:4, Funny)
Zork taught me never to wander about in the dark, period. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The Final Fantasy series... (Score:5, Insightful)
On an unrelated note... AAARGH!! MY EYES!! MY FRIGGIN EYES!!!!!! (if you can't tell I'm really not a fan of this colour scheme)
Re:The Final Fantasy series... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Final Fantasy series... (Score:5, Funny)
Ignoring the first, are we? Hell, the story to the original Dragon Quest/Warrior was more coherent than the three or four paradoxes that one caused...
- If I killed Garland in the beginning of the game, who got sent back in time?
- If I killed the Four Fiends, who sends Garland back in time?
- If I go back in time and kill Garland then, who spawns the Four Fiends?
- If I killed the Four Fiends in the past on my way to killing Garland for the second (first?) time, how come they manage to make it to the present unscathed?
Square: Um... uh... Hey, look! There's a hidden tile game in it!Duke3D (Score:5, Interesting)
As for a game that affected me emotionally, I'd have to say Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the US). The storyline was so deep that, even with the terrible translation that Square inflicted on it, the pain of the characters showed through.
Re:Duke3D (Score:3, Funny)
Scared the shit out of me.
Wolfenstein: "GUTEN TAG" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wolfenstein: "GUTEN TAG" (Score:3, Interesting)
GTA3, for one... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't do it, of course, but one can dream... and I know I'm not alone, because I've seen other posts on here from people similarly afflicted.
Re:GTA3, for one... (Score:4, Interesting)
But what really made me back off was an incident involving a cop car. I was returning a video to the store, and the cop car is outside, running to keep it warm in the January cold. First bad thought: Does the cop have two sets of keys? Second bad thought: If he has only one set, the door is unlocked, and he can't see the car from his angle inside. Third bad thought: Hit Triangle button in real life.
I could deal with the red light running instinct, the pedestrian hitting fantasies, but cop-car jacking was a bit much to handle. I play Vice City in small bursts now, but no marathon sessions.
Re:GTA3, for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. Back in the day, I spent about 8 hours playing multiplayer air combat with acm [websimulations.com] on an SGI Onyx system (a predecessor of the Onyx 3000 [sgi.com]), with its incredibly-realistic-for-the-time 3D rendering and physics.
On the drive home, I found myself needing to cross 4 lanes of traffic to make a light. Without thinking, I spotted a small opening, stepped on the gas, and floored it, squeezing through quite nicely. Then I realized what I had done.
Resolved: remember that I don't have bonus lives.
Re:GTA3, for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nail those Pedestrians! (Score:4, Funny)
M.U.L.E. (Score:3, Funny)
Doom (Score:5, Interesting)
And there was nothing worse than turning a corner and confronting a demon unexpectedly
Re:Doom (Score:3, Interesting)
Civilisation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Civilisation (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at actual history, though, you can use this game mechanic to explain why certain real-world civilizations were also technologically primitive without resorting to un-PC speculation about inherent cultural/intellectual inferiority. For example, both New World Indians (no wheel, no metallurgy) and sub-Saharan Africans (no writing) were technologically backwards b/c they were isolated from the technology swapping that was going on between the various Eurasian civilizations.
Warcraft II (Score:5, Funny)
Unreal Tournament.. (Score:3, Interesting)
As it was the game stopped working due to a Direct X foobar a week before my finals and I didn't have the inclination to reinstall. So, thank you Gates/Balmer for my 81%!
OTOH as far as great games goes, I think Dungeon Keeper wins every time. I played that one for about 60 hours straight until I fell asleep at my desk. Ahh, what great days.
The game that affected me the most ... (Score:5, Interesting)
As of late, Xbox Halo (Score:3, Interesting)
Metal Gear Solid (Score:3)
Tetris' lingering side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tetris' lingering side effects (Score:5, Funny)
For a few weeks i was stuck in a rather remote location with a Compaq II as company.
It had this 'Tetris' game on it and I started playing it but found it rather impossible, the 'highest scores' showed several hundreds of points by some unknown predecessor and I could not even reach 100...
I figured they had 'edited' the list.
After about 10 days of playing I scored in the 10's of thousands and went loopy, even ordinary daily problems seemed like a bunch of falling blocks that only needed organising before hitting the floor.
Scary, I laid off of the game for more than a year before I tried again.
But I had several calls of collegues if it was me that had got to these high Tetris scores on that field computer...
