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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?"
I'd have to say the game that most affected me is Global Thermonuclear War.
I swear, I'll never play that game in the dark again. Damned headcrabs scared the hell out of me, jumping out of dark corners and attacking me in air ducts.
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.
"They told me it was impossible. I replied with maniacal laughter." http://www.mydailyrant.com/
...has always been a favourite of mine. I mean, the series has gone through 12 iterations now and it's still going strong; maybe not the most cutting-edge graphics, but the attention to storyline and soundtrack has certainly made it very popular (Square games seem to have by far the most fanfics written for them, if that's any metric of the storyline).
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)
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.
There are times now in traffic when I get that unimistakable urge to just pull into the oncoming lane to pass some slow moron in front of me, or to pull the guy who cut me off out of his car at the next red light and lay a beating on his ass.
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.
tony hawk's pro skater: everything is a grind or jump these days...
-- ribbit
Yeah it was 1983...yeah it was on the Commodore, but who needs more than 64k anyway?
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
Download my free songs!
...for giving me an interest in history and geography.
-- And when Justice is gone, there is always... Force. --Laurie Anderson, "Oh Superman"
I can't seem to quit playing this god forsaken game no matter how hard I try. On the other hand, it has taught to me to double check everything before you accept a trade. :)
I played it for 72 hours straight and got severely dehydrated. If I hadn't looked at the clock I, might have died.
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.
After I played Tetris for a while, I just couldn't stop thinking about the block shapes and the combinations I could use to create complete lines. I haven't played in a while, but I can still clearly picture a game in my head.
Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
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... :\
Once I was talking to someone about the benefits of recycling and solar power and then I realized I was basing my entire discussion on what I had learned from playing Sim City 4.
I still haven't finished the damned thing. I get myself so tense trying to sneak through the places that I find I can't play for longer than an hour or so.. it's exhausting.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
If Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Quake would be one. It was one of the first real 3d first person shooters. The lighting, combined with Trent Reznor's twisted soundtrack, made this a real experience. While games like doom or wolfenstein were great, they still had that "video-game" feel to it. Quake was the first game that really gave me that sense of claustophobia and panic.
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!
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
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
Oh boo hoo
When I started playing it, it switched my allegiance from strongly Star Trek to strongly Star Wars. I've since acheived a comfortable geequalibrium between Star Trek, Star Wars and Tolkien.
I've noticed a 10 mph or so increase in my driving speed after an evening of Gran Turismo. I don't notice going faster, I just realize that I'm getting places earlier.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Its really the simple games that get me the most. To really play minesweeper well, you have to commit complex patterns to instinct and then defocus your eyes a little so that you see and comprehend all of the field at one time. Then you sort of make your world one with the field and shut out everything else. After a few hours of minesweeper, I'm a very dangerous driver because turning off that pattern matching logic is difficult. I tend to find myself instinctively relating the cars to the cells of the field and wondering which are the bombs.
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
Nothing else comes close. Several months ago my machine crashed and I had to reformat my hard drive. By this time I was already having dreams ascii dungeons, monsters, and a 'd' following me around hoping for '%'. I decided maybe it was best if I didn't reinstall nethack. Though there's still those darn public nethack machines....
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...
Tweet, tweet.
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...
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted my own X-Wing. Apparently the makers of Lucas Arts' X-Wing did too. They made me my very own X-Wing, and I couldn't stop flying it. When I first sat down to play the game, I had butterflies in my stomach, because I didn't believe they'd get it right. When I realized they did, I couldn't stop laughing with joy. It was a true nerd experience. All of the subsequent games, like Tie Fighter and so on, were even better.
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.
I think I'll stay away from those fire flowers, I can't imagine what those would do to me.
take off every sig for great justice
That's easy: Doom. I got Doom when I was like 13 years old, and it glued me to our family's computer at the time. I played it for hours and hours, and after I had had enough of playing it, I downloaded WADs and hacks and played them, too. After I got bored with those, I started designing my own WADs. When id released the source code, I had just turned 16 and was still crazy for the game. It immediately made me want to learn to program. I learned programming and generally messed around with the game, making cute little changes and addons. I will graduate next year with a degree in Software Engineering. I blame Doom for my fascination with programming and designing games and for showing me the wonderful things I could do. And yes, I still play Doom and still mess with the sourcecode. I can't wait for Doom3. :)
"Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that!" - George Carlin.
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
It introduced me to sleeping with hookers. I've never felt so diseased!
Prior to Morrowind, I had serious contempt for anything and everything involved with RPGs or RPG elements. But I fucking loved Morrowind, I wasted my whole winter break playing it non-stop (to the rather severe detriment of my health). I still don't understand the appeal of pencil and paper RPGs, but they don't seem to understand the appeal of NetHack (my next, after Morrowind, and current RPG indulgence), either. Still, it did significantly shange my worldview, though.
When I heard the sound of that little white square hitting that white line, knowing that the little white square was now headed toward my white line, I was so frightened I turned and ran.
But then they stopped keeping score.
...superior horror experience, scary enough that I only know a single individual who managed to play the whole thing through.
In no particular order: Tie Fighter: seriously helped to improve my hand-eye coordination. Star Control II: showed me that video games could have plots as rich and as deep as a (good) novel. Mysteries of the Sith: I know that a lot of people didn't care for this "expansion" too much, but I thought it showed how an FPS could emphasize more intellectual aspects. I took a shameful amount of time on the last battle before I realized what I had to do. Curse of Monkey Island: taught me that life is not like a video game after I tried shoving that huge block of tufo down my pants.
