The Five games that define you as a gamer

[Panorama]

Doom 1 & 2
Probably the first series of games i played, got me to the love i have of FPS's.

Oblivion
The first series that stole huge amounts of my time nearly failed my GCSE'S because of this and my lack of will power, got me into the Fallout series as well. Found i really like RPG's.

C&C RA2
The best and still my favourite in the whole of the C&C family. i have loved all of C&C minus Tiberian Twilight which is the only one i have no played to the end. I really disliked that there is more then one type of MCV, which limited my type of troops.

Crash Badnicott
This applies to all of them that were on the ps1 and ps2, loved them all and it was just much fun. my favourite as far as platformers goes.

GTA3
The most fun i have had with all of the GTA games, i had played both 1 and 2, and never really found it so much fun, but the shift to 3d. Made it ridiculously fun for me. Better then both San andreas and Vice city. even though i love both of those games.

 

[XSin]

1. Dune II on the Acorn

First game I really lost myself in, no group unit selecting, you had to enter a pause menu every time you constructed a building, AI ranged from overpowered to retarded. Damn I loved that game =P

2. Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time

Still my alltime favorite game, took me over a year to beat and twice that to find everything in. I miss the days when walkthroughs weren't a mouseclick away.

3. Legend of Legaia

It might be a shitty FF7 ripoff to everyone else but it was fresh and new to me, one of the games I'm glad i managed to hold onto an original copy of.

4. Jet Set Radio Future

This was the first game I played where music was more than just a background feature, it was the whole feel of the game. I was hugely disappointed when I grabbed the HD remake of JSR on steam and found it to be nothing like JSRF

5. Heroes of Newerth

I've sunk over 4000 hours into this game and I'm proud to say I'm now average/okay at it =)

 

[SodaDew]

1. Final Fantasy 7: Crises Core: This game introduced the Final Fantasy series to me.
2. Forza 3,4,and Horizon: The three newest Forza games got me into playing racing games almost full time.
3.Jet Force Gemini: the first co-op game I ever played.
4: Pokemon Silver: This game showed me that with some games the wait is worth it.
5.SOCOM 2: This game introduced me to online gaming(at the same time as Star wars Battle front)and that there is a lot of asshole online.

 

[John Farrell]

Ace Combat 5/Zero (5 has better story and more mission variety, but Zero has smarter A.I. and my actions change how people see me)
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (I was in the top 1% of online players before real-life dragged me away)
Sim City 2000 (all time favorite PC game)
Wing Commander 4 (I remember watching a friend play this when I was a kid. Luke Skywalker in a game about fighting in a starfighter? Not just the voice, the actual actor? I was in awe)
Persona 4 (favorite RPG)

 

[Jordy Hartog]

1. Little Big Adventure 2

I'm not kidding. This game was the basis of my ability to learn the english language. I am danish and started to play this game at the age of 8. Armed with a vocabulary and a dictionary I started out Twinsens adventure to save Twinsun.

Yours was LBA, mine was 80s cartoons I know exactly how you feel.

As for my choices, in no particular order:

1: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
I first played this game when it was a badge of honor to be able to describe what happened after the second level. It, in many ways, defined my attitude towards gaming in general as well as my attitude towards challenges in daily life. This game is one of the ones that defined the term "Nintendo Hard" as it was as brutal as it was badly coded to the point where you could find yourself in a much more difficult situation if the gods of fortune decided to give you a different enemy pack on a whim.

2: Final Fantasy Legend 2 (GameBoy)
When I first got this game as a christmas present back in 1992 I thought that this was the sequel to the game my brother received, Final Fantasy Adventure, and that "Legend 2" was merely a clever way of naming this sequel. Regardless, this game planted a seed that would blossom into my love of RPGs. Even though it would prove to take me 12 years to actually finally beat the game after finding out just how weird this game's leveling system worked.

3: World of Warcraft (PC/Mac)
It's difficult to describe just how much impact this game had had on my life. Though seeing as how I got back from a holiday not 12 hours ago to visit people who I never would have met were it not for my starting to play WoW in early 2007 on one particular server, it's not a stretch to say that it did. While the game thankfully did not shape me as a person, it did greatly expand my circle of friends and to this day I am extremely happy to respond to one such friend's call for someone to talk to because she and her boyfriend were on a bit of rocky footing. Going over to visit them would end up triggering more people's requests for me to come by, which led to me meeting more people who never had anything to do with the game in the first place, all culminating in meeting what has since become one of my best friends last year at a Halloween party. Hell, this game even ended up giving my parents a new friend in one of my friends' mother!