Re:Tetris' lingering side effects (Score:5, Funny)
I remember having recurring nightmares in which i was playing an impossible level, every piece was falling fast and when at last i was downing the pile. Suddenly a bright blue sphere apeared falling.. slow, very slow. And then I started to think desperately.. where the f*ck can i put the sphere ! where ! and every time i woke up sweating with my heart sounding as a train..
After some nights like this i quit playing tetris, i loved it, but it was too dangerous.. i was't playing it, it was the game who was playing with my mind.
True Story
Re:Tetris' lingering side effects (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tetris' lingering side effects (Score:5, Informative)
As the plane passed by the skyline of Manhattan, I looked out the window at the buildings, and visualized how many blocks I could 'drop in' to make a solid line across the top.
Tetris: the game that programs you (Score:5, Funny)
Being the middle of summer, half of the adjusters were on vacation, and the rest of them were taking as many personal days as they could manage. There was nothing to do except answer the phone when it rang twice a day...
This went on for about three weeks, until one afternoon I had to put a particularly intense game on hold to go answer the call of nature. I ambled into the bathroom, sat down in one of the stalls and was all set to do my business, until I made a fatal mistake: I looked down...at the floor made out of thousands and thousands of 1.5" white square tiles.
I swear to god the entire room tilted sideways, and if I hadn't been sitting down, I would have fallen. I could feel the parts of my brain that had been doing nothing but tetris pattern recognition for the previous four hours having a near-meltdown as they looked at this solid mass of blocks and tried to map tetris shapes onto each of them. For about 15 seconds, it was like watching a thousand games of tetris played at once, transparently overlaid on each other. I imagine that the sensation was a little bit like what epileptics feel: a firestorm of neurons triggering all at once.
As drug experiences go, it had a lot to recommend it, but I have never really wanted to play Tetris since. Just say no.
Re:Tetris: the game that programs you (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, you sure know how to hold it in!
Myst (Score:5, Funny)
I always got scared playing that... it was too quiet... I was always expecting someone to come out from around a corner shooting... :o
The worst part was that my brothers would always come in and scare the shit out of me.
But I guess I'm just a pussy... :\
Re:Myst (Score:3, Funny)
Christ, thanks for leaving me with nothing to reply. Trolls need to feel needed too
This is pretty sad but... (Score:5, Funny)
Sim City made me hallucinate (Score:5, Funny)
Thief (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Thief (Score:4, Interesting)
It was also nice in that there was almost always more than one way to surmount any obstacle or best any foe you came across -- stealth, speed, distraction, evasion, brute force, etc. And brute force was usually the worst option to choose.
All in all, Thief and Thief 2 have to be my favorite single player games. There are a couple of examples of bad level design in them, but then there are plenty of good levels that more than make up for the bad ones. Worth buying if you've never played them before, especially since they're more than old enough to be in the bargain bin.
I think I occasionally spent way too much staying up at night playing the game, and becoming sleep deprived. The next day I would have an embarrassing, almost unconscious urge to walk close to walls and seek out shadows, :)
Isn't Thief 3 supposed to be coming out sometime, or has that been cancelled? I wonder if it will be any good. I wonder if any of the same people that created Thief are working on it, given that Looking Glass went under long ago.
Games don't affect people (Score:3, Funny)
for me (Score:4, Insightful)
Another notable example would be Starcraft, which affected me greatly as I lost my tan and my social life because I spent so many years playing it online!
Scorched Earth (Score:4, Interesting)
It's deceptively easy, only angle and power adjustments, but the weapon choices add an intense degree of strategy, and the simpleness of the game makes it available to everyone.
Easily one of my biggest time hogs ever
Jedi Outcast (Score:4, Funny)
Minesweeper (Score:5, Funny)
The countdown... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) DOOM. Nightmares after playing it for 11 hour straight, the day the shareware images were first released. The dark images, the flickering lights in the station, the SOUNDS!
2) DOOM II. Driving out of town for a holiday in the mountains, I saw a sign advertising a "Sale today on chainsaws!" Instantly I thought, "Damn, I've been looking for a chainsaw for days. Should I..." and then realised that I'd been looking for a chainsaw in the game.
3) System Shock. The updated original, on CD, with voices. Shodan was NEVER so scary! Oh man, the nights I lay awake, wired on adrenaline and fear. That changed my life, because it nearly cost me my job.