"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" - Groucho Marx
I don't play it anymore, but I distinctly remember the day my friend convinced me to buy the game a few weeks after it first came out. I was convinced the game was for girls and I would have no fun.
I haven't played the game for a while now, but I still have yet to find a game that feels like running the long way through the Karanas on a rainy evening.
Talk about nearly peeing yourself.
MORTAR COMBAT!
That damn dog. I shot him for hours on end. Fucker always just laughed. DIEDIEDIE
It's got to be Ico. That game just totally set the bar for emotion. I can't even play it I'm so afraid of losing the princess to the shadow beasts. It's a gorgeous game with great atmosphere. Another one would have to be the first Tomb Raider. When you first meet those wolves and the music gets all fast paced and energized, it really gets your blood pumping.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Just this simple puzzle that I found online. Maybe this doesn't qualify as a video game but it is cool because it seems like just a simple picture but if you stare at it long enough you realize there is something wrong with it. And once you realize what is wrong you're left thinking about it for a long time. As interesting as a lot of video games.
If it wasn't for Leisure Suit Larry, I wouldn't know that failing to take a condom off after sex results in terrible disease.
Thanks Al!
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 or senator. 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
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Not long after the DOOM phenomenon began, I had to sleep in my basement during the period after I gutted my bedroom and before my new furniture for it arrived. The basement has wood-paneled walls, and a lot of stuff hanging on them. One night as I was sleeping down there, one corner of a "frameless" picture frame decided to let go of the nail upon which it was hanging at about 3am one morning. It began swinging back and forth on the remaining nail, scraping against the paneling. It made a noise that was practically indistinguishable from the tearing noise you heard when one of the baddies in DOOM (the guy on the right side in this screenshot) got too close to you and started inflicting damage by clawing at you.
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.
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), 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
Here's a sure-fire to scare the living crap out of oneself. Wait until about 2am, turn out all the lights, and start a new game as a Marine.
But don't wear headphones. I ruined a good pair by screaming and jumping backwards when a Facehugger got me.
Read all the comments.
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.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
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 threw up once after playing descent, from motion sickness.
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.
Might have been responsible for me and my roomate dropping out if college. My old roomate to this day claims he "became Darth Vader".
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
For some reason, that game really got into my head. I dreamed about it for weeks after I finished it, and every now and then that line will suddenly pop into my mind, a year or more later. Kind of makes you wonder what effect these games have on our unconscious.....
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).
Okay, I know that might sound odd, but it's true... Super Mario Bros. has affected me more than... well most anything else in my life. Growing up as a kid who had difficulty dealing with normal schedules, life, etc., I ended up feeling like I couldn't succeed at anything. At this game, I got really good. Fantastic, even. I was able to beat all my friends. And I learned to keep going, to try and succeed no matter how hard the task was that lay ahead of me. At six years old, this was a big thing for me. Without it, I may not have ever gained the confidence that later on helped me make it through college. Yes, it sounds odd. But Mario made all the difference for me, and my life. Yet, ironically, many people still criticize video games as "good for nothing wastes of a kid's time." Needless to say, I hold a very different opinion. And I still play Super Mario Bros. games to this day.
http://mediagoblin.org/
Playing a marathon game, co-op with a friend... got to the Flood at 4AM on a stormy night. Geez, that was crazy. Likewise w/ Eternal Darkness... the sanity stat was the craziest thing I ever saw. That and the fact that most of the sanity effects were geared at the PLAYER. I still remember seeing a BSOD come up... man that was wierd. That and the fact that I got so into it that I actually went and answered the knocking door... not in game but at my house...
Man that Lucas Arts game was so cool, so funny.
:)
And the places you had to go... I dont even know
where to start.
SCUMM was the best engine ever
Check my site: http://pixel.pagina.nl
"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
When you had to rail a car RIGHT on to get it to do a 360.
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.
God spoke to me
...or at least its introductiory sequence. When something unexpected happens, I now say "what happen?" by force of habit. Toaplan hath set me up the bomb.
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
Definitely MGS for the PS1. That game was so cinematic... every character was really cool. The part that the guy has the heart attack, and I could feel the heart beating in the controller. Mantis, reading my memory card... that was impressive. Finally, the torture... it really felt like a torture to me. My arm was in pain after surving the torture, and Snake said his was too! And then on the codec "I'm going to activate the nanomachines to give you a massage". Talk about interactive!
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
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.
There was once this Emergency Room game thats a doctor and surgeon simulator. I discovered my dormant sadism one day when I decided to poke a needle into the eye of a patient during an outpatient examination. The needle really was meant for testing skin sensation but the designers actually thought of that as they put in the most horrific, and loudest, screaming sound of a person having his eye pierced. Later, I found myself demonstrating the ritual to every friend that came to my house.
But, for the game that really affected me was Ultima Online. I played for a year during its first year, and again after 3 years break. The richness of experience, as a side-effect of such a multi-player game, is beyond what the box advertised. You can make real friends and enemies in the game. You observe and realise the extent of human behaviour. You see people play out their deepest fantasy which is otherwise hidden in the real world. You will find good leaders, honorable PKs, blue PKs, pure scumbags, worthless griefers, enterprising businessmen, the most determined thieves, clueless crybabies, social parasites, and highly organised mobsters, like the red guild 'Ragnarok' at the Formosa (Taiwan) shard I play in.
