5 games that changed how you look at and play games

So I was thinking about a bunch of games earlier today, specifically a few that vastly changed my understanding or feeling towards video games as a whole. My question to ya'll is this: what 5 games have completely changed how you play, look at, think about, or feel about games? These games don't have to be your favorite (hell, you might not even like them), but they do have to have had a serious impact on your gaming mentality. EDIT: Your list also doesn't have to be 5. If you can only think of a single game that was a lamppost for you, name it!

My 5:

Shadow of the Colossus - Before SotC I had just seen games as a time-waster, no thought required, no emotional investment, no real meaning to them. SotC made me look at how games made me feel without using any dialogue. I felt genuinely sad for these creatures I was killing for selfish reasons and started to hate my character for what he was doing for greed. For the first time I looked past the surface-layer of a game and actually saw what the meaning behind the game mechanics meant. Because of SotC I don't look at games for just their entertainment value anymore, I look at them for their meaning and <insert pretentious reason here>. SotC is the sole reason I started caring about "art" games.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - This game was a huge influence on my childhood, but what it really did for me was make me really appreciate and enjoy parts of the game that aren't necessary to beat it. Spending hours upon hours getting the Biggoron Sword and finding Golden Sketullas was the first time I enjoyed what could be called tedious tasks in games. I probably have OCD now because of this shit. I will also fight to the death anyone who doesn't like OoT, you know, to prove them wrong.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - Story. MGS3 was my first MGS game and really the first story-driven game I really enjoyed. I can't actually recall giving a single meaningfully shit about story games until I tried out MGS3. Yeah I had played a few Final Fantasy games (including 4, 6, and 7), but I was never actually hooked by the stories. Now I never skip cutscenes or dialogue in games for fear of losing some crucial piece of story information.

Legend of Zelda - The single reason I started playing video games. I was only 4 or 5 when I first played it, but after trying it out for a little bit (and taking hours to even find the first level) I couldn't stop playing. I forgot about all the other NES games my family had and only played this one thing for what seemed like forever.

Super Metroid - Along with Legend of Zelda this game defined my early gaming years. Super Metroid introduced me to the "water-cooler" part of games, talking with my friends about how to get past certain levels or secret areas. We came into Super Metroid a few years after it came out, but when one of us got it we all got it. Those days were like our mini ARGs we had constant discussions about. Super Metroid was to me what Fez is to the Giant Bomb crew. Somehow Super Metroid got me loving the idea of teamwork even though it's a single-player game. This game directly lead all of my friends and I into doing the goddamn same thing with Pokemon Red, but multiple magnitudes more.

Tarzan for the Playstation 1 made me realise that I can't just win the game by pressing left on the d-pad (it was the first videogame I ever played).

And I think it was Sheepdog and Wolf that made me realise I had a deep love for coming up with designs for games. I never owned the game, mind you, but for years I really wanted it and fantasised about how it might look and play. No idea why I had such a fascination, but kids are weird.

aladdin for the Genesis made me realise that games could look amazing and have fantastic gameplay all at the same time and i remember thinking it was " like watching a cartoon" which of course it wasnt but at the time wow

Dark Souls and The Witcher have made it really fucking hard to play any other RPGs without chronic yawning.

Half-Life is one I can think of right now.

Vanguard Bandits or Front Mission 3 - Both of these games have 2 main branches of story, I thought that feature was awesome when I played them when they were more relevant but I never really knew just how awesome they were until I was in the more present where things like "killing a enemy commander who happened to also be a main character if you were playing a different branch" don't really exist anymore or at least are much less prevalent

Return to Castle Wolfenstein : Enemy Territory - I played a few shooters online before ET but ET probably to this day remains one of my favorite, it still defines what I really enjoy in shooters which unfortunately largely don't match what is popular which is to say :

-Multi-tiered objectives with multiple ways to complete them

-Class system with classes that don't involve shooting, but can still shoot

-Ranking up systems that could reset (depending on server specifications) but also were tied into the equipment or skills you could use

-Large battles

The closest comparison I can think of is Nautral Selection but I never really looked into that.

