Which Game Changed the Way You See Video Games

-Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time -- I just felt it was so much better than almost everything that had come before it. It raised the bar for what a game could be in my mind.

-World of Warcraft -- It wasn't the first MMO, but it was the first I played. Before playing it, I had really very little clue what MMOs were. After playing it, I discovered how close games can come to truly creating an alternate reality. I also discovered via WoW that gaming addiction is real and is nothing to take lightly.

-KOTOR -- Convinced me that games can be every bit as good as and even better than the average Hollywood movie when it comes to story and dialogue.

in order of when i played them:

Super Mario World & Donkey Kong Country

Banjo Kazooie

Zelda: OoT

Final Fantasy VII

Super Metroid

FFXI online 

Rez

Shadow of the Colossus

the only game i played previous to super mario world and DKC were turrican and tetris for the gameboy. imagine going from that tiny LCD screen to a TV with full-colour 16-bit graphics. i loved the graphical depth, the sounds and the the fact that there were so many levels and things to do.

i got banjo kazooie at the same as mario 64 but i played BK a lot more. i learned how to walk around in a 3D world and that game made me feel fully immersed and it was very warm and comfortable.

Zelda OOT was probably the first proper adventure game i played. i loved the free-roaming nature, hyrule field, the vastness of it all. it was truly epic to me.

FFVII. first game to really affect me emotionally. it was also incredibly deep in the gameplay department. the characters, story and final battle made me demand a lot more of games; from that point i wanted more stories in games, and better ones.

super metroid was brilliant but i never really appreciated it as much as i should have until recently. the design is immaculate, and the bosses are so full of terror and really 'badass'. such a well-balanced game and now probably my favourite adventure-type game. now i want all games to tell their stories through the art, through the graphics, because of metroid and how well it conveys mood.

FFXI online. emotional! addicting! it really affected me in about every way. i had withdrawal symptoms, wrote a letter to edge telling them i couldn't play normal video games anymore, played as a girl character, and got involved in strange relationships. it was really bad in every way, but good.  

Rez made me feel a lot of emotions again. not since the psone FF games have i felt a range of cathartic and ecstatic feelings of joy. the design of the game is very clever and unique. even if a lot of the conceptual framework of the game came from kandinsky's theories, mizaguchi has brought synasthesia to people without synasthesia and the video game is very well-adapted to that. just that first boss fight...the disco ball thing, so much fun and joy in shooting and making rhythms and patterns of sound in relation to contact. now i demand all games are made like rez. heh.

SoTC made me think and feel. i do believe that it makes important progressions in the idea of 'level design', 'boss fights' and how a narrative can be explored. it's such a beautiful design and so emotional. this game made me question a lot of conventions in games.

honourable mentions:

vagrant story

metroid prime

yoshi's island

Wing Commander showed me that game and story, although mechanically very different can be integrated seamlessly.

Deus Ex's mash up of shooter and RPG spoiled me for more emergent gameplay

Falcon 3.0 was the first sim that made the technical side of air combat fun

Rainbow Six really stirred the shooter pot by making shooters a thinking affair

Grim Fandango brought the point-n-click adventure as close to a state of art as the genre could get

Metal Gear Solid made guns less of a priority in an action game

Metal Gear Solid

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - I think it's pretty self explanatory.

Metal Gear Solid - The first really truly great cinematic experiences in gaming.

Super Mario Bros - It got me into gaming, and quite honestly it's one of the greatest games of all time.

Resident Evil 4 - Just a totally engrossing experience, not a lot of games out there gave me such a feeling, and excitement than RE4.

Zelda: OOT, Mario Party (very first one), 007: Goldeneye, Beetle Adventure Racing, Turok (very first one), the Crash Bandicoot series, Gex: Enter the Gecko, MDK2, Sonic The Hedgehog 1 and 2, Grand Turismo 4, the Ratchet and Clank series, Grand Theft Auto III, and very recently, Halo 3 and Fallout 3.

These games/franchises are also my favorite of all time. When I played these games, I had a unique and different experience than I've had with any other game, and I had an unusually emotional tie/bond with them. They're games that raised the bar of video game standard that I thought couldn't be, and made every other game I had played before obsolete in my eyes. Because I played the majority of the games listed above before I had aged a mere decade, you can imagine how mind-blowing they were to someone as young as I was back then. My tops out of all of these would have to be Zelda and the Ratchet and Clank series. Those games completely changed the way I viewed video games.