And when I stop playing for awhile, I miss my online friends. Nevermind the crappy graphics, sound, lag and bugs. The original vision of the designers withstood the test of time. You can probably even call it the Last Oldskool game.
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
Zelda: Ocarina of Time is probably the most flawless game ever created.
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.
Besides the simple elegance of the premise (a young boy with horns guides a strangely beautiful girl out of an enormous labyrinthian castle as shadowy abstractions of evil attempt to abduct her at every turn), the designers have managed to turn a very linear quest into something much more rewarding: they have created an emotional glimpse into a rich, complete (yet completely foreign), beautiful world. If you manage to get your hands on a copy of this now-classic title for the Playstation 2, you'll understand my words the first time you pan the camera around with the right analog stick and see, off in the distance, a part of this gargantuan castle you visited hours before. The sense of scale and of environment are nigh indescribable.
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!
I'll never forget after one all night Doom session, leaving work down a hallway when the elevator door opened. I literally jumped to the side of it before realizing that I was no longer playing.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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...
I judge rpg's by their immersion factor, and out of all the rpg's I have ever played, Planescape: Torment is the one that really gave me a character that was truly my own, a real "I" in Planescape's universe.
I remember talking with my friend's addressing to them the game's thematic question: "What can change the nature of a man?" The game answers this questions in a show-not-tell process that is worthy of a novel. (Actually, I recall there being a strategy guide from IGN that told the plot of the game from a first-person narrative. It's worth digging up if you liked Planescape.)
Plus who could forget classic moments like:
"You remember your name and smile at how simple it is."
or when you choose to revive Dakkon and announce the "two deaths as one" for the final battle.
Damn, I'm getting goosebumps. Where is that CD?
Marathon and Marathon II: Durandal were my favourite first-person story shooters. I can't play them anymore, sadly. Newer games have made me dependent on mouselook, which Marathon does crappily. Heigh ho.
The only game that has stirred me emotionally is Final Fantasy VII. It was the only PS game I actually bought for our G3 with Connectix Virtual Game Station. I actually cried when Cloud laid Aeris to rest in the city of the Ancients. My dad told me to grow up, but it was so sad. The only movie I ever cried for was Life is Beautiful, and I felt in that scene in FFVII nearly the same loss as when Roberto Benigni is led around the corner by the guard...
My friends and I still say the infamous "Casualty" whenever we accidentally break/destroy something.
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.
I will use any opportunity to discuss my favorite games of all time. And at the top of that list is Super Metroid for SNES. I first played it back after its release in '94 and I haven't stopped since. I would play through till the end trying to find every last missle tank and power bomb. As much as the metroid series is known for item collection though, it was the atmosphere that really engrossed me. The way Samus's suit breathed, the way the environments felt real and alive. And of course, the music. If there is one thing that can make or break a game in my opinion, its music. The drums in the ancient area of Norfair or the subtle mysteriousness of Maridia still brings back memories like some SPC induced Flashback.
My two other favorite games of all time, Mechwarrior 2 for the PC and Final Fantasy III, (VI in Japan) for the SNES, both have stayed that way because of gameplay and music, certainly not graphics. I can definately say that these three games have influenced how I think and see visually more than any other games that I have played. Because of these video games my intrest in computers skyrocketed, landing me in the well off position of art school. It's because of these games I still have my SNES connected, while my PS1 and N64 gather dust like a forgotten relative. I would still be playing Mech2, except it requires some god awful configuration where every component must be just so, and must be played while standing on one foot, while jumping, with the jupiter in line with the moon. So I opt out and just listen the music for nostalgia instead.
Unbelieveable, I know, games based on conflict and viloence actually had a positive effect in a child's life. Must've been some wierd fluke...
This game had a killer ability to suspend disbelief, and the story just sucked you right in. I worked as a telephone operator on graveyard shift at the time, and I would actually haul my 386 system into work so I could play the game during down times, then haul it all back home and play some more. Like a dork, I still find myself thinking about the game from time to time.
Hear hear.
I remember returning to University after my intern/placement year and as a leaving present from work I got Deus Ex (I'd been playing the Demo for ages so my friends knew what to get).
The first time I noticed a game had really affected my was when I was shopping in Leicester city centre walking down the high street, to realise I was glancing up at the roofs of every nearby building for snipers... I was in a strange "this is too weird" daze for quite a while and being slightly more aware of everyone around me.
I also agree about the 9/11 similarities, but I try and have a more hopeful idea of the future in spite of being spoon fed stories/ideas/predictions about our demise in the coming decades or century... although that notion will go out the window when Deus Ex 2 comes out and I'm completely immersed in that world again.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I'm not sure if anyone else remembers this game. I played it religously via BBS for about a year. I have never been so involved in a game. I bought the helper progs. and planned my next day's turns for hours. I think that fact that you had only so many turns per day is what made it so addictive. You could never "overdo" it!
After playing Ridge Racer (the first one) for a couple of weeks, it took me about a year to not panic when driving through narrow lanes surrounded by jersey barriers.
I was just waiting for the car to smack into one like they suddenly do in the game.
Need For Speed - Porsche Unleashed is the game which affected me the most because the physics and sound of the cars are so realistic compared to any other racing game. Other Need For Speed versions aren't as good as this one. The only downside I see is that you can only drive Porsches, which isn't necessarely bad by itself.It's pretty much the only game I play, I don't have any interest in adventure on first person shooter games.
