What game was a "Game Changer" for you?

I would say freespace 2, i always loved space sims, but for one in that game when the capital ships rolled in you were a cog in the wheel versus loan hero i cane take them all out by myself in my little fighter with 1 torpedo. Other games that followed like freelancer did a good job too but it started for me with freespace 2. It was a a very cool way to do things and the voice acting was superb and how you got different theater briefings and then tactical briefings from your squadron commander really helped with the feeling part of the story.
 
Civilization I and Bard's Tale, both on the Commodore 64
DOOM & DOOM II
Might & Magic
 
I will play.
Tried to keep it under 10 games:

Adventure-Atari
Zelda
Wolfinstein
Final fanstasy- I don’t recall which # it was. It was my first taste of a real RPG I can recall
Doom
Civ
Diablo 2
Xwing
Sam and Max hit the road- I had to pick one Lucas arts point and click game, that one I remember most fondly)
HL2
 
dark_reign said:
Probably GLQuake. Mind blown. :)
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Actually, that's a brilliant one. I'll never forget seeing that for the first time. Especially after running it sans 3dfx and getting about 0.25 fps.
Kind of funny to think that game was running at about 23fps and looked smoother than butter, too.
That mod changed graphics forever.
 
Ultima 4
The Original Bard's Tale
Baldur's Gate 2
Quake
Everquest
World of Warcraft
 
Super Mario Bros
Contra (NES)
Rivercity Rampage
DooM
Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle
Warcraft 2
Final Fantasy 7
Starsiege: Tribes
 
RTS: WarCraft 2.
FPS: Quake/ Wolfenstein/ Doom
Racing: NFS: Underground
Action sidescroller: Mario
RPG: Dragon Warrior 1 (Dragon Quest 1)

Amongst many.
 
HL-DM: If you play this game seriously you never ever look at an FPS or third person the same again. That is game changing. The sad part is most people only revere this game for the storyline in single player which was good. The tau cannon is IMHO the best weapon ever made in any game to date. It is just too bad the company valve never respected what they have, but you will see that valve is always like that.

HL2-DM: when I first played it I hated it as HLDM will do to you, but once again when you see the gravity gun unleashed you wonder why this shit is not in EVERY fps game that isn't a boring realistic shooter. Valve didn't just make a gravity gun they included enough props and interacting weapons to make it shine, the FRAG, orbs, and all the physics items. Oh and the single player was pretty good too, It is the only single player I have enjoyed finishing in my life. I am not a big single player guy. The puzzles with the gravity gun in SP were refreshing because many where intuitive not just some garbage that you had to figure out that made little sense. Like game changers should it makes you bitter playing other single players and being bored and unstimulated. The gravity gun comes in at number 2, the second best weapon ever made in FPS/third person game. Once again valve just sort of abandons a game. HL2DM was made by 1 guy at valve in his spare time saw almost no updates, was nearly completely unsupported, yet it was amazing.

Tribes 2 and Starseige tribes: These games are similar enough they don't deserve to be separated. But this game was the base, it was THE game changer. Its the game all the battle field noobs copied, tribes 2 especially was so far ahead of its time it wasn't even funny it really came together in Tribes 2. The depth, the team play, is untouched period in any FPS game to this very day, that is an insane feat to think that over a decade passes and no one from any company steps up to the plate. When you play this game you pretty much can't handle how bad other team games are. You can't believe how much still ends up missing from the features of team based games. When people talk about open world and big maps you wonder why they are still so small?

Portal: great game huge potential for multiplayer once again being squandered by valve. This game brought a real not crappy puzzle to FPS.

Quake, culminating at Q3: Discipline is what this game brought to the gaming world. Item timing, precise strafe jumping. Many other games just didn't require you to put all your skills together so precisely and so disciplined. You screw up one strafe jump you might not make it to the quad in time the whole game turns around in a split second. Not to mention that quake is basically the FPS game every other FPS game wanted to copy.