The Elder Scrolls 3 : Morrowind - At first I hated this game actually and regretted buying it, but then after I looked at the back of the box the words "live another life" really got me gripped somehow so I gave it another shot and when I approached it from that perspective I discovered that I really liked it. I got around the basically really dull combat system and instead loved exploring the world, and yes, living my own unique life in it. It's also one of the few games that let me store things in a house.

World of Warcraft - I played Everquest but never really got into it, WoW on the other hand was much easier to get into since I really liked WC3 and when I saw the trailer for WoW I was immediately hooked. WoW was also the game that sort of made me look into the more "social" aspects of gaming not only in gaming but in the gaming industry in general.

GTA3 got me really back into gaming with more adult themes and the open world genre was officially born I love open world games the variety and replay value is what I look for in games ever since.

• Dark Souls
• Braid
• Mass Effect/Dragon Age: Origins
• A Link to the Past
• Prince of Persia Warrior Within

Vice City made me realise I don 't have to actually accomplish anything to have fun, also tanks.

I honestly can't think of a game that's done that to me, I'm sure plenty have, just can't remember

Devil May Cry and Symphony of the Night showed me what I really want out of games, and subsequently ruined my enjoyment of most other things.

I still play and enjoy a lot of rollercoaster games, like God of War or something, but my "real" games are few and far between. The wait between Bayonetta and Dark Souls was kind of excruciating considering the amount of fucking first person shooters that filled the gap.

Good thing we have addictive MP games like Dota around, keeping me into the industry.

Myst

Age of Empires

Splinter Cell

World of Warcraft

Uncharted

Journey

Tomb Raider - atmosphere

Morrowind - bye bye quests, hello MY OWN story.

Fable 2 - goddammit i love my kids

Demon's Souls - harder is better

Fallout New Vegas - sleeping/eating/segregate the casuals

Super Mario Bros 3, Killer 7, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Mass Effect

Half-Life + Mods - I like to lump this into one in these lists. It completely changed how I think of the FPS genre and to this day, is still more fun for me to play than any other FPS out there. The speed and precision involved is something that is still umatched.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - That atmosphere is still the best I have ever seen. You have to play smart throughout the entire game or you will die several times. A lot of horror games I've played don't feel like they do horror right. I was never that scared with games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, it was more the shock moments of something popping out of nowhere that scared me. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. scared me at every step I took because of the atmosphere.

Deus Ex - The options!! The ways you can beat the game!! Still to this day, my favorite single player experience. You can beat this game a hundred times over and play it a different way every time.

Battlefield 1942 & 2 - The large scale battles. One person isn't going to make a difference, you have to work together and split your team up evenly in squads to go after different objectives.

Not even sure what to put in the fifth spot, nothing jumps out at me like the above four mentioned.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne taught me that random battles and grinding don't have to be awful.

1. Devil May Cry 3 showed me that combat in a game could be more than just mashing buttons or shooting at dudes. I know that technically DMC1 could have done the same thing, but the fact that it was decidedly easier meant that at no point were you ever expected to master or even become decent at any of the game;s systems. There was a degree of scrub-friendliness that allowed you to progress if you brute-forced it hard enough. DMC3 wasn't at all like that. It demanded more of the player than any other action game available at the time. This has given it the reputation of being a "hard game", but it really isn't. It just expects you to know how to play it and punishes you for slacking off. It respects the player and asks that the player respects it in return. Every action game I've played since now gets compared to DMC3 in terms of combat design. Since then, its spot has been taken by Bayonetta, but you never forget your first....
 
2. Street Fighter III: Third Strike inspired me to get down into the nitty gritty about game design in general, because simply learning to play it decently meant you had to know how the programming worked. I learned about frames and how to count them, I learned about button priority, animation priority, hitboxes, hurt boxes, and generally how to get the best out of a game on both a technical and casual level. Third Strike is also just a beautiful example of 2D animation in a video game. It remains one of the prettiest fighting games to this day.  3S in combination with DMC3 eventually helped me development my own theories of game design which I'll hopefully put into practice one day.
 
3. Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil is probably the first game I've ever become emotionally invested in on both a gameplay and story level. The themes were surprisingly mature and actually got me to wonder about some pretty complicated societal issues. While I've never actually cried during the ending of  a game, this is probably the closest I've ever gotten to doing so, granted I was pretty young at the time. Gameplay wise, the game is essentially a puzzle platformer with some light combat. The puzzles are designed in such ways many of the tougher ones require some kind of "sacrifice" to solve. Sometimes you'll have a difficult time progressing to a portion of the level, then reach a puzzle that seems to want you to throw all that progress away in order to solve it. Then there're my favorites that feel like you're breaking the game to solve them, but the solution is almost certainly intended by the developer. Not many puzzle games nowadays would attempt something like that.
 
4. Skullgirls is kind of weird, but definitely belongs on this kind of list for me. It completely changed the way I see fighting games and the future of game development. Lead programmer Mike Z has gone above and beyond in order to bring this game to the public and is generally an easily approachable guy. He answers questions almost without hesitation, even when he probably shouldn't, and I've learned invaluable information about game development leading up to and following Skullgirls' release. The game is still a very player-driven experience with a perfect blend of fan influence and creativity. There are features in it that players have asked to be included in fighting games for over 10 years, and now big budget developers are shamelessly copying them, which is great. Anything that changes the fighting game industry for the better is welcome. Capcom even directly credits Skullgirls for some of its new features in current fighting games, and fans are constantly telling other developers to "make it like Skullgirls".
 
5. The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise got me into gaming as more than just a toy to sometimes play with friends. The Sega Genesis was the first game console I've personally owned, and Sonic the Hedgehog was one of the first games I've personally owned and beaten. Sonic was my gateway into gaming. He easily became my favorite video character, and I became so obsessed with the series that I would literally buy any Sonic game that came out, even if I had to purchase a new console to do so, which is exactly why I bought the Sega Dreamcast (no regrets). This series made platformers my favorite genre, which holds true today despite them being virtually an endangered species at this point. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is still probably my favorite game of all time, and Sonic Adventure is still kind of close it. Unfortunately the franchise dropped off the map after Sonic Adventure, the developer Sonic Team was disbanded, and not a single Sonic game has been made since.

It seems like the 3 most frequently cited games I've been told are Final Fantasy 7, Dark Souls, and some variation of Zelda.

Mario 64 - It was on a whole new level.

FFX - First franchise I loved to die on me.

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Visuals don't matter if everything else sucks.

Can't think of 5 at the moment, but the one that jumps to mind immediately is the original Civilization. It was the first game I got on my first PC, back in around 1992-93 or so. The only video games I had ever experienced up until that point had been Atari 2600, Commodore 64 and NES games that I had played in my younger days before giving games a break for a few years. During that break, I had pursued more "intellectual" pursuits such as studying astronomy, history and geography. I wanted to put my new computer to use and saw an ad for a game that could appeal to some of my interests. When I got it and played, I came to the realization that it was the polar opposite of everything my 12-year old mind had thought video games were. I've been hooked on the series and genre ever since, including Civ 5, which I have sunk 300 hours into according to Steam.

Metal Gear Solid: Cinematic gaming. A ton going on and detail everywhere. Plot that is so far reaching.

Deus Ex: Freedom in gameplay, atmosphere

Battlefield 1942: Multiplayer could be more than an arena, it could be much bigger.

GTA 3: Open world gaming.

Final Fantasy 7: Epic scope to a plot. How long and involving a game could be.

I want to say Rush 2049 flipped the script.

Stunts.