In the beginning, there was Bard's Tale and there was Wasteland. Bard's Tale was fun, but flawed in its perspective and only slightly different from the usual fantasy games.
Wasteland was my life.
Non-linear, turn-based, top-down tiled. "Old school" when that was the only school. This was the dawn of modern computer role-playing games, and Wasteland was, in my mind, the best.
Conversation options were limited, but the freedom of plot made up for any stilted "guess the keyword" communication with the twisted denizens of a post-apocalyptic world.
A post-apocalyptic world. That's the essence of Wasteland, and the essence of the 80's. Before global warming, we lived with the Cold War warming, and a real possibility of nuclear annihilation. This was no ambiguous ivory tower intellectual threat of ozone layer depletion and the loss of rain forests-- this was true world wide destruction leading to anarchy leading to feral children and leather-clad warriors.
To an anti-social geek outcast, that was paradise. Roaming the wastelands, living on your wits, leaving the law in its grave, following your own compass, ignoring what the others thought, and going out with a flamethrower and a sledge hammer and taking care of business.
Wasteland allowed me to live that fantasy in a huge world of post-nuclear deviants. I tend to play the Mad Max type of nice guy, but if I slipped and wiped out a camp full of pre-teens, the game didn't hold it against me. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Wasteland has influenced every attempt I've ever made at writing games. It was the creative catalyst for many of the stories I've started and discarded. It was the inspiration for my first proto-MUD BBS game, and for every MOO I've administrated since.
Today's gamers didn't grow up wondering if tomorrow would be "The Day After." Excellent titles such as Fallout have helped, but it seems our generation of post-nuclear gamers is doomed, not by apocalypse, but by the lack thereof.
In any case, I'll always have my Scorpitron, my Guardian Citadel, my Proton Axes and Power Armor, and with every dire media inflation of a super-flu and leaked nuclear warheads, I'll always hope I'll have my Wasteland.
#19845
Although Half Life was more immersive, and there are many better games out there, those little squares with info you had to click kept on appearing a long time in real life.
Being a big bully and member of the biggest alliance in the online browsergame Planetarion messed up my life for about a year. At it highest point there were about 200k players, and organizing the alliance and galaxy so you'd stay on top was a full time job. For a year it was normal for me and my friends who also played, to never sleep for about more then 5 hours, unless somebody you could trust and had your cell phone number was online.
I wanted to say Doom II because I used to spend most of my time playing it and modifying it, both with level editors and DeHackEd. It got me thinking about game programming for a long time and I had some interesting ideas for a first person shooter that I wanted to make. So I bought many books on the subjects and thought it out a lot... that was before id released the sources. Doom II definitely scared the shit out of me several times. On one occasion I was in The Factory when I heard one of the aractrotrons or whatever they're called, walking, stopping, walking again... and it scared me so bad that I just froze up in some corner and waited for it to come up so I could shoot it. It never got there. After what must have been 20 minutes (I shit you not), I decided to go looking for it and finally discovered that it was stuck in a corner, on top of a raised floor from which it couldn't descend. So all that time I was scared of a spider that couldn't even get me.
But Quake II scared the living daylights out of me in a way that Doom II never did. I played it all night on one of my older computers at the time. I think it was a Pentium 133 or maybe a 200; in any case it was a pretty slow box. The graphics were low resolution and I couldn't really see the wonderful detail that id put into that game. I arrived at some part where I think I was in some sewer pipe or something and this creature shows up behind me and is just about to shoot. I shoot first and to my utter horror, this force field shield thing appears in front of the monster, kind of like the Borg have in Star Trek. I think I just started running at that point. The next night, I was on a different computer just listening to Joe Satriani through headphones and minding my own business. I don't think I was playing anything. On the contrary, I must have been trolling /. or something. It was after midnight and dark in my room except for the glow of my monitor. Suddenly and all at once, I jumped, screamed and turned around, to see that it was my sister, as opposed to some alien from Quake II, that put her hand on my shoulder. I became pretty nervous for a while and didn't play Quake II again for years.
After playing Ultima IX I became so fascinated by games with complex world simulations that I started looking into how they were developed. I left behind the free software projects I had been working on, and joined the WorldForge project, started going to game developer related conferences, and eventually developing games became the core of my career.
The Ultima series have a quality which I have not yet managed to pin down that makes them different from most other RPGs. Its something to do with the powerful sense of immersion, the depth and complexity of the world model, and the type of story.
This (Macintosh, at least originally) game affected me by making me very, very angry.
/ gameId,25 9/
Here's a typical review:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/p,24
One of the most over-rated game designs ever (there was absolutely no sense to it, but reviewers all seemed to think it was amazingly deep), the fundamental idea was that whenever one superpower did something another didn't like (establish an embassy in Bangkok, for example) they would play a game of chicken with nuclear weapons. Truly, the only way to win this game was not to play (and not to have bought it).
Typically games are just a diversion for me, I play them and that's it. I do remember playing Tomb Raider at 3 in the morning while it was raining, and this was the first time I encountered the T-Rex. I had no knowledge of this and when it came out, I got a nice adrenaline shock.
But as much as I enjoyed Tomb Raider, it was just pure fun, no life changing deals here. Then I played Thief. Now to this day, I've only completed 3 levels, and it's not even my favorite game. However, how I walk around the world HAS definitely changed. I find myself concious of how loudly I'm walking, peeking around corners, etc. Still haven't gone to carrying around a blackjack, but sometimes I wish I did.