4) Grim Fandango. Never have I been so wrapped up in the characters in a game. Never. Ever. I just about cried in at least three different spots.
Re:The countdown... (Score:5, Interesting)
When we finished the game, she was depressed and she said, "Im am sad that its over, I feel like I've lost someone."
That my friend is a good game :)
Nethack (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know if I'm the best example, though. I've spent tortured nights dreaming of physics problems, one or two particularly bad nights dreaming of C++, and even come up with a Pascal algorithm or two in my sleep.
Of course, I have also come upon the secret of life once or twice in my sleep, but can never seem to remember it when I wake up...
Deus Ex, by far... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully the Invisible War will be out soon. I will buy it as soon as it does
And if that game doesn't run on WineX like Deus Ex does, I will even go so far as to install Windows on my machine. Yes, that is how much this means to me...
X-Wing (Score:3, Insightful)
Games nowadays are vastly superior from a technical standpoint, but none of them approach the inspiration behind this game. Though I have to say, Jedi Outcast is a close second. An incredibly cool game. I've also wanted a light saber since I was a kid, and JO is a good substitute.
Definately the original Super Mario Bros. (Score:5, Funny)
I think I'll stay away from those fire flowers, I can't imagine what those would do to me.
Star Control 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
GRAND THEFT AUTO (Score:5, Funny)
Morrowind (Score:4, Insightful)
Pong (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Clive Barker's Undying... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most Immersive, life changing Game I've ever playe (Score:3, Interesting)
"Mod Parent Up" or "I Concur" (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple puzzle game (Score:3, Interesting)
Leisure Suit Larry (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks Al!
Believe it or not, Space Invaders (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer games can affect people on many different levels. There's the meta-effect, where a person sees something occur in a computer programmer and thinks "What the blazes?" and is inspired to work out how it works, how it can be replicated, how the technique can be used in other applications. There's the deliberate effect, where a game can promote a point of view or a a view of the world that makes someone's mind click and say "I understand that". The great strategy games, with Sid Meyer standing proudly in the center, have influenced me there, but other, more ordinary games, can often influence in much the same way. Games can also mentally challenge - Lemmings taught us to solve puzzles in real time, adventures did similarly, and the games that have followed Doom and forerunners like Hired Guns have provided us with a new level of real time problem solving.
The mind is exercised by those flashes of light on screen. Like a lightbulb appearing over one's head, computer games can illuminate the dark crevises of the mind, putting them to work for all of us. Unfortunately, not everyone sees the world that way. Efforts are often made to discredit computer gamery as a mind device. Attacks from procensorship groups are common, and while the games industry is not yet as heavily regulated (voluntarily or otherwise) as, say, the movie industry, it's merely a matter of time. Already computer games are typically more regulated than the music industry, and without an RIAA like organization to defend computer game manufacturers, that trend is likely to get worse. Indeed, whereas the RIAA, and Hilary Rosen, has done an astronishingly successful job of countering lobbying to censor music through a combination of token solutions ("Parental Advisory" labels and such) and aggressive pro-speech counter lobbying, the ASPA and ESPA and other similar groups have gone far beyond even the MPAA on self-labelling and have done little to promote the notion that games, like music, films, and literature, are a form of speech; indeed that you cannot "censor" without there being speech to censor.
The games industry lacks an affective defender, and without one, attacks on "violence" and sex in computer games will continue until a legislative disnification of games becomes inevitable. The choice between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will become a fight where only the names are different.
This quagmire of games becoming censored in the absense of an affective lobbying organization which becomes more unlikely to be effective as games become more and more censored will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them that computer games are a form of speech, that they impart ideas and ways of thinking, and that they inspire people to do things they'd otherwise never do. Tell them that you appreciate the work of groups like the ASPA and ESPA to combat attempts at censorship by the imposition of voluntary ratings but that if groups like these continue to fail to focus on the speech aspects inherent in computer games, and as such games merely become more and more neutered, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Tell them that you believe the world would be a better place with more groups following the lead of successful free speech lobbyests like the RIAA. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how censorship everywhere, in computer games a
The original DOOM, for another... (Score:5, Funny)
That noise immediately triggered said DOOM character's appearance in a dream, and about 10 seconds later I bolted upright, wide awake and feeling around for my gun, any gun-- what woke me up was the feeling panic that I was taking damage from that guy, and I couldn't see where he was to shoot him. Then I realized it was a dream. THEN I realized I still heard the sound, even though I was awake. Finally, I noticed the swinging picture frame, laughed sheepishly and pulled it off the wall before going back to sleep.
