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)
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.
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.
THPS (Score:2, Funny)
M.U.L.E. (Score:3, Funny)
D2 (Score:2, Funny)
Warcraft II (Score:5, Funny)
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... :\
This is pretty sad but... (Score:5, Funny)
Games don't affect people (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Halo (Score:2, Funny)
Jedi Outcast (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nail those Pedestrians! (Score:4, Funny)
Minesweeper (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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.
GRAND THEFT AUTO (Score:5, Funny)
Pong (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Duke3D (Score:3, Funny)
Scared the shit out of me.
Wolfenstein: "GUTEN TAG" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's actually a pretty good question (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Half Life (Score:5, Funny)
Leisure Suit Larry (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks Al!
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.
Tie Fighter Wars... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Myst (Score:3, Funny)
Christ, thanks for leaving me with nothing to reply. Trolls need to feel needed too
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Funny)
I'd argue that some of the attraction in the original Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn was also because of the movies between missions, where you'd be briefed directly by a game character and proceeded to make a tactical decision. They lost the magic already partially in Red Alert as there were more characters interacting together and it just didn't feel as involved for the player and lost it completely in later games such as Tiberian Sun where the movies mostly consisted of bad acting where the player wasn't involved in any way.
Are there more of these? I've played my share of games and I'm sure there are ones that I just can't remember right now.
First person shooters such as Unreal have been able to awe me by their detailed visuals and some games present an awesome storyline but very few manage to get the player so involved in the game world. Ironically, role-playing games that would seem the most obvious ways to attempt this are often just settle for presenting a story and getting the player interested in some stats-crunching.
HALO and Eternal Darkness (Score:2, Funny)
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)
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: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:Hmm (Score:2, Funny)
But still, those sites made me fail my exams >:(
It know it's old school, but.... (Score:4, Funny)
Myth II (Score:2, Funny)
Many times it would have made everything better when you accidentally fry some CPU/expensive component if only the great deep voice from the sky stated loud and clear: "Casualty."
And when you spill your entire cup of coffee into your computer, you'd get a high-quality "Casualties!" to put a smile on your face. Genius, I say.
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:The original DOOM, for another... (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, yes, computer related nightmares...
I had a nightmare about getting r00t3d tonight. I'm not kidding. Seriously. Is there anything that screams "go outside!" more than that?
At least you had the dignity of being scared by a big ugly monster that wanted to kill you. I mean, that's manly.
I sure as hell don't know what being scared by script kiddies is... :-P
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (Score:2, Funny)
It's the first Hawk game I played of the series, and I still fire it up from time-to-time.
It affected me to the point where, walking down the street, I'd notice a rail or a bench or what-have-you, and think "I could darkslide that, no problem!"
Even worse, I'd be watching one of those extreme sports shows, and anytime I'd see someone do some crazy trick in the halfpipe, I'd be, like, "Whatever! I can do that. That dude sucks."
Of course, after a minute, I'd remember: Oh yeah, that guy's doing it for real...
=)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
I did better in Quake I, though...
Re:Zero Wing... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Balance of Power (Score:3, Funny)
Zork, without a doubt (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Civilisation (Score:3, Funny)
I believe the question was "Descibe a cration theory".
I wrote
"In the begining, the earth was without form, and void
but the sun shone upon the sleeping Earth
and deep inside the brittle crust
massive forces waited to be unleashed...."
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Boonga Boonga (Score:2, Funny)
I blew chunks after this! (Score:2, Funny)
It made me so damn dizzy i puked in the washroom and could walk straight back to my comp to finish the first level.
Netrek (Score:2, Funny)
Ships coming the other direction, must latch onto them and blow up!
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...
Re:Tetris' lingering side effects (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Half Life (Score:5, Funny)
Barney Doom (Score:2, Funny)
The sounds of barney throughout the levels!
Scary shit
Jones in the Fast Lane... (Score:1, Funny)
I used to play it when I was little, and when "Wiley Willy" used to pop-out of nowhere and steal all your money - I'd get so freaked out I'd cry.
Hardcore baby.
Re:Tetris: the game that programs you (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, you sure know how to hold it in!
Re:Warcraft II (Score:3, Funny)
72/24 = 3 days.
You claim you realized by looking at the clock, but the time of day would have been exactly the same. I know I've missed entire days that way before ;)
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
Re:Balance of Power (Score:3, Funny)
that might have been the point
Sim City made me hallucinate (Score:5, 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.
Re:Tetris' lingering side effects (Score:3, Funny)
1. Geez, some loser geek fanboy wannabe poser pretending he knows...oh, right, that's Wil Wheaton.
2. Too young? Too YOUNG? Too shy, maybe, but certainly not too young.
3. It's probably a lot easier to fill the skyline in now that the two long tetrads are gone =(
Re:Wolfenstein: Scarier than Doom (Score:2, Funny)
Quake did that as well (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Zork (Score:2, Funny)
Define 'affect'.... (Score:2, Funny)
Games like Civ and SimCity definitely affected my worldview though.