My brother had acquired a pirated copy for me. But the videos and dialogues had been stripped out to save space. He was gushing about how your footsteps would make different sounds on different floor types, but I already knew that from Jedi Knight. So I really didn’t get what the fuzz was about.
Don’t know how much time later I got a full copy and completely fell in love. It’s one of my all time favourite games. The atmosphere is the best. And the different footstep sounds actually serve a gameplay purpose.
Dwarf fortress I was always into it conceptually and think that all the under the hood simulation stuff is rad as hell and its fascinating how emergent narrative arises from such complexity.
Also love kruggsmash’s videos, the bastards a legend. He’s what got me into it.
But pre steam release I just could not get into actually playing it. Even with tile sets and such. I tried, I really did. But the horrid UI and high amounts of game ending bugs were just too much.
The steam release was the only game I’ve truly been hyped for in my adult life. I was giddy like a kid and got it the SECOND it released, and finally fell in love with PLAYING the game and not just hearing about it. Its so fun building up a fortress and getting invested in your little dwarves well being, hidden surprises they put in to spice things up. Every month there’s an update, even if is just a small peacemeal to let us know things are happening and adventure mode is coming along.
After playing for a while and learning enough to know how much you dont know, you can feel the limitless passion and raw intelligence that is the foundation for the insanely rich systems you work with. It feels like a living world in your computer. The closet thing to true technological magic I’ve ever had the pleasure of interacting with.
The binding of Isaac. I played about 10 hours of the flash version. 10 years later my friend gifted me afterbirth and repentance and I’ve played almost 1000 hours
There’s a cheat that puts the game into slowmo, and it was the first game that pretty much let you dive into an army of soldiers and take them all down with melee combat. It was glorious.
Plus there was a cheat that would let you teleport, so sometimes your enemies would go rally an army against you, and you could literally teleport behind them and take them on the hills.
I have two very different kinds of games I did this with.
The first was Undertale, didn’t really get into it at first and stopped playing it around half way through. However after I watched someone else beat the game I got a lot more into it and finally beat all the main endings. Really liked the story and it quickly became one of my favorites after that.
The other is the Crusader Kings games. I got one of them when I was pretty young through a humble bundle and did not understand how it worked at all. Then near the end of highschool I finally tried them again along with playing Stellaris and thats when I was finally able to figure out how to play them and got super into a lot of Paradox’s games.
Minecraft. I tried it as a teenager and didn’t really “get it”. Much later in life I found some friends and none of us really played the game that much so we decided to try it together and got hooked.
As someone who has played Minecraft fairly consistently for the past 12 years or so, I want to ask, what is different about either yourself or the game that made you enjoy it now when you didn’t before?
Not all that time was spent in the same world, but over three different creative worlds and three survival ones, online with friends. I like designing and building, both aesthetic creations and also functional ones. The game to me is all about imagination and so from that perspective it’s just a sandbox that never runs out of content.
Hollow Knight for me fits this scenario to a t. I got it as part of a humble bundle, but couldn’t get into it for at least a year as the initial part felt really depressing, and didn’t at all grab me.
But once I managed to tough it through to greenpath, and started to get some power ups, it finally sunk it’s claws into me. I proceeded to nearly 100% the game.
Mass Effect. Played the first one and couldn’t get off Eden Prime cause of the shitty starting rifle and the OG game’s idea of weapon stability.
Played Mass Effect 2 years later and beat it in a week, just absolutely loved the whole thing. Went back and played the first one after that to get the whole story. Then waited for ME3 to come out.
I still hate the way weapons work in the original ME1 but I pushed through, not surprised it turned people off of the game though.
Skyrim, thought it was boring at first but started again after a friend got it 1 month after me, im currently on what feels like my hundreth playthrough and it still is my all time favorit
Oblivion for me. I had no idea what to do once I left the sewer, I was overwhelmed. But I brought it to a friend’s house and he helped give me some direction. I’ll always be thankful for that because elder scrolls is now my absolute favorite IP for video games
One of the first video games I owned was FFXII, gifted to me for Christmas after I had finally saved up and bought my own PS2.
I did not understand how to play the game well. Basically kitted out every character as archers, and if I ever struggled (which was frequently) my go-to was to chain mist attacks and use up all my mana at once. I would often sure a lot of time just waiting for mana to regenerate after any had fight. It was slow but worked, until the bomb king boss in the forest. I would finally kill it, and then the thing would revive, and I would have nothing left. Tried and tried until I managed to kill it a second time and it revived again.
I gave up out of frustration. Came back to it a couple years later, a little bit wiser, and found the game much easier when the different characters had different roles and I didn’t blow all my mana at the first sign of trouble. The bomb boss was actually a breeze, and I noticed this time that each revival was with fewer hp than before, so it only revived 3 times before it was done for good.
I played Celeste, thought it was kinda easy and the hotel level kinda lame which is where I dropped it. A few years later I broke my leg, being a pc gamer before the steamdeck my switch was the only portable console I had and celeste the only unfinished game i had for it. I played the entire game in a week of 12 hour sessions while high as a mother fucking kite. It was amazingly good fun.
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