The Ultima Series (Score:5, Insightful)
From it's loose concept of "virtues" to it's world simulation, most of the Ultimas have been worlds apart from the fictions most games take place in.
Ultima IV was an amazing concept for it's time, and remains revolutionary as far as a game plot goes. There is no big "Foozle" to kill, you just have the archtypical midieval land to fight through... but the goal is to make a respectable character out of yourself. Sure, you could cheat the system like anything else (See Doug the Eagles page for many examples in the Ultima series [it-he.org]), but it actually offered a somewhat meaningful system of judgements about your actions in the game. Sure, you could steal and cheat others in deals, but you would not be walking the path to Avatarhood... it was a pretty large impact in an age when games were so private an experience on home computers.
The later games left a VERY minor aspect of such karma in the game, but the effect lingered, as gamers continued to think of themselves as the Avatar. In a sense, the lack of judgement improved later games. Having concepts like Humility being important, not for religious reasons, but because you are role-playing a character who went to such pains to represend himself one way... 'tis a very unique thing.
Of course, beyond Virtues, the Ultime series is as historic as a game series can get. Ultima Underworld was pretty much the first fully-fleshed out first person simulation game out there - from the deep interaction of objects in the world, to many factions of creatures in the Underworld... when it all came into existence BEFORE Wolfenstein 3d... it was truly an awesome thing to behold. And still to this day, the mixture of plot and characters (after you get past the kidnapped-princess thing) makes the game worth re-playing just for the entertainment of the writing.
And of course, on the same lines, Ultima 5 through 7 revolutionized games in ways that have yet to be matched even in other RPGs. The deeply pervasive NPC schedules, the complex mixture of dialogues and plots, the wide variety of dynamic object interactions, and of course the humor and the unique technicalities that come from exploring the absolutely huge acts of creation that went into these games... it's truly amazing.
Ryan Fenton
Negative effects... (Score:5, Insightful)
Scared, confused, upset. Only one that had a positive effect.
Maybe the question should have been phrased to specifically include positive affects.
Granted, most games are designed to appeal to the basest human instincts.
Humans are Easily Scared but Hard to Please.(tm)
Who can design the game that makes people say "Wow, after playing I wanted to go out and make the world a better place!"
Let the sarcasm begin.
Grim Fandango (Score:5, Interesting)
The Tex Murphy games (Under a Killing Moon, etc.) were in the same category, although not quite so honest as GF.
Outlaws and Descent (Score:4, Insightful)
Outlaws I got vertigo on one of the levels. It is strange that none of the newer games affect me quite like the old 2.5d games did.
Tie Fighter Wars... (Score:4, Funny)
sierra text-based games (Score:3, Interesting)
FF7 (Score:5, Interesting)
At first glance, I thought that the entire game would revolve around cloud taggin along with avelanche and blowing up the reactors.... eventually taking down the evil shinra. This made it seem like any other boring game that i've played without a real plot. But... the dynamics that ensued in the story line as i played along captivated me for the 40+ hours it took me to finish the game (and the multiple times I've played it all the way through as well) held me through the battles to find and against Sepiroth, Jenova, and all the other bosses throughout the game untill the final encounter... and I only wanted more...
Although some people dislike it, others love it, FF7 opened my eyes into a whole new line of story telling and interactive gaming. From it's subtle love story, dynamic plot twists, countless side games, hidden pasts of every character... I could pick it up right now and be fully entertained and satisfied from the first cinematic sequence to the very end and back again.
Re:FF7 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FF7 (Score:4, Insightful)
So, back to the engine, since I scarcely think I need to mention the plot. Anyone who's played it all the way through can attest to its quality. Think of all the neat little touches in the game, the chocobos (and chocobo racing), the various hidden characters, the chase scenes (motorcycle and truck)... The game is amazing! How many games have that much going on in them now?
FFVII's plot was fantastic, but older final fantasy games had great plot, they were just really damned annoying to play. You suffered through the use of this complicated interface and pathetically featureless and ugly engine (Even final fantasy games on SNES look like crap compared to the legend of zelda, which of course is a completely different kind of game) in order to experience the fantastic plot. FFVII really has the experience as well as the plot.
