Passing the controller around the room playing God of War 3 on Wednesday nights.

Clutch team killing in Rainbow Six Siege. A rare occurrence but so much adrenaline.

Hillcrest in The Last of Us 2. Never have I had so much fun trapping and hunting people down. It really brings out the psycho killer energy.

I was probably 10 when my best friend (at the time) and I would play Super Contra on the NES for hours. We loved everything about it. We'd get as far as we could. We'd give each other lives. We could sing the soundtrack. When it was game over, we just restarted it.

Those days were simple and beautiful. I don't think another game could give me anything like that experience, since it wasn't really entirely about the game.

Flawlessly clearing Genichiro in Sekiro was deeply satisfying. Parry parry parry, dodge, mikiri counter. Don't think I got hit once.

Most recent one I can rememver was beating Tears of The Kingdom. I was SO invested in the final boss battle and I got really emotional. I was so immersed I was basically vocally taunting the boss for everything they had done. Only other time that happened was with Cyberpunk 2077 and only because of Edgerunners.

Then in the past (jesus has it really been more than 17 years??) the first time my buddy and I beat Halo 1 on Legendary after an all-nighter of gaming. That was awesome. Horrible smell in that room tho lmao.

Probably back on dota1 before matchmaking and meta and all that crap, you could play any hero in any role on any lane and everyone was mostly just having fun

When I beat Grim Fandango.

It was bitter-sweet, because you ::: spoiler have to leave one of your companions behind, him being a spirit of the land; while you ride off to the land of eternal rest with your new love interest spoiler :::

I think nfsu2, we got it for christmas and played it for 2 full days in a row.

But tbh i still remember my playlist (flyleaf - i'm so sick/ fully alive, hinder - wings of an angel, Marilyn Manson - the beautiful people, a perfect circle, Korn and a couple others) i used while playing wow for the first time when you could get to lvl30 within a certain trial period. Definitely been hooked for some time but never made it to lvl cap nor did i get sny good gear.

Skyrim gobbled up the most hours of any game.

But i think wow really offered the best escape of real life back then for me, which is my main drive for playing games.

Being able to do the right thing and actually getting rewarded for it is a thing that keeps me coming back to videk games.

Real life isn't really like that most of the time. It will drain you completely, eat all your good intentions and shit you out the other end completely drained and empty handed.

Vermintide 2 dlc where Saltzpyre gets a piglet as a hat. Best goddamn $5 I've ever spent on dlc. His little legs and his butt wiggle around when you move and ofc the purity seals are on point.

Also way back in DCUO when fire tank was busted AF I kept summoning fireballs that I would then Chuck into my buddy trying his best to actually complete whatever task we were doing.

Also Also max difficulty helldivers 2 against the robots on Mavelon Creek. It was a struggle to survive more than 10 seconds out of the drop pod and it was some of the funniest shit I've ever played.

Rank, taking out 2 full teams while my dead teammates watched and cheered. With health that even a sneezed would kill me.

My hands were shaking and my heart rate high AF, fucking diamond Apex.

There are too many. Completing Lode Runner on my C64. Playing the Oregon Trail as a kid and making silly names 'Tit face has died of dysentery'. The first time I played Sonic on my megadrive on Christmas day 1991. Playing Wonder Boy on my game gear for hours with my little bro. Crash Team Racing or FIFA tournaments (any FIFA after 16 is rubbish) on PS1 with my mates. Playing Echochrome on the PS3 on LSD. When the nuke exploded in Modern Warfare 2. Playing through Inside in one go in the dark by myself. Winning a PS5 in a raffle the day after my xbox1 died.

Don't know if it's the greatest joy, but I absolutely adore the sound effect in the original borderlands where you set a Crimson Lance person on fire and they scream before being disintegrated after their health depletes. Sounds horrible, but it's just a sound I think they did a really good job on.

Ace Combat 4 and 5 both made me feel awesome, then sad, then vengeful, and then awesome in their campaigns. They start as casual arcade styles, throw in some grief, grow the antagonists' justification, then the skies start speaking Latin and you systematically destroy some megabase. I was fairly young, so now sad Spanish guitar riffs cause me grief when thinking about Yellow 4 and 13. Is that joy? The memory of a fairly casual arcade game weaving in a heartfelt tragic war story?

