RetroGaming

Vampire the masquerade bloodlines (god, what a mouthful of a title) is still the best rpg ive played to date. Troika games created a masterpiece here, even if it needed an unofficial community patch to be playable. The story is engaging and it is very easy to get immersed into the game world. It is a shame it does not get mentioned more often.

As for a more mainstream fantasy rpg, yeah I am with everybody on Oblivion. The first time you exit the dungeon, with the whole world right there for you to explore, was truly magical.

Halo : CE was the first game I split screened with my dad, and we spent hundreds of hours on it together. I remember the first time we beat the game on legendary, that final car ride was really something. Only wish I can someday share that feeling with my offspring.

Edit: typo, must have been thinking of Requiem as bloodlines 1.

Chrono Trigger, and finishing the games first full arc. What would normally be the end literally showed me that this game had so much more, which expanded the more I played it.

Man, I was playing Borderlands (1) on PC, playing as Roland with the support gunner class mod. I had a couple of Tediore legendaries, I believe it was the revolver and the combat rifle, and I just reached this zen state near the end of the game, shooting at these seemingly endless waves of enemies just coming from everywhere. thanks to the guns and class mod I never had to worry about picking up ammo, it was just constantly spitting lead in every direction, and it just clicked, it was golden and beautiful.

Gaming my consciousness with shrooms and ket.

the very first Call of Duty and Tribes 2 on PC way back in the early 00s.

I used to be fairly "known" on the old "Planets" websites (PlanetQuake, PlanetTribes, etc) that were hosted via gamespy. I was popular, on a few of their camportals that were invite only and I worked on a couple of the gaming news sites providing art, writing reviews, and doing web dev stuff. I was friends with some very early internet celebs which really just consisted of guys that made webcomics or had their own websites. Friends with Mike and Jerry at Penny-Arcade, etc.

So anyways about once a week we'd all get together, Jerry from PA, myself, couple of gamespy guys, and a few other close mutual online friends and we'd play CoD, Tribes 2, etc. We started playing CoD fairly frequently. One guy on our team, Porkfry, had a thing about not playing as the Nazi's so if we got into a game that put is on the Nazi side we'd always have to leave and find another server until we were Americans.

It was funny, we joked about it. just one of his many quirks.

Now on one map in CoD there was this german truck that had a raised flatbed. there was NO WAY to normally get in it but Porkfry had figured out that if you jumped at the rear of the truck at a certain angle you could get inside, duck down, and you'd essentially be hidden. So we did that. We would hide in the back of this truck and while the enemy team was frantically searching for us we would stop crouching and just blast them when they got nearby. We'd do this constantly and just howl with laughter over vent or teamspeak or whatever we were using. That's what we did, just silly stuff like that. Or we'd be playing Tribes 2 and one of us would act like a disgruntled bus driver when flying the troop transport. We'd just do dumb shit in the games we'd play to keep us all entertained and make each other laugh.

I really miss those pure early internet days.

Mech Assault 1 & 2, particularly 2. The two most memorable boss fights for me was the mid game one where you fight some giant robot bull thing in a tiny exosuit while Getting Away with Murder by Papa Roach Plays, and the final fight where you fight a half built giant mech again in the exosuit while Right Now by Korn plays.

Also I really liked Halo 2 for the banshee dogfight with Follow by Incubus in the background and the big Mausoleum fight at the end of Gravemind with Blow Me Away by Breaking Benjamin plays; the part where the doors open and the bell starts to toll chefs kiss. Oh and the whole level where you drive a tank up the bridge chasing down a Scarab too.

Also, why has there been no remake of Crimson Skies yet? That game was so much damn fun. I miss the dog fighting and crazy guns.

Siralim Ultimate

You like Pokémon but could leave the anime? You like building decks in Magic or some such tinkering?

This might be the last game you need to buy for years, and it’s like $20ish.

Grand Theft Auto 3.

Going into that for the first time was mind blowing. A true generational leap over everything before. Now you just get slightly nicer reflections and loading times and pay £500+ for the privilege.

Rhythm Doctor boss stages. Each one is an amazing showcase of visuals on a rhythm game with the simplest control scheme ever. And the game's final stage, the full release is in December 10.

With each stage exceeding my expectations by a long shot, I can't wait to see what they'll do this time.

Halo 3 Multiplayer before system party calls were a thing

The only console I had exposure to as a young child was the Gameboy.

At a birthday sleepover with some friends, we all stayed up late into the night playing the original Nazi Zombies map from COD: WAW. Nothing has ever beat the sheer joy and fun I had with that initial playthrough.

Katamari Damacy

EDIT: I could add a few more--

The original Legend of Zelda

Final Fantasy IV and VI; I was one of those people who bounced off of VII because of battle load times (I tried twice and both times that was what drove me from it)

A now-obscure Atari arcade game called Rampart

Another arcade game, an action RPG from Taito called Cadash, which could be played by four players on two linked cabinets (no emulation, even official ones, currently support this mode)

Saints Row Co-op over systemlink with a monitor each up on the sofa table (also a bong each on the sofa table).