Deus Ex - freakishly predictive (Score:4, Interesting)
Deus Ex was an unbelievably good game. And it affected me a lot, some in good ways, some in bad. Suprisingly enough, it helped exercise my problem solving skills a lot. I also now unconsciously look for ventilation ducts everywhere I go.
It also raises some interesting questions about how much power a government should have. It includes a government that has imposed strict military control after a terrorist organization called the NSF played out a series of terrorist attacks. I don't want to spoil it by saying what's revealed past the first mission, but regardless, it scarily predicted a lot of the government's response to the terrorist attacks on New York.
The only people who I've met that haven't liked Deus Ex either haven't played past the first mission (which is IMHO the worst in the entire game) or haven't found a playing style that suits them yet (I personally became a Trinity/stealth-ninja/sniper).
Planescape: Torment (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the fundamental question behind Planescape: Torment, and the clue that most ties the game together. And the game doesn't let you take the easy answers (love, hate, death). The REAL answer is chilling and unexpected and will leave you thinking for days.
The game's narrative is mindbending in a number of ways. To begin with, you play an immortal amnesiac who is following the trail of breadcrumbs he left for himself in case he should die and lose his memory, again. You meet people who know you and know things about you (which neither the player or the character know or remember), you live in a place where belief affects reality and everyone keeps secrets, some of which are revealed in the most inopportune moments....
There's one riddle/story that has stuck in my head from the game. Paraphrasing:
"You come to your senses, sitting on a sidewalk under a bright noon sun. You can't remember how you got here or what you should be doing. Looking around, everything seems as it should.... but you have a nagging feeling that it shouldn't be that way. Then you see me, smiling, holding out a hand.
Then I say, That was your second wish."
Psyche people read: Destruction Derby (Score:5, Funny)
The announcer yells,"Threeeeee SIXTEEEEEE!"
Its awesome... So I'm driving home after 6 hours, and see someone pulling out of his driveway.
Now since the timing in the game is like under a second which way you need to aim, you don't really have much time to think about your actions.
I almost deliberately turned into the back of this person coming out of their driveway because I was in an almost hypnotic state, thinking of the game.
So to get people suggestive:
#1: Use lots of loud and cool noises in your game to reward people for doing cool things.
#2: Have the cool thing be something very similar and realistic to real life.
#3: Leave the window for the action to be under a second, so conscious thought can not control a reflex action.
Then guaranteed at least 1 or 2 people out there would do the shit in real life.
Zero Wing... (Score:3, Funny)
Squaresoft's Chronotrigger and FF3 (Score:4, Interesting)
How can you forget Zelda: Ocarina of Time? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a theory. When motion pictures first came out, they were dismissed as gimicky and for entertainment only. Only years later did they become recognized as a legitimate ART form.
I truly believe that this will one day happen to videogames, like movies. Most will still be just entertainment (which, like many movies, is perfectly fine), but some, like Zelda, with it's mixture of gorgeous visuals, enchanting music, wonderful storyline, fantastic gameplay and engulfing characters will one day get the recognition it deserves as a work of Art.
civiii (Score:5, Interesting)
completely immersive obsessive compulsive gameplay.
the "just one more round" effect is frightening in its power.
there is nothing quite like staying up like 36 hours straight, completely forgetting your real life, micromanaging a little empire.
then you try to sleep, and you find yourself dreaming in geography and little combat units.
Super Mario 64 (Score:5, Interesting)
But when I saw Super Mario 3 on NES, I thought "Wow! What a great improvement on the original SMB!"
When I saw SMB4 (Super Mario World on SNES) I thought "Wow! This is like Mario 3... supercharged!"
But the first time I saw Super Mario 64, it simpl BLEW me away. Total 3-d environment. it was not "the next step" in the mario games. it was an entirely new experience.
SM64 is a game that both singlehandidly defined the 3-d platform genre AND got it perfect the first time around!
It know it's old school, but.... (Score:4, Funny)
The short list... (Score:5, Interesting)
Quake -- I thought it was just another 3rd person shooter, albeit with better graphics. Then the Fiend leaped at me for the first time, and I yelped and nearly threw my mouse across the room. I got killed -- but it was worth it for the adrenaline rush.