4: Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (NES)
Bit of a weird choice, but this game accomplished something that few things had before: it got me to bond with my younger brother back at an age where a difference of nearly two years meant we might as well have been born in different countries. Instead of the usual situation where it had us either take turns or compete against each other, this game had us working together and teaching each other. Later games like TMNT 3: the Manhattan Project, the SNES port of TMNT: Turtles Through Time and the Battletoads games would continue this trend until we started to hate each other like real brothers should in our early teen years, but Chip and Dale had set the early example.

5: Diablo (PC)
While I'm certain that its sequel is one of the top two games I have clocked the most hours in, it's this first game that made it all possible. It changed the way I looked at storytelling, not just in games, but in general. Here I had a game that showed me what it would be like to be an actual adventurer, arriving in a small town with a dark evil lurking literally beneath the surface. It's one of the first times where I saw an inventory system that was implemented "realistically" in the sense that I had a finite space to carry items and gold. Which was the case in FFL2, but there a potion was as big as a Nuke (no, really, that game had a Nuclear Bomb as one of its weapons). And beyond this, it's the first game that showed me a less intrusive and more natural way of telling the game's backstory where instead of just having omnicient townsfolk who apparently have all the answers you need but don't feel the need to bring up the fallen space rock with magical properties until they sense that you're on the exact dungeon level where it's stashed, it had various books scattered across the floors that would give you more insight into just how the forced aligned against you worked.

 

[NinjaSniperAssassin]

Wacky Races
An old PC kart racer, similar to Mario Kart. Until I was 10 the only game system I had was my parents' computer, and this was the game I played far more than any other. It was the game that got me into videogames.

Do you mean Wacky Races or Wacky Wheels?

Definitely Wacky Races. It was based off an old cartoon series. The box art looked like this:

 

[shrekfan246]

Wacky Races
An old PC kart racer, similar to Mario Kart. Until I was 10 the only game system I had was my parents' computer, and this was the game I played far more than any other. It was the game that got me into videogames.

Do you mean Wacky Races or Wacky Wheels?

Definitely Wacky Races. It was based off an old cartoon series. The box art looked like this:

Aw... I think I'm the only person who remembers that Wacky Wheels was a thing that existed. It was pretty fun, too. You got to race around as zoo animals in go-karts and could shoot hedgehogs at other racers.

So old that it was a DOS game. And now I feel old again, which I really shouldn't.

 

[Spearmaster]

Dragon Warrior (NES): Probably the first game that made me realize there was more than just points, levels, jump and shoot in a game.

Deus Ex (PC): The game that brought me the realization that a merging of genres can be a fulfilling experience.

Shadow Warrior (PC): The game that most appealed to my raunchy side and to this day keeps me from taking games to seriously.

Final Fantasy 7(PS): Hate to say it but ill take 7 over 6, technically 6 was the better game and had a better story...but it lacked emotion, I think the cut scenes in 7 made me feel the game more than just reading the parts, it made me realize the effect of visuals on story in a game.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC): What can I say other than this single game identifies me as a gamer more than any other game and I still don't know why, played it at a friends house for an hour, next thing I know I'm ordering parts to build a new gaming rig, I think its because it represented how free a game world can be, that I can experience a game at what ever pace or interval I wanted, I was in control of the game, What I wanted, when I wanted and there was no wrong way to do it.

 

[mjcabooseblu]

Alright, let's take a crack at this.

1. Commander Keen
Commander Keen. Commander. Keen. Just say the name a few more times, for me. It's got a nice ring to it. It's also the first video game I every really played, and planted the seed of interest for sci-fi in me. Commander keen was rad as shit, and completely blew my mind as a kid. The visuals are bright and well-executed, the story is very cheesy in all the right ways, and the main character is a dork in ways we can all related to. Coming back, it's still pretty fun, but the reason it's so important is simple: without it, I may never have played...
2. Halo: Combat Evolved
Now, As we all know, 500% of people that played Halo first played it when they were technically "too young." And who could blame them? Halo dropped a bomb full of GAME on us, and screamed from the top of a mountain "This is what fun looks like!" As a kid, I just enjoyed it because hey, shooty-bang-bang fun! When I come back and play it now, it's practically an exercise in identifying every way Halo changed gaming forever. Whenever I play a shooter game, the first thing I ask myself when recommending or critiquing it is, "was it as fun as Halo?" Plus, Halo was the first game to make me realize that a game can be silly fun as a kid, but a deep and engaging story for adults, or returning fans.
3. Black Mesa
"Why not Half-Life?" I hear you cry. Well, it's because I never really got into the original Half-Life. I beat it, and I liked the story plenty, but I always felt there was some unidentifiable aspect of it that was just missing, that kept me from enjoying it as much as others did. And then Black Mesa came out, on a motorcycle made of tears, and it was awesome, and I realized that I just want to play more old games made better. Simple as that.
4. Minecraft
Minecraft is like writing to me. I love it, I'm good at it if I have to be, but whenever someone tries to make me do it, I just want to lie down and stop having organs. But I digress. Minecraft doesn't feature stellar combat, or an epic story, or beautiful visuals. Minecraft has potential that we, as a gamer, can explore on our own. It's an incredibly engaging building simulator, and that's all I have ever wanted in life.
5. Riven
Riven, simply put, is one of the most beautiful games ever created. Maybe not the most graphically advanced, but the aesthetics and design are some of the most incredible I've ever seen in my life. More than that, it has a complex and gripping plot, and puzzles just hard enough to challenge, but not so impossible that you have to get a walkthrough. I could ramble on indefinitely about why I love the game so much, but I think I'd much rather drop a screenshot and be done.

