The last game where you felt "it".

[thx1138]

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.
View attachment 1501618
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'm going to heartily agree with this. Maybe it was the time it came out, before I got jaded with open world games, but my goodness. Walking along some desolate shore way, way up north and feeling like I was a thousand miles from civilization, like Balmora was weeks' travel away. I remember finding these loose journal pages lying on the ground, somewhere out in the desolate wilderness southeast of the Red Mountain region, just...lying there. Discarded, or blown there by the wind. Getting lost in Morrowind (and later, Oblivion and its addons, and then Skyrim) was always phenomenal. Fault the later games or Bethesda all you want but they really know how to do open world fantasy, and Morrowind is just sumptuous.

I would say that the opening dialog from the G-Man in HL2, as well, even though it's a different kind of game.

 

[Inflatable Julay]

Spelunky maybe? Or Ghostbusters 2008 or Fallout 3...I think Takes of Symphonia and Wind Waker were the last games I truly enjoyed on the way that I used to. After that I became too critical to really enjoy a game for what it is.

 

[Neanderthal Guru]

Mass Effect 2 for sure. I played a ton of games in the early 00's, but then I went into family/school/work mode for like seven years straight with no consoles and an old machine that couldn't play anything made after like 2005. Then I had a month free in summer 2010 when I had a house all to myself, no work, and got to borrow my brother's 360. First really modern game I played since Halo 1, first HD game I played, great story, etc. Just drank beer and played ME2 for a month without a care in the world.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

Although it's impossible to ever recreate that childhood feeling, the FF7 remake is the most recent example I've played. Now tell us when we're getting part 2 dammit.

 

[Big Bad Wart]

Last games were probably Bloodstained: ritual of the night and hollow knight loved Castlevania type games so I played them excessively.

 

[Agarathium1066]

Walking into Stormwind for the first time in WoW. One thing I have always loved about the game was how huge it felt.

I had that with Ironforge's entryway back when it was a much more popular spot to hang out in front of due to the auction house being there. The size of the gate, the titanic size and detail rich (compared to what I knew) statue that loomed over anyone coming in. It all just felt so much bigger than anything I'd ever seen, so much more detailed. NPCs were everywhere alongside players, running and jumping over the grate that perilously holds over this trench in the lava.

Looking at it now the walls of Stormwind feel squat, Ironforge looks blocky and silly. I still love the forge area in Ironforge though but they've since done better in Cataclysm. Shame they're never going to bother updating it.

 

[FeverGlitch]

Xenoblade Chronicles

 

[Takodachi]

Mabinogi, I stopped playing it like 2 years ago, but I started back in 2009 and there was so much shit to do and to see, and since wikis werent that popular back then, there were so many secrets to discover.
I havent felt anything like that since then.

 

[SwollenGorl]

Age of Empires and Civilization (I was a micromanager at birth)

 

[Tovarisz]

Games peaked with the release of The Devil Inside for me and idgaf if anyone even knows what that game is.

 

[Benzo Samurai]

the Qing dynasty campaign in OpenGeneral made me pretty warm and fuzzy because you're fighting for control of 'nam, and i had just read about it, dreaming myself away in ancient China, so it was based to play a campaign that had that, so that has to be the last game that made me feel some love.
Baldurs Gate I and II used to make me feel very epic, another is Heroes of Might and Magic III. Dark Souls I, probably a very normie-tier example but it is a lovable game, and me and two of my friends all worked through it together when we first played it(years after it came out).

Games peaked with the release of The Devil Inside for me and idgaf if anyone even knows what that game is.

Now you made me google it and it looks pretty cool. Love games from that era. It was a magical time to be a kid.

 

[Tovarisz]

Now you made me google it and it looks pretty cool. Love games from that era. It was a magical time to be a kid.

Yeah, I kinda wish there were indies made in the style of early 3D games instead of just late SNES 2D. One in question, It's buggy and rushed budget game that got most of it's sales from video game magazine discs but it was fun to play, still is for me but it might be nostalgia. Games with so much camp will never exist again.

Edit: Also RPG games peaked with Gothic I and II, III doesn't exist.

 

[sasazuka]

Even if the map isn't that impressive by today's standards, by Playstation 2 standards, the Test Drive Unlimited map looked gorgeous and took me many days to fully explore every nook and cranny of the (simplified but still immersive) version of Oahu, and I enjoyed going offroad and hillclimbing with cars that weren't designed for it. I eventually got the XBox 360 version as well but mostly to play the game with Ferrari, which were missing from the Playstation 2 version due to licensing issues (they were only able to get the rights to Ferrari on the 360 through Turn 10), graphically, the XBox 360 version didn't look substantially better than the PS2 version other than the resolution being high definition.

There are better open world racing games today, quite obviously, but it's only been incremental improvements since Test Drive Unlimited.


I don't have anything to play it on but I am feeling that "quantum leap over its predecessors" excitement for Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020), something I haven't felt in a long time.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Breath of The Wild, Super Mario Odyssey and Cuphead made me feel like a kid again.

Cuphead reminded me of what games looked like when they were new to me as a kid and the punishing difficultly reminded me of that feeling of "dammit, I want to see more of this game, but it's so hard!" as a kid.

And Breath of The Wild and Super Mario Odyssey felt like reconnecting with old friends, since they were the first mainline Zelda and Marios I had beaten since Super Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker on the Gamecube, it was just magical.

 

[TenMilesWide]

The web swinging mechanics in Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man were and are the most satisfying thing(s) I've felt in gaming. The sense of momentum zipping around those open city environments just felt right.

Spider-Man PS4 got pretty close, but it wasn't quite there imo. But more recently I've been playing a VR game called Windlands 2 that just utterly nails it, it's been a real blast just flying around in the headset.

 

[MissJessiac]

Honestly, Danganronpa V3.

for those who haven't played/heard of Danganronpa, it's a murder mystery game with 16 high school students.
for it to be really emotionally immersive you need to really love the characters, and I got really lucky with V3.
I really liked Shuichi as the protag ngl, and that helped really get into the game.
I finished it all in ~25 hours over two days.
I've played it again recently and it's replayable which I appreciate.
Also I ended up loving Kokichi in the game even when the game makes him a dick up until he dies.
that and I cheered in Chapter 3 when both Angie and Tenko died like haha annoying characters dead

 

[Focken Kiwi]

Outerwilds.

I second that. Breaking the time loop knowing full well the consequences if you fail was a chilling moment that still makes my spine tingle. Sure, there aren't really any consequences for death in the game; Outer Wilds does a good job of drawing you into the story and making you feel like there are consequences however.

Spoiler

 

[Tour of Italy]

I played the Halo Master Chief Collection multiplayer and it didn’t really click for me.

Until I narrowed the queue down to the same settings my friends and I would play nearly every weekend for 4 years:

Default starting weapons, team slayer, 4v4.

It was like an unexpected visit from an old friend.

 

[Mazinkaiser]

I felt it again just last week when I was replaying Halo 3’s campaign. Nostalgia definitely is a big part of it but the gameplay is just so simple and fun that nothing today compares.

 

[Lunachu]

The Spyro Trilogy. Reignited brought back so many memories.