Thief -- During the haunted monastery episode, while I was watching an in-game "cut scene," one of the undead Hammers snuck up behind me. Just by coincidence I happened to turn around just in time to see a six-foot skeleton swinging his weapon at my head. I nearly had a heart attack and spent the rest of the game deathly afraid of those things. When the sequel came out, and I found myself trapped in a basement with one of those things, I said "forget it," and just stopped playing.
System Shock (the original) -- still one of the most cinematic games in history, IMHO. Best scene in any game ever: I finally set the station to self-destruct, and fought my way to the escape pod... then, just as the countdown is about to reach 0 to launch and I am breathing easy... the countdown stops and Shodan appears on the screen. "You're not leaving!" Oh, hell. I didn't know whether to laugh or scream -- as I recall, I did both.
Half-Life - though the game is excellent throughout, I think it has the best opening in video game history. Walking through the Black Mesa installation, causing the "resonance cascade scenario," then running back through the same installation, except this time it's trashed and all the scientists and security guards you were talking to are dead... fantastic. That, and the huge monster running after you through the parking garage, tipping over SUVs as it charges... breathtaking. There are so many great moments in that game. I can't wait for the sequel.
Alien DOOM Full Conversion -- Much older, and many years before the AvP video game, but so scary I could never stand to play it for long. Especially when you had to go into the tunnels full of facehuggers. Screw that.
Omikron - Not a perfect game, but very underrated IMHO. You enter a parallel world where you possess the bodies of other people and are stalked by invisible demons that only you can see. A great adventure game with a great plot; not without its flaws, but original enough to be very compelling. It was all I could think about for days after playing it.
I'm sure there are more, but these are the games that come to mind immediately...
Marathon. (Score:5, Insightful)
MUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh man.. I wish I'd never tried. I managed to get my degree, but I've also seen multiple friends drop out because of simple text based MUDs.
Oh yeah, and Nurse Edna in Maniac Mansion literally made me yell out loud in panic the very first time I encountered her in the kitchen. What a great game
Battlezone (Score:4, Interesting)
Adventure / Colossal Cave (Score:5, Interesting)
The first time that I (unexpectedly) entered the " twisty little maze with passages all alike", it was like getting sucker punched. I had to get up and walk around to collect my thoughts before continuing. Fortunately, moving the opposite direction let me get back out before I had a chance to get lost.
I also still remember the first time I found the volcano view. It was visually (and yes, I know it's a TEXT adventure!) stunning, more so than anything I've seen in the years since. Years before Infocom, it proved that your imagination is better than any graphics hardware.
And yes, like so many others have posted, I did have dreams about the game.
Haven't seen this one: (Score:4, Informative)
Coupled with the music and overal atmosphere...damn near Art.
Others I haven't seen: Leasure Suit Larry 8P, Conan (first platformer I'd ever played (apple ][), with others like Montezuma, elevator action and other classics).
And of course there's a whole host of other games which showed off, wowed and changed my thinking about what computers can, could or would do with different aspects of their gameplay.
Final Fantasy, Secret & Legend of Mana (Score:4, Interesting)
Final Fantasy affected me way back, during high school. The world around me was so depressing, and the people in it were (justifiably) very cynical. The Final Fantasy series, however, gave me hope and values that I needed to get through high school, and introduced me to the complexities of the world. It also helped introduce me to metaphysical notions of Love and Spirit.
Secret of Mana has changed me in ways that I don't understand, and thus can't articulate.
Non-Square games include Starflight, and Robot Oddysey.
Due to Robot Oddysey, I got to snooze through a month of CS classes and breeze through homework, having learned binary logic when I was 10 years old fooling around on the computer. It wasn't that I am smart, it's just that the game is incredibly good at introducing binarly logic and circuitry.
At risk of a "flamebait/troll/redundant" mod (Score:4, Insightful)
F*ck that f*cking "game" (cheat-fest is more like it). No game has ever made me so angry. Deleting it from my drive was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
And yah, not everyone cheats - but nobody follows the "spirit" of the game (team-based? HAH!) What a joke.
For me it was Ultima Online (Score:4, Interesting)
I spent three years of my life in a state of amazing addiction to that game. For two of those three years, I was playing UO 12+ hours a day. Weekdays, I'd wake up at 10AM, go to class, come home at 2PM and spend an hour or two on homework. Then I'd login to UO, and I wouldn't stop playing until the servers went down at 5AM. If something happened to my main server before it was supposed to go down, I'd usually go to bed early. I was literally scheduling my sleep every day around Ultima Online.
