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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.
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 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
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
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.
Talk about nearly peeing yourself.
MORTAR COMBAT!
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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
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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.
(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.
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!"
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.
Screenshot1 | Screenshot2
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?
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?
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.
Zork taught me never to wander about in the dark, period. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
make world, not war
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?"
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