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.
For showing that a game can have a more complex plot than "There are 5 billion demons trying to kill you". There's more going on in those games than a lot of novels.
I remember playing this game at my friends house on his philips cd-i. It was a dark and stormy October night (naturally), and I remember seeing those hands pop out of the painting the first time, and not being able to sleep that night for hours upon hours. This wasn't helped by the fact that my parents have a still life painting very similar to the one in the game. Still creeps me out
I mean, be honest, does anyone here want to meet a grue? It may have just been text, but it surely changed my life.
There was no game that would really AFFECT me yet. There were ones that scared the shit out of me (Behind Jaggi Lines in the "Boo!" way and Feud in the "Creepy" way), there were ones that impressed me deeply (FF7, Amberstar), there were some I had emotional relationship with (AvP, Space Hulk) - but none really changed me.
Morrowind is NOT YET it. But if there is ever a game that would affect me, it will be along these lines. What's needed:
1) Complete freedom.
2) Detailed world
3) Amazing plotline
4) Original, pretty, impressive art design
5) Beautiful music, quality audio.
6) Realistic feeling
7) Flawless engine.
Morrowind lacks the last two. Nobody sits. There's no children. People stand or walk around all day and night. Dialogues repeat. There are gfx glitches. The gfx is very pretty but "not there yet". And damn thing crashes for no reason, you get stuck in walls, you scroll through miles of inventory, etc, etc. This game came short of being perfect - but it has a bit too many small glitches to get there.
And I'm still waiting for computers to get good enough to run smoothly games that would look like the "Mother Nature" part from 3DMark.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I believe true classics are usually the games that leave you with great anecdotes once you've finished playing them. Things that you enthusiastically tell to your friends, even though they probably have no idea what you're talking about.
Having said that, one of the most intense moments I ever experienced wasn't with an 'officially' sanctioned classic - it was the PC version of Aliens Versus Predator. I remember it like it was yesterday...
[cue harp music/wavy video effect]
I'd gotten really far in that level where you encounter the Predator in the hangar bay. The savegame patch hadn't come out yet and I was down to my last 40 bullets, plus two grenades. It had taken me five tries to get this far, so needless to say I was a little on edge. As I rounded the corner into another half-lit corridor, I spotted two xenomorphs clinging to the ceiling. I was about to dispatch them with my autorifle when suddenly, an enormous Praetorian appeared at the end of the corridor, racing towards me. Almost simultaneously my motion detector went haywire, and I heard a cacophony of screeching, snarling noises coming from behind me. I was trapped! Desperation crept over me as I dashed towards the oncoming Praetorian, emptying the remaining rounds into its head while firing a grenade at the xenomorphs on the ceiling. The explosion splattered their acidic remains all over me as I ran past the dazed Praetorian, but I couldn't afford to slow down - the pursuing xenomorphs were almost on top of me! I raced towards the end of the corridor and into the hangar bay, frantically hitting the door switch to the right in the hope that it might contain the xenomorphs. Through the combined miracles of technology and reinforced steel, it did. I was safe--
But that's when I saw it.
Just above the door switch, and moving towards my head, was something that made my skin crawl: a triangle of little red dots. Laser guidance dots. There was a bright flash as I jumped away from the switch, and in that instant I could see the hangar bay very clearly: test rockets everywhere, the ghostly silhouette of a predator moving among them, and in the back... two deactivated sentry guns. My only chance! I fired my last grenade into the rocket closest to the predator, causing a huge explosion that short-circuited his optic camouflage. At the same time, I ran for the sentry guns at the other side of the hangar, hoping the predator would be too disoriented to respond. As it turned out, he had other things on his mind - like the seemingly endless flood of xenomorphs pouring through the ceiling hatches and bay doors. I could hear the clicking, scratching sound of their nails on the metal floors, I heard the Predator scream with rage, I reached the first sentrygun, hit the activation switch, ran towards the other--
And then it was all over.
As the first sentry gun roared to life, it started firing indiscriminately into the writhing mass of xenomorphs on top of the predator. Bullets struck the remaining rockets, causing a chain of explosions that seemed to last an eternity. The surviving xenomorphs lunged at my hiding place behind the sentry gun, but they were caught in mid-air by a hail of bulletfire so intense it almost seemed to keep them suspended as it ripped them apart. Then everything fell silent.
I looked around, looked at my motion detector. Nothing. Shrapnel and alien remains were all that was left of the hangar bay. My heart was racing and my ears were ringing, but I had survived. With three percent health and no ammo left, I prepared for the second half of the mission...
[cue harp music/wavy video effect again]
See what I mean? My memory may have colored in some details here and there, but even so, you still have no idea what I'm talking about!
Hee-hee. Dying tickles!
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
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
I have always been a huge fan of the Final Fantasy games. When a new one comes out it usually completely consumes my life until I beat it. The best one, in my opinion, is Final Fantasy 7. The story line is amazing, and at one point I actually jumped off the couch and screamed "NOO!!" Anyone who hasn't played a Final Fantasy game doesn't know what their missing.
About ten years ago, I was home from college during the summer, and making a little extra cash by being a receptionist at an insurance company office.
...and play Tetris on the 386 running Windows 3.1 on my desk. So I played it a lot. For hours on end, day in and day out: racking up some pretty impressive scores, and spending almost entire days in the Tetris Zone.
