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BlackHeronBlue

After 2 years of absence from GB, it took the wonderful community only three threads to remind me why I left in the first place.

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Life-changing Games

These games influenced me more than others. Some of them were great stories that I just couldn't forget about for months or even years, and some were worlds immersive enough to completely replace reality for weeks. These games made, and are still making my actual life feel like just a filler between epic adventures that seem more real to me than this boring, tiresome "normal life". Surely, more titles will be added to the list as I play more games. They might not be what is generally considered the best of video games; some of them are, but it's a list of personal holy grail moments - not a list of what objectively are the best games ever made.

List items

  • How does a modern game beat the titles that shaped my youth? How does the new defeat all-powerful nostalgia? How does a Zelda game suddenly change everything I knew about video games and creates a new level only for itself to occupy? Read here: https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/blackheronblue/blog/an-experience-beyond-video-games/116177/

  • It was my first real introduction to RPG games, and it's probably responsible for that genre being my all-time favorite. I loved all the Infinity Engine games, and I played all of them, but Baldur's Gate was the first I ever got so sucked into a game world that I wasn't able to think about anything else. I played a lot of games before, obviously, but something about Baldur's Gate just altered my consciousness in a way that made swords and magic spells and all that stuff crawl into my daily life. It was probably the game that launched me on the quest to fully and permanently replace my reality with video games.

  • I **LOVE** the Witcher books. I consider them the best fantasy literature ever written, and I've read a lot of it, so I feel like I am allowed to make that call. Being able to become part of that world was a dream come true like no other, because the source material is just so good, even the worst Witcher game would've been better than most. Fortunately, these games are some of the best ever made, so they honor the source material. The games are exactly like the books - they make you feel the same things, and think about the same issues. It's a game series that makes you care about things, making you believe you shouldn't, at the same time. And on top of that the games came out of Poland and reached worldwide fame and acclaim. It's impossible to summarize what The Witcher franchise does for the fans of the books, for video games, for Poland in a few lines or paragraphs. A book could be written about what non-obvious things make The Witcher even greater than the series is in strictly video game terms.

    Above all, I expect games to rise important moral questions. Modern RPGs simply have to incorporate tough moral decision making in one way or the other. The Witcher wrote the book on how to do it properly.

  • This game has to be mentioned right after Baldur's Gate because it's the same deal for me, just with a different flavor. I have to say that out of all the Infinity Engine games I liked this one the most. Its very unique world, atmosphere, story, and great music made it so thrilling to experience. The characters in Torment are some of the most interesting and well made in video game history, and the dialogues reveal stories that are nothing short of mindblowing. It's a game that makes you really think about things like destiny, the nature of good and evil.

  • Skyrim. I own like 6 different copies of this game. I just really like winter and Norse mythology and history, so this game was a must-have even before I knew how good it is. Skyrim felt very real, very mesmerizing, and I don't know if I ever logged more hours into a single game. It was the first time an open-world game never got boring for me, there was always something to do, and even after all the quests were done, it didn't feel like the world suddenly became empty. Skyrim is very close to being a tangible alternate reality (one in which you can just respawn after falling to your death, and one in which you never have to pee). Of course, I'm going to continue buying Skyrim probably until I die, it's just that kind of a game.

  • Diablo II had some awesome cutscenes, and really bad graphics before the resolution patch. And it was addictive. To this day I'm very impressed with how interesting and absorbing doing the same thing over and over can be. It's just killing monsters, and collecting the loot - really, that's all every Diablo game is, and it's amazing how Blizzard turned that into an art. A whole genre of games spawned from Diablo, and a lot of people became hooked. I was one of them, and Diablo's second appearance was my favorite.

  • The Persona 4 ER here on Giant Bomb was probably one of the most important events to ever take place on the internet, but it wouldn't be that good if the game played was some mediocre title. Persona 4 is pretty much the final achievement in the turn-based JRPG genre. It takes all of that genre's vast experience, mixes it with a seemingly simple, yet surprisingly deep story, spices it up with on-target social commentary, lets it all brew for approx. 100 hours, and there you have it: a perfect game, a game that could very well be the example below the encyclopedia entry for JRPG. The game is important to me, because I really identified with the characters, all of them to a degree, in fact. The story, the social link stuff... all very close to home.

  • Dark Souls and souls-like games are the big deal these days, aren't they? For me, Dark Souls reach a certain degree of perfection in the dark fantasy realm. Yeah, I love the game mechanics, and the great sequels (especially DS3, 2 was just ok), but the real reason why I liked the original Dark Souls so much was the way that game conveyed things like hopelessness, fatigue, depression... and hope, relief, accomplishment. Dark Souls and its entire genre are not games, they're emotional roller coasters. They're also fantastic displays of amazing design and taste.

  • If you don't know why this game is one of the most incredible things to ever happen in video games, watch how Patrick Klepek fights with Dan Ryckert's levels.

  • Space opera games can be pretty much all the same. The Mass Effect franchise grew into one of the loudest hits of the decade because it gives you everything you want from a space game: cool spaceships, cool weapons, cool aliens, interesting interplanetary wars, interspecies politics, conspiracy theories (actually, the Indoctrination Theory was a very interesting social phenomenon), the fight between good and evil, romance, drama... Mass Effect had it all, and overall I think the story is a really great one. It felt more like an interactive movie than a video game, but in this case it was probably for the better. There reason why ME3 is on this list is because it was polarizing, it created a cult following for Shepard (me included!), and it was a beautiful experience, and a very emotional one. It's a shame the Indoctrination Theory didn't end up being true, but there's a lot of fan fiction making up for that. Say what you will, Mass Effect 3 was a global phenomenon.

  • It has to be on this list, and there are a lot of reasons.

  • The Star Wars movies should be more like KOTOR. I've always loved the SW universe, but the movies were always the weakest link - the were cheesy, and pretty childish (to state the obvious). SW books and video games, however, had the opportunity to make Star Wars attractive to fans of darker sci-fi. Both KOTOR games are masterpieces that completely outshine the source material. I mean, to me, this is what Star Wars should've always been. Also, there is something very deep about just being the void, clad in a robe and a mask.

  • It might be surprising that this game is on this list, but the whole aesthetics side of it speaks to me so strongly... I love everything about this game: the setting, the freedom of exploration, the way the monsters look, the huge robots - all of it. And on top of that, the systems used in this game are brilliant, because they allow to minimize lost time. Fetch quests turn themselves in automatically, the fast travel system is one of the best I've ever seen, you can save everywhere, and after death you respawn nearby with no bs in between. It's a beautiful, beautiful game that makes exploration so fun, and the amazing open world gameplay is masterfully wrapped in a story that doesn't disappoint.

  • It might finally be time to admit that I did write some MK2 fan fiction...
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