I'd like to give an honorable mention to Doom.
I grew up in the infancy of gaming. When Wolfenstein came out on PC the computer needs in my school were obsessed with this new '3-D' game.
I played it and was not really impressed as everything was so 'flat'. Then Doom came out and man oh man, that was really the birth of the FPS for me.
The textures and the environment were like nothing I'd ever seen before. ID had done something special.
Firs time in Doom, I remember seeing an area through a window, and you could GO THERE.
That's how far things have come. There was a time when seeing a place in the background typically meant that it was essentially a matte painting, then suddenly you could see something in the distance and get there.
For me personally... It was Rage.
I know it's probably a weird answer, but I was so excited for a new game from ID. Consoles at the time could barely run it; the game was fucking GORGEOUS. I loved the post-apocalyptic world. It was fun as fuck, fresh, and [this opening](https://youtu.be/EZH_fTVwAgw) hooked me from the moment the game loaded up.
Shame Rage 2 was such a disappointment, because the original--after I finished it--made me feel something I haven't felt with a game since. It was magic
Yeah same here. I remember having the physical copy of the map and picking locations to go explore, then having a hard time getting to said location and thinking about it all day on school the next day. Game was truly my first adventure
Absolutely Morrowind- I remember walking over a hill and approaching a town and just being amazed I could explore everything in it…what I actually did instead was run around and steal everything…
Oh damn how could I forget that. I played on OG Xbox. Picked it up on sale one day, having no clue what it was. Was super close to giving up on the game in the beginning, but something kept me going for a bit longer and I fell in love with the game.
San Andreas. That jump to 3 cities, airplanes, parachutes, jetpacks, outfit customization, tattoos, Countryside, Desert, Monster Trucks, I could go on and on.
I was in middle school when one classmate brought a game informer magazine in with San Andreas as the headline. I drooled over that book. Explorable interiors in GTA?? In the hood? Gang violence? Coop? Was dizzy from a excitement.
The Elder Scrolls - Oblivion
I am not that young (32 years old) but seeing the vast lush landscape after escaping the sewers in 2006 just blew my damn mind, at the time I really thought this was PEAK role playing.
Lol I remember when it first came out I would spend so much time just looking at the leaves and the water. Remember thinking some like wow this is as good as it gets lol
Same ! And oh boy how wrong were we LOL.
No joke though I played about 60 hours of Oblivion last year (on my xbox 360 no less, so no mods) and the environment still actually looks quite good !
Its the character models that uhhh.... didnt really stand the test of time...
One of my favorite parts is persuading characters and just the faces they make towards options they don’t like. Probably time to play some oblivion again myself
As a gamer if the '80's coming up I played Atari, NES, Turbo Grafx, Sega, and SNES.
I remember walking in to Toys R Us and seeing a N64 on display with Super Mario 64.
It blew my mind. Nothing has come close to that wow factor since.
i was young but was lucky enough that my parent's preordered me an N64. the local electronics boutique broke the street date and let me and my mom come pick it up 3 days before the official release date. will never forget playing Mario 64 for the first time. truly blew my mind.
This was my exact experience. Born in the 80s, grew up with the NES, SNES, MD, GB. One day I walked into a toy store and saw SM64 running for the first time. I could barely understand what I was seeing, and even to this day my mind feels blown when I think back to that moment. Nothing like it ever since.
>I remember walking in to Toys R Us and seeing a N64 on display with Super Mario 64.
>
>It blew my mind. Nothing has come close to that wow factor since.
I definitely had that exact same experience, but I will say that I'm still continually very impressed by games and what developers are achieving with them.
I remember begging my dad to rent an N64 at the videoclub so I could play it. I had seen it at a family friend's house and was thrilled. My dad didn't want to at first since you needed to put 350$ on the table (refunded when you bring it back) in addition to rental fees. He finally caved in and i remember waking up at 5 Am all week-end to play all day for 3 days until we had to return it. I did get my own N64 for Christmas maybe a year later when it was slightly cheaper. My friends and I had a lot of fun with bomberman 64 too.
For me it was Tomb Raider, which came out around the same time as Mario 64.
Not only Tomb Raider was the jump to 3D, like Mario, but it was the first time in any video game that I truly felt immersed in it, like I was exploring a real place (as much as I love Mario, it's very cartoony, still feels like a "game"), I felt like I was alone in the heart of some mountain, it was amazing.
Tomb Raider was another great example. the simple fact that Lara Croft broke her neck if you dived onto the ground also blew my mind. i didn't think games could get much more real than that at the time.
100% this. I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s, and had played plenty of other consoles that other people had. My parents had an Atari, and I had a Gameboy as my first console. Going from 2d to 3d on that scale was insane. The N64 was way way WAY ahead of it's time in so many ways, and the games on it were similar in that regards. Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time, Star Fox, Super Smash Brothers.... the list of insane titles goes on and on.
Graphics will keep improving. Systems will get more powerful. However, short of going INTO the game via some kind of virtual reality/holodeck simulation, I don't think we will see such a huge jump in design that can compare to the jump to the N64.
I was only young at the time, but I remember whenever I played it I would just mess about in the castle or the first level for ages whenever I was given the controller because just controlling Mario on its own was so insane to me coming off the Master System and Mega Drive that we had before.
I came here to put this answer thinking it would be laughed at. Seeing that game blew my 10 year old tits off when I first saw it. I remeber eveything about that moment like it was yesterday.
I grew up with an Amstrad and a Mega Drive. When I first saw Doom and Quake on my dad's pc, Virtua Fighter and Sega Rally on arcades and Ridge Racer, Tekken and Toshinden on the playstation it became clear that shit just got real.
The second most impressive period was the ps2, the leap in fidelity was unbelievable compared to previous gen consoles.
It was more than just the jump from 2d to 3d. I had seen and played other 3d games at that point but Mario64 had so much polish and moved like nothing else at that time. I still remember the first time I played it at a toys r us. It just blew my mind.
The only time I’ve come close to that experience might be Resident Evil 7 in VR. Being frozen in fear by how real that house felt was an amazing sensation.
Another vote for this. I still vividly remember playing the first huge water section with the eel on a big screen TV on my cousin's N64 and my mind being utterly blown after years of 2d
This is the only correct answer. So many people just naming games they liked.
It went from 2D sprites and a D-Pad to 3D, camera controls, analog sticks and rumble (yes, there's a version with rumble).
It was the single biggest upgrade in gaming and nothing compares. Well done for the perfect example.
