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Logo uses joystick by liftarn
I don't know if it changed my life, but my god it was cathartic - Celeste. I've cried while listening to the soundtrack and I've cried while playing it. Like, actual sobbing. Having a positively-represented trans character in media, especially in a game as popular and highly-rated as Celeste, means so much to me.
Frontier: First Encounters (Elite3), (and Pioneer Space Sim (still playing)). -- Found my safe space via such game. I go out into space, for my safe space. Life changing.
Soul Calibur. -- I discovered it's like chess, and there are depths to excellence. And, I don't know how causal/influenced by it that I ended up basically looking like my fave character from it. LOL. Deep metaphors and synchronicities in it too. Life changing.
Diablo 2: Lord Of Destruction. -- Ate up a huge chunk of my life. [Eventually] Learned the empty dopamine addiction hole's to be avoided. Basically the game that stopped me being "a gamer" (as if I ever really were ~ was just a diablo2 addict). Found hanging out in the arcane sanctuary, the atmosphere, helped me sleep. n_n Life changing.
Minetest (now called "Luanti"). -- Designed my house in it. LOL. Life changing.
Undertale. That was the game that really changed my life. I never did complete the bad ending route because that game is my comfort game, and it made me want to be friends with the world. I was kind of a jerk in middle school and highschool, but Undertale, which I played in my Junior year made me feel so guilty about who I was being. I think it also saved me from going down the rightwing extremist pipeline because of how much it touched me. I thank Undertale for making my life better.
Deltarune also means so much to me.
Outer wilds hit that spot for me
Outer Wilds. Unfortunately I can't elaborate without spoiling it.
Disco Elysium
System Shock 2 - The only game to have truly scared me. This was one of the first games that I played when I switched to PC gaming since my HP Pavillion at the time couldn't play a lot of the newer games. The rest was history
Deus Ex - This game still informs much of my world view
Thief 1 and 2 - While SS2 scared me in absolute terms, Thief gave me a sense of dread and isolation coupled with amazing stealth mechanics
Skyrim - My gateway to RPGs
GTA 4 - SA was my introduction to the series and, while I enjoyed very much, 4 was just blew me away.
Planescape: Torment - The most beautifully crafted RPG ever
Fallout 2 - I'll be honest: I only played and beat the first two Fallouts just this year but, man, do I wish I played them sooner. FO2 in particular change my relationship with the series.
You should play Torment: Tides of Numinera too.
It was segmented so it wasn't really at the ending for battlefield one but the beginning that has fucked me up for a long time. The game opens to a black screen, utter silence, and a description prints out of how wide and brutal the first world world war was. The last text that appears on the screen was, "What you are about to experience is front line combat. You are not expected to survive."
What they were describing was that they didn't expect you to play one character and that you should be dying to respawn in a new section of the map with new features. This was the most accurate depiction of the war possible, even if it was just meant to describe the mechanics of the level. It went further! Every time you died they showed a real name of a real soldier that lost their life in the war and their birth and death date. Most of these ages are under the age of 24.
After the final death, it plays a cut scene where two soldiers are pointing rifles at each other and they both break down and chose not to kill each other....I believe all of this gameplay and the cut scene are being played off as a PTSD nightmare he's having while recovering in a hospital.....one of those 'stare at a blank wall and rethink how fucking good our lives are' moments. Also a deviation to the standard which is having a good guy-winner/bad guy-loser. They instead opted for the "we're all losing because of this" realization...I don't think we'll ever see anything like it again.
Half-Life 2. It brought me into PC gaming, as well as introducing me to Garry's Mod, a relatively simple sandbox tool for creativity, complete with a wide array of assets to use.
I also really appreciate its moody world design that doesn't often explain things directly to you.
I'm getting old so there have been a few.
Super Mario World (SNES) - my first video game and the reason I eventually wanted to learn about computers
Final Fantasy VIII - my parents accidentally bought this for me instead of VII that I asked for. It was not a good impact, it was during formative years of my life and I looked up to the broody/loner main character and tried to emulate him, but in real life that just made me act an asshole and be lonely
World of Warcraft - this was probably an addiction and took too much of my college life. Haven't played an MMO since I quit. Still reminisce about it.
SimCity 4 - forced me to think about systems, which I think indirectly shaped my career path
Kerbal Space Program - made orbital mechanics intuitive and made me interested in all things space
i remember wow was addiction to people in my HS, in the mid 2000s, im glad idnt play it. also it costs money so i never had interest. STARCRAFT/red alert CNC was pretty much got me more interested in space related topics(i did not pursue the field, because i wasnt really good with physics/high level math courses)
Braid.
The game itself is brilliant. The story and message within is heartfelt, heartbreaking, and un-apologetically autobiographical. Up until that point, I knew gaming was a good storytelling medium, but not for something this moving.
