First Time a Game 'Wowed' You
- Thread starter SonOfMethuselah
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I've said it before plenty of times because it really did change my life. The whole introduction in Super Metroid, followed by the space station search, and then waking up the planet just blew me away. I skipped 3 days of school I became so fascinated with it, and it's what inspired me to make games myself. I want to create an amazing experience just like it. I still haven't seen a game with as great as intro as Super Metroid.
Getting a SNES was the best motherfucking birthday ever. Before that, I saved up for a Game Boy literally cent by bloody cent. Before that, still trapped in our corner of the third world, so poor we didnt even have a word for "gamer", me only barely aware of the existence of personal computers, there was still Golden Axe and Double Dragon to pour countless moneys into. (Srsly, I found a stash of foreign notes, and my first thought was "I wonder if the arcade guy accepts these...")
TL;DR I was gaming for a looooong time. But my tiny little mind was utterly BLOWN when I first tried my hand at Super Mario 64 and Wave Race. That was the moment I knew I would never ever grow out of this. EVER.
Runner up: Half-life The First. On top of all its well-known qualities, it was also the game that taught me the proper way to play an FPS, simply by having keyboard + mouselook as the default controls. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
TL;DR I was gaming for a looooong time. But my tiny little mind was utterly BLOWN when I first tried my hand at Super Mario 64 and Wave Race. That was the moment I knew I would never ever grow out of this. EVER.
Runner up: Half-life The First. On top of all its well-known qualities, it was also the game that taught me the proper way to play an FPS, simply by having keyboard + mouselook as the default controls. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
Well the first time a game "wowed" me was also the game that made gaming a hobby. It was my birthday, I was given an XboX and 2 games by my family and my Dad brought his projector to my Mum's house. The 2 games were Halo CE and Crash Bandicoot or Sonic Heroes. Anyway, I played Halo first, wasn't very good at it but once I got to the second level and stepped out of the escape pod and saw "Halo" across my entire wall with the projector it was like I was Master Chief, I felt amazing and Halo has been my favorite game ever since and I've been a heavy gamer sinse then. Many games have wowed me since (Spec Ops, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Dark Souls, Resident Evil 6, Far Cry Instincts, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and more) but none in the same way that Halo did.
Some point in Half-Life 2, likely during the first level. Even though I had been playing games for nearly a decade at that point, that was the first a game truly made an impact on me, propably thanks to it's amazing atmosphere. This being the first game that wowed me probably explains my undying love for it.
I haven't been the type that is impressed so easily but I think my moment is when I played Descent. Being able to shoot up baddies in a zero gravity environment with the ability to go any direction and orientation at will was pretty awesome.
There's also some small moments like in Outcast when your character says something different in the same conversation when playing the game a second time. Didn't think the devs would of went out of their way to do that but that's a sign of effort.
There's also some small moments like in Outcast when your character says something different in the same conversation when playing the game a second time. Didn't think the devs would of went out of their way to do that but that's a sign of effort.
While being exposed to video games my whole life, I don't think I really had a 'wow' moment until I first saw the level 'Crew Expendable' from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare around its release. Up until then, I never really knew that games could be so epic like that.
I think Legend of Dragoon was probably the first time I really felt drawn into a world and its characters.
Granted I'll admit that I was at an age where I hadn't really experience fantasy cliches.
A man trying to avenge his destroyed village and getting swept into a quest to fight the evil Empire while searching for his childhood friend/love-interest was breaking all sorts of new ground for me.
Granted I'll admit that I was at an age where I hadn't really experience fantasy cliches.
A man trying to avenge his destroyed village and getting swept into a quest to fight the evil Empire while searching for his childhood friend/love-interest was breaking all sorts of new ground for me.
Several moments come to mind if we're all being honest. There have been too many great games...
Getting to fight Mike Tyson on the NES was a major wow moment for me, and being knocked out with one punch of his was another.
SNES Super Mario World - the last fight with Bowser wowed me. I didn't think that the SNES could do that 3D-ish thing with the graphics.
The gore at the end of Bionic Commando on the SNES, and the graphics for the explosion at the end also. Definitely wow on the explosion because it looked awesome, but wow on the gore b/c I wasn't expecting it, yet it was used tastefully. One of the most satisfying endings for the challenge.
Street Fighter 1 after discovering that fireballs and etc were possible.
Street Fighter 2 after discovering that game at a carnival. I thought I was going to die and go to arcade heaven.
Ico - the whole experience. Not a fan of story driven games, but this game does it right.
Einhander - the amount of ships available to you, and the overall experience. I miss side scrolling shooters! We need way more than what's available now!
Discovering who Revan really is Knights of the Old Republic. That should be on everyone's list.
