For me: Fallout New Vegas, Bloodborne, Hollow Knight, Skyrim, and Red Alert 2
EDIT: adding Stardew Valley to this, most delightfully charming game I've ever played
Disco Elysium for the story
edit: Lisa: The Painful for the story, the jokes, and the gameplay. Still the best RPG I've ever played.
Shadow of the Colossus for the atmosphere
FFXI, but only if I get to play it again in 2003
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, the feeling I got from that game when I first played it is something I haven't felt with any other game, ever. Every moment was excellent, listening to every noise, seeing the sun go down and thinking night was gonna claim another victim -- me. It took me four in game days to cross the railway tracks in Cordon because I was constantly shitting myself. I spent nights near campfires with other loners, always having guard up. Spent a lot of time looking at the map in my PDA wondering how insane Pripyat must have been, looking at every building thinking it was a nest of mutants and so on. It disappointed me a little going forwards, but all STALKER games are pieces of art.
Project Zomboid, my first days in it were also pretty insane. Sleeping on a couch that I moved to the bathroom, doing minimal sounds, closing all windows, shutting down all lights.. listening to a helicopter thinking they were evacuating some important government guy only to see my entire place surrounded by the undead. Beautiful game.
World of Tanks, legit. I loved that game when I was a noob, looking at my tank perform in battle, not giving a fuck about my stats or anything like that. Sometimes I would play a stock T-26 light tank just because the stock turret looks much cooler than the upgraded one.. now I can barely stand the game. I have a similar feeling with World of Warships, but I don't hate that game lol.
Skyrim, because of course. The first days were magical, the world felt big, full of life, full of things to do. It's a solid game, but as time went on I understood the game was not as big as I initially thought. Thankfully you have mods.
GTA San Andreas, back when I got it for PS2 my mind was instantly blown. I recall seeing a car with two passengers and I felt that was insane for it's time, also bikes and shit. Damn, the first night I got the game (christmas night) was pretty fucking poggers, I got lost inside Los Santos and that was beautiful. I stumbled upon the airport.. that was THE moment..
Minecraft, because of course. Everyone wants to go back to that first Minecraft moment.. what a time.
IL-2 Sturmovik 1946, exploring my way through the game's complicated mechanics was just wow. The moment I learned how to use the Full Mission Builder and make any mission I wanted, with any unit and as many as I liked that just fucking awesome. I made some fun missions for myself, massive Ace Combat-like airbattles.. back when I had some creativity...
Return of the Obra Din, it's a fantastically told story with some great mystery solving to do, but you can only really solve a mystery the one time.
Minecraft easily. Some of the best times I've had in the game recently was playing RLcraft and feeling like I had no idea what was going on and genuinely being scared everything again.
I started playing Minecraft a few months ago after not playing for like 6 years or so and a flying mob that I didn't know about definitely scared me shitless lol
Oh yeah definitely Majora's Mask. It was a pretty heavy experience as a child.
That part where you enter Mexico....by god, one of the most memorable scenes I can recall from any visual medium.
Fuck I thought you were talking about the RDR1. RDR2 was great but I still remember the first more fondly.
Definitely agree with Hollow Knight. I had such a sense of amazement and wonder at exploring the world, every little secret felt like an accomplishment.
Also Control just for reading all the logs over again for the first time and seeing all the weird shit. That game was a dream come true for me since I've been reading SCP foundation articles for years.
And Disco Elysium like others have said
It's pretty fun when you start getting some of the cooler abilities (I won't spoil anything). The thing that kept me coming back though was how many secrets there are. It's kinda like older game design where you really have to dig and pay attention to lore to find some of them. And it wasn't just like little achievements for finding the secrets there was like whole gameplay segments behind them.
pillars of eternity, i absolutely loved the mood and got really sad after deadfire came out with a completely different one
Star Wars Galaxies before Sony fucked it up. Studies have been written about that game's ability to create player-run communities.
Modern Warcraft does everything in its power to prevent you from needing to even speak to another player. Even Dark Souls does more to encourage co-op.
BASED BASED BASED
there are some pre-NGE mirrors with reasonable populations out there. I like Restoration III but it's not the biggest one I don't think. It'll never be the same but it scratches a nostalgia itch at least
I wish I could play the Deus Ex games again. They have zero replay ability for me but I loved the first play through.
Also the sense of wonder playing alpha Minecraft during dark winter nights. Trying to defend my weird little castle.
I think I've forgotten the solution to most of the puzzles by now, but a few still haunt me.