1. Final Fantasy VII: While I never actually played this game, I watched my brother play every minute when I was 7. I was so sucked in by the world, the visuals and the story, it was the moment I fell in love with RPGs
2. Pokemon Red/Blue: The was the first "collect 'em all" game I ever played, and had concepts that were mind blowing to my 7 year old self.
3. Grand Theft Auto III: First open world I ever played and was amazed at how so many moving parts were so well put together to make me believe it was a breathing living world... that I could completely FUCK UP!
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: Not the first competitive game I was really into (Counter Strike: Source being the first) but the perk and promotion system introduced was literally game changing. This is to date, the only game that has brought the most of my friends together.
5. Portal: Never played a puzzle game before Portal, never wanted to, but once I decided to give Portal a try, and then played it straight to the end, I was hooked. Since Portal, I am always on the lookout for great mind-bending puzzle games.

There are a lot of games I believe have influenced my tastes to what they currently are, I even made a list (which can be found here)! I picked out the five I feel best sum up my tastes and influenced them.

• CoD4 - This game introduced me to how goddamn cool online multiplayer shooters could be. The first online shooter I played was Halo 2 which I enjoyed (I played CoD3 online as well,) but 4 is really what made me start to take online multiplayer seriously rather than as a place to go and goof off.
• DMC3 (and the original) - The original was like nothing else I had ever played and introduced me to what is possibly my favorite genre and was just incredibly fun. The third game showed me how bat-shit awesome these kinds of games could be and spoiled me to the point of not being able to play any of those games that weren't outstanding. Also it solidified Dante as my favorite game character ever.
• Super Mario 64 - Introduced me to 3D games and was simply amazing at the time.
• Zelda OoT - First game of that type I had played (3D Action-adventure with sword combat I guess?) and it just straight up blew my mind that a game like that was possible.
• Runescape (THAT'S RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKERS.) - I still play this game, man. It introduced me to PC gaming, online gaming and that type of RPG (grind-y with skills to level up and stuff?) as well as being my first MMO game.

I can't really think of 5 that really fit what the title of the thread is asking.

Half-Life 2 is certainly one. The "less is more" approach made it one of a kind. Experience the world instead of being told what's going on. Just look for yourself and understand what's going on.

Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid also known as cinematic gaming. Before those games i would never have thought about games in this fashion.

Everything else i can think of falls more into the category of games that revolutionized their respective genre but really, that's just the normal progression of games over time, not really something that change how i see or think about games on a fundamental level.

Final Fantasy VII was the first game that made me feel for the little people on my TV screen.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time undid the most basic mechanic of games; dying. I'm sure that other games have done this, but none quite like it.

Metal Gear Solid was just so strange in every way, while still being entirely accessible. I'm not even sure what it changed for me...

Grand Theft Auto III taught me that games can be entirely open, while still having solid progression.

Morrowind didn't quite change how I looked at anything, but it did raise the bar for open world games, by executing what I'm sure we had all long since fantasised about seeing in a video game.

Alone in the Dark - my first horror game

Doom - Back in the day damn.

Monkey island - got in into point and clicks

Tie fighter - game just seemed so vast and can you complain when you wind up as darth vader's wingman, back when there wasn't a bad Star Wars movie.

Cannon Fodder - Getting me attached to pixels for no plot related reason (RIP Jools) and burning the intro music into my head.

Carmageddon - Saddistic game, yet loved every second of it

Deus ex - For being so ahead of its time it tainted my expectations for a long time.

GTA3, showed that freedom in video games was possible.

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, showed me that I could feel like I was in another world with its own rich history and made me think this is how you do RPG leveling right. You level up what you use, you don't just assign points.

Half-Life, made me happy to get into MIT and also feel like you could be the dude that was fighting.

Soul Reaver, first time I felt like I actually cared about the story of a video game.

Age of Empires/Roller Coaster Tycoon, can't remember which was first, pretty much played both at around the same time but they introduced me to strategy, management and standing back and letting things happen was fun.

Prince of Persia Warrior Within: First game to make love the idea of multiple endings, and have me strive to go out of my way to get all the collectibles to get the "best" ending.

God of War: Wowed me with it's grand scale. It was like another Prince of Persia for me, but upped the visual wow factor.