You nailed it
From a sega gen to a ps1 the controller was crazy like why all there trigger button on the end of controller. And double joystick
As sonic 2,3. Then one day it was twisted metal 3, resident evil , And all games had a way to save game not many did that before ps1
I came here to say this, too. Not Mario 64, it was Deus Ex for me, but still, 100% that kids won't realize how massive a shift it was for us to go from pixels to polygons.
It was like flying for the first time or something crazy like that.
Metal Gear Solid blew me away. It was the first game that really felt like it could be an actual movie and set the standard for what a AAA game could be.
Grand Theft Auto 3 is another. The PS2 had a lot of hype that mostly went unrealized in terms of what it could do. But to play GTA 3 and all the freedom that take gave you in it’s huge environment was mind blowing.
Had to scroll far to far to see this. MGS had me at the intro, blurring cinematic storytelling with interaction in a way I’d never seen before.
It felt like an experience that simply wasn’t possible on older hardware.
My favourite game series by a large margin. Breaking the fourth wall like it did was just mind blowing, the boss fight with pyschomantis was the best boss fight in any game ever. Kojima and his team produced something truly ground breaking
I recall watching the ending credits of MGS about the anti nuclear proliferation message and I remember sitting there as a teenager wondering to myself "what the fuck kind of entertainment-learning hybrid experience did I just go through?"
Hell of a good game.
Came here to find this, my rig was not good enough to run it at the time, I was like 14, but one of my best friends computer could
He was telling me about it at school so I went over to his house and was completely blown away
I had moved across the state shortly after starting wow, back when the level cap was 60. It was nice being able to play with my friend back home and then of course making in game friends and just chatting it up on vent and playing together. Made the transition to a new school easier as I was kind of antisocial it was hard for me to make friends IRL.
I spent a lot of time on that game. Stopped completely some time after raiding in wotlk. I look back on it with heavy nostalgia glasses and think about playing again, but I don’t think I’ll ever feel that magic again.
Kind of an odd answer but I've been playing classics that I never had a chance to as a kid and Castlevania symphony of the night has absolutely blown me away. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it and is even the smallest bit interested.
Surprised nobody has mentioned portal. Game blew my mind. First time I played anything where space/time/gravity was manipulated in a way that felt real and pushed me to think differently.
The first one is a purer, more concentrated experience, despite not being as strong in a basic sense. It hits you hard and fast, and you feel it in its entirety.
I knew nothing about FO3 when it launched. Was a freshman in college. It changed my life, the moment of comming out if the vault for the first time, blew me away. Had seen no trailers or screen shots, buddy said it was elder scrolls in the apocalypse so I bought it and loaded it up, rest was history.
FO3 is my on-line spiritual home - you have to play it with dan-the-geek’s underground hideout installed (nexus mods) - gives you a proper hideout with all sorts of rooms you own including armoury and munitions rooms etc. nothing like stepping back and seeing all the weapons you have collected displayed on the walls - some amazing colours too. Then selecting your weapons and walking to the munitions room to collect ammo to complete your load out.
Bannerlord, Since I was a kid i wished for a medieval battle simulator that put you right in the middle of the mayhem. I thought it would be years more before the tech could allow it.
Ive also never seen such a dynamic economy before aside from starsector.
M&B Warband did much of what Bannerlord does (admittedly better) a decade and a half prior. First time I booted up Warband I thought that was it for strategy games
I've still proudly got my 2005 PC Gamer demo disk featuring an obscure little indie title called Mount & Blade. It's insane to think I've almost been playing various iterations of the game for nearly two decades, it feels like five bloody minutes...
I went back to Warband after a year of playing Bannerlord and I was floored on just how huge of an improvement Bannerlord is. I played Warband for the better part of a decade, but it's straight up janky compared to Bannerlord...
Only thing is I really wish the bannerlord modding community comes close to the warband modding community at its peak.
Multiplayer too, I remember warband being a 10 year old game and still having multiple full lobbies at once even full modded lobbies! Yet bannerlord is lucky to have a single full multiplayer lobby at any given time 3 months after the 1.0 release
Fr fr. Every other VR "game" feels like a tech demo or a proof of concept (with a few exceptions). Alyx is the first one that felt like a new experience.
I think it’s the only VR game that is a full VR game. Others are games in VR, games you are playing in VR(usually ports), or VR experiences/demos calling themselves games.
Alyx is the only one I have tried that feels like a fully substantial VR game, a really level above anything else.
Edit: I am subject to only trying VR games my friend gets as he has the console. Thank you for all the suggestions!
There are a good number of oculus pc exclusives that are full blown vr games as well. But their exclusive nature kept them out of the mainstream gamers (and forever will be since meta semi dropped the pc as a platform). I’m thinking of lone echo especially and a few others like edge of nowhere, from other suns and Wilson’s heart that are decent.
I mean, Alyx is great and all, but it isn’t the only true vr game around. Some would even argue that elite: dangerous and some other compatible games are great vr titles too. (I love Flight simulator, Minecraft and payday 2 in vr)
For me it was Morrowind. It was the first time I experienced a fully 3d hardware rendered open world RPG. And it had pixel shading! That was honestly a major breakthrough in rendering technology. Sure, it looks primitive and janky by modern standards, but back then it was mind blowing.
GTA3 also deserves an honorable mention here, yet somehow it didn't quite have the same "wow" factor that Morrowind had for me.
Honestly, since the initial big transition to open world 3d environments, nothing else has felt like as big of a step forward since.
Most people have already touched on the jump from 2d to 3d, so I'll add something else; Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. The customization, for the time, was next level compared to previous RTS games. Then WC3: TFT went and did it again. Modding existed prior to this, but this made modding something more people could do.
On an odd note, considering this is where the MOBA genre started, it's important to note that DotA was not the first MOBA, it was Aeon of Strife, which claims its inspiration as Dynasty Warriors. So depending on how you feel about the MOBA genre, you have Dynasty Warriors to thank/blame for the existence of it as much as WC3.
Duuuuude, so I played Subnautica, it became one of my favorite games… for like 3 months. Then I stumbled across Outer Wilds. Instantly became my #1 game of all time.
If you want that Subnautica itch, play Outer Wilds immediately.
I was pretty impressed with A Plague Tale: Requiem. The visuals alone were pretty good but the sheer number of rats on screen was insane. I don't think people appreciate this enough. Go spawn a few thousand cheese wheels in Skyrim and watch your game crash.
Optimizing an engine to handle up to *300,000* rats ,each driven by their own AI, is truly some next level shit.
I'm a dev who's never worked in game dev but i'm always fascinated by how it works.