 

[JEBWrench]

5. Riven
Riven, simply put, is one of the most beautiful games ever created. Maybe not the most graphically advanced, but the aesthetics and design are some of the most incredible I've ever seen in my life. More than that, it has a complex and gripping plot, and puzzles just hard enough to challenge, but not so impossible that you have to get a walkthrough.

I felt like a genius when I finally solved the sodding

Spoiler

Fire marble puzzle!

(Side note: I was legally an adult when I first played Halo:CE. Christ I'm old.)

 

[mjcabooseblu]

5. Riven
Riven, simply put, is one of the most beautiful games ever created. Maybe not the most graphically advanced, but the aesthetics and design are some of the most incredible I've ever seen in my life. More than that, it has a complex and gripping plot, and puzzles just hard enough to challenge, but not so impossible that you have to get a walkthrough.

I felt like a genius when I finally solved the sodding

Spoiler

Fire marble puzzle!

(Side note: I was legally an adult when I first played Halo:CE. Christ I'm old.)

You're not old, you're just the -500.1%.

 

[notred360]

1. legend of zelda: ocarina of time - the N64 was the first console i had, and ocarina of time was my favorite game on it, i loved the open word that it presented and to this day i still don't attack chickens.

2. dark souls: one of my Favorite recent (sorta) games, the open world was nice but this was the first game i had played in ages that i had to stop and wait in my fights, and i loved it.

3. Balder's gate: aside from being a terrific game, this was one earliest game i played, though terrible at it when i was young i had a ton of fun with it and still had fun when i returned to it and beat it recently.

4. star wars KOTOR: one of my Favorite games for story, the way that the universe felt so alive and this was before moral meters were everywhere so that gave me replay value.

5. call of duty 4: this gets a special mention as it marks the point when i decided to stop buying war shooter and other such schlock, though a good game (over rated in my opinion) i could tell that it would lead go to bad places.

 

[Mnixos]

I'm gonna talk in term of IP instead of particular game:

1.Kingdom Hearts
I'm going nuts with these games. It's been 10 years now and nothing is finished yet. I can't pass on any occasion to play one of these games but in the same time I grow more and more dellusioned with it...as I do with the whole video game thing I guess.
Kingdom Hearts is a constant reminder that I age and age with the time passing. But, at the same time, it also reminds me that there is still a child in me who has suddently been told that he's an adult but who doesn't always feel like it and want to pley the video game

2.Assassin's Creed.
Been playing since the first one. I know there's a lot to say about those games in term of negative comments. But sometimes a game is just too good or too fun or too interesting to let its issues stopping you from playing them. Well it's the case for me anyway.

3.Okami
Or the perfect exemple for the concept of "Games as Art". That game had two things that I love in video games : interesting gameplay and a long story. But more than that it was beautiful, in term of visual but also in its story and in its characters.

4.Persona 3
Again: interesting gameplay and long lifespan. But also a extremely interesting story with an atmosphere and a sens of dread that never leave you. I can't count the number of time where I lost two hours of game because I died in Tartarus, one level short of the exit point. it was frustrating when it happened but on the other hand I loved the sensation of mastery I felt when it didn't happened, when I managed to go in and out of Tartarus.

5.The Elder Scroll
Shame on me, I started playing this IP with Oblivion and never played Morrowind. Nevertheless, it was one of my first experience with a open world game and all the mod's scene. Those things are still with me today (as is Oblivion ^^)

 

[Soods]

1. World of Warcraft
-- I've probably clocked in almost 3000 hours on all my characters combined. It really turned me into a more hardcore & competetive gamer. I never liked PvE, but PvP was my forte. I lost interest in WotLK as there was close to no effort to fix PvP (globaling people made any kind of planning and mind games unnecessary), but I still sometimes play it (like 1 month a year).