Metal Gear Solid: Showed me that game stories can be super in depth and intricate with lots of back story to have to research.

Mass Effect: Took the idea of having squad mates and made it a core part of the experience that made you care. The way the dialogue wheel handled conversations was revolutionary for me.

Uncharted: Took all those grand epic scale scenes that I was used to seeing in cutscenes and let me actually play them.

Witcher 2: First game I've seen that had the balls to actually have proper adult sex scenes with properly modeled nude characters. None of the stupid GTAIV strip club with none of the strippers being naked bullshit.

1. Witcher 2 for being earning its serious tone, and making me turn the game off after seeing a outcome from one of my prior actions that I had not expected (but still being perfectly fitting and logical within the world).

2. Alpha Centauri for wowing me with turn-based gameplay (the first I tried)

3. Fallout 2 for the very well realized world that I actually thought about when not playing

4. Mass Effect 2 for amazing voice acting and cinematic sense

5. Starcraft II for having a great single player campaign in an RTS (when I assumed it would be garbage)

Or do I just love sequels? I was not planning on having that many twos. Although for all but Starcraft I had just never really seen anything about the series prior to the 2nd one's release (due to my on/off habits with video games).

Bioshock &

GTA Vice City

Morrowind - For two reasons: Firstly for it's atmosphere and free-roaming, do whatever you want style. Secondly for getting me into modding after I later bought it for PC after having first experienced it on the Xbox.

Mass Effect - For making me actually care about the characters in a game on a significant level.

EQoA - First experience with MMOs.

Shadow of the Colossus - Not the reasons you'd actually think. I like it because of it's structure. There are no levels, just one giant world and every fight is a unique boss fight; there are no generic enemies you have to kill hundreds of while making your way to the next dungeon or boss. I think this is game design distilled down to it's most pure elements, but presented in a way that is still interesting and fun. It also has a pretty good story, if you didn't know.

Shenmue - Really cemented my love of Japan, and anything to do with it. Especially games.

Portal made me think about lateral mechanics.

Braid changed my view on how artistic games can be.

Dark Souls made me appreciate for the first time a real time combat rpg.

Starcraft 2, games can be E-sports.

Final Fantasy series, specifically 9, this one is probably the most important one, but the story here just had me attached to dagger and her plights and by the end I crying. Changed how I not only view story in games but also brought about an appreciation of certain movies I would never have ever taken a look at before(such as Cinema Paradiso), I should also say that it influenced the very way I view relationships with people and open mind to appreciating international cultures.

Nier - For making all games after it seem lesser in comparison

GTA: Vice City - it made me desire to never be addicted to a game ever again

Europa Universalis 3 - Sparked my interest in strategy games

The Void - made me want all art games all the time

there's probably more but that's all I can think of I am tired

5 nintendo games, classic nostalgia childhood appreciate artistic masterpiece puzzles

Pokemon: Of the many videogames that I played as a kid, I doubt any of them influenced me as much as Red did back in the day. I can't remember how many times I played through the game with one of the starters only to restart and pick another one to play with. Although I never managed to capture all 150 Pokemon, I was still proud of the fact that I managed to get around 126~ or so by myself. As a 6 year old. Awesome.

Grandia: This might've been my first console RPG as a kid. I'm not quite sure what prompted me to buy it ('twas probably the back of the case or something), but it's a purchase that changed me for the rest of my life. Say what you will about the voice acting, but the battle system, music, and amazing sense of adventure shook me to my very core back in the day. I was a bit too young to fully understand the various systems that governed the growth of my party, but 13 years later, I'm still able to go back and savor every second that I put into the game.

The Bouncer: Since this was the game that I received alongside the PS2 I got for my 8th birthday, it was only natural that I'd play it to death. Maybe it wasn't the greatest of videogames, but it came along at the perfect time to have a huge impact on my life. The combat was fun, the moves were flashy, and the soundtrack was so flippin' good. Oh yeah! This was also my first time experiencing the magic of ragdoll physics.