At risk of making this my only personality trait, Far Cry 2's desert at night was a treat for me. I seek out similar experiences in real life now. It didn't necessarily create that desire, but it was my first open world game, if I remember correctly. It didn't make me jump for joy, it just made me feel serene.

I'm sure it was driven by the memes, but Portal 1 gave me a great sense of accomplishment. It was mild reaction skill with some decent logic puzzles. The build up, the turn, the fight, the final song. Quite a trip.

Overall most joy might go to Forza Horizon 1. First open world Forza title, first (for me?) open world racing game with decent driving mechanics, excellent variety of cars, hit me at my peak interest in house music and other EDM, showed me Colorado scenery I'd see IRL 10 years later, and the campaign was focused around the Woodstock of a [cars X EDM] festival. I wish that was real and I wish the scene would be respectful. But, unfortunately, you can't control 300 drivers and prevent them from one-upping each other and making it dangerous and disrespectful. And you gotta pay for parking everywhere nice. See: h2o, ocean city Maryland.

I don't know if that's count, but I spent one Summer almost every night playing on an almost dead private WoW-Server with my Brother and my best Friend. Since we were only 3 People and the Server was almost empty, it felt like we had the whole World for us. This was such a fun time back then......

Finishing the Easter egg at the end of origins in black ops 2 zombies after trying all night and seeing the special cut scene with my friends on Xbox 360 has to be up there as core gaming achievement.

I think my purest moment of gaming bliss was experiencing completely blind the last handful of worlds in Super Mario Odyssey while buzzed with a few whiskeys. God, my soul was in orbit with that experience. Pure, unfettered joy and whimsy through and through and cinematically epic when it wanted to be. I wouldn't call it the best game ever or even my favorite game ever, but god damn it, it struck me just right way at just the right time. It was something truly special.

More games I will cherish will certainly follow, and have followed. But for that specific set of vibes and circumstances, I don't know if I'll ever top that peak from playing a video game ever again.

Riding a snake in Getting Over It With Benett Foddy.

As a millennial, I'm probably not alone when I write Red Alert, Atlantis, Diablo and Fallout 2 on a computer without internet connection. Also endless demos from PC Gamer CDs.

The more unusual game I want to add is Warlords 3. Got it as a Christmas gift from my cousins boyfriend (he was maybe 20 years older than me). Probably because he wanted someone he could play shared screen PvP with. Spent a lot of time with that game. The same guy also gave me a pirate copy of Diablo. I should probably give him a call today and thank him.

Also playing Tibia on a 33k dial up connection was special. A very laggy and expensive experience. Always afraid that mom would just turn off the connection because she had to make a phone call. And the true horror I felt when I encountered another player or a new monster deep within an unexplored dungeon. I didn't like WoW when it came out. Probably because of emotional bluntedness that free PvP in combination with gear + xp loss causes.

And I'm still chasing the dragon.

Killing Malenia. Finally.

WoW probably holds the most cases of this for me.

World PvP was one front. Early on, just winning fights felt good. Then, as I got better, it felt more normal when it was an advantageous matchup for me. But the peak for me was during TBC, I was leveling my rogue and a hunter jumped me as I was mining. This was pretty much a worse case scenario, especially because the hunter was lvl 70 (max at the time) and I was still something like lvl 65. But even at the same level, a) a hunter is a natural counter for a rogue, and b) I was mining so I didn't even get the stealth advantage.

So there was a lot of dopamine when I ended up getting to finish mining that node and the hunter had to walk back to his corpse after I beat him anyways.

Also a lot of dopamine from finally beating raid bosses that my guild had been stuck on for a long time. Vael in BWL was the peak for that one IIRC.

Don't share this.

River of Sorrow in Metal Gear Solid 3. First regular then as "no kills" run. It's something that made me genuinely question everything while playing a video game. Everything.

Ejaculation?