Gaming

Neon white was super fun, still working in 100% for the good ending.

Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2. My favorite game series of all time. Honorable mention to Red Dead 2 and God of War Ragnarok. I’m a slut for cinematic games.

Thief. The first three, at least. (*)

Splinter Cell as well.

Basically, Splinter Cell got me into what became my favorite genre: stealth.

Then I went and played Thief because stealth, and just everything about those games furthered my love for not only stealth, but it was my gateway to immersive sims as well.

Also, the level "Robbing the Cradle" in Deadly Shadows will always stick with me. As someone who hates survival horror, that level was both fucking incredible and also a nightmare that I had to use a walkthrough to get through quickly.

KOTOR got me into RPGs, and New Vegas came around and has stuck with me ever since.

And Skyrim I guess, since I've played it way too many times.

Should probably add Prey (2017) as well. Incredible game. For that matter, Dishonored. Both have a permanent place in my mind. And when I say Dishonored, I mean the first two, although I also enjoyed Death of the Outsider.

(*) I actually enjoyed Thief 2014 for what it was. Not nearly on the level as the originals, but it was still okay, if a sadly forgettable entry which kind of put the nail in the coffin for future releases.

Red alert 2 and counterstrike will be with me forever. I played those games so much growing up that I always find myself going back to them.

Not a fantastic game, but the first Walking Dead Telltale series really hit me in the feels and so has stayed with me. The Witcher 3 definitely affected me, but it's hard to seperate that feeling from the books.

I'd say Kerbal Space Program, Factorio and Rimworld because whenever I play those it's like coming home, but since I'm always playing at least one of them, it feels a bit like cheating.

The feeling of the Tribes games is always there in my mind. I occasionally go back but the freedom of movement in that game is just so liberating. I never know why they aren't more celebrated. (Titanfall 2 comes close, but still not quite the same).

Battlezone 2 is IMHO another unsung classic. I loved the mix of RTS and FPS. Another one from before the mechanics of FPS and the general feel of motion had standardised (to a fault) which I think helps it keep it's hooks in me.

Neverwinter nights and it's expansion packs still sticks with me

Shovel Knight stuck with me more than I think the developers even expected. Maybe because I went through a rather distressing breakup at the time.

Yeah yeah, I know I probably read more into it than they put into it, but I did and it stuck with me.

Life is Strange Might have just been I played it at a point in my life that I could really relate to it but characters have stuck with me since playing it. Looking back, it could have been so much more then it was in terms of choices and such. But I still think overall it was great

Ar Tonelico. I was very into world building in high school. And this game hits the closest to my imagination at that time. I just can't forget that feeling years after. Regardless of the weird visual novel-y parts of it

For me, it's Mirror's Edge, particularly Mirror's Edge Catalyst. I even go running IRL to the soundtrack.

Believe it or not, it was a flash game. You can't play it online anymore, though you can find it for download somewhere I'm sure.

It was called "Obliterate Everything 2" - it was just a small game about space battles, with fairly simple mechanics. But the amount of depth it got from that was so absurd. The difficulty curve was a bit wacky, and I remember talking at length to my friends about the various game design principles I'd learned from observing and judging it.

Spyro, Explorers of Sky, and Yoshi Island to name a few.

The Last Guardian. So many plot points were left a mystery never to be solved...

Ports of Call on the Commodore 64. One of the first video games I ever played. Set up a shipping company, buy a ship, buy low and sell high and get better ships. Occasionally you have to take control of the ship (incredibly rudimentary, but it was 1986, give them a break) to dock or leave port, avoid a collision or avoid reefs, but for whatever reason I keep coming back to it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1085260/Ports_of_Call_Classic/

Alpha Protocol, cause and effect and replayability just made it one of the best of all time in my opinion.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is the easy answer for me. It hit me at just the right time, in just the right way. It was masterfully crafted. The sound track was, at the time, perhaps the best pairing of a video game and sound track ever made.

Eastward is an indie game I got because I saw someone recommend it on Lemmy a couple years ago. The pixel art was amazing, and some of it had a very unique eerieness. The story was heartwarming at times and creepy at other times. The only real complaint I had was that so much of the story remained unexplained after the ending, I really wanted to see all the little pieces of plot tied together.