Final Fantasy VII. I know that's going to draw the ire of just about every obnoxious anti-FF7 person out there, but oh well. That game turned me from a mild gaming enthusiast to an addict practically overnight.
I also really wish I could relive some of my college moments with games, particularly when I hooked a friend on Dark Cloud 2 and we spent a preposterous amount of time on the golfing and fishing mini-games.
@Jay_Ray: Shenmue 1 was my favorite game for a long time(until this generation of consoles). I remember playing the hell out of it, it seemed like such a long and personal journey to be in a game. Also, talk about immersion in a game. Playable arcade games, buying toys, all of these things really add to the game. I didn't get the same sensation from number 2, but number 1 was a game that I cannot forget. If you haven't played the Yakuza series, give it a try. It is a spiritual successor to Shenmue in many ways and is a great series on its own.
The first Mass Effect. That game had a special, detached mood that resonated infinitely with me. From the melancholic, mysterious sci-fi tones of the soundtrack (Which in the later games was replaced by more generic, epic orchestral music) to the intriguing skyline of Feros with gigantic citadel ruins stretching into the distance, the sense of scale and adventure, to THAT conversation with Sovereign and THAT conversation with Vigil, the mood and emotions of Mass Effect 1 simply hit me in a special way.
To be honest though, I'm not sure I'd want to play it for the first time now. I think I played it at the perfect age and level of maturity, a lot of the ideas which aren't so novel to me now seemed cutting-edge to me at the time.
I wish I could play Portal without any idea of what type of game it was. Not just the twist at the end. I wish I didn't even know that game had god damn portals.
this
I was lucky enough to play it while knowing virtually nothing about it. I'd seen screenshots of white, tiled rooms and the picture on the box that had turrets pointing lasers into portals, but that's it. It was insanely cool discovering the story and "cake is a lie" rooms, long before they had become iconic memes. I wish you guys could have that experience too.
a lot of good answers i'd agree with in this thread
i think my list would be;
portal
half life 2
assassins creed 2
metal gear solid 2
the first two because of how the world / story unfolds before you and the second two because of how great the game is up until the end where they just take it somewhere I would never expect
i'll add red dead redemption because i didn't enjoy it and look at it now and impressions of it and wish i could go through it again and play it differently, i think i would just roll around the world more instead of playing it like a game and hitting objectives, some of the characters / missions ruined the world for me
Red Dead Redemption: What a spectacular game, easily the best setting ever created for a video-game. The characters were brilliant, the gameplay was sharp, the world engaging and the graphics were spectacular.
The Walking Dead: I hate Telltale games, not the developers themselves but the game design. Despite this, I've been reading the comic since it began and I love the show. I decided to give the game a shot and wow... just wow. Was I ever wrong. The game blew my expectations away with a wildly engaging story-line branching from both comics and television. The characters were brilliantly written and easily relatable and you weren't forced to like them.
Mass Effect 1, 2 & 3: All brilliant games with spectacular stories of their own and easily the most engaging characters and settings.
For me, it would have to be Grim Fandango. It's my all time favorite game and I would play it every chance I get. The thing I regret the most about Grim is that I played the game from start to finish with the walkthrough. As soon as I finished it, I felt really bad because I felt like I didn't accomplish anything. Using the walkthrough took the challenge off from the experience and though I can play Grim from beginning to end flawlessly, it feels so empty and incomplete. I wish I could have an amnesia from playing Grim Fandango so that I can finally play it properly.
Super Mario RPG and Skies of Arcadia. I want to see if these games can repeat the immense joy that I remember having when I played those games back then.
I may now have like 50 peptic ulcers and other things, but that sense of achievement I got from finally beating the final boss was amazing. If I could experience it all anew, I would, even the rage.
Dark Souls is probably pretty up there. Along with probably the entire Metal Gear Solid series, FF7 because I've never finished it and at this point probably never will, but if I had never started, just maybe..Original Quake and Doom, most of the adventure games I've played, since you can only really experience them fully once, Super Meat Boy, a few open world games, especially GTA4, Burnout: Paradise, and if I had to pick a single Elder Scrolls game, probably Skyrim, but that's a hard pick. I have more but I'm gonna cut it there. I actually am surprised at how many games I found myself thinking of.
Tough question, but it would be close with Bioshock, RDR, or Fallout 3.
After reading and thinking more i concur with some other crazy people and have to add Dark Souls. I dont agree with the extreme difficulty, but it may be the most rewarding experience i have had from a game.
@Crypt135: I remember playing through Cold Winter some time after it had released. It had a pretty good story that made it stick out a lot more than most FPS games at the time. I always wonder why it didn't receive more acclaim. Same with Breakdown, a game mentioned earlier in this thread.
The first time I played Battlefield 1942, it completely changed the way I looked at games. What was capable, the scope of it all, large numbers of combatants, and just the general sense of empowering the player. You could jump into a goddamn battleship with the press of a button! It also marked the shift where I began to spend way more time in online multiplayer than any kind of singleplayer. Good times...
If you can't enjoy it to an almost exact degree as the first time it probably wasn't that good to begin with.
You know you don't really believe that... and even if you do believe that enjoyment doesn't differ from one playthrough to the next - experiences do. He asked what game you wish you could "experience" all over again (not "enjoy" all over again) and it would literally be impossible to have the same experience while playing through a game the second time.
If you can't enjoy it to an almost exact degree as the first time it probably wasn't that good to begin with.
You know you don't really believe that... and even if you do believe that enjoyment doesn't differ from one playthrough to the next - experiences do. He asked what game you wish you could "experience" all over again (not "enjoy" all over again) and it would literally be impossible to have the same experience while playing through a game the second time.
If you can't enjoy it to an almost exact degree as the first time it probably wasn't that good to begin with.
You know you don't really believe that... and even if you do believe that enjoyment doesn't differ from one playthrough to the next - experiences do. He asked what game you wish you could "experience" all over again (not "enjoy" all over again) and it would literally be impossible to have the same experience while playing through a game the second time.
You are so wise in the ways of science.
I'm forced to agree I suppose.
Sorry. I don't mean to nitpick so much, i'm just trying point out that the OP had a different meaning than what you were getting at in regards to enjoyment.
This... Mass Effect 1 is truly a classic and the recent release of ME3 had me flashing back to how much i loved it when i was just getting to know Shepard and his universe. However World of Warcraft is definitely the right answer for me and i never would have thought to say it either (so thank you for bringing it to mind). I've often thought of how magical it was to play through for the first time and what it was like in those early days when I was leveling my first character and meeting new people in a community that was still young. I had dabbled in a few betas prior but WoW was really my first MMO and i was hooked immediately making it a part of my daily routine (sometimes all day of course). After an absurd amount of time played i eventually stopped playing and haven't been back since but I don't look back on those day in regret or shame and dismiss it as a dark time of junk food and loot lust (like many do). Instead i look back and see the golden age of a great game wishing i was a noob all over again when all I cared about was killing kobolds for their candles and had yet to see Van Cleef or even witness Stormwind for the first time.
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