WWF No Mercy : 'Nuff Said.

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: This is another one of those games that I randomly bought back when it first came out in 2003. I came for the artstyle and stayed for the humor, characters and crazy amounts of grinding. Laharl? Etna? Flonne? I love 'em. Prism Rangers? Yeeeeeeeeeeeees! This game took all the good things from my childhood (Power Rangers, anime, etc...) and threw it all onto one disc, effectively overloading my ability to feel happiness. I still have a long life to live and a ton of games to play in the future, but I highly doubt there will be any game that will resonate with my soul better than this one. Thank you, ATLUS.

Fallout 3 changed what I wanted out of an RPG which is a huge open world ready to explore and talk to literally everybody and find everything and be whoever I wanted to be. I rarely played an RPG before that game.

Heavy Rain: I noticed, that I have no personal binding to characters in games! I mean the guy lost his son, and I felt nothing. Second son gets kidnaped... I don't care. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Heavy Rain, but I was never in front of my TV and thought "oh no, I don't do this, because I can't stand it!" ...

GT5: Made me realise that PS3-Fanboys are literaly blind! They didn't see things I saw. And kept arguing with me, why I'm SO wrong.

When I played MoH WF with my boss, it was an experience that demonstrated me: Boy, First Person Shooters are not your "thing" anymore!

WoW: Wasted 5 years of my life to this game. I never get them back, and I feel bad for that! It was certainly fun most of the time, but I regret buying this game till this day!

I have a pre-existing list of 15

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/slag/games-that-mean-the-most-to-me/46-81951/

This is a great topic! I was actually thinking about this quite a while back. It's so amazing though what video games can accomplish, and how it effects your feelings in the real world.

My five are:

Tomb Raider -

I grew up with the Tomb Raider series, so it's had quite an impact on why I enjoy video games and also why I aspire to become a person in the Games Industry one day... maybe. I adore the colours, the schemes, the detail in the older games, and specially that you had to be very precise with where you jumped and landed. Also how you felt when you managed to accomplish puzzles without a guide. Those were the good old days! It all taught me to be careful with my choices and whether I can make it to specific areas, and also makes me think of areas which I could exploit to take short cuts.

Bastion -

It's been a year since the last time I actually played this game, but the way everything is modelled, and the emotional feel it brings out of you is amazing. When ever I can, I actually buy Bastion from Steam and give it out randomly so that others can experience the beauty of it. As an artist, I guess it's more of an attraction to me because of it's 'painted style' and the way everything moulds together. It inspired me to take on the style myself, and I have been trying to paint like JenZee (the concept artist for Bastion) for a while now.

Journey -

The best story telling illustration game of the ENTIRE games collection I have in my possession. It shown me that you can make a story from just images or ways you interact with environments in gameplay. I know there are many games like that, however Journey just seemed so perfect and fluent, it really had a flow that I will never forget. Story is a great way of teaching people, and if there were more games like Journey, the world would obviously be a better place. (I'mjokingbythewaypfffff)

Dark Souls -

I played Dark Souls before I entered Higher Education and figured out that games these days just use tricks to make their environments looks crisp and beautiful. I was a complete fool, I know, but the amount of beautiful scenes in the game is fantastic that it had to be magical. I guess I could tie in that feeling with Final Fantasy games, as they also follow that same path of beauty. Dark Souls taught me that no matter how big your ideas are, and how much you want to put in them, with enough time and effort you can make those things reality. But this game is also a great example with Journey, because it doesn't tell the story to you directly, you can find it through items you collect along the way (like a memento).

Portal/Half Life -

The games themselves are bloody fantastic, no matter which way you look at them. I spent many hours playing both and could really tell you inside and out where enemies are, where you have to go next to get to the next room, ect. But it's not just that but the sheer flow of them really immerses you into the game itself. I don't feel like games do that these days, but it must be such a tough concept to get the player to feel like they are part of the game, part of the story. It all goes to show that games can really take you away from reality.