For me it was definitely DOOM 2! Miles ahead of anything else I had played before.
Morrowind, by far. I still remember the sense of freedom and exploration I got
Also Morrowind. The systems of that game blew my young mind, and I was far too dumb to notice most of the jank.
I was too young for Morrowind and started at Oblivion, but yeah, it’s the Elder Scrolls games 100%. At the time, to me (age ~9), gaming was jumping and gunning around blocky worlds full of fake doors and imagining how cool it would be if GTA felt like an actual world instead of a blocked-out setpiece full of people whose only thoughts were to walk around, drive, or fight each other.
I started Oblivion and it was insane. I could go in nearly every house, I could have conversations with everyone, I could walk around picking up whatever objects and stealing stuff, then break out of jail when I got caught, I could get inducted into an assassination cult (even if I was really bad at lockpicking and struggled to get in the front door), etc. It was mindblowing and those sorts of features are why I prefer Bethesda titles even to these major titles everyone loves like Witcher 3.
This is 100% my experience too. My mind was blown when I saw what you could do in oblivion.
Same. One of my friend’s dad played all the old school DnD games and what not. I remember going over one day and seeing him play that, and when I asked him he was showing me a bunch of things with the open world and the characters. As soon as I was able to get it, I did, and I put in so much time into that game.
Duke Nukem 3D.
One of my most nostalgic games! I replay it yearly - the ambient sound effects and drone and atmosphere is incredible - the space levels have a creepy feeling despite the comedic tone it often goes for.
Yeah, Wolfenstein 3d and DOOM were great but Duke 3D was some next level shit. Being able to take a leak at the urinal was so cool.
Shake it baby. Wanna dance?
definitely!
I remember getting my first 2 computers connected over 10base2 LAN with T connectors and terminators and all that stuff just so me and my brother could play duke nukem 3d. It was awesome. I also remember one of the computers could barely run it and then only if shrinking the screen down. If more than 3 laser trip bombs went off at once… instant slideshow.
Hell, Duke Nukem 2 was pretty amazing even.
My first? Probably roller-coaster tycoon. I was amazed how big and intricate the would could be, and all these coasters and everything were running at once. Led to other things like Sim city and such to find more world building games.
MechWarrior 2,
It was the first real experience I ever had playing a game that was 3D. I was pretty young and didn’t know what I was doing. But I thought it was so cool.
Prince of Persia. I remember being blown away by how realistic the movement was
Yeah they used rotoscoping to do the animations. It turned out amazing and captured such realistic movement in just basic pixels.
Myst has always stuck with me as looking amazing at the time. I totally sucked at the game but its graphics have a fond place in my mind for some reason!
For me, the original browser demo of Minecraft was really exciting. I grew up with LEGO, and the Minecraft demo really brought back the joy of just making things for no other reason than to make them. I’ll always have a soft spot for it
There is definitely a sort-of wonder I felt in the early days of Minecraft that I’ve been striving to find in a game since, and have been left wanting.
Half Life
This is the right answer. Half-Life 2 literally blew my mind when I first played it. It still holds up to a lot of similar games nearly 20 years later
Recently just played through most of it again with the HL2VR mod and it was amazing
Has to be portal
Wolfenstein 3D. I’d played ‘3D’ games like The Bard’s Tale before, but the ability to turn around and look in 360’ just blew my mind.
Deus Ex. I was 14, didn’t really play or like first person shooters and only played it because it was in the pile of old games someone essentially dropped off on me. But I understood rather quickly that this game was something special, especially with the player’s choices actually making a difference. I remember a moment when I was playing around with cheats and at one point spawned a Paul Denton next to his dead body in the lab under UNATCO just to be funny and when he started talking to me as if he hadn’t died, a quick online search revealed that I didn’t even know how deep your influence truly went.
I still don’t really like or play first person shooters, but that’s now mostly because Deus Ex has set my standards very, very high!
Î was going to mention this one. Just the flexibility of approaches it permitted was revelatory to me.
On a more dubious note, it also unlocked sides of me that I wasn’t aware of before.
Honorable mention to the first civ which was, for me, what the Risk boardgame had prophecied.
Deus Ex touched on a lot political issues. Another game from that era with a similar feeling of having to fight against the government is Nomad Soul. It’s not as good as Deus Ex, but it features David Bowie which is a plus.
Probably Return to Castle Wolfenstein was one of the first games i ever played
Even with the view window reduced so it would run decently on my 12mhz 80286, I was amazed.
Hello fellow old person! You’re thinking of Wolfenstein 3D, which I also played on a 286. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was from around the year 2000, I believe.
oops, that’s right. It’s been some years. :)
I didn’t own it, but my dad’s friend had it on a computer in the back of his shop. I spent hours back there when he was visiting his friend.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this game also the engine upon which Enemy Territory was built? I logged soooo many hours in that multiplayer mode…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iweK-Z99MwQ
I believe it was one of the early games to implement classes/roles in a team-based shooter
Arguably the best free game ever released. “I’m a medic!”
This is what did it for me.
For me it was World of Warcraft. First time experiencing an MMO, so that was magical in it’s own right but the fact that there were so few loading screens in that game despite it’s size was just 🤯
i was tied between WoW and Diablo 2 for what blew my mind the most. WoW was also my first MASSIVE multiplayer game, i am still amazed my mom’s laptop actually ran it XD
World of Warcraft for sure. My brother and I had downloaded the trial as a joke between us, making fun of the nerds… Next thing you know we could not log off. The size, the community, the music was just so captivating; I can still hear the score in my heard when I think of Teldrassil. The friends I made in game became closer than anyone I knew prior and some I still know and see today! It was lightning in a bottle for me and once my enthusiasm for WoW finally drained years later, no other MMO could really replace it.
Black & White, Alpha Centauri, and Dwarf Fortress.
Alpha Centauri was incredible.
Maybe too retro for “PC” gaming, but Ultima III on the C-64. To have a huge explorable world full of details and people to talk to sucked me right in. Others did a better job later in graphics, size, and details, but Ultima was the first.
For RPGs for me it was Ultima VII - it was the first truly open world game I’d come across, with freedom and so much to do (for the time). I still think it’s a great game to play even now.
I thought Ultima 3 was “big” to explore, then I played Ultima 4.
It was ultima online for me. Slightly less retro, but damn if Ultima isn’t the most slept on truly dead gaming series. So many good games over two decades in the 80s and 90s and then basically shelved since 2000. UO still exists, particularly in private servers, but I would love to see the IP revived in the 2020s. So much potential.
UO would be my next pick in that it blew open the door of the MMORPG concept. EverQuest was next and introduced me to the need for a video card, but UO was simple yet complex at the same time.
