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What Games Have Actually Affected You?
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?"
The first time I encountered one of those floating brain things in Duke Nukem 3D I nearly peed myself. Those things made the creepiest noises, did massive damage, and completely freaked me out the first time I saw one (after it snuck up behind me, underwater).
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.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Doom. Definately Doom. First truly immersive 3d shooter. Those dark areas and shuffling noises scared the bejesus out of me.
And there was nothing worse than turning a corner and confronting a demon unexpectedly
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...for giving me an interest in history and geography.
-- And when Justice is gone, there is always... Force. --Laurie Anderson, "Oh Superman"
This game came very close to making me fail Fluid Dynamics A.
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.
Beep beep.
The game that affected me the most was Wolfenstein 3D. I was 7 at the time, and somehow it had appeared on my computer (I guess my dad went out, bought it, and installed it). I figured out the directory where it was stored and played it (this was back on my 386). Never has a game scared me so much. I wasn't even allowed to see PG movies, let alone Nazis and guard dogs and mutants spewing crimson gore! I was mightily afraid of the game, but at the same time, couldn't stop playing it. It taught me an interest in the Nazis and World War II that I would never have acquired otherwise. And I had nightmares for years on end ... walking through hallways armed only with a pistol ... and then I turn around and a Nazi with a machine gun is shooting at me!! Newer FPS's with more realistic graphics don't scare me as much ... for me, the one and only horror game will always be Wolfenstein 3D.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Playing Halo late at night by myself with the surround cranked up had me seeing the invisible monsters in my dreams.
Scorched Earth, and it's descendants such as Pocket Tanks. We still play it fanatically at work now. In fact, we're gonna have pocket tanks brackets set up this week for a quick tourney.
;)
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
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.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Well not a countdown. Just a list.
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.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I have to say that I am a *huge* fan of the game Deus Ex. That game includes some incredible storytelling. I can play the game over and over again, and each time I do, I find something new. The creators of that game really spent a lot of time paying attention to detail. Truly an incredible game.
:-)
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...
I have never been so engrossed in a game since. This was all I played for months, and also probably one of the hardest games I have ever played. To this day I still use little refrences from this game in my daily life. *Enjoy the Sauce!* 0rcspit
I've never cared about characters half as much as in that game. About once every six months, I replay the game just like rereading a favorite book. It's inspired me to go out and read up on Mexican religion and mythology.
The Tex Murphy games (Under a Killing Moon, etc.) were in the same category, although not quite so honest as GF.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I have had the same urge, also the "empty intersection but it's red" syndrome.
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.
Rule of the open mind
People who are resistant to change cannot resist change for the worst.
king's quest, space quest, hero's quest (and quest for glory), and police quest. Nothing beat that part in space quest where you had to type 'shoot robot' before you walked across the screen so you wouldn't get shot while trying to destroy the reactor. All those point-and-click fancy graphics leave nothing to the imagination. Hell, I still enjoy firing up zork or the old hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy game.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Inside was just a commercial-labled floppy with the title "Global Termonuclear War".
Anyone happen to know if there's a disk image of this floating around on the Internet somewhere? Would love to check it out.
Although I have never played the final fantasy games prior, I have to say that FF7 definately changed my opinion of gaming in general.
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.
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).
"What can change the nature of a man?"
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."
THS
---
"Poor girl looks as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market." - Simon R. Green
For some reason I've always enjoyed playing (even to this day) Chronotrigger and Final Fantasy 3. The music is incredible (especially for SNES!), and the story lines are well-thought out. I still have Snes9x so I can play Chronotrigger. It's great for reliving stress and just to get away sometimes. You don't find those kind of games anymore (IMHO).
Want to talk about games which have really, really "affected me?" There's only one, and that's Ultima Online.
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!
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
civilization iii
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.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It may be just a personal reaction....
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!
Most of the games that really get under my skin are in the 3d shooter category (some spoilers):
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...
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.
Fred (old zx spectrum game) was a disaster for my primary school, Warcraft was a disaster for my secondary school, and ...errrr ...girls were disaster for my high school.
Now i'm 28, employed, married with children, and i just started ruining my life with Nethack. I installed it on all three computers i use (GNU/Linux, Windowz and Psion 5) and have pretty much troubles because of it.
Most surprisingly lack of graphic is best in this game. Playing any other game i know results in headake, with random game-screenshots displayed when closing eyes. You know, all they operate on tilsets, which are repeatedly and continuesly attacking our brains. Worse than cocaine.
Nethack is almost (almost) free of this effect.
And this is the only game, which makes you screaming just because you saw letter "D"...
This Is Not a Sig
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.
Not the sequel; the original. Never has there been such realistic gameplay. I actually played so much one weekend that when I raced up to a stoplight the next day I had the urge to jump out through the sunroof and snipe another driver.
Against the computer Balance of Power was okay, as you could judge just how far you could push the AI before they would nuke you. However, against a human opponent this game was pointless.
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!"
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.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Legend of Mana is basically repackaged, Japanese Michael Ende. (His wife was Japanese.) I tried to play that game 3 times after I got it, but it never "worked" for me. I couldn't get into it. A couple years later, I was really angry with a lot of people around me. For some reason, I was drawn to the game and started playing it. It made me really rethink through some ideas about how I live, and how I think about and treat others. It also inspired a love of gardening, and got me working on some free software projects again.
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.
After playing this for most of the day, I drove to the store to get some food. After about 200m I discovered I was driving on the wrong side of the road! (We drive on the left in my country...)
;-)
Amused me, if nobody else