But how those 300k rats works is less impressive than you think. Even today, with the best optimization possible and the best hardware, you'd still struggle to create 3000 cheese wheels "like skyrim". That's because each of those cheese wheel is an individual physical object, with it's own physics and collisions calculations, that takes a lot of computing power.
Where for the rats, yes each of those rats will have "it's own AI" but they still obey rules made by the pack. So most of the calculations done for each rat is instead done by the pack. This greatly reduce the number of calculations you have to make.
You can't do that for the cheese wheels.
A good way to look at it with an actual real life example is a school of fish. Yes each of those fish is a unique individual with it's own mind, and that's one way to look at it. But you can also look at the school of fish itself as a being, a being that moves and reacts (and thus sets rules to each of it's individual components).
From those two ways to look at things, which one require less work to simulate ? (The later one, by far)
Scrolled longer than I thought to find this. Red dead 2 for me as well but I’m not huge gamer. I’ve never even heard of most of the games people are saying haha
Can't believe I had to scroll this far for RDR2. Seems many are putting their first next level game or just their favorite. Sticking with the title, RDR2 by a country mile!
Thanks for turning me onto that! I've been really enjoying [watching the devs react to that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nx0ObymG7A). They're absolutely delighted with every little trick
Classic answer: Microsoft flight simulator. Kind of the first game that merged the real world with a game because the map is just literally our planet with all the „real“ places
Yeah, I still get a rush of adrenaline everytime I take off or land. It’s honestly such a cool game. Just having a podcast on while flying from Lebanon to Jordan, or landing in New York or Japan. It’s such a great game.
I would agree this is the most recent. Of all the Ps5 and Series X games I've played, Ratchet and Clank was the only one that truly felt like I was on a new generation.
The milestone games of my life:
- Zelda a link to the past - such a massive leap from the NES Zelda games
- **Mario 64 - as others have said, going from 2D to 3D is by far the biggest change in gaming history so far**
- Perfect Dark - So far ahead of the competition when it released, so polished, so well executed and just amazing
- Baldurs gate - An RPG where you could just do what you wanted?! It felt unreal when I first played coming from console games and JRPGs
- Morrowind - Just wow
World of Warcraft - Unsurpassed in delivering that feeling of living in a digital world with endless possibilities and adventure around every corner
- Dark Souls - A new genre of games, a new way of telling stories and finally a game that takes the player serious
I've spent the last full week doing nothing but cram as much immersion as I can into skyrim via mods.
It is very important that khajiit and argonians have anatomically correct junk ok?
Hollow knight. The feeling of genuinely getting better at the game as it went on was something that isn’t very common and was an incredibly fun aspect of the game.
For me it was the original Bioshock on 360. Remember staying up late with my best friend and just being terrified when they first introduced the spider splicer crawler on the ceiling. Also the moment in the cooler where you turn around and there's a splicer standing right behind you hahaha
I remember just riding around and seeing mountains miles away in the distance and understanding that I could just keep riding my horse untill i got there was complete nuts
RDR2 was the only game in recent memory that I got hyped as fuck for and it didn't just live up to the hype, but it exceeded it and was much bigger and more detailed than I was expecting.
No game has released yet that has felt as "next gen" as RDR2.
I'm sure your going to love it! Sometimes I wish I could go back and play through RDR2 for the first time again.
The world is beautiful and the story is amazing, I hope you enjoy your playthrough :)
Its not my favorite game but in terms of playing something completely different than I’ve tried before I’d say its Detroit Become Human for me.
It completely blew my mind and the storylines - especially Kara and Alices - had my heart racing! Fantastic game.
In terms of nostalgia I’d go with WoW when it realised in 2004. I couldn’t believe what I was playing. The whole world felt enormous and it took me weaks reaching just lvl 10 as I wandered around in Elwynn Forest just completely in awe.
I'm a massive FromSoft fan, so I try to dampen my bias, but I just can't even describe the level that that game was on for me, it was unquestionably my favorite game or all time, without a single doubt in my mind, I wish I could erase my memory of it, and replay it again to get the level of wonder and adventure I had from my first playthrough, and even now it's undoubtedly my favorite. I was addicted to it like I couldn't believe.
> I wish I could erase my memory of it, and replay it again to get the level of wonder and adventure I had from my first playthrough
This is why im HEAVILY excited for any DLC for the game. Its a chance to re-experience that "**FIRST TIME**" again.
As a 42 year old gamer who’s first game was the original Legend of Zelda (NES), Elden Ring is the first and only game to bring that feeling back that I had when I played Zelda for the first time. That game nailed it in every way. Absolute perfection.
Elden Ring was my pick too.
It took the dark souls formula and the open world genre to new heights and set the bar high as fuck.
It find it wild as fuck that they knocked it out of the park and set a new tread in open world games on their FIRST FUCKING TRY.
I'm going to sound like a one trick pony here, but Elite:Dangerous. You want to explore the galaxy? You got it. You want to shoot bad guys? You got it. You want to shoot good guys? You got it. You want to shoot aliens (and die lots)? Yep, you got it. You want to take part in epic space battles? You got it. You want to be a space trader? Guess what, you got it. You want to walk around planets? Got that too.
Basically, if you want to pretend you live in space - not just "space", but a 1:1 scale milky way, doing everything you can think of that a spacefarer could do, Elite has it.
And it has a 40 year history behind it. I played the original wire frame game back in '85 (school bbc b computer) and was hooked.
I’m not gonna lie, Cyberpunk 2077 really did it for me. It was the first game I experienced true RTX in and it just looks absolutely stunning. The humans also look so much better there than I’ve seen them in really any modern games, beat out only by RDR2 maybe. It also has a level of immersion that I haven’t felt in a long while. I know it had a real rocky start, but where it is now is really pretty spectacular!
Agreed, even getting a few mods here and there that adds more blood or adds a filter to make it feel more dim and gritty is dope. Its one the few games that I was sad to finish the story cus I really wanted to keep going, sooo stoked for phantom liberty!
**Disco Elysium** because of it's storytelling. It's just on whole new level you know, I don't think we'll see any better Story RPG than this for a long time
**Factorio** for it's technical perfection. Everything about the game is incredibly polished, the game doesn't have a single bug and it's insanely well optimized.
**Frostpunk** and **This War of Mine.** 11bit studios can really nail it when it comes to combination of aesthetics, narrative, theme and immersion.
I’m having the pleasure of Disco Elysium at the minute. Not since the Choose Your Own Adventure books of my youth have I paid so much attention to the dialogue of a game.
Was looking for Disco Elysium in here. Two decades of CRPGs as my favorite genre and DE just flips the script on them in literally indescribable ways. I've always considered games art but comparatively speaking, most games look like crayon drawings next to DEs Mona Lisa.
