Whether you started with a 2600 and a joystick in your hand, an N64 with a blistered palm or building your first PC in your teens, what is that one video game you’ve played at some point that to this day sits at the top of your list.
Road Rash
Morrowind. Morrowind’s world just feels alive and as someone who knows the game inside out that game just feels home
Dishonored, I absolutely adore that game, and it still looks so good because of the art direction they took with it. Funny enough, it was the same art director as Half Life 2
Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Skyrim
Gotta go with Morrowind. It was a pretty formative experience during my early teenage years, and it’s one of the few that I boot back up for a fresh run about once a year. Instigating the downfall of the Tribunal has become something of an autumn ritual for me. I know the world map layout of Morrowind better than I remember the layout of some of my own childhood homes.
It’s a little clunky and not enjoyable for a lot of people that jumped into Elder Scrolls with Oblivion or Skyrim, but for old school fans, it’s still probably the single greatest product that Bethesda has ever released. Fallout New Vegas makes a close second place on that list, but at least in my opinion, Morrowind holds the crown and given modern Bethesda’s tendencies I don’t expect that to change.
“What do you want Cyrodiil?”
Deus Ex on PC, from the year 2000.
This game made me rethink what a game could even be. Whenever I thought of what a great game would be I’d think “It’s like Deus Ex but…”
Elden Ring
The Outer Wilds. IMO, non-violence-based gameplay design is an underexplored space, especially in 3-D games. The Outer Wilds manages to feel like a fully-fledged game, rather than a traditional walking simulator, using exploration as it’s core gameplay loop.
Further, it’s main progression system is you, the out-of-game player, learning about the world. There’s no abilities you gain or keys you have to find. You unlock new areas, not as a programmed game mechanic, but as a function of reasoning about what you’ve discovered and gaining insight into how the game world works. Any playthrough could be beaten in about 15 minutes – there’s nothing physically blocking you from triggering the end of the game – but it takes you 15 hours or so of flying around the solar system to accrue the necessary insight to get there.
It’s really a special game.
And an amazing soundtrack to match the thrills and sadness of the journey. Dlc was awesome too.
The music towards the end aaa
I wish I had the guts to play it - the anxiety I got from the water-tornados and huge vast emptiness of space, the black hole - the game did such an amazing job at giving me an overwhelming sense of dread that I had to just stop playing. I consider that a compliment towards the game lol
Hey, speaking as someone who hated all the planets (especially the a fog-ridden one I won’t spoil)
Part of the reason why I fell in love with this game was the realization that nothing could ever really harm you. The anxiety I feel when exploring the water-tornado planet was always there – slightly dampened by the understanding that nothing dangerous could ever happen. At most, I was flung up to space. Black hole? Don’t worry, you’ll just end up far away. I’m always anxious, always fearful. I had to learn to be with those feelings, instead of pushing them away.
This was outer wild’s personal message to me: it’s okay to feel scared or overwhelmed. It’s okay to be crushed by narrowing tunnels or die of oxygen depravation or whatever else the universe can throw at you. You’ll always be back in front of a crackling campfire. That’s the safety that the game always guarantees you.
Honestly, with enough exposure to outer wilds, I tried doing black hole trick jumps and sometimes even drove my ship right into the tornados for fun.
I really hope you continue playing! This was one of the best games I’d ever played.
Elder Scrolls III Morrowind. Everything in that game feels so different than anything else, including the other Elder Scrolls.
Yeah Morrowind is so incredibly alien compared to the rest of the games. Everything is so weird and unique in the best possible ways.
Skyrim because it’s not just vanilla skyrim.
Vanilla skyrim is good, but skyrim is also modded skyrim.
Some of those mods are basically games in their own right. And not average games either. Enderal and The forgotten city have won awards and are genuinely great.
You can easily spend a thousand hours playing Skyrim and that’s saying something for a game that doesn’t rely on grinding or have an online mode.
Morrowind and Oblivion don’t get enough credit. Skyrim stood on the shoulders of giants.
Morrowind and Oblivion don’t get enough credit.
This couldn’t be more untrue. It’s all but impossible to mention Skyrim in any gaming of gaming-adjacent space without someone bringing up how Morrowind or Oblivion were better.
Final Fantasy VII (the original)
Final Fantasy 6 for me. The bad (mad) guy TRULY winning was just the coolest as a kid. It definitely tore apart my expectations for what a good game was ever since.
Ocarina of Time.
Ocarina fans know that this is the only correct answer. Lol
People that vote for Ocarina just couldn’t handle Majoras Mask.
Honestly, I just didn’t like the hub-wield element of MM as much as the geography of Hyrule in OoT. It had much more interesting social quests, and combat was smoother, but it just wasn’t what I was there for.
It probably didn’t help that I didn’t have a Memory Pak, and didn’t get to play MM until I got the GCN Collectors Edition disc like 10 years after it originally came out.
Tetris. Tetris is the King.
But the game is racist.
It is a product of its time.
I will never in a million years connect “racist” with “tetris”. What was that about?
There was an article about Kotaku using AI writers, and someone in the comments had ChaptGPT write an article about how Tetris is racist.