StarCraft: The stick by which every RTS is measured, the only RTS I can keep playing for any length of time. It wasn't the first and won't be the last but it just has all the right parts.

Counter strike: this game sucks but it is in fact a game changer and we cannot let bias get involved in our nominations. CS ruined an entire decade of gamers by being such a massive blockbuster with such a low skill ceiling it showed game companies how to make games as boring as they could possibly be. It was the father of pretty much everything that is wrong with gaming. It all started here even though many will try to pin it on Call of Duty. No the COD clowns were just riding the coattails of the CS > DOD transitions just passing the torch to the next lower level of play. What's the pattern oh yeah Valve dropped the ball on this one too lol letting COD take over.


DotA not much to say here since I do not much enjoy this game type but it has certainly blown apart the world of gaming. Dota is like the CS of RTS. One day we may see a pathetic future of demeaning skills where almost no real RTS games exist anymore because they are simply replaced by MOBAs. I feel for RTS fans but oh well been there done that as we say.

Mine craft sand box got out of control with minecraft lol. Not my cup of tea but it brought sandbox mainstream.

The next big game changer, I don't know what it is or when it will come but I have a hunch it will go one of 2 ways. First those ridiculous card games will take over and lower the bar even more, or maybe a glimmer of hope will come and we will see a resurgence in fast complex stimulating games based on future or sci fi combat, and what will enable it is millions of people who have grown bored of the BF/COD snail shooter fests and want something a little more OK we had a generation of AOL noobs that created CS/BF/COD and halo / COD wrangled the console noobs into the FPS genre, so will they know have enough skills having learned how to walk forward, backward, strafe and jump to want to apply their skills in more interesting settings?
 
Nytegard said:
King's Quest (1984). Full color and animated? This to me is the game that proves that as gamers, we've always cared about graphics over gameplay. Adventure games were mostly text or static pictures at the time. All of the sudden, a game comes out that looked like a Saturday morning cartoon (at the time, granted it looks ugly today).

King's Quest V (1990). While it wasn't the first VGA game (I believe a Tex Murphy game was), it was the first popular one. 256 colors, and if you had a Roland MT-32 & SB, it was miles ahead of the NES. Not to mention it came out before the SNES and was still ahead of that in capabilities.

Ultima VII (1992). This game defined CRPGs for me. It was an open world that was incredibly interactive. Granted, the combat was terrible (it was one of the first mouse driven games, let alone RPGs), but quite honestly, the game blew me away even with that fault. Origin was one of those companies that you knew you needed a new $5000 machine every time they released a game, because it would run terribly otherwise. It was one of the few games that the world felt alive, and sadly imho, still hasn't been topped to this day.

Unreal Tournament (1999). Not the first FPS, nor the first 3D FPS, but it was good at everything it did. And it was a game that really only focused on multiplayer.
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Completely agreed on your choices.

- Ultima 7 Black Gate was the first RPG that broke the graphical boundry enough to put you in a real, living world

- Wing Commander - I'd played Flight SIMs all the way back to Commodore 64 and this was really the first "fun" one that integrated a story-driven approach successfully. Also, as pointed out, when Origin released a game you just knew you'd be dropping bills to upgrade. I remember reading the requirements for Strike Commander and my head nearly exploding.

- Gologo 13 - The forerunner to Goldeneye and the proto action-adventure FPS in my eyes. Also, cyborg Hitler

- Wolfenstein 3D - First modern FPS in my eyes. Also, again, cyborg Hitler

- Out of This World - One of the first 100% stylized games

- Quake - mine and most of my gamer friend's first intro to online FPS
 
rudy said:
HL-DM: If you play this game seriously you never ever look at an FPS or third person the same again. That is game changing. The sad part is most people only revere this game for the storyline in single player which was good. The tau cannon is IMHO the best weapon ever made in any game to date. It is just too bad the company valve never respected what they have, but you will see that valve is always like that.
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I totally agree with you on HLDM.
The feel of the game, the cleverness with which you could undo your opponent.
Hiding, sniping, the pistol, trip mining and when you really have had enough, the crowbar.