2. Warcraft 3
-- As an rpg fan I loved the addition of heroes, and the awesome world editor and all the custom maps (DOTA!!) kept me occupied for a long, long time.

3. Dragon Age: Origins
-- My favourite RPG game. I've tried to get my friend interested in it, but 'tis a lost cause. And despite the popular opinion, I liked DA2 as well (not as much, though).

4. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
-- Though I never played the previous ones, I really fell in love with this game as soon as I got it. And I had to include a sneaky stealth game in my list.

5. Battlefield series
-- Helicopters, man, helicopters! Flying them is awesome.

 

[Zyst]

1.- Warcraft III && Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne

This is most likely still my most played game of all time, I easily sank over 2000 hours into playing endless custom maps. From -save -load RPGs and ORPGs, my introduction to MOBA games with DotA which easily accounted to 600 or more hours of those 2000, Tower Defense Games, Hero Arenas and the social aspect that came with it. Even games like Vampirism, are you a retard, Impossible bosses and so on completely marked me and made me appreciate how much a game can do, and its community. To this day I've bought 4 battle chests so far, 1 as a gift and 2 copies I lost before battle.net let you register your product key and just re-download it. I would still buy it again.


2.- DotA 2 && LoL

These two are what I sink most of my gaming time nowadays in, I found a great love for MOBA games, the fast paced action, the high skill reward, the fact that everyone (Well not in LoL but that's a whole other worm of cans) starts the absolute same and the only factor is how well you can play, coordinate with your team and how good the enemy team is at it. I absolutely love this genre and I will for a long time.


3.- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

Now, I never had the good fortune of playing Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1 was widely pirated in Mexico, however, my parents travelled to the US in a weekly basis and I had the fortune of them always bringing me the latest games which was a great joy) but I remember buying this game in a trip to LA, I had played a Final Fantasy Game before and I had really loved the whole theme. My mind was fucking blown. I remember finding a FAQ back then (I wasn't very internet smart when I was 9 or so, and I was one of the two or three guys in my school with internet and mine was a 'for rich people' private school) and seriously, I was just amazed. I printed out the whole thing, all 700 pages or so and put it in a huge binder, I remember how excited I was. All these games that made me read forced me to learn English because I was infuriated when I couldn't understand something, I was fortunate enough in that way. I remember how excited I got when doing missions, how I'd read and it was a guide that outlined some good strategies and notable things in that engagement. Now I didn't really care about the strategy part, what I cared was "The hunter also has the ultima bow so take a thief and make sure to use steal on it" I remember even some engagements where I felt I Was just mugging people, In one engagement my thief/black mage (hey I never said I was good at the game) Moogle stole literally 90% of the Gunner Skills in the game from one guy. Overall tons of fun.


4.- Mario Party (2 or 3 or 4, it was one of the N64 ones)

Back in the day my cousins came over nearly every summer for weeks at a time, and just stayed with me. We played Mario Party endless times. I remember practising ridiculous amounts of time so I would stand a better fighting chance. This game is probably self-explanatory to any who had the fortune of playing in groups.


5.- Final Fantasy IV

This game was the RPG that truly got me started on them, back then I didn't know JRPGs or RPGs I just knew I loved this game, Cecil was awesome to me, I loved the story and overall I found it a great game. Sure now I know it was a bit Cliche and whatever, but Cliches are fun when you are a kid.


Anyway, that's me.

 

[Plucky]

In no specific order


Cool Spot: the game itself was pretty obscure, but the music was great and the movements was smooth, may be Nintendo hard at times, but i remember sitting down for an entire morning getting close to the last level and pausing it so that i can get back to it after school, none of my brothers belives me that the end level is a similar theme to the...2nd (?) level, the one with the Ropes and the Docks, with him floating away on another green bottle to another island.


Columns; Although the game was simple, sometimes me and the family members would play it for hours a night, playing against whoever won and whatever.

Pokemon Red/Blue; One of the first major games that I've actually witnessed the release and purchase of, the amount of depth in the game was amazing despite some superficial flaws such as Poison/Bug/Dragon/Ghost moves either being not effective or simply underrepresented by moves....or simply on Pokemon that had better moves to use. The whimsical thing was that you could swap Pokemon with other people...and the Huge amount of fan theories and rumors that spread about. (Remember Skelezard and getting behind Bill's house, anyone?)


Super Mario Kart; It was breathtaking how there was pseudo 3D on a console that was possibly seen as a more powerful...NES, the music was awesome and the game was simple and fun to play, you know that the soundtrack is amazing, especially Rainbow Road!