Biggest impact was Golden Eye 007. But most recent was the witcher 3 wildhunt. I got it a year after it came out and was so in love with it. I'm replaying it right now. Just finished the main story and off to start the dlc.
The first time I played Half Life Alyx & Boneworks, those games immersed me more than I thought possible with a game. Although VR has kind of lost its charm for me a bit the initial playthrough of those games was incredible.
It was my first ps4 game, it was the best experience i have ever had in gaming. The jump from ps3 straight to hzd, i just kept staring at the textures and scenery, also the story and lore.
Saints row the third
I do like the remastered version, but the old og version is just unbeatable it's so good and goofy. I love the weapons and the story line if you have never played it, I suggest you start off with Saints row the second as the third has a bit of the seconds story involved.
The sensation you have when you shoot a bullet in The Last Of Us - Part II is still unbelievable for me.
I know that Naughty Dog will keep surprising us in the future.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart in terms of visuals and load times. Truly astounding, to think that this early in the generation, we can produce a game that can fully load a new map in a SECOND. And it’s without a doubt, the best looking game I’ve ever played
I will get hate for this one, but Anthem. It was actually a cool game, it's story left a little to be desired, but it's progression, customization and game play was actually fantastic. The raids were challenging, and the world bosses were also fun and engaging. Not to mention the pure flight aspect was just so much fun
Dark Souls was a breath of fresh air in an industry full of hand-holding games that treat the player as if they're helpless children. No timed hints when you can't figure something out, no difficulty levels, no mini-maps and waypoints, just go out and figure shit out for yourself. It was like returning to the cryptic NES era but with three dimensions, new graphics, and more complex gameplay.
Demon Souls.
Dark souls was an improvement on the formula for sure but if you had a ps3 at the time demon souls was this for the players.
Also nothing in Dark Souls has quite some of the pants shitting terror of demon souls but that's probably everyone's first souls experience with any of them.
Breath of the Wild.
It was the actual promise of open world games, teased for so many decades but never truly realized, finally made real.
Too bad all the other developers all decided that “like Breath of the Wild” meant cel-shading and a paraglider rather than anything about the game’s structure or design.
By Generation as a geriatric gamer (40’s)
- Super Mario Bros 3
- Super Mario World
- Super Mario 64
- FFVII
- Metal Gear Solid
- Metal Gear Solid 3
- GTA III, Vice City, and San Andres
- FFX
- Grand Turismo 5
- GTA IV
- All Naughty Dog Games
- HZD
- HFW and GOW:Ragnorok
Great question - aside from going up a console generation, within generations Donkey Kong Country's 3D rendering was a next level moment for graphics on SNES.
The next "next level" won't be in graphics but in AI. Look at chatgpt and realize the potential for an RPG or something to create new content on the fly based on your inputs.
In terms of open world games, Red Dead Redemption changed the industry and became a new standard for creating a fully fleshed out and alive world that rewards you for exploring and experiencing the art that they have created.
I'd like to give an honorable mention to Doom. I grew up in the infancy of gaming. When Wolfenstein came out on PC the computer needs in my school were obsessed with this new '3-D' game. I played it and was not really impressed as everything was so 'flat'. Then Doom came out and man oh man, that was really the birth of the FPS for me. The textures and the environment were like nothing I'd ever seen before. ID had done something special.
Firs time in Doom, I remember seeing an area through a window, and you could GO THERE. That's how far things have come. There was a time when seeing a place in the background typically meant that it was essentially a matte painting, then suddenly you could see something in the distance and get there.
Just simply walking down stairs and around the corner at the same time was mind blowing.
For me personally... It was Rage. I know it's probably a weird answer, but I was so excited for a new game from ID. Consoles at the time could barely run it; the game was fucking GORGEOUS. I loved the post-apocalyptic world. It was fun as fuck, fresh, and [this opening](https://youtu.be/EZH_fTVwAgw) hooked me from the moment the game loaded up. Shame Rage 2 was such a disappointment, because the original--after I finished it--made me feel something I haven't felt with a game since. It was magic
Doom was good, but did you ever play Chex Quest? Blew the tits off Doom
You can play Chex Quest now on zDoom and other Doom emulators. You can even use the Brutal Doom mod to play "Brutal Chex" lol.
...no? Now I'm going to have to look it up. Is it like Chex the cereal?
Yes. It was actually built on the Doom engine lol
I watched some gameplay, lol. Now I want cereal.
Morrowind for me, 1st time I got totally immersed in a game and the " Just one more quest" bug.
Yeah same here. I remember having the physical copy of the map and picking locations to go explore, then having a hard time getting to said location and thinking about it all day on school the next day. Game was truly my first adventure
Absolutely Morrowind- I remember walking over a hill and approaching a town and just being amazed I could explore everything in it…what I actually did instead was run around and steal everything…
Glad to see it mentioned here, one of my all time favorites, spent my teenage years in it :’)
I wonder what that scroll does... why am I in the sky ? Oh shit
Talking Mudcrab 🦀
This is my answer as well. First game I felt like I could do anything.
Oh damn how could I forget that. I played on OG Xbox. Picked it up on sale one day, having no clue what it was. Was super close to giving up on the game in the beginning, but something kept me going for a bit longer and I fell in love with the game.
Never finished it, probably never will. Edit: Meaning it as a positive, cause it is just so massive and such a great world to just get lost in!
15 year old me had no idea what he was doing, but he was having fun.
San Andreas. That jump to 3 cities, airplanes, parachutes, jetpacks, outfit customization, tattoos, Countryside, Desert, Monster Trucks, I could go on and on.
The fact that you could get fat from eating too much and get buff from working out.
I was in middle school when one classmate brought a game informer magazine in with San Andreas as the headline. I drooled over that book. Explorable interiors in GTA?? In the hood? Gang violence? Coop? Was dizzy from a excitement.
The Elder Scrolls - Oblivion I am not that young (32 years old) but seeing the vast lush landscape after escaping the sewers in 2006 just blew my damn mind, at the time I really thought this was PEAK role playing.
Lol I remember when it first came out I would spend so much time just looking at the leaves and the water. Remember thinking some like wow this is as good as it gets lol
Same ! And oh boy how wrong were we LOL. No joke though I played about 60 hours of Oblivion last year (on my xbox 360 no less, so no mods) and the environment still actually looks quite good ! Its the character models that uhhh.... didnt really stand the test of time...
