For me it was definitely DOOM 2! Miles ahead of anything else I had played before.
Myst blew my mind as a kid, and World of Warcraft made me fall in love with PC gaming for life.
I’m gonna go with world of warcraft. The idea of a persistent online MMO was entirely new at the time (at least for me and most people I think) and it just blew me away that it was basically just a virtual world that was going 24/7, entirely 3D too. I got into mmos a bit after that and got really into ragnarok online which is now a fond memory for me.
Gonna date myself a bit, but the Original Descent and MechWarrior 2. The seemless use of a z-axis in a shooter was for some reason mind blowing, and the combination of resource balancing and evaluating pros/cons for how to approach a mission was amazing. TIMBERWOLF is the real Og.
The Secret World.
I loved the spooky Lovecraftian vibe and the stories.
The Siren Song is still stuck in my head.
Morrowind, by far. I still remember the sense of freedom and exploration I got
Also Morrowind. The systems of that game blew my young mind, and I was far too dumb to notice most of the jank.
Road Rash was the first game that made me love games then it was Need for Speed II I could replay those games for hours. nowadays the only game that gave me good replayability was Hades and live-service games like Valorant.
That’s a tough question! I would have to say it’s a toss up between MechWarrior 2 and the original Half Life. I spent so many hours customizing mechs and tearing stuff up. There was something magical about the first Half-Life game though. So good and led to so many mods that I played for such a long time (CS, TFC/2, DoD).
Has to be The Sims. I remember going into Toys R Us with my best friend and we each picked up copies of the base game with the Livin Large expansion (remember toy stores and when you had to go and pick up physical copies of games?!)
Say what you will about The Sims but it was my first real exposure to just how expansive, creative, and immersive games could be. The possibilities felt endless!
Probably Warcraft III
I did not grow up with a console. Pretty much just floppies with TLC games on them. My grandma introduced me to Sierra and Blizzard games, and they were exciting yeah but not mind blowing.
But then warcraft III (didn’t play Starcraft much at this time, was young) introduced the concept of custom maps to me. Basically going from having one game to dozens. Tower Defenses, RPGs, genres that basically either didn’t exist yet or don’t exist anymore (rip Enfos…and RP maps seriously wth)
It pretty much shaped my childhood, friends, and all that stuff. Really sad that SCII never really became what Warcraft III was to me.
Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the USA)
That game made me feel things in a way that no other game had made me feel before that. The deep emotional story telling in that game was leagues beyond anything I had played before it. I played it once a year for a while.
Porom and Palom hit me hard as a kid. FF4 was definitely a gateway into a life long enjoyment of deep RPG stories.
You spoony bard!
I was a console gamer until the late 00s so by the time I was on PC we’d already had our major mind blowing landmarks.
I guess Bioshock was one of those games of the late 00s that was gorgeous. one of the best looking games at the time and it had a story and setting that matched the visuals.
Sim City - I loved that on my Amiga and played it to death.
Also Secret of Monkey Island, first game that was fun and funny - opened my eyes.
Thief: The Dark Project is probably the first time I spent an entire game going “I didn’t know games could be like this!”
Dungeon keeper 1. Real time strategy and first person shooter at the same time. Its like playing strategy game with a view from the top and then you can switch to Minecraft mode, dig the walls, build things, fight enemies.
Deus Ex. I was 14, didn’t really play or like first person shooters and only played it because it was in the pile of old games someone essentially dropped off on me. But I understood rather quickly that this game was something special, especially with the player’s choices actually making a difference. I remember a moment when I was playing around with cheats and at one point spawned a Paul Denton next to his dead body in the lab under UNATCO just to be funny and when he started talking to me as if he hadn’t died, a quick online search revealed that I didn’t even know how deep your influence truly went.
I still don’t really like or play first person shooters, but that’s now mostly because Deus Ex has set my standards very, very high!