Urban Reign - the animation was so smooth and the combat was so gritty. It's the best brawler so far.
Bayonetta - the guns on her heels and the way she fires them. I passed up Devil May Cry, so Bayonetta was the 1st game I played with that kind of craziness. Loved every minute of it.
Zeno Clash Ultimate - the fact that it combined my favorite genre (brawlers) with gamings most commercially successful genre (First Person Shooters) and does it well, but it seems like no one cares about that game. That's two wows.
There are too many games for me to list with too many reasons to list them for. Great topic.
Getting to fight Mike Tyson on the NES was a major wow moment for me, and being knocked out with one punch of his was another.
SNES Super Mario World - the last fight with Bowser wowed me. I didn't think that the SNES could do that 3D-ish thing with the graphics.
The gore at the end of Bionic Commando on the SNES, and the graphics for the explosion at the end also. Definitely wow on the explosion because it looked awesome, but wow on the gore b/c I wasn't expecting it, yet it was used tastefully. One of the most satisfying endings for the challenge.
Street Fighter 1 after discovering that fireballs and etc were possible.
Street Fighter 2 after discovering that game at a carnival. I thought I was going to die and go to arcade heaven.
Ico - the whole experience. Not a fan of story driven games, but this game does it right.
Einhander - the amount of ships available to you, and the overall experience. I miss side scrolling shooters! We need way more than what's available now!
Discovering who Revan really is Knights of the Old Republic. That should be on everyone's list.
Urban Reign - the animation was so smooth and the combat was so gritty. It's the best brawler so far.
Bayonetta - the guns on her heels and the way she fires them. I passed up Devil May Cry, so Bayonetta was the 1st game I played with that kind of craziness. Loved every minute of it.
Zeno Clash Ultimate - the fact that it combined my favorite genre (brawlers) with gamings most commercially successful genre (First Person Shooters) and does it well, but it seems like no one cares about that game. That's two wows.
There are too many games for me to list with too many reasons to list them for. Great topic.
The first time playing Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.
Just the visual design of everything blew my fucking mind.
Just the visual design of everything blew my fucking mind.
Super Mario 64,
Granted, I was a wide-eyed four year old who'd never played a video game before, buuuut
ALSO granted, it was the moment that inspired me to become a game developer, something I still aspire to do.
Granted, I was a wide-eyed four year old who'd never played a video game before, buuuut
ALSO granted, it was the moment that inspired me to become a game developer, something I still aspire to do.
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Well, I don't remember the first time but I do remember the last time. The last time I was really wowed was a couple days ago when I finished burning all my toys in Little Inferno. Holy shit does that game have a powerful ending.
First game I could remember wowing me: I dunno, I guess a while ago when I played Star wars force unleashed and i was all like "OMG I can throw my lightsaber at this can and shoot out tons of lighting."
Latest game to do so: Farcry 3, Everything about the game.
Latest game to do so: Farcry 3, Everything about the game.
In other news: that trailer was the quickest escalating trailer that left me terrified and scarred.Worgen said:
Hmm ... see my avatar ..
<<<
Elite II: Frontier. I'd played the first one but never really though about it much. I was old enough to appreciate the incredible work David Braben had done by creating a galaxy that could replicate ours not just with four or five systems, or 50 or 60, or 500 or 600 ... but with, as far as I could see, INFINITE systems. That shit blew my mind. I remember jumping from Sol to Barnard's Star, and trading, and so on, just to see if I could reach the absolute limits of human expansion. Goddamn it took in-game months of travelling.
Once as a kind of weird little Moses homage, I took a ship with a few dozen tons of slaves (lol i love how we counted them in weight, nice and dehumanising), farming equipment, tools, medical supplies, live animals, weaponry, and did a forced 'misjump' (pirates could track your warp signature and calculate your destination point and jump after you, ambushing you when you arrive). Misjumps were a good way to get out of a sticky situation without anyone following you, but they were risky - you could burn out your jump drive rendering your ship an expensive paperweight, or capable of only intra-system or environmental flight. Anyway, my forced misjump did exactly what I'd planned - dumped me in an uninhabited system some 10,000 light years from the edge of human space and burnt out my jump system. There was a suitable planet for supporting life as well - so I flew down, landed on on of the northern continents, and established the Empire of Uzo by freeing my slaves (and keeping it a secret that I'd done it on purpose, of course).
I like to think that we would have been happy on our isolated little alien world a bazillion gazillion miles away.
<<<
Elite II: Frontier. I'd played the first one but never really though about it much. I was old enough to appreciate the incredible work David Braben had done by creating a galaxy that could replicate ours not just with four or five systems, or 50 or 60, or 500 or 600 ... but with, as far as I could see, INFINITE systems. That shit blew my mind. I remember jumping from Sol to Barnard's Star, and trading, and so on, just to see if I could reach the absolute limits of human expansion. Goddamn it took in-game months of travelling.