Good times. I wish I could go back, but alas all the servers are empty or loaded with bots.

I will never forget the frenzy of being number one, with people running around with various skins like Aquafresh toothpaste or powerpuff girls.
 
Shenmue first game I got totally invested in the story and characters. Despite the cheesy voice acting I was just totally engulfed in that from from beginning to end.

A couple notables that blew my mind when I played them the first time:
Blaster Master
Ocarina of Time
Secret of Mana
Final Fantasy VII
Mass Effect
Fallout 3
KOTOR
WoW
GTA 3
Quake 2 (when I played it the first time on OpenGL)
 
Kerbal Space Program

I never thought a game would actually get me to study math and physics for fun.
 
Super Mario Brothers will always be the biggest at home gaming "game changer" for me. Having plugged a pile of quarters into the arcade console at the local mini-mart, then being able to have that same experience at home with the release of the NES was a revolution.

GLQuake sparked the "3D acceleration" revolution. After seeing it in action on the computer of a guy on the same floor of the dorms in college, I went out that same day and bought myself a 3D accelerator.
 
HL-DM + college got me into multiplayer. There's a chance that I'd probably be single player only if it wasn't for that. Opened a whole new world
 
I see some here.... but honestly I expected more Doom and GL quake. Those were game changing moments.
Doom was just unreal at the time, you literally could not look away It was actually really scary at first. People would turn their bodies while they played! People got dizzy!

Gl Quake was similar.... booted that up on a VooDoo 1 and it was like what, is this real, is my computer doing this, omg WOW !!! Biggest jump in eye candy there was. Crysis was not even close to what seeing GL quake for the first time was like.

Also, Exodus: Ultima 3. I say this as much for the box art as for the game. I mean in 1983 you literally wondered if this was some occult product. One simply didn't see boxes on store shelfs that depicted demons in molten hell.
 
toddw said:
Gl Quake was similar.... booted that up on a VooDoo 1 and it was like what, is this real, is my computer doing this, omg WOW !!! Biggest jump in eye candy there was. Crysis was not even close to what seeing GL quake for the first time was like.
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GLQuake didn't do it for me. Looked good, but it wasn't mind blowing. Unreal was the big jump for me. Walking out of that ship with the huge outdoor area, great looking water. It was just a stop and enjoy the scenery for a while moment.

Doom... Yea, it was great. I upgraded my PC to play it. I learned how to set up IPX/SPX on Novell to play multiplayer. It was definitely a game changer.
 
I think GLQuake had more impact (for me) than Unreal just because it was so visually amazing. That level of smoothness and speed was just jaw dropping. As game, it was "meh" but at least really fun in multiplayer. The mods more or less made Quake as it was so-so at best by itself.

Unreal was more mind-blowing as a game because everything was so big and open. Unlike all of the claustrophobic Quake engine games, Unreal had massive open areas. The first look over the huge cliff at the beginning was breathtaking. The colosseum with the first boss, the amphitheater, and the later Nali-based levels never let up either.

While graphically very old school, I remember being really wow'd by Daggerfall's absolutely massive castles that you could see coming way, way, way in the distance only to be able to walk up to them, fully explore them (in their proper dimensions) all with no loading. I kinda miss that.
 
Hmm,

smb1 -first game
smworld -first big game
goldeneye -first fps
ocarina -first open 3d world
ff7 -first cinematics
ut99 first online multiplayer
Tribes 2 first online multiplayer with tons of strategy
Ut2k4 first online multiplayer with voice and strategy
HL2 graphics graphics graphics
Portal 1-2 games for us smarter people.


And now games seem dumbed down, go here shoot this press this fuck that.
 
sorry for the necro...

