The last game where you felt "it".

Morrowind. The first Elder Scrolls game I ever played. I remember just getting lost in it. Reading each new book I encountered, poking around every cave, crypt, or dungeon I found, wondering over every new creature that wasn't a giant rat. I completely lost track of time that night, ended up playing from about 8pm to the crack of dawn. Didn't even notice the time until the sun came bursting rudely through the window cooking my eyeballs like crispy fried chicken and I realized it was dawn, more than 12 hours since I started.
Well I saved my game and went to check my map to see how far my 12+ hours of gaming had gotten me. And boy was I surprised.
Morrowind Map.png
The area in red is the approximate total of the area of the map I explored in those 12+ hours. And it just floored me. I'd already explored a dozen caves and dungeons on my way here, and I'd encountered 3 different towns all with their own distinct style. I realized just how much of this world was left to see, how much of the main quest lay before me and I was just awestruck.
Every bit of my free time over the next many months was devoted to trying to take it all in. To this day after years of continuous play I still don't believe I've found everything this game has to show me.
 
I think the last time I ever felt "it" was when I first Animal Crossing on the GameCube when I was a kid. It just blew my mind how responsive the animals were and how much shit you could collect and stuff. I remember sneaking down to play it in the middle of the night because it was so fun and to see what the animals were doing at night.

Haven't really felt "it" from any other game ever since. Not to say I haven't had fun with any other games since then, I definitely have, I just haven't felt the magic sense of wonder ever since then. I've felt similar things, I guess, but never that childlike sense of excitement and curiosity.
 
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If we're talkin old-skool as a kid, for me it was Sonic3&Knuckles. Sonic 3 was already good enough, but once I locked on Sonic & Knuckles with Sonic 3, my mind was blown and i thought it was literally the best game ever, and to this day i still do. The story was told in a simple but "straight to the point" way with the cutscenes. The colorful levels, each having their own unique personality, with the help of some amazing music. The PC Collection made it even more interesting with the different music for CarnivalNight/IceCap/LaunchBase (which were confirmed almost a year ago that they were actually the ORIGINAL tunes in an early beta build) There was ALWAYS replay value for me with that game, even after getting all the emeralds. Sometimes I would dick around with debug mode and try to go through the Knuckles path as Sonic.

If we're talking recently, then Sonic Mania was the game that rekindled that old feeling I had as a kid, and just like Sonic3K, even after getting the emeralds there will always be replay value for me in that game. Once again the story is told in a simplistic way and the older stages have been given even more life and personality than they had before while the new ones are still unique. Also it has Puyo Puyo, which is a fucking awesome puzzle game.
 
Arma 3 since it's pretty fun when you end up in a realism server with a bunch of boomers acting all serious, I haven't played it in over a year tho but did rack up around 800 hours of playtime on Steam. it's a good way to spend 3-4 hours being bossed around by a fat 55 year old from Texas tbh. The other game modes like King of the Hill is fun too if you get in with a good squad and roll out together, it's one of the reasons why I upgraded my PC to play it since Arma 2 barely ran on my shitbox, if Arma 4 comes out it'll probably be the first game I buy in years although I don't think a I5 4th gen and a 970 will run it unless they use a different engine...

I've never been a big vidya game player except for the basics, I think I have like 20-25 games on Steam and I have had an account for over 10 years although the ones I have I played the shit out of them with many having 500+ hours. I mostly just played shit like Gmod and CS:S with the custom maps like Zombie Run and the bhop servers and stupid shit but yeah as you get into your mid 20's vidya just isn't fun anymore, the only thing I do now is once in a blue moon play a few rounds of CS:GO for maybe 45 mins then not play it for weeks.
 
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It's actually a recent one. First time playing Crusader Kings 2 and I go for one of the Spanish kingdoms. I conquer the rest of the christian realms and then once my character dies, the kingdoms split between my children. Yeah, I didn't know what gavelkind would do at the time. So each time I'd die, I'd assassinate my brothers or declare war on them while holding off rebellions and muslim invasions with a zero gold cost crusader army that happened to settle in my realm. I didn't really expand my kingdom, but I felt like a medieval king.
 
I don't know if this counts, but Minecraft. Less so from actually playing the game and more so watching videos and machinimas of it.

I remember watching obscure youtubers doing let's plays and videos of the game back in the earlier days. Some guy called Razorknight and his Alpha let's play, CorruptCarnage and his tutorial series, HomicidalTendencies (now -Bryan-) and his TNT videos, PaperbatVG and his modded Beta series, TwoAwesomeGamers and their skyblock let's play, craftedmovie and their machinimas, Joshua Mutter and his Minecraftian movies, FVdisco and his redstone maps, Yogscast and their unfinished Shadow of Israphel series, and a whole bunch of other people.

Those people were what made the Minecraft that I remember. It was wonderful. Now they're all dead and gone and my recommendations are being spammed with this dream faggot and his speedruns. :(

There's also Ace of Spades 0.75/0.76, I guess. It was a neat little voxel build-and-shoot game that was free. I think it was the first multiplayer game I played before TF2. Used to have so much players, but since then it dropped down to near dead game status. Having limited server choice (because people only play on those servers) and no game-wide anti-cheat did a dent on that game.

Edit: gremmer,
 
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First Mass Effect for sure. It gave off such an inviting feel, the worldbuilding was fantastic. And I loved that they hid loot boxes in little corners of maps. Sometimes I'd get this... "cozy" feeling (for lack of a better word) when playing the game. Something about walking around a space station, or being layers-deep into a "dungeon" really made me feel at home, especially if I played at night. ME2 only emphasized that feeling further, I think due to the planetary probes, finding distress beacons, etc. I love that Bioware rewarded players who like treasure hunting. Wish more games did that.

Kotor had that feeling, too, come to think of it. And New Vegas, as someone mentioned earlier.
 
Terraria; the first time I found the ocean and jumped in, only to immediately suffer an attack of thalassaphobia that had my heart pumping and the hairs sticking out on the back of my neck was wild.
 
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