The reason I have Halo 3 and Fallout 3 up there are because I hadn't really indulged into games of their genre prior to playing them. I had of course played FPSs before Halo 3 (Goldeneye, Turok, the previous two Halos, etc.), but Halo 3 was the first FPS, or game I should say, that I had actually played online. The experience I had when I first began was exhilirataing, and was my grand introduction to the world of online gaming. Fallout 3 impacted me the same way that Zelda: OOT did, but to a lesser degree and in a different way. It's nearly been a decade since I first played Zelda: OOT, and in that time, the only other RPGs I played were Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, Fable, and Fable II, so I haven't played many RPGs. I did play Oblivion, but for a very limited time; not enough to see how good it actually was. But when I played Fallout 3, I felt like I was playing a true RPG. It was the first post-19th century RPG I played that really changed me in terms of gaming.

GTA 3 because I never knew video games could be that realistic in terms of violence and real world antics

cod4:

 Before this I thoughtFPS were for the 'l33t'. I'll take my R&c thank you!

I put it in and just WOW!

 Speaking of WOW:

A game i loved until I manually pulled the plug on myself. I had to, or else I would just be gone from real life

Pokemon:

The first community game I ever played, swapping pokemon with friends became fun, and rare candy cloning anyone??

TESIV Oblivion - You have no idea how long i played this game and didnt get bored but when i first played it, it seemed so different because it was my first RPG of Bethesda's but after a few weeks i saw it differently

Mirrors Edge - Im already going through withdrawals for this game

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots. It showed me that games can give deep, emoitonal experiences. Too bad there's only a handful of any games that can do that and it'll probably never be something commonly seen in games.gunswordfist

did you skip the first 3?

[QUOTE="gunswordfist"]Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots. It showed me that games can give deep, emoitonal experiences. Too bad there's only a handful of any games that can do that and it'll probably never be something commonly seen in games.Nifty_Shark

did you skip the first 3?

[QUOTE="Nifty_Shark"]

[QUOTE="gunswordfist"]Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots. It showed me that games can give deep, emoitonal experiences. Too bad there's only a handful of any games that can do that and it'll probably never be something commonly seen in games.gunswordfist

did you skip the first 3?

Well I just figured that you would have felt the same way, especially MGS1

[QUOTE="gunswordfist"][QUOTE="Nifty_Shark"]

did you skip the first 3?

Nifty_Shark

Well I just figured that you would have felt the same way, especially MGS1

A few that stand out for me:

Super Mario 64

Pokemon (blue, red etc)

Metal Gear Solid

Final Fantasy 9

GTA 3

yeah, forgot pokemon. it was a very big deal; a game that managed to be everywhere and it really meant something to me back then, to be a pokemon trainer - on the road, searching for 'pocket monsters'. heh.

My serious answer is Resident Evil 2, because it was the first game I obsessed over. I hadn't played the first one when I came across number 2, and was the reason I got a Playstation which is what started me on the world of consel gaming (I was into PC games at the time).

I loved the survial horror aspect of the games, I have actually played Alone in the Dark on the PC but that was nothing like Resident Evil. Resident Evil looked fab in it's day, the weapons are fun and I just loved the horror movie feel to the game. And they scared me! I miss being scared :( For some reason nothing in a movie or game can scare me anymore, hardly anything IRL can except if you threaten my boy bits with some garden sheers).

Street Fighter II for home consoles for delivering the arcade to my home.

Final Fantasy X for the general epic experience that i played through

Bioshock for bringing complex, philosophical issues that could not be presented through any other medium

GTA III for bringing the sandbox

Goldeneye for the multiplayer and for bringing legit and unique FPS play to consoles.

Operation Flashpoint.

It made me realize just how small all other game environments seemed. The ability to attack any situation in the manner I saw fit was amazing.

Final Fantasy 6- It was the first RPG that I truly loved.

Gitaroo Man- It got me addicted to quirk.

Fantastic Contraption- It was my first physics puzzle.

Resident Evil 4- It was the first game to make me panic about ammo.

Battlefield Bad Company- My first game with good online multiplayer.

For me these games would be:

- Final Fantasy IV or II if you prefer : First RPG I ever player and it was damn shocking to see a game with such a deep history development.

- Chrono Trigger: I would say best RPG game for SNES ever made.

- Fintal Fantasy VII: I have played every damn FF out there and I have to say that None of them surpass FINAL FANTASY VII ever...come on...it     even has a movie xD.

- Zelda OT: That game was just beautiful....

- Counter-Strike: It was a new experience to play a game with a team and made me see games as sports sometimes. 

- Warcraft III: Best RTS game Ive ever played...history was stunning. 

-  Elder Scrolls  IV: First rpg I played with such development in quest and npc, like the old ultima games. 

- Half-Life 2: Most amazing graphics I first saw and with a very nice story. 

And lately I would add The witcher is one of the best rpgs Ive ever played, it really touchs several social points and the main character is amazingly well made. 

Im testing Fallout 3 right now and its also a great game, -makes you reflect about nuclear war and stuff like that- Im sure there will be many other unique games out there in many genres.

OH AND I ALMOST FORGOT XD, METAL GEAR ALL OF THEM, THAT GAME IS MORE THAN JUST A GAME...