Runescape; it was one of my first ever major MMORPGs i played, nevertheless it felt boring whenever i had one of those low level periods...which simply turned to pure awesomeness when i got membership back in 2005, the quests were interesting with little "Kill 50 Bears" and whatever, every new area that came out with a quest usually had freshly designed graphics, models and even music, showing the amount of care they taken into adding quests, though argueably WoW may be extremely bigger, their lore sorta fail slightly mostly because of the thin spread of what's what happened to be across 3 RTS games, countless books and comics, and even content that isn't in the game anymore.



Shame it's sorta shaky right now, what with waning content in favour for slight revamps/tweaks to existing content, with the occaisional graphical lick of paint.....with a hearty dash of microtransactions, no offence mind you.

 

[JEBWrench]

You're not old, you're just the -500.1%.

I am the antigamer! If I ever run into a real gamer, we'll both explode!

 

[Ezekiel T Bluff]

Maniac Mansion / Secret of Monkey Island
They helped me learn english, and they were and still are classics

Rick Dangerous 1&2
My first games. Ah, nostalgia. These games were extremly difficult, but I kept coming back for more

Fallout 1&2
I didn't play them untill 3 came out. At first they were weird to me, and a little dated. but once they sucked me in, oh man...

Unreal tournament
I played this all the time through LAN with my coledge roomate. A few years later I was in a dorm, and we started playing multiplayer games through the dorm LAN. Everybody wanted to play Call of Duty 2 because it was so realistic, but all I wanted was some oversized guns and lots of low gravity

Silent Hill 1,2&3
I still get creeped out by these games. Best horror games ever (altough Amnesia and Penumbra get pretty close)

Honorable mentions:
Gold Box games
Warcraft 3
Max Payne
GTA 3
Lucas Arts games
Worms
Flashback

 

[JayRPG]

1. Tales of Symphonia
Easily my favourite game of all time, It was the first game to show me how good a video game story can be, I remember when I was 14 sitting awake waiting for my parents to go to sleep so I could quietly turn my TV on and play during the night.
It was so compelling and impossible to put down, I love this game so much in fact I have a whole forearm tattoo'd with a cruxis crystal.

2. Final Fantasy 9
For very similiar reasons as tales of symphonia, The story was amazing, I couldn't put it down and everytime beatrix came on screen I went crazy with excitement.
A beatrix and Rose of may tattoo are planned to show my dedication to this game.

3. Aion
Though I started with WoW back in vanilla and raided full time in both BC and wrath (and reached US top 200), I still look more fondly at my time in Aion, it really introduced me to the great friendships online gaming can create, although I live half way around the world from most of my old legionmates, I met a bunch of them in real life when I went travelling and am still in contact with most of them today.

4. Counterstrike Source
Oh the hours that have been put into this, I played gungame (both solo and in scrims) for hours everyday, I have a folder with a screenshot of every win, above anything else it showed me cooperation (well scrims that is, GG is every man for himself and that's the way I like it)
and pretty much introduced me to the FPS genre.

5. World of Warcraft
Even though I listed Aion higher there is no doubt WoW is one of the most important games to me as a gamer, I raided 6 days a week, 5 hours at a time for all of BC, alot less in wrath because it was much easier but what this really taught me was dedication.

 

[DanDanikov]

Define me, as a gamer? That's gotta be some old-ass games. Let's see...

nibbles.bas and gorillas.bas. My first games ever, and they also got me interested in programming too.

Lemmings made me appreciate puzzle and cerebral games- I went on to play Myst, a variety of point and clicks (The Dig, The Longest Journey, Broken Sword series...), Sim- games (SimTower and SimCity being my favourites), even modern tower defence games like Defence Grid and Plants vs. Zombies I'd say were born from that first puzzler.

X-Wing made me buy a joystick and I've never been without on since. Tie Fighter and Freespace 2 are the bests results of that trend.

Warcraft II was the first RTS game I ever played, and that genre has had a fantastic pedigree- C&C series, Homeworld series, Ground Control series, World in Conflict, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War... even newer titles such as Ruse have been good, or the less known ones like MechCommander or Earth 2150. By far my favourite genre.

Homeworld gets mentioned again for being the first game succeeded on engaging me on an emotional level beyond pure entertainment (or frustration). From those roots, I went on to engage more with games like Deus Ex or Morrowind, later more 'arty' games, such as Ico or Killer7, even to the extremely abstract Rez, or poignant flash gamelets such as The Majesty of Colors or Every Day the Same Dream.

EVE Online gets special mention for being the only MMO to snag me on a non-casual basis.