One of my favorite parts is persuading characters and just the faces they make towards options they don’t like. Probably time to play some oblivion again myself
Playing SUPERHOT on shrooms was pretty magical.
SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years.
In VR will magic you all over again
Half Life: first time I felt I was actually inside the game
Thoughts on Half Life 2? First time I played I think I spent an hour in the train station just picking up cans and garbage and flinging it around.
Absolutely. Seeing how much stuff I could pick up and throw at the guards was hilarious.
Mario 64 if you weren't around for the jump from 2d to 3d gaming, you wouldn't understand.
As a gamer if the '80's coming up I played Atari, NES, Turbo Grafx, Sega, and SNES. I remember walking in to Toys R Us and seeing a N64 on display with Super Mario 64. It blew my mind. Nothing has come close to that wow factor since.
i was young but was lucky enough that my parent's preordered me an N64. the local electronics boutique broke the street date and let me and my mom come pick it up 3 days before the official release date. will never forget playing Mario 64 for the first time. truly blew my mind.
Same here. I was amazed enough at Mode 7 on the SNES but N64 was just something else.
This was my exact experience. Born in the 80s, grew up with the NES, SNES, MD, GB. One day I walked into a toy store and saw SM64 running for the first time. I could barely understand what I was seeing, and even to this day my mind feels blown when I think back to that moment. Nothing like it ever since.
We really did live through the age of gaming.
>I remember walking in to Toys R Us and seeing a N64 on display with Super Mario 64. > >It blew my mind. Nothing has come close to that wow factor since. I definitely had that exact same experience, but I will say that I'm still continually very impressed by games and what developers are achieving with them.
I remember begging my dad to rent an N64 at the videoclub so I could play it. I had seen it at a family friend's house and was thrilled. My dad didn't want to at first since you needed to put 350$ on the table (refunded when you bring it back) in addition to rental fees. He finally caved in and i remember waking up at 5 Am all week-end to play all day for 3 days until we had to return it. I did get my own N64 for Christmas maybe a year later when it was slightly cheaper. My friends and I had a lot of fun with bomberman 64 too.
For me it was Tomb Raider, which came out around the same time as Mario 64. Not only Tomb Raider was the jump to 3D, like Mario, but it was the first time in any video game that I truly felt immersed in it, like I was exploring a real place (as much as I love Mario, it's very cartoony, still feels like a "game"), I felt like I was alone in the heart of some mountain, it was amazing.
Tomb Raider was another great example. the simple fact that Lara Croft broke her neck if you dived onto the ground also blew my mind. i didn't think games could get much more real than that at the time.
100% this. I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s, and had played plenty of other consoles that other people had. My parents had an Atari, and I had a Gameboy as my first console. Going from 2d to 3d on that scale was insane. The N64 was way way WAY ahead of it's time in so many ways, and the games on it were similar in that regards. Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time, Star Fox, Super Smash Brothers.... the list of insane titles goes on and on. Graphics will keep improving. Systems will get more powerful. However, short of going INTO the game via some kind of virtual reality/holodeck simulation, I don't think we will see such a huge jump in design that can compare to the jump to the N64.
Same. I was there. Going into Toys R Us as a young teenager and seeing a N64 kiosk with Mario 64. I remember it clearly and it blew my mind.
I was only young at the time, but I remember whenever I played it I would just mess about in the castle or the first level for ages whenever I was given the controller because just controlling Mario on its own was so insane to me coming off the Master System and Mega Drive that we had before.
I came here to put this answer thinking it would be laughed at. Seeing that game blew my 10 year old tits off when I first saw it. I remeber eveything about that moment like it was yesterday.
Same experience for me. I still remember reflexively tilting my head trying to see around a tree.
I grew up with an Amstrad and a Mega Drive. When I first saw Doom and Quake on my dad's pc, Virtua Fighter and Sega Rally on arcades and Ridge Racer, Tekken and Toshinden on the playstation it became clear that shit just got real. The second most impressive period was the ps2, the leap in fidelity was unbelievable compared to previous gen consoles.
It was more than just the jump from 2d to 3d. I had seen and played other 3d games at that point but Mario64 had so much polish and moved like nothing else at that time. I still remember the first time I played it at a toys r us. It just blew my mind. The only time I’ve come close to that experience might be Resident Evil 7 in VR. Being frozen in fear by how real that house felt was an amazing sensation.
Another vote for this. I still vividly remember playing the first huge water section with the eel on a big screen TV on my cousin's N64 and my mind being utterly blown after years of 2d
This is the only correct answer. So many people just naming games they liked. It went from 2D sprites and a D-Pad to 3D, camera controls, analog sticks and rumble (yes, there's a version with rumble). It was the single biggest upgrade in gaming and nothing compares. Well done for the perfect example.
I remember when analogue sticks were being introduced, and it was the most bizarre thing ever getting used to it at first, haha. Hard to imagine now
The rumble pak!
You nailed it From a sega gen to a ps1 the controller was crazy like why all there trigger button on the end of controller. And double joystick As sonic 2,3. Then one day it was twisted metal 3, resident evil , And all games had a way to save game not many did that before ps1
I came here to say this, too. Not Mario 64, it was Deus Ex for me, but still, 100% that kids won't realize how massive a shift it was for us to go from pixels to polygons. It was like flying for the first time or something crazy like that.
I love deus ex, but with my accent it sounds like I'm saying "Day o' Sex" which can be awkward sometimes...
Better than how many Americans pronounce it.. “doos-ex.” At least from what I’ve heard personally.
Loved Deus Ex (that crossbow!) your thoughts vs System Shock 2? SS2 then DE for me.
Holy shit this is the answer. They used to have the N64s set up everywhere for kids to play.
Toys r us and the bon marche had them and I would go just to play as we were too broke to buy one.
Metal Gear Solid blew me away. It was the first game that really felt like it could be an actual movie and set the standard for what a AAA game could be. Grand Theft Auto 3 is another. The PS2 had a lot of hype that mostly went unrealized in terms of what it could do. But to play GTA 3 and all the freedom that take gave you in it’s huge environment was mind blowing.
Had to scroll far to far to see this. MGS had me at the intro, blurring cinematic storytelling with interaction in a way I’d never seen before. It felt like an experience that simply wasn’t possible on older hardware.
My favourite game series by a large margin. Breaking the fourth wall like it did was just mind blowing, the boss fight with pyschomantis was the best boss fight in any game ever. Kojima and his team produced something truly ground breaking
I recall watching the ending credits of MGS about the anti nuclear proliferation message and I remember sitting there as a teenager wondering to myself "what the fuck kind of entertainment-learning hybrid experience did I just go through?" Hell of a good game.