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.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Based on your post I think you might be interested by the book "Guns, Germs and Steel; The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond. The book extensively talks about how such issues relate to the survivability of societies throughout history as well as the domestication/extermination of native flora and fauna, North/South vs East/West axis' of continents and the singular possibility of technological devolution in isolated empires under central control. Amazon has some reviews up.
People are mad at me when I enact the game.
.smell my feet.
It has to be Everquest, hands down.
/played. It tells you exactly HOW long you've physically been sitting in front of the computer playing that particular character..
/played time is IN EXCESS of 100 DAYS. Mines at 101 days, at lvl 60. Thats over 3 years.
/played times..
And the pocketbooks of many speak for itself. We've forked out 10+ dollars a month for over 3 years just to be able to play it.
In the game, there's a command
Most people that are reasonably high level have been playing for 2+ years. In that time, most high level characters
That means, in the last 3 years, I've spent a month every year, JUST PLAYING THE GAME. And many, MANY people have this sort of
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
It made me so damn dizzy i puked in the washroom and could walk straight back to my comp to finish the first level.
(Warning: for those interested in late 80s gaming, there's some U4 spoilers below):
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.
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.
There are definitely a number of games that stick out in my mind as taking up a significant amount of my time and thinking, and one in particular as taking up a significant portion of the LIFE.
For pure fun factor my favourite game would be Super Mario Kart (on the Super Nintendo, followed by the newer version on the GBA). This game was not only great to play against other people, you could also constantly challenge yourself in trials and trying to win the gold cups and get the faster speeds. It is a game that is almost timeless in its gameplay, and I still go back to it occasionally (albeit through an emulator now).
As a game to make me think I would say Civilisation 2 or Command and Conquer (or maybe Dune 2 somewhat earlier) were my thinking games. This is the type of game I would sit at and just HAVE to keep playing more until I got totally frustrated (such as the solo levels in C&C where there was no base building and an impossible mission to complete with just one guy). But with Civilisation 2 at least, this is one of the games that could actually make me stay up all night and not sleep before going into school (at the time).
Perhaps my most thoughtful game is Ultima 6, played on the Amiga. It was the only major game I played for sometime (being relatively young then) and I would spend days exploring dungeons and performing tasks, and occasionally would jump out of my skin or physically shake with excitement when roaming the depths of the dungeons some five or six levels below ground, suddenly stumbling across some magical graveyard or mystical talking statue.
Ultimately though, the game that has altered by life in ways that mere games should not has got to be an online game that has been around since 1989. Most people will have heard of MUDs and many will have their own favourites, but there is one I have played now for over eight years (arguably over ten). This game literally has affected me in numerous ways, including relationships and my education (a positive, mostly, and negative affect, mostly, respectively!) It is definitely the most emotionally submersive game I have ever been involved in, and one that I still go back to even now. This game is called Avalon (The Legend Lives), and has eaten up a not insignificant span of my life and definitely my money!
Beyond all these, more recent games I have enjoyed include Return To Castle Wolfenstein, SimCity 4 and Warcraft 3. Oh and an honourable mention must go to some recently discovered gems that I have enjoyed; KBounce and Frozen-Bubble (although they perhaps haven't exactly "affected" me in ways like the others have done).
... I guess
Aside from the many hours of my life sunk into the game, there was more than one occasion when driving home after playing netrek for too long I felt the quite natural urge to ogg the oncoming traffic.
Ships coming the other direction, must latch onto them and blow up!
I have only seen 2 postings of X-COM. Man, I used to love throwing alien bodies, or spending hours training my crack team of psi warriors and then setting them into a terrorize outfit and mind controlling them all in one turn. Then I would make them drop their weapon and I would have my guys get good at aiming, or marching, or throwing. Using the blaster launcher I would punch holes into enemy ships and come in style! Also throwing smoke into a small enemy ship and choking them out... only to be used as target and reaction practice for my troops. What fun! Props to Civilization too tho'.
Ultima7 was a game I played and played. It was so unbelievably huge and you seemed to be able to do anything you wanted. And then Windows95 came along and I could no longer play unless I rebooted into DOS mode. And then the sound didn't work, which was a shame considering how often I had to reboot Win95 ;-)
I was overjoyed to find that you can play Ultima 7 parts I and II with the open source Exult Engine. If you have the data files then you can (with effort) load them up and play. Exult gives a faithful rendition of the old games (although currently you can get away with more stealing and the animals talk to you). Also you can play windowed and increase the resolution (320x200 was fairly restrictive, even at the time!)
Heartily recommended to people who know the game and people who don't.
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hours and hours of fun. I almost failed high school because of it...
:)
The sounds of barney throughout the levels!
Scary shit
huh?
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?
Multiplayer Quake II teamplay taught me about friendly fire, and how easy it would be in the heat of battle to accidently kill one of your own. Sure I'd heard of friendly fire before, but when you're in a 1st person game and you accidently shoot your own team - that makes it real. And then you take that tiny experience and multiply it begin to understand reality
Age of Kings taught me tons of things. Like how easy conflicts can start. I remember one game when I was playing against some computer opponents. I was neutral to a nearby computer player, he was neutral to me. I had no intention of attacking him until much later... There was a gold pile in the middle of our lands that I just "assumed" was mine. Later in the game I saw him mining that gold and then I had an "ah-ha moment". How many times in history have wars been started over similar occurences.