Star Wars Galaxies before the horrible updates and Jedi inflation.

Total Annihilation on a LAN

Red Alert cut-scenes

Halo on a LAN

Battlefield online with voice comms

Couch co-op gears of war, and Army of 2

Finishing Mass Effect

Worms, hot-seat

Instagib. Oh fuck, instagib is pure adrenaline

Just one more turn

Last 5 in Battle Royale, never yet finished last!

You have died of dysentery

Hitting that last alien

The first time I beat the final boss of Sekiro. It was a culmination of everything you learned in that game and perfectly paced. Felt like being part of a well choreographed dance and like everything you had gone through to get to this point of the game was paying off.

Accomplishment-wise playing in a few ProAm counterstrike tourneys, beating any of the dark souls/elden ring/Bloodborne was great, beating a couple of the xwing missions felt like an accomplishment too, topping the score board in online shooters like TF2, tribes 2, quake arena etc

Just overall hitting max level in wow and raid level in EverQuest back in the day, and a couple rpgs Chrono trigger, phantasy star 4, pillars of eternity 1/2 for the story and characters. Monster sanctuary ng+ randomizer is a lot of fun too

Two different things:

I was infatuated with Halflife and unable to function in life for a certain amount of time. I would say it did a number on my first run at college, but there was a lot going on there.

As a teen, I was the annoying kid that didn't have their own games at home, or at least any of the good ones. I would go over my friend's house and they would be stuck on a boss level only for me to win when the controller is passed over to me.

Being in the zone, utterly focused at defeating ~~glock~~ Sword Saint Isshin. Doing it so many times that trouncing Genichirou pre-Ishin was a given, a warm up even, before going for the main dude.

Nine balls and more nine balls and more nine balls in Armoured Core Q_Q.

Penetrator from Demon Souls.

Malenia.

My Arma 3 Antistasi server. it was so fucking dope

The last time must have been when Valheim released. That shit got me hooked. Now I am waiting for the Deep North biome to finish development before I play it again.

Now that I think about it the last time was when Schedule 1 released.

For me it's probably playing online games like BF2, Day of Defeat Source, TF2 and Live for Speed in about 2005-07. Communities and community servers back then were different and now sorely missed.

So just shy of 10 years ago me and the dudes were playing a lot of Dota 2, we had played since early Beta. At this point in time the game was still young and hip so the ratio of casuals to sweaty mlg was much more forgiving, which was great because it put me and the dudes in the upper bracket especially when combined with shenanigans, nowadays we'd probably only be in the top 60 percentile at best.

Very few people knew about this or utilized it but you could put your level into stats instead of an ability, so I would find weird builds to focus on only 1 skill and stats. We discovered this build called Sand King Jesus where you could use a character called Sand King to sit, invisible, in sand storm AoE DoT effect on the lane and just never leave but the tradeoff was the inability to move without cancelling, items focusing on regen and armor items as well as utilizing another little known mechanic where you buy 2 stout shields: they used to have a 50% chance to reduce damage by 20 (almost all damage a creep can do) and it would run that 50% check for each individual shield. At the time there was an exploit where if you move, cancelling the Sandstorm ability, but recast it before the particle effect dissipated... Uh Oh! The particle stays put but the Sand King and the AoE radius both moved. That made him not immune to non-targeted stuns or hooks but it did make him extremely hard to hit with them. It also made it difficult to avoid the DoT if you couldn't see where it was. Now there is an immortal, invisible, constantly damaging enemy on the lane, but sure you can still buy wards or keep firing shots in the dark until something hits: but Sand King has another ability called Burrowstrike. Burrowstrike is suppose to be used to instantly travel in a straight line towards enemies and stun them momentarily. But instead, you can burrowstrike away from enemies and then cast Sand Storm as soon as it comes off cooldown, and this ability allows travel up and down ledges and past trees. All of this culminates in "Sand King Jesus" because much like the mythical Jesus it would take forever to try and kill him and often still fail.

Now this is silly at best but the true greatest gamer high for me was this one match where I used this strategy to dominate middle lane, cutting off the creep waves with a well placed sandstorm to both take out an early tower as my creeps poured in damaging either the enemy mid or the tower, chipping away, and I get all of the last hits uncontested, started roaming and ganking with the boys, and buying up hearts, assault cuirrass, vladmir's offering, refresher orb and for added AoE DoT a Radiance, and I became so tankie and my team had me covered on healing and providing DPS that I was able to enter the enemy fountain, where players respawn, and sandstorm in there for another 10 or 15 minutes before we had even taken down any towers before barracks. We were all laughing so hard at these real human beings on the enemy team reduced to NPCs unable to leave their own fountain and unable to do anything about it.

Awhile later they completely reworked the character.