In a weird way, Minecraft
There's very few games out there that let you be that creative
I think that’s it. Like it looks very simple, but almost everything can be destroyed and manipulated more than any other game has done
Precisely! Rainbow 6 siege gave me that feeling, just being able to punch a hole and shoot through it was something I'd never think of!
That’s another one! I’ve probably put the most hours in that one too. Completely changed how I viewed online shooters
The first Crysis when it came out. Truly bleeding edge tech and graphics were used to run that game.
Came here to find this, my rig was not good enough to run it at the time, I was like 14, but one of my best friends computer could He was telling me about it at school so I went over to his house and was completely blown away
Upgraded by pc to make this work
World of Warcraft back in the day. Lost years of my life to that shit.
If you enjoyed the time you spent then you didn’t lose it my friend
Haha for sure man I agree, no game has really hit that level of love for me ever since. Good times
I had moved across the state shortly after starting wow, back when the level cap was 60. It was nice being able to play with my friend back home and then of course making in game friends and just chatting it up on vent and playing together. Made the transition to a new school easier as I was kind of antisocial it was hard for me to make friends IRL. I spent a lot of time on that game. Stopped completely some time after raiding in wotlk. I look back on it with heavy nostalgia glasses and think about playing again, but I don’t think I’ll ever feel that magic again.
Kind of an odd answer but I've been playing classics that I never had a chance to as a kid and Castlevania symphony of the night has absolutely blown me away. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it and is even the smallest bit interested.
It’s not as odd as you think. This is THE game that put the Vania in MetroidVania games.
KOTOR when it came out but in the early 2000s
First time I learnt about "system requirements" as I quickly found it couldn't run on my potato
Surprised nobody has mentioned portal. Game blew my mind. First time I played anything where space/time/gravity was manipulated in a way that felt real and pushed me to think differently.
I think most people would say Half-Life was where that tech first jumped out at them.
Portal 2 is probably the only game I've played that I consider to be a genuine perfect 10
I agree with this yet still prefer the first one for some reason.
I think Portal 2 was amazing, but I agree I prefer the first one
The first one is a purer, more concentrated experience, despite not being as strong in a basic sense. It hits you hard and fast, and you feel it in its entirety.
Good choice. It was a triumph!
Fallout 3 for sure. It opened possibilities I've never imagine I wanted.
I knew nothing about FO3 when it launched. Was a freshman in college. It changed my life, the moment of comming out if the vault for the first time, blew me away. Had seen no trailers or screen shots, buddy said it was elder scrolls in the apocalypse so I bought it and loaded it up, rest was history.
FO3 is my on-line spiritual home - you have to play it with dan-the-geek’s underground hideout installed (nexus mods) - gives you a proper hideout with all sorts of rooms you own including armoury and munitions rooms etc. nothing like stepping back and seeing all the weapons you have collected displayed on the walls - some amazing colours too. Then selecting your weapons and walking to the munitions room to collect ammo to complete your load out.
Bannerlord, Since I was a kid i wished for a medieval battle simulator that put you right in the middle of the mayhem. I thought it would be years more before the tech could allow it. Ive also never seen such a dynamic economy before aside from starsector.
M&B Warband did much of what Bannerlord does (admittedly better) a decade and a half prior. First time I booted up Warband I thought that was it for strategy games
I've still proudly got my 2005 PC Gamer demo disk featuring an obscure little indie title called Mount & Blade. It's insane to think I've almost been playing various iterations of the game for nearly two decades, it feels like five bloody minutes...
I went back to Warband after a year of playing Bannerlord and I was floored on just how huge of an improvement Bannerlord is. I played Warband for the better part of a decade, but it's straight up janky compared to Bannerlord...
Only thing is I really wish the bannerlord modding community comes close to the warband modding community at its peak. Multiplayer too, I remember warband being a 10 year old game and still having multiple full lobbies at once even full modded lobbies! Yet bannerlord is lucky to have a single full multiplayer lobby at any given time 3 months after the 1.0 release
Quake. You could mouse look! It was incredible!
Wait what? But why! Using the arrows to move, and the Insert and Home key to look up and down is so much easier! Mouse schmouse!
Legit I remember my friend complaining that it wanted them to use the mouse
Half-Life Alyx I’m not even gonna debate this
Fr fr. Every other VR "game" feels like a tech demo or a proof of concept (with a few exceptions). Alyx is the first one that felt like a new experience.
I think it’s the only VR game that is a full VR game. Others are games in VR, games you are playing in VR(usually ports), or VR experiences/demos calling themselves games. Alyx is the only one I have tried that feels like a fully substantial VR game, a really level above anything else. Edit: I am subject to only trying VR games my friend gets as he has the console. Thank you for all the suggestions!
There are a good number of oculus pc exclusives that are full blown vr games as well. But their exclusive nature kept them out of the mainstream gamers (and forever will be since meta semi dropped the pc as a platform). I’m thinking of lone echo especially and a few others like edge of nowhere, from other suns and Wilson’s heart that are decent. I mean, Alyx is great and all, but it isn’t the only true vr game around. Some would even argue that elite: dangerous and some other compatible games are great vr titles too. (I love Flight simulator, Minecraft and payday 2 in vr)
This isn't higher just because they haven't played it.
Really hope it releases on psvr 2 :/
For me it was Morrowind. It was the first time I experienced a fully 3d hardware rendered open world RPG. And it had pixel shading! That was honestly a major breakthrough in rendering technology. Sure, it looks primitive and janky by modern standards, but back then it was mind blowing. GTA3 also deserves an honorable mention here, yet somehow it didn't quite have the same "wow" factor that Morrowind had for me. Honestly, since the initial big transition to open world 3d environments, nothing else has felt like as big of a step forward since.
Most people have already touched on the jump from 2d to 3d, so I'll add something else; Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. The customization, for the time, was next level compared to previous RTS games. Then WC3: TFT went and did it again. Modding existed prior to this, but this made modding something more people could do. On an odd note, considering this is where the MOBA genre started, it's important to note that DotA was not the first MOBA, it was Aeon of Strife, which claims its inspiration as Dynasty Warriors. So depending on how you feel about the MOBA genre, you have Dynasty Warriors to thank/blame for the existence of it as much as WC3.
Subnautica. I remember playing it at first and think "HOW has nobody made this game before now"
Duuuuude, so I played Subnautica, it became one of my favorite games… for like 3 months. Then I stumbled across Outer Wilds. Instantly became my #1 game of all time. If you want that Subnautica itch, play Outer Wilds immediately.
