This is a good question; thank you for posting. For me it was probably the original Unreal and having a dedicated 3D graphics card for the first time to play it on. I of course had played its historical predecessors in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom and such, which also amazed me at the time. But Unreal felt like a magical leap forward.
The first game that blew my mind was a pirated copy of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in my older brother's computer. Back then I was intimidated by big and "complex" games like that. I was only playing mainstream online multiplayer games, particularly shooters, that are trending in my country (Crossfire, CS 1.6, etc.). I was bored that time, don't know what to play and decided to try this game. It blew my mind that games could be like this, and it's not complex than I thought. That was the first time I've played a "modern" game and made me fell in love with gaming.
Earthsiege 2. It had branching mission structures based on previous successes or failures, great resource management mechanics, and a fun plot. I'd love to see a remake.
Hmmm I would say Battlefield 3, because not only was it a technical marvel at the time, but it was the first game I launched on the first computer I had that wasn't ancient.
Dungeon keeper 1. Real time strategy and first person shooter at the same time. Its like playing strategy game with a view from the top and then you can switch to Minecraft mode, dig the walls, build things, fight enemies.
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!
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.
Wolfenstein back in '93 or so. My buddy down the street was the only one in the neighborhood with a PC that was able to run it and we spent weeks straight playing that thing. I must have pushed on every damn wall in that game looking for secret areas.
Next would be Homeworld in '99, the story and the music are still amazing. Just listen to this choral version of adagio for strings and tell me it's not fucking epic.
I remember my first time playing Half-Life was pretty incredible. What really wowed me was the intro being so slow, and you just starting in a normal world, with no combat for like 45 minutes. I'd never seen anything like it before, and I loved the feeling so much. I used to hang out in the intro area for as long as I could, just enjoying how immersive and calm it felt. To this day I really dislike games that have little to no down time to them - I love just hanging out in a world. My favourite genre wound up being JRPGs since they handle that balance so well.
I played half life way later (2014-ish) and it's hard to imagine how crazy it must have seemed back then. Even now, delaying the combat for that long is pretty rare. Back then I can't imagine how groundbreaking it must have been.
Doom, no question. I was an Amiga owner at the time, and we were used to being the go-to platform for computer gaming. Then Doom came along and pretty much sent the Amiga scene on a quest for a "Doom clone" that it would never achieve.
I loved that game as a kid, I've never found anyone else who has heard of it. I remember having a print out of the game lore and reading through it a bunch of times before I would play because it was so cool, and probably the loading times were so long back then I had a lot of opportunities to read it.
Mass Effect definitely up there. Everything was right with that game (perhaps not the excessive time in the lifts). The story line and sound tracks were beyond amazing.
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