(in rough order)

SMB (graphically stunning and complex compared to hand me down Atari 2600 games I cut my teeth on)
Super Metroid - Immersiveness, graphics, scope increase beyond anything NES could dream of
Final Fantasy 3 US (6 world wide) - graphics and depth blew me away, depth of characters never before seen in a video game
Warcraft - my first multiplayer and first RTS, and damn did it have me hooked, despite playing on 14400 baud modem with my buddy and watching a peasant take 5 seconds to chop wood a single time
Unreal - yeah, the name said it all. in 1998 the graphics in this game were truly unbelievable. Loved the immersiveness too
Final Fantasy VII - playing the demo and watching the summon for Bahamut was about the most impressive thing I'd seen in a video game. I bought the PS1 that day but had to wait several more months to play it.
Baldurs Gate - richness of story, depth and scope of game
GTAIII - First "sandbox" game
Final Fantasy XI - my first taste of an MMO. Incredible freedom and player interactions, but I quickly learned a new definition of the word "grind"
Rock Band - great in-person multiplayer game
Crysis - graphically so far beyond it's time; we were still catching up 5-6 years later. Open world, highly interactive with great physics.

I'm sure I'm forgetting others, but these really stand out. There hasn't been much that changed the game for me in the last 5-7 years, but I'm enjoying the shorter indie games with interesting plot lines and concepts now (like Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons), and search those and foreign studio games out more than mainstream titles.
 
  • Super Mario 64
    • Nintendo does a 3D platformer right. Movement is smooth, intuitive and responsive. Levels provide just enough gameplay depth to keep you interested but not frustrated. Mario is even more charming in 3D. Presentation was just excellent. Quite possibly the greatest video game of all time, and the benchmark to which I hold similar platformers to today.
  • Tekken 2
    • Reignited my interest in fighting games after it had waned in the 2D era. Combo system was fun and addictive. I obsessively learned and memorized all the built-in combos for each character and later had fun improvising. A large, diverse roster of colorful characters and interesting backstory.
  • Gran Turismo
    • Another game that reignited my passion for a genre. After Need for Speed had taken the road down the ridiculous I was ready for something new in production car racers. GT came at the right time and had it all: simulated physics that felt great with a controller, a long list of real production cars, fun circuit layouts, performance customization out the whazoo.
  • Mass Effect
    • I had never had a real interest in what developers were doing with the sci-fi genre in video games until Mass Effect came along. It has a great cast of characters that face impossible odds with a rich history that spans several races across the expanse of the galaxy. Disappointments in the direction the series took along the way did not affect my enjoyment. I've played around 2000 hours total across all 3 games with a dozen characters with another 300-400 hours in the ME3 multiplayer. Definitely my favorite game series of all time with the best soundtrack.
  • Super Metroid
    • Probably the video game responsible for defining the types of games I like to play then, now and in the future. It offered a richly detailed environment with interesting items to find and great gameplay mechanics. The platforming aspects were superb, as with any Nintendo platformer. Being able to visually see your character progress did a lot for pulling me in and wanting to find more. All games with these kinds of gameplay elements to this day are what interest me most: vast open world, diverse movement mechanics, character customization and progression. Proves that so long as you make your world diverse and interesting, you don't need a complex narrative to pull people in.
  • Castlevania 64 (honorable mention)
    • I don't think this was really a "game changer" for me, but I just want to point it out as something beautiful. Out of all the games from the fifth console generation, this one stands out the most. The combination of gothic themes and music makes this game extremely memorable for me. The night/day mechanic added an interesting level of depth, if not frustration. It sure had its technical problems, but I feel that this is a very underrated entry in the Castlevania series and video game in general.
 
Final Fantasy VIII really got me into the genre of RPG's. Plus the OST was memorable and is to this day one of the best video game soundtracks I've ever listened to.

Half Life 2 really got me into FPS. The timed sequences and the graphics were something new and crazy to me.
 
Comixbooks said:
Sewer Shark on the Sega CD
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Man, you're high. The game looked cool, but that was about it. It was up there with Tomcat Alley and the other FMV 'shoot at sprites over the video' games. Looked great at the time, but I thought it lacked actual game play qualities.