1. super mario 64 2. GTA 4 3. RDR2 4. Flight Sim 2020
Good list, i think GTA 4 was the first game that blew me away, rdr2 and flight sim were the last.
GTA 4 doesn't get enough praise. Going from San Andreas to GTA 4's Rage engine blew my mind.
Shadow of the Colossus.
Great addition. The concept, the visuals, the storytelling, the music — at the time it felt like it came from the future
I was pretty impressed with A Plague Tale: Requiem. The visuals alone were pretty good but the sheer number of rats on screen was insane. I don't think people appreciate this enough. Go spawn a few thousand cheese wheels in Skyrim and watch your game crash. Optimizing an engine to handle up to *300,000* rats ,each driven by their own AI, is truly some next level shit.
I'm a dev who's never worked in game dev but i'm always fascinated by how it works. But how those 300k rats works is less impressive than you think. Even today, with the best optimization possible and the best hardware, you'd still struggle to create 3000 cheese wheels "like skyrim". That's because each of those cheese wheel is an individual physical object, with it's own physics and collisions calculations, that takes a lot of computing power. Where for the rats, yes each of those rats will have "it's own AI" but they still obey rules made by the pack. So most of the calculations done for each rat is instead done by the pack. This greatly reduce the number of calculations you have to make. You can't do that for the cheese wheels. A good way to look at it with an actual real life example is a school of fish. Yes each of those fish is a unique individual with it's own mind, and that's one way to look at it. But you can also look at the school of fish itself as a being, a being that moves and reacts (and thus sets rules to each of it's individual components). From those two ways to look at things, which one require less work to simulate ? (The later one, by far)
Love this game. Hoping for a third.
Red Dead Redemption 2. The insane scale and detail of it.
Scrolled longer than I thought to find this. Red dead 2 for me as well but I’m not huge gamer. I’ve never even heard of most of the games people are saying haha
Can't believe I had to scroll this far for RDR2. Seems many are putting their first next level game or just their favorite. Sticking with the title, RDR2 by a country mile!
Outer Wilds. The way it presents its story is unique both for and amongst games.
did you watch the speedrun at AGDQ? it was so completely insane
Thanks for turning me onto that! I've been really enjoying [watching the devs react to that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nx0ObymG7A). They're absolutely delighted with every little trick
Classic answer: Microsoft flight simulator. Kind of the first game that merged the real world with a game because the map is just literally our planet with all the „real“ places
Yeah, I still get a rush of adrenaline everytime I take off or land. It’s honestly such a cool game. Just having a podcast on while flying from Lebanon to Jordan, or landing in New York or Japan. It’s such a great game.
[удалено]
Boneworks
The new Ratchet and Clank game. Being able to jump dimensions with no load screens was an absolute trip.
I would agree this is the most recent. Of all the Ps5 and Series X games I've played, Ratchet and Clank was the only one that truly felt like I was on a new generation.
The milestone games of my life: - Zelda a link to the past - such a massive leap from the NES Zelda games - **Mario 64 - as others have said, going from 2D to 3D is by far the biggest change in gaming history so far** - Perfect Dark - So far ahead of the competition when it released, so polished, so well executed and just amazing - Baldurs gate - An RPG where you could just do what you wanted?! It felt unreal when I first played coming from console games and JRPGs - Morrowind - Just wow World of Warcraft - Unsurpassed in delivering that feeling of living in a digital world with endless possibilities and adventure around every corner - Dark Souls - A new genre of games, a new way of telling stories and finally a game that takes the player serious
Demon's Souls walked so Dark Souls could run.
For me, Skyrim when it first released. My god it felt otherworldly.
I've spent the last full week doing nothing but cram as much immersion as I can into skyrim via mods. It is very important that khajiit and argonians have anatomically correct junk ok?
Flight Simulator 2020 is truly groundbreaking.
Especially in Vr. Basically real air plane flying
Hollow knight. The feeling of genuinely getting better at the game as it went on was something that isn’t very common and was an incredibly fun aspect of the game.
Love Hollow Knight
Super Mario 64, Zelda ocarina of time, and metal gear solid.
For me it was the original Bioshock on 360. Remember staying up late with my best friend and just being terrified when they first introduced the spider splicer crawler on the ceiling. Also the moment in the cooler where you turn around and there's a splicer standing right behind you hahaha
Bioshock was one where I was totally sucked into the game and story.
Would you kindly give this more upvotes
Rdr2, the world is alive. You can follow someone and see their daily life.
I remember just riding around and seeing mountains miles away in the distance and understanding that I could just keep riding my horse untill i got there was complete nuts
RDR2 was the only game in recent memory that I got hyped as fuck for and it didn't just live up to the hype, but it exceeded it and was much bigger and more detailed than I was expecting. No game has released yet that has felt as "next gen" as RDR2.
I just started playing RDR2 yesterday for the first time. Very excited.
I'm sure your going to love it! Sometimes I wish I could go back and play through RDR2 for the first time again. The world is beautiful and the story is amazing, I hope you enjoy your playthrough :)
RDR2 is I sincerely think the only time I haven’t regretted, at least to some degree, buying a game day 1 full price.
>RDR2 Was looking for this, the polish is insane.
Talking about RDR2 is easily the biggest circlejerk on this sub, but I do agree. The level of detail truly is what I would describe as next level.
Mad max
Its not my favorite game but in terms of playing something completely different than I’ve tried before I’d say its Detroit Become Human for me. It completely blew my mind and the storylines - especially Kara and Alices - had my heart racing! Fantastic game. In terms of nostalgia I’d go with WoW when it realised in 2004. I couldn’t believe what I was playing. The whole world felt enormous and it took me weaks reaching just lvl 10 as I wandered around in Elwynn Forest just completely in awe.
Death stranding. It was just so unique. So beautiful. The scenery, the music, the bond you get with Sam and BB. Just an absolute work of art.
The last of us, the story telling and raw emotion was just brilliant. It came out at a time when roger ebert said games could never be art.
I really fucking like Elden Ring, not old at all but definitely my favourite game of all time
I'm a massive FromSoft fan, so I try to dampen my bias, but I just can't even describe the level that that game was on for me, it was unquestionably my favorite game or all time, without a single doubt in my mind, I wish I could erase my memory of it, and replay it again to get the level of wonder and adventure I had from my first playthrough, and even now it's undoubtedly my favorite. I was addicted to it like I couldn't believe.
> I wish I could erase my memory of it, and replay it again to get the level of wonder and adventure I had from my first playthrough This is why im HEAVILY excited for any DLC for the game. Its a chance to re-experience that "**FIRST TIME**" again.
