For 90s kids, there’s no need for explanation. For others, well, pokemon was a phenomenon. It was everywhere, on TV, in magazines, toys, stickers. You could trade pokemon at the school excursion on the bus.
You felt alive in this world, pokemon gen 1-2 were the pinnacle of pokemon for me. And in gen2, finishing the game, and lo and behold, there’s a whole other region (kanto) waiting for you to explore it. The night cycle in the game blew my mind in ways that I have been chasing ever since.
I know it will never be reached again, but the memory will remain as powerful as it was that evening of the early 00s. What is your greatest gaming high, that you know will never be topped again, and that you have been chasing ever since?
Planetside 2.
Was pretty new to the game and just wsndering around as a sniper when a guy in a transport pulled up and told me to get in.
Boarded the transport and drove around for a bit when we crossed a hill that sat above an enemy camp.
I jumped out as he drove on and started scouting the camp from the hill. Felt a bit lonely and asking myself if jumping out here was a good idea at all.
After a while, I chose to shoot and see where it lands to see how high I need to aim to adjust for bullet drop.
Suddenly I hear a loud ‘boom’ and an explosion roughly where I was shooting at. Then another ‘boom’ and another explosion.
Turned around to be surprised by 5 friendly tanks in one line behind me unloading at the enemy camp.
After about 20 more seconds, my hill was swarmed with all kinds of friendly tanks and personell, just blasting away at the camp.
It was as if I went from a lonely scout newb to somehow spearheading the attack, which felt really cool.
I’ve been playing it for too long. Varying styles of play is really interesting when combined with the carried map and scale of battle. Not that everything in the game scales well, but what does scale makes it very interesting.
I know what you mean about Gold and Silver. Everything you mentioned, plus events that happened on specific days of the week, “mystery gift” functionality via IR, and more stuff I’m forgetting. There were also radio stations you could “listen” to (read text) that made the world feel alive.
Even in gen 1, trading/battling revived link-cable culture, which I’d only ever seen people use for Tetris, years before.
The awe and grandeur of Occarina Of Time… at the time.
Disco Elysium is the best literature I’ve ever played.
I still feel like used to live in Skyrim. It was a place where I wanted to be and explore.
TF2/Halo CE multilayer mix of copetitive adrenaline and funny shenanigans
Those are the game experiences which stuck with me.
Morrowind. Playing it, modding it, breaking it, trying to fix mods, writing new mods, all of it. Morrowind was so fun, for some time it convinced me that Bethesda might be a competent company
Playing the Mass Effect Trilogy for the first time.
Sure the ending was a bit disappointing, but the ride was absolutely phenomenal.
The first two weeks of Pokemon go were like peace on earth. Everyone was friendly, excited, and walking around outside together, chatting with perfect strangers was actually a blast for once. We shared tips and locations, exchanged numbers, metup after work, cops were largely unmotivated to do anything about it because of how many of us and how wholesome it really was. Honestly best 2 weeks of my life
Great thread! My moment comes from Deus Ex. There was a mission near versalife in Hong Kong, and I took the wrong door at some point and veered off path. I did not have to do it, but I got lost and I did, i cleaned all security from the entire building. After I got out, i read on one of those news screens… it had an article about a terrorist attack massacre on the versalife offices 97 dead… I realized they wrote about me - clever bit of cause-effect-scripting there!
Mech Assault 1 & 2, particularly 2. The two most memorable boss fights for me was the mid game one where you fight some giant robot bull thing in a tiny exosuit while Getting Away with Murder by Papa Roach Plays, and the final fight where you fight a half built giant mech again in the exosuit while Right Now by Korn plays.
Also I really liked Halo 2 for the banshee dogfight with Follow by Incubus in the background and the big Mausoleum fight at the end of Gravemind with Blow Me Away by Breaking Benjamin plays; the part where the doors open and the bell starts to toll chefs kiss. Oh and the whole level where you drive a tank up the bridge chasing down a Scarab too.
Also, why has there been no remake of Crimson Skies yet? That game was so much damn fun. I miss the dog fighting and crazy guns.
