Games that change you

Justobuddies said:

How does one not mention the Infocomm classic Zork when discussing games changing lives? I suppose because it was text based. Still "it is pitch dark in here. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

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And Planetfall. Never got past the death of Floyd. (Seriously - the game was freakin' nasty...) Text-based gaming is a truly lost art.

I was a Commodore kid myself, though the first games I recall playing were Blackjack and Frogger on the Timex-Sinclair 1000. Yes, back with a black-and-white TV monitor and a cassette tape drive that put those little scrolly lines across the screen as it "loaded." Many Commodore games left indelible impressions on my psyche, for good or ill. (Master of Magic, I never won or even did good at, but I booted it up just to listen to the soundtrack: Original and Orchestra cover, YouTube links.)

Ori and the Blind Forest certainly changed me. The fact it can tell a storyline and provoke such a strong emotional response through lack of dialogue is amazing. And the game is absolutely beautiful. Would strongly recommend to anyone.

I know this thread is old-ish but I have to participate! I just (belatedly) finished Undertale last month and I loved it so, so, so much. The writing is fantastic and the morality is so deep that it really struck me. I also loved Earthbound. All of the Animal Crossings are a perennial favorite, and I feel like those games emphasize the simple pleasures in life.

This game took me in so much, I had to make an "Advanced" version over 15 years of research...: Read the second comment post to sample some of it...:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/97109/advanced-air-force

Gaston

To the Moon is so good, it's like a litmus test for your heart. If you can play it and not shed a single tear, you might just not be human. There's also a new-ish sequel that hasn't received much attention (or nearly any, it looks like). It's called Finding Paradise, and its a lot more heartwarming, and less outright sad than TTM was, but equally a tear-jerker.

DOOM.

Seriously, that game changed my life. I had played maybe one or two other shooters (Hello, Goldeneye!) by the time I played my first DOOM game in DOOM 64 way back in 1997. From there, it was a glorious dive into one of the most influential games of all time -- I recall being afraid of the bloody faces the HUD from the original DOOM games had, but I had no idea that years later, I would be playing it again on PC with a mod that turns everything into bloody chunks. Having played so many games throughout my life, I like that feeling of being directly in the game, where my actions would actually have effects not just on my game avatar, but on me -- Sure, watching events happen to Link or Leon Kennedy was exciting, but in first-person? It becomes easy to forget the "player avatar" part and get immersed in the game events themselves. Also doesn't help that shooters are still popular today -- Fortnite may be the biggest game on the planet right now, but it wouldn't be anything without DOOM to pave the way first.

I have a few other games I could say 'changed' my life in ways. Super Mario World was the very first game I beat as a child, and it let me know of the finite nature of the universe, heh. Super Mario RPG got me into, um, RPG's and their deep gameplay mechanics/story/worlds. Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas each got me through rough patches in my life. Fallout 3 introduced me to the idea that, yes, modern games could still be good, prompting me to continue gaming to this day. Hell, the Mass Effect series has all of the above-mentioned qualities (seriously, the multiplayer components for 3 and Andromeda contain a gameplay loop so satisfying, I'm still playing them -- now if only they'd do something about those microtransactions, heh...), where I would wager money that an inspiration for its combat mechanics were inspired by DOOM -- visually distinct enemies and enemy types to allow for quick target identification and strategizing, a wildly varied arsenal that isn't held back by realistic conventions, emphasis on mobility, and a specific atmosphere that fits the universe. Sounds like classic DOOM to me!