In online multiplayer Age of Kings I learned all kinds of military strategy - like sometimes you can't really directly help your ally, you need to perhaps attack another enemy and hope your ally can hold on. Then you can help later. I'm sure things like that have happened many times in histroy (China in WWII was our ally and we really didn't help them in their homeland). But from playing the game I realized that sometimes it's better not to directly help - when you can see the big picture.
Also from Age of Kings multiplayer I learned alot about moral and communication. When your teamate just got double teamed you need to encourage him not to give up and what not.
Now for another game most have never heard of - Planetarion. It probably still exists, it was an online massive multiplayer text game. Alliances were huge - which was a lesson. In huge games like that, you can't rely on yourself only. Politics is huge. If you really want to win you've got to take the time and hassle of organizing with people - coalition building, etc. Again the point is the game made this real to me.
Also from planetarion I learned more about welfare programs. In the game you could trade resources within your own galaxy (about 25 players). And when someone new joined, if they were hardworking / learned the rules and strategies etc., it was a huge help and headstart to them if you donated them some resources to get them going. But at the same time, there were people who no matter how much you gave them they wouldn't do good. They would blow the money on stupid things - and not get any better. I think that truth I learned carried over perfectly to the real world.
Also for a while I was the number 1 player (of about 20,000 players worldwide - Hondo of Hondune). That gave me a small taste of fame - fans (people wanting your time), critics/haters (people wanting to bring you down), and more scrutiny. I was eventually busted and banned from the game for finding some backdoors and exploiting them (I treated it like the Matrix - lol). I guess that also taught me a few things. I could go on and on.
Anyway, games are great if you stop and think about a real life connection.
Schools today should incorporate games. They'd reach all kinds of kids and bring some excitement/fun into the classroom.
I still remember the anxiety of trying to get to Garth's shop without getting killed, at the beginning of the game. That game was my introduction to the D&D world, and I've been a mediaeval geek ever since. Ah, the wine cellar...
Homeworld. Especially the beginning of the 'gardens of Kadesh' level. First time round I just sat back and watched the drones spiral in and let the battle evolve.
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.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
This cavalier attitude in which game lovers want to have absolute freedom without any of the responsibilities will doom games as a creative activity.
I don't want minors to receive the message that violence is trivial and even fun.
I don't want minors to get the message that sex is explotiation and gratification without knowing about the responsibilities it entails.
Sadly game developpers and game companies have not taken the lead to facilitate that minors have a healthy approach to gamming that includes violence and depravity (no, not sex, but sex as mechanism of alienation).
This applies to several industries that spread ideas and attitudes, some other industries have shown far more restrain and compromise.
The gamming insdurty is the black sheep, if they don't make something different to blabber about freedom they will go the way of the dodo as a viable creative endeavour.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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.
Once I played Sim City 2000 for 11 hours straight. Afterwards I was seeing people as mixtures of commercial, residential, and industrial zoning. Took a few hours for that to wear off.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
COUNTER-STRIKE
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.
Gran Turismo 3 (F1 cars rule!)
Quake3Arena (love the mods)
Zork taught me never to wander about in the dark, period. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
make world, not war
When I was 8 years old, with my Rubber keyed spectrum, my mum decided to broaden our horizons, and bought a book full of basic games.
One of these was called "DracMaze" a 3d spectacular with monsters and ghouls waiting around each corner - or so the book told us.
She spent around 40 days typing this in - the computer never got disconnected or powered down, because the basic code had errors, and it wouldn't save. In the end we never got this game to work, but the determination to fix problems and solve things has lead me into a career as software developer, and I look back on that experience as pivotal to my current self.
liqbase
Everquest cost me my wife, my kids, my career. I now am recovering from spending the last 3 years of my life immersed in that game. I don't know what it is about that game, but it really pulls you into the virtual world and affects real life priorities in a way no other game ever has, and possibly ever will.
After hours of Quake CTF online, I remember watching TV and seeing an ad where you were looking down a tube with a down-escalator in it, with a guy standing on it in a suit reading a paper. I commented to my buddy, damn! I've an urge to jump down into that tube and blast a rocket up his ass!
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
For example, in some driving games, slipping up onto the shoulder is perfectly acceptable, affecting the performance in calculable ways (usually some speed reduction or difficulty in handling). So then, I'm driving down the highway and I think "I can pass them on the shoulder". No, I don't even think it... it just starts being an option, and I have to consciously override the option.
It doesn't help that I drive a 2002 Camaro Z28 (with a top-speed of 155 mph, I'm told). So my real-life car handles like a lot of the simulated race cars I drive. Except the damage would far exceed the loss of the four quarters I stuck into the game.
And then there's the "run from cops" option of "Need for Speed". For about a half hour, I'm thinking of how to avoid spike scripts as I pull around every corner.
The scary thing is... if it's this easy for me to confuse the two driving realities, what is it like for people who play shooting games? Scary thought.
Loved it. The greatest thing is that so may people had that game in their school. I can still make a joke about being a Banker from Boston or feeding my kids 'meager rations' and it still gets a laugh. Hunting had to be the best part of the game. That and crossing the Columbia River in the end. Let's not forget the old Shoshonee who helped you ford the river!
I had the Warcraft 2 CD in there when I started Quake up one time. I remember thinking "What the fuck has Trent been smoking?"
Exile on the BBC B affected me the most. Scary AI, stunning graphics and impressively realistic physics. At the time it wowed and scared me trying to avoid the billion different ways to die, but now it gives inspiration when coding. Afterall, if they could do *that* in just 32k...
Oh and Elite on the B too, although I think the best I got to was Dangerous.