Once as a kind of weird little Moses homage, I took a ship with a few dozen tons of slaves (lol i love how we counted them in weight, nice and dehumanising), farming equipment, tools, medical supplies, live animals, weaponry, and did a forced 'misjump' (pirates could track your warp signature and calculate your destination point and jump after you, ambushing you when you arrive). Misjumps were a good way to get out of a sticky situation without anyone following you, but they were risky - you could burn out your jump drive rendering your ship an expensive paperweight, or capable of only intra-system or environmental flight. Anyway, my forced misjump did exactly what I'd planned - dumped me in an uninhabited system some 10,000 light years from the edge of human space and burnt out my jump system. There was a suitable planet for supporting life as well - so I flew down, landed on on of the northern continents, and established the Empire of Uzo by freeing my slaves (and keeping it a secret that I'd done it on purpose, of course).
I like to think that we would have been happy on our isolated little alien world a bazillion gazillion miles away.
Pretty much my words; the opening, followed by the sound of rain and despair, underlined by one of the best tracks in gaming history...Vuliev said:
I still play Diablo 2, almost 12 years after the release (got it day 1), and still consider it the best game possible.
2 and a half years later Metroid Prime blew me through the wall with its own way of endless perfection, landing on Tallon IV and the some seconds after was burned into my heart like only a few other things managed.
I can't quite differ which of these two is superior, but however, Diablo 2 was first.
There's a couple of experiences I've had with games that WOW'ed me.
SPACE HARRIER (1980s - arcade game - full motion seat setup)
Unbelievable. Expensive to play but a blast. Sega was the one to beat back then. The only thing missing was wind blowing in your face.
Wizball - C64 action game. You coloured the world and shots lots of abstract critters, with a flying cat and tons of upgrades. Brilliant sound, fun gfx. It was otherworldly.
Uridium - C64 action game. As smooth as any arcade game. Your main ship had the smoothest animation.
Sidewinder (Amiga version)
That game is the reason I bought an Amiga 500. The explosions won me over. Felt like going from pocket radio drama to cinema presentation of Star Wars. KABOOOOOOM!
Contra 3 on SNES, second level. I liked this game in general for its sheer creativity, but that Mode7 level blew my mind. Also loved the music too. For the same reason I enjoyed F-Zero on the SNES. Fast as hell, lots of multiplayer fun.
Doom - PC version. I was actually shocked when I pistoled and shotgunned some mutant folks away. It actually scared me, never mind the guys at the end of world 1. A milestone. In most levels you knew where you were just because of the creative level design too. LAN parties were the thing then.
Super Mario 64 - the first of its kind. It felt natural.
Bioshock - a new world that pushed my emotional buttons. Always freed the little girls too. Awesome.
Truecombat 1.1 (PC mod of Quake3) - I probably had my most intense multiplayer moments in that game, ever. Heart racing, actual fear, the works.
Half Life - endless fun and so much unique locations. Punishing soldier AI too.
There are quite a few more great moments I had in gaming, but this is enough for now.
SPACE HARRIER (1980s - arcade game - full motion seat setup)
Unbelievable. Expensive to play but a blast. Sega was the one to beat back then. The only thing missing was wind blowing in your face.
Wizball - C64 action game. You coloured the world and shots lots of abstract critters, with a flying cat and tons of upgrades. Brilliant sound, fun gfx. It was otherworldly.
Uridium - C64 action game. As smooth as any arcade game. Your main ship had the smoothest animation.
Sidewinder (Amiga version)
That game is the reason I bought an Amiga 500. The explosions won me over. Felt like going from pocket radio drama to cinema presentation of Star Wars. KABOOOOOOM!
Contra 3 on SNES, second level. I liked this game in general for its sheer creativity, but that Mode7 level blew my mind. Also loved the music too. For the same reason I enjoyed F-Zero on the SNES. Fast as hell, lots of multiplayer fun.
Doom - PC version. I was actually shocked when I pistoled and shotgunned some mutant folks away. It actually scared me, never mind the guys at the end of world 1. A milestone. In most levels you knew where you were just because of the creative level design too. LAN parties were the thing then.
Super Mario 64 - the first of its kind. It felt natural.
Bioshock - a new world that pushed my emotional buttons. Always freed the little girls too. Awesome.
Truecombat 1.1 (PC mod of Quake3) - I probably had my most intense multiplayer moments in that game, ever. Heart racing, actual fear, the works.
Half Life - endless fun and so much unique locations. Punishing soldier AI too.
There are quite a few more great moments I had in gaming, but this is enough for now.