Theres one little paragraph from braid that really stuck with me.
Tap for spoiler
If we've learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn't we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?
Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou and Planescape Torment. I think both helped me think about death and reincarnation - what would it even mean to have a “soul”? Would it mean some sort of unbroken consciousness, or are we bits and pieces of different segmented ideas and thoughts loosely connected together?
World of Warcraft. I was really addicted to it for a few years but it really helped me get over a lot of the social anxiety issues that I had. I went from being really shy and barely interacting with other people in that game to being elected to take over a 60+ person guild by the time I was done with it. That confidence carried over into real life when I went back to school and began my career.
I actually found Lemmings to be a game that changed my life. I played it just before I became a professional programmer. Solving Lemmings puzzles is not exactly like programming, but it does teach you that there is a solution and if you just keep persistently trying different shit, you will eventually solve the problem. Also, it actually helps to be high as a kite all the time.
The first one - Planescape: Torment.
The second one (accidentally): Baldur's Gate 3.
Accidentally, because I fell in love with the characters so much that I started watching the actors' streams on Twitch and learned that I probably have ADHD.
Outer Wilds. A game that genuinely made me reflect on my place in the universe.
Cyberpunk 2077.
It's one thing to read a cyberpunk novel or watch a cyberpunk movie and "get" the moral of the story, which is usually "misuse of technology is bad".
But it's another thing to actually spend time in that world; to feel the effects of corporate corruption on your community, to experience the addiction to mind- and body-altering technologies, to watch loved ones - who you've spent hours looking directly in the eye and having conversations with - have their lives taken from them unfairly so that the richest person in the world can get 0.0001% richer.
I'd always been wary of techno-corpo bullshit. But that game instilled an all-new level of hatred in me; a hatred toward billionaires and megacorporations, toward oligarchs and aristocrats, toward those with the resources to change things for the better but too apathetic to stick their necks out.
Johnny Silverhand was right.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice stayed with me for quite a while. It's a walking simulator with some mild puzzles and fun combat, but the real experience is something I've never seen before. They really made the best of the medium to tell their story. Also there is a short documentary you should watch after finishing the game.
The first one that comes to mind is Ocarina of Time. I was 10 when it came out. I didn't know video games could do that. Been a huge Zelda fan ever since.
Also metal gear solid 2. I was 13 when that game came out, my brother and I rented a ps2 without a memory card. We were obsessed instantly. We left the ps2 on all weekend so we could beat it. I replayed it recently and it still holds up. Kojima is on another level.
Cyberpunk 2077. Only game that touched me that deep so far (though not many games I have played)
Cyberpunk is the only game in recent memory where I felt like I was not playing into my interpretation of who I wanted the character to be, but rather who I wanted to be as V. Games like Red Dead 2 let me drive the character's outcome and I definitely has an emotional response to Arthur's journey (one of my favorite games of all time), but it felt like the character's story. Cyberpunk did a stellar job at making it feel like my story.
The game introduced the "immersive" term to me, better than any dictionary ever could
I think about CP77 to this day. I sometimes even miss Johnny. He's with you the entire time and it's a really fascinating bond to experience as a player.
Yeah. He is lying, confused and manipulative (at least in the beginning), but I do miss him
Agreed. Thought about it for a while and I think that's the one that made me think the most.
Chrono Trigger
Dance Dance Revolution 3rd mix. It sounds stupid, I know, but hear me out. I really sucked at this game at first. My friends use to play every weekends at the arcade, so I really wanted to get better. So I really trained hard and became the best player in our group. People gattered around the arcade when I was playing. I was good enough for tournaments.
Now when I face something difficult, I'm confident I can overcome it if I really want to. I wasn't like that before. Thanks Konami.
Recently beat Portal (first one), for the first time. Please play if you haven't!!!
dark souls 1. wife passed in that year and i just rolled through it completely distracting myself from reality and it helped a ton.
RDR2 (PC)
"Madeline is gonna make us a pie with all the berries she collected"
Madeline is gonna jump off this mountain from embarassment after making a pie with two strawberries
Kingdom Hearts II.
There was something about that summer, and the way this game (especially through Twilight Town) delved into the theme of an "everlasting summer" ..it was a magical year. And that year of my life still resonates with me till today.
Plus, I thought Sora and gang to be so wholesome.
Kerbal Space Program changed how I understand space flight.
Factorio changed how I approach programming
Modding original Doom and GTA vice city taught me 2d and 3d graphics as well as hacking and programming.
Both Psychonauts games had this exact same dopamine release. I spent all of my time playing both as they both came out right around the time of a close family member dying and the games were my outlet for those emotions at the time. Very special games to me.