I swear to god, ATC on the Radio Shack TRS-80 shortened my life through sheer stress. I remember so many times feeling really horrible when there was a an impending mid-air collision. I wish someone would implement this game for Unix.
ron lussier / lenscraft / fine art giclee prints/ sausalito / ca
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
I've been playing home computer games pretty much since there were home computer games. I've skipped the really old stuff (defender etc.) because most of them are too obscure and tended to go by different names as they were cloned from platform to platform.
Anyway, in rough chronological order...
Repton Infinity - For being the first game with any complexity that was really modable. You could design graphics, levels, animations and even code.
Elite - For stealing not just weeks or months but years of my childhood.
1940 Their Finest Hour, The Battle Of Brittain - For endless playing, over and over, while making igniting a complete fascination in that period of history. I'd tried Falcon 1 through 3, FS4, F-15 Strike Eagle II but that was the first flight sim that really had everything just perfect for me.
Wing Commander - Despite it being a little over blown as a claim, it still was close enough to an interactive movie (compared to what was around) that it really did make you feel like a sci-fi movie star.
Gunship 2000 - For, to this day, being the only flight sim where you could control a whole diverse unit of choppers in much the same way as you can a diverse unit of troops in Ghost Recon.
Alone In The Dark - Primitive polygons now. But at the time, it was the scariest game ever. Especially when you first realised that there were some things you couldn't possibly kill, you just had to run. You weren't an indestructable hero, you were just plain scared.
Doom - For having an interface so simple that you were the game. It was the first game where your fingers just rested on a set of keys, never moving, yet you really felt like you were interacting. That was the genius of the game - you weren't playing it, you were it. That and introducing deathmatches (damn we killed a lot of early LANs) and [excluding Repton Infinity] mods.
No One Lives Forever - For, despite games like Thief trying to do it before, being the first game to really capture me and make me feel like I could play a game my own way, using stealth instead of insane violence. It was also funny as all hell.
Aliens Vs. Predator 2 - For unbelievable balancing. Every time you think you've found an invincible trick, some means of defeating it comes up.
Civ 3 - Because now I can totally understand why South East Asia is important, why Hitler went for Blitzkriegs, why Europe advanced in to industrialisation faster. It's taught me more than any game I've ever known. That and every quick session always turns in to four hours.
Ghost Recon - It finally did what the D-Day part of Medal Of Honor on high difficulty hinted at but then abandonned on later levels. You finally get a military sim where you're scared of getting shot because one shot is all it takes. Much like Gunship 2000, you finally get a good system for controlling multiple troops, which makes it possible to plan really advanced strategies, rather than just rush'n'shoot.
Planetside - OK, I'm biased, I work for SOE. Still, being one part of epic battles, being able to define my own roles (a lone stealth assassin amongst the maelstrom; a scout pilot; a sniper searching out perfect ridgeline positions), it's honestly been proving good enough for me to regularly find something new to just go "Wow!" over. Most of all though, it's the fun of the even more endless than AvP2 discussions over what makes for the perfect squad, the perfect tactics.
The first time I played this ungodly horrifying game, it was about 3am after a long night of substance abuse. My Sig Oth and I were in our living room with a PS2 hooked up, and we decided to plug in this horror, action/adventure survival game. When the first zombie reared its ugly head, I nearly had a heart attack.
What made it even worse, is after we had played for a while, we decided to go down to the Kwik-E-Mart for a squishee and some munchies, and when we exited our apartment building, the downtown streets were dead silent, with not another living being in sight... and a slight mist...
never before or since have I been so ready to bolt inside and barracade the doors. Just glad that I didn't hear radio static... I would have lost it entirely
The chains are broken
Loki is free
Ragnarok is at hand...
You might be interested in knowing that another FF-collection CD for playstation just came out - I believe it details the Japanese episodes 1-3 (could just be two of the three though), but with revamped graphics.
Currently I'm replaying my "FF Chronicles" CD, with FFIV (FF2 in USA, but with better translation, skills, and a few video cutscenes added).
For awhile, I lived the plots of FF2/FF3 (USA). The games were completely immersive, like having a great book but being able to dig into the plotline, and not being able to advance it without actually playing through.
I bought my PS2 for FFX, and it culminated the experience from my childhood. With full voice, awesome graphics, and cinematics, it's more a cross between a movie and book now. My only beef is the modifications for the USA version, why cut stuff out or change it???!!
I'm hoping FFXII can live up to my expectations (also hoping it will be available on PC, better graphics and I don't have to shell for yet another console).
In the meantime, has anyone ever considered trying to redevelop the old FF's into more modern graphics, perhaps with a 3d engine and cinematics? If somebody could come up with a short demo, I wonder if Square would be interested in furthing such a project.
Also, why couldn't somebody make a Open-Source RPG project of similar nature.
I'm not an expert, but I had developed a base 3D development engine (D3D) years back that would have been suitable for RPG's (less speedy rending needed, more cachable/fixed scenes). I'm sure there's somebody with better coding skills, and perhaps more time who could create a decent linux/GL engine and start an RPG.
... if the definition is 'wasted a semester of my education on it', I'd have to say Netrek or Civ would qualify.
Games like Civ and SimCity definitely affected my worldview though.
Still a very cool game and still very challenging! Dual-joysticks and smart bombs, what else do I have to say? 8)
Get yourself a HotRod joystick and the mame emulator and it'll be like you never left the 80's!