Don't take my word for it, I actually liked making my own music videos with C&C Music Factory and saving the girls on Night Trap. :)

Sega CD is probably my favorite console for games (Well, console add-on). I still love it (need to solder on a new fuse for my Model 1, though).
 
Dark Souls: It changed the way I viewed games. Why play shitty dumbed down health regen games just so you can say you beat them? This one is satisfyingly hard to where you feel like you have accomplished something when you beat a boss.

Mass Effect: This game +2 was awesome. Still butthurt from the ending of 3, but oh well. Great story and combat

Gothic 3: I thought oblivion was good but then I played gothic 3 and was blown away. Defects aside it felt like a superior RPG in many ways

Serious Sam:SE : I learned how to play FPS with this. Some sections took me days to get by, I just sucked really bad. And then MP also, getting good enough to start winning consistently was just a massive high

Dragon Age:Origins: Just a great story, great gameplay with memorable characters and character plots. And lesbian sex!

Painkiller: (original) another of my all time favorites. Just great level design and weapons and bosses and secrets

Far Cry: If you see it you can go there. Was pretty awesome except for a few points (broken stealth and the RL snipers).
 
Adventure Atari 2600
Mania Mansion C64
Forbidden Forest C64
M.U.L.E. C64
Kings Quest Police Quest PC
Starflight C64
Alien Breed Amiga
Any CINEMARARE game they were all great
Zelda Nes
Contra Nes
Many many more.
 
PC:
Everquest
Original Doom

Everything that came after are just clones of those two.

Console:
N64
 
Seeing the SNES and Super Mario World for the first time in person was pretty impressive for me.

I am almost 40 years old, I grew up on pong consoles and then the Atari 2600, 7800, and then the original NES. The NES had it's moments, but nothing quite compares to finally seeing the SNES in person at a local K-Mart right before Christmas the year it came out. I was a 15 year old and literally fighting off 7 and 8 year olds so I could get my hands on the demo kiosk for Super Mario World. And I sure didn't want to leave the store when my parents were done shopping.

On the PC Half-Life 2 impressed me quite a bit when it came out.... still does too, ten years later. The eye candy in City 17 is almost photorealistic in many areas. Because of HL2 I got back into multiplayer gaming for a short while, playing HL2DM and even running a few servers on our dedicated colo server boxes. Good freakin' times there.... dm_carousel was one of my fave maps.... I got so good at laying trip mines it was hilarious. :D
 
The game that got me into FPS: CS 1.4 (it was the first version I first played)
The game that got me into RTS: C&C Red Alert 1
The games that got me into TBS: Panzer General and Heroes of Might & Magic 3
The game that got me into RPG: Fallout 1
The game that got me into Platformers: Jazz the Jackrabbit
The game that got me into Space fighting simulaters: Wing Commander 1
The game that got me into side scrolling Shmups: Salamander
The game that got me into vertical scolling Shmups: 1942

Lastly...

The games that got me into MMORPGs: Diablo 2 & RuneScape

Honorable mentions (the games that got me into their series, or one that got me to crave for more):

Final Fantasy 5 (6 being the high watermark)
TESV: Skyrim
C&C 3
X-Wing vs Tie Fighter
Metroid Fusion
Super Mario for NES
Battle City for NES
Mass Effect 1
Raptor: Call of the Shadows
 
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Game changers:

Unreal and UT99--this is what got me into FPS/MP
Descent series-nothing else like it
Deus Ex--Up until DX:HR and the Mass Effect series, nothing quite hit the spot
Halo--not a huge fan of the series, but playing it on the Xbox display in store let me see an FPS future for the console. I think it would've failed on the PC as originally slated.
 
Some highlights:

Maniac Mansion - !!!
Elite - Got me dreaming of things we wouldn't see till EO.
Dune 2 - Birth of the RTS genre (don't quote me HZ), even if it took a while.
Dungeon Master - Realized in a "few years" it'd be 'real-time free look'.
Quake - Mouse look + invert
Baldur's Gate - Rise of the Platinum Age of CRPGs, and with it Bioware.
 
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