Weekends I occasionally made my "off days" from the game, where I actually had some semblance of a social life, because on weekends there were more people logged in (adding to the lag/crowding problem). I thought of weekends that way, too - as "off days" - like one might think of having a day off from work. The game itself was a lot of work, though I enjoyed every bit of it. And, towards the end, it paid like work too. I was selling various in-game items on eBay here and there. Not enough for a living, but at the time, I had enough income and savings that I could afford to take 2 classes then sit around playing an MMORPG all day long.
If I still had the comfortable income (back then I was running some websites which were doing wonderfully until the economy went into the shitter) I'd probably still be playing 12+ hours a day. As it turns out, I sold my UO accounts almost a year ago. I created another one when the latest expansion, Age of Shadows, was released... But I haven't played in a month or more due to lack of time. I still pay to keep the account active, though; once every now and then I'm able to login for an hour and have a bit of fun.
When it comes to games affecting me, UO was it. Not just affected but totally consumed - it doesn't get any [better|worse] than that.
I miss the old days. Gaming all day was cool, working all day sucks!
Re:System Shock 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
This one time, I was going up a ramp and turned a corner, and this huge rumbler (a big muscle-bound beast, kind of like the big pink creatures in DOOM) was right there charging at me. I yelled out loud "Shit!!" and I turned the character and sprinted back down that ramp, frantically trying to load up anti-personnel bullets. If I had had a lesser keyboard, it would probably have been killed because I pressed that run key so hard. It was only after the rumbler killed me that I realised that my heart was pounding at 120+ bpm and the desk was covered with sweat from my arms.
Whenver I install that game and see the intro video for the first time again, I always get this sinking feeling in my stomach ... "Oh shit ... why the hell did I install this again?!?"
Yes, SS2 actually delivers on the promise of being immersive. Too bad Looking Glass Studios went out of business due to a lack of short term cash. Probably because Eidos couldn't front them the short term cash because they sent millions to John Romero & Ion Storm, developers of Daikatana.
Avatarhood as Religion (Score:4, Informative)
I know people who became so enthralled with the completeness of Ultima IV's philosophy that it became a religion of sorts for them. People I know actually wore ankh's around their necks...NOT to signfiy a taste for Egyptian mythology (where the ankh originates), but rather because it was adopted as the spiritual symbol of the Ultima series....Similarly, the notion of an "avatar" from hinduism was badly bastardized to represent a morally enlightened being in the game's world.
Anyway...putting aside the mixed metaphor world of English medievalism/Hinduism/Egyptology/Pseudo-Latin spells aside, the systematicity of Ultima IV's philosophy hung together so well that's it was profound. Seriously, for an adolescent, it was remarkably profound. Eight virtues, each symbolized by a color, were derived from a mixture of the three overarching "Principles:" Truth, Love, and Courage (a la three primary [pigment] colors, red yellow and blue). Each virute exemplified by a character class, each character class with its own "home" city...with a natural, face valid correspondence of the character classes with their virtues (Mages valuing truth and honesty, the scientists of the game....Fighters valuing valor....The artsy Bard valuing compassion..etc.). And with one symbol that captured the whole interconnection.
And your job in the game was basically to discover this system. Though you start out a particular character class (not chosen on your whims, but rather based on a psychological battery of sorts of moral dillemas..more fun than it sounds), your quest was to become a master of all virtues...and enlightened avatar..while, you know, fulfilling the plot points of the game as well.
The face validity of this system just made SENSE even in "real life", at a time when most kids (especially geeks) value imposing an order and meaning on the organization of the world...Here was a mythos that was at once undogmatic and common sensical yet tantalizingly mystical...It set out a remarkably self-consistent framework for how the moral world was organized, and how to be an upstanding person in it.
The way the game climax brought all these concepts together...oh yeah it affected me when I was 13, believe me.
I never got so into it that I started carrying an ankh, but the game did develop a trekkie-like cult following. It was a world you could feel good about immersing yourself in. But it definitely had its place and time. There was a "critical period" of both target audience (disenfranchised adolescents) and technological innocence (when it was still OK that imagination had to fill out some of the graphical details). Now games and gamers are far too cynical for a game like Ultima IV. If you weren't that age at that time playing U4, you missed out on an incredible gaming experience.