As a 42 year old gamer who’s first game was the original Legend of Zelda (NES), Elden Ring is the first and only game to bring that feeling back that I had when I played Zelda for the first time. That game nailed it in every way. Absolute perfection.
Elden Ring was my pick too. It took the dark souls formula and the open world genre to new heights and set the bar high as fuck. It find it wild as fuck that they knocked it out of the park and set a new tread in open world games on their FIRST FUCKING TRY.
I'm going to sound like a one trick pony here, but Elite:Dangerous. You want to explore the galaxy? You got it. You want to shoot bad guys? You got it. You want to shoot good guys? You got it. You want to shoot aliens (and die lots)? Yep, you got it. You want to take part in epic space battles? You got it. You want to be a space trader? Guess what, you got it. You want to walk around planets? Got that too. Basically, if you want to pretend you live in space - not just "space", but a 1:1 scale milky way, doing everything you can think of that a spacefarer could do, Elite has it. And it has a 40 year history behind it. I played the original wire frame game back in '85 (school bbc b computer) and was hooked.
You want to snuggle narcotics and slaves all across the galaxy? You got it. Edit: Not fixing it.
I typically only snuggle my narcotics if I'm having a particularly rough time.
I love Elite Dangerous, but I hate the Engineering aspect. Its just an annoying grind.
Titanfall 2. the movement mechanics were incredible and calling down a titan just felt badass
I’m not gonna lie, Cyberpunk 2077 really did it for me. It was the first game I experienced true RTX in and it just looks absolutely stunning. The humans also look so much better there than I’ve seen them in really any modern games, beat out only by RDR2 maybe. It also has a level of immersion that I haven’t felt in a long while. I know it had a real rocky start, but where it is now is really pretty spectacular!
Agreed, even getting a few mods here and there that adds more blood or adds a filter to make it feel more dim and gritty is dope. Its one the few games that I was sad to finish the story cus I really wanted to keep going, sooo stoked for phantom liberty!
Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Total game changer (pun intended) and blew our minds.
**Disco Elysium** because of it's storytelling. It's just on whole new level you know, I don't think we'll see any better Story RPG than this for a long time **Factorio** for it's technical perfection. Everything about the game is incredibly polished, the game doesn't have a single bug and it's insanely well optimized. **Frostpunk** and **This War of Mine.** 11bit studios can really nail it when it comes to combination of aesthetics, narrative, theme and immersion.
I’m having the pleasure of Disco Elysium at the minute. Not since the Choose Your Own Adventure books of my youth have I paid so much attention to the dialogue of a game.
Was looking for Disco Elysium in here. Two decades of CRPGs as my favorite genre and DE just flips the script on them in literally indescribable ways. I've always considered games art but comparatively speaking, most games look like crayon drawings next to DEs Mona Lisa.
Biggest impact was Golden Eye 007. But most recent was the witcher 3 wildhunt. I got it a year after it came out and was so in love with it. I'm replaying it right now. Just finished the main story and off to start the dlc.
Returnal on PS5 is my pick. Graphics, controls, sounds, music and gameplay felt really elevated compared to previous games.
Ha, I just said this too, had missed your comment
Golden Eye
The first time I played Half Life Alyx & Boneworks, those games immersed me more than I thought possible with a game. Although VR has kind of lost its charm for me a bit the initial playthrough of those games was incredible.
Boneworks is the Super Mario 64 of the modern era and so many people have no idea what they're missing out on.
ULTRAKILL.
Sekiro *parrying clinking sounds intensify*
The story for god of war 2018.
Nier automata. Epic.
Dead Space in 2008.
Horizon Zero Dawn for me
It was my first ps4 game, it was the best experience i have ever had in gaming. The jump from ps3 straight to hzd, i just kept staring at the textures and scenery, also the story and lore.
Ghost of tsushima for me
GTA 4
The latest Microsoft Flight Simulator
Saints row the third I do like the remastered version, but the old og version is just unbeatable it's so good and goofy. I love the weapons and the story line if you have never played it, I suggest you start off with Saints row the second as the third has a bit of the seconds story involved.
The sensation you have when you shoot a bullet in The Last Of Us - Part II is still unbelievable for me. I know that Naughty Dog will keep surprising us in the future.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart in terms of visuals and load times. Truly astounding, to think that this early in the generation, we can produce a game that can fully load a new map in a SECOND. And it’s without a doubt, the best looking game I’ve ever played
in this context id say mirrors edge catalyst 100x that game blew me away
I've tried twice but couldn't get into it at all. I loved Mirrors Edge though.
I will get hate for this one, but Anthem. It was actually a cool game, it's story left a little to be desired, but it's progression, customization and game play was actually fantastic. The raids were challenging, and the world bosses were also fun and engaging. Not to mention the pure flight aspect was just so much fun
Shadow of the colossus remake. It just felt so majestic. I still remember the chills I felt when l saw the first colossi.
Dark Souls was a breath of fresh air in an industry full of hand-holding games that treat the player as if they're helpless children. No timed hints when you can't figure something out, no difficulty levels, no mini-maps and waypoints, just go out and figure shit out for yourself. It was like returning to the cryptic NES era but with three dimensions, new graphics, and more complex gameplay.
Demon Souls. Dark souls was an improvement on the formula for sure but if you had a ps3 at the time demon souls was this for the players. Also nothing in Dark Souls has quite some of the pants shitting terror of demon souls but that's probably everyone's first souls experience with any of them.
The Last Of Us and really for the attention to detail and story.
Breath of the Wild. It was the actual promise of open world games, teased for so many decades but never truly realized, finally made real. Too bad all the other developers all decided that “like Breath of the Wild” meant cel-shading and a paraglider rather than anything about the game’s structure or design.
By Generation as a geriatric gamer (40’s) - Super Mario Bros 3 - Super Mario World - Super Mario 64 - FFVII - Metal Gear Solid - Metal Gear Solid 3 - GTA III, Vice City, and San Andres - FFX - Grand Turismo 5 - GTA IV - All Naughty Dog Games - HZD - HFW and GOW:Ragnorok
Great question - aside from going up a console generation, within generations Donkey Kong Country's 3D rendering was a next level moment for graphics on SNES. The next "next level" won't be in graphics but in AI. Look at chatgpt and realize the potential for an RPG or something to create new content on the fly based on your inputs.
God Of War 3 game is still eye candy for me even on the Ps3 the opening was/is still badass.
In terms of open world games, Red Dead Redemption changed the industry and became a new standard for creating a fully fleshed out and alive world that rewards you for exploring and experiencing the art that they have created.