Ark Survival Evolved.
Waking up on the beach, getting insta-murdered by a raptor.
Managing to meet up with your mates, building a hut, thinking you are doing ok and carno eats you and your hut in the night.
Taming your first T rex, stomping about monching everything, thinking you are doing ok, then suddenly giga eats you and everything you love.
Wish I could recapture that feeling.
I think it’s a pretty easy call for me - World of Warcraft raiding was some of the most fun I’ve ever had gaming. The pinnacle was probably when my guild got Realm First! Fall of the Lich King (25-man heroic). We spent MONTHS grinding away at it - we had the 10-man realm first achievement as well and could clear heroic with a variety of group comps, 2 or 3 groups per week would run on off-raid nights. But for 25-man heroic, we could clear the rest of the raid in 2-3 hours as I recall, so we’d take some swings at him on night 1 and then we’d spend 2 full raid nights on The Lich King - the final boss of Ice Crown Citadel raid and in fact the final boss of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
For SEVEN months we did this. He was tough af. He had a number of abilities where a single person fucks up and either the whole raid wipes immediately, or it rapidly snowballs out of control otherwise. So after a month’s long uphill fight, and with competing guilds just as close as we were, it was an INSANE moment when we got our realm first kill. It was such a ridiculous high, everyone screaming with relief and excitement. The realm second kill happened that same night, too - so we just narrowly managed to earn our server first kill.
We continued with realm firsts in the Cataclsym expansion on Sinestra, Ragnaros, and Deathwing. I got my first and only legendary weapon - Dragonwrath this expansion. And finally the Mists of Pandaria expansion was the beginning of the end for our guild as a lot of long time players like myself started falling off, so after earning #1 for the first raid tier, things slipped from there. I had a ton of personal victories in game too - after earning Dragonwrath, the most esteemed of all was earning the achievement Insane in the Membrane.
And yet - none of those other victories remotely compared to that first kill of the Lich King. It was truly a special moment.
My first Wrecking Ball achievement is probably the peak of WoW for me. Orc warrior SMASH
I never did get too into PVP - I did enough arena to get a bunch of low hanging achievements and always enjoyed the occasional casual battleground, especially when there was a lot of downtime between patches… But otherwise PVE was my jam.
Finishing Ultima IV on my C64. Yep I’m old.
Not the greatest of all time I don’t think, but the greatest in recent memory
At the end of Chapter 12 of the Entropy Centre I really felt like I was saving the world against all odds. And Chapter 13 immediately after was a trip in a good way. If you’re curious, having a good setup (TV, speakers) helps a lot.
Reaching the top of the mountain in Celeste was pretty awesome too now that I’m thinking about it
THE Brad Boimler?
Yeah the Celeste finale is amazing
THE Brad Boimler?
Sup
The last time must have been when Valheim released. That shit got me hooked. Now I am waiting for the Deep North biome to finish development before I play it again.
Now that I think about it the last time was when Schedule 1 released.
soft smelting and forging sounds beckon
There was a period of about 2 years where every single one of my friends played Destiny religiously. Every day I could log on and just have 2 friends ready to run strikes or get a ragtag team of 6 and run raids (yes, plural).)
15 to 20 members in the clan, just loving this flawed game, having laughs, bantering, even getting deep and serious about relationships, politics, religion, and more.
Even the fights that meant we kicked out 2 racist pieces of garbage from the clan are such precious memories to me.
We have lives now, partners and jobs. I still play, but I raid with strangers or not at all. Sometimes we log on and do an old activity together or run trials, we laugh and have fun, bit never again will we be carefree, and whimsical.
Probably not everyone’s type of game but the first time I got into orbit in KSP. Doing it manually was a huge challenge and the first time I got into orbit not to mention later when they added the mun and I landed and returned to kerbin was a awesome feeling . When they added other planets and later when they added asteroids it was still a great feeling to do it without mechjeb. Of course that was in 2011. I have more hours in that game than any other and I still play it for few week one or two times a year.
