First Time a Game 'Wowed' You

[revjor]

Seeing the quality of the graphics in Donkey Kong Country on the SNES is the first time a game wowed me.

This was mine too. I got it for Christmas way back when and my whole family were taking turns and everyone was flabbergasted by the graphics.

Also not an in game thing. But when I as a real young'n I saw the gold cartridge for the Legend of Zelda and it blew my tiny mind. The game wasn't my thing...but gawddamn that cartridge.

 

[Neverhoodian]

The first time I loaded up Tie Fighter on my family's IBM 486 (hide annotations for a more authentic experience):

It may not look like much today, but that shit was epic for an eight year old kid back in 1994. Hell, it still gives me goosebumps two decades later. An amazing intro for a truly amazing game.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Probably the first ever was on Monster Hunter Freedom and seeing Lao-Shan Lung for the first time, a boss so huge he took up most of the area he was in.
Next was Skyrim when I was on one of the mountains near the north coast at night, the landscape was just so beautiful I had to stand there and look at it. I'll never forget that feeling.
Fallout 3's opening and ending deserve note too, but they've already been mentioned.

 

[FFP2]

I can't remember my first but this one came to mind: Lake Bresha in FF13. Especially near the end of the level when the music from The Gapra Whitewood starts playing... So beautiful.

One of the best FF tracks, just listen:

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The pseudo 3D background graphics in Donkey Kong Country come to mind.

 

[omicron1]

Homeworld. Three words: Adagio for Strings. (So pretty! )

Other than that, I remember being "wowed" most recently by the mile-deep sinkhole lake in Far Cry 3. Just one of those moments you have to bask in.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I was 9 when I played the first halo. The ending seemed awesome back then, it just blew my mind.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

Hm? Nope. There is no reference. Just a name XD

Damn. Now I have to figure out where the association was coming from. TO GOOGLE!

 

[Doom972]

Probably the Zeromus Battle in Final Fantasy II.. the intro, that song, the background. It was one of the few moments in my early days of gaming that had an aura of intensity.

That's Final Fantasy IV (it was called FF2 when it came out for the SNES in the west).

OT: The first game that wowed me was Doom 2 (I played it before Doom), from the very first moment. This was the first time a game wasn't a game anymore, but an experience.

 

[mParadox]

There were alot of games which blew my mind.

But only one came close to blowing my pants off.

Half Life. My God, that game was epic. And scary. And awesome.

Ah memories~

 

[Squilookle]

Does being five years old and being amazed at the ability to control Mario count? I mean, I had never even heard of video games before. I just figured it was a movie at first, then I was handed the controller and I was all "No way!!!!!!!!!!!!" Blew my tiny little mind.

Anyone who answers different to this is a damn liar. You pressed a button. Mario moved. You shat bricks. We've all been there.

Except of course, for those that weren't...

 

[RustlessPotato]

Final Fantasy IX. Seriously. That's the most "fantasy" game I know. It was so beautiful and the story was amazing. I'll always remember the first time I visited Lindblum .

Big mention to The Lord Of The Rings, Battle For Middle-Earth. It was the first rts I played where HORSES ACTUALLY TRAMPLED THEIR ENEMIES ! :O. I really liked the system where 1 unit consisted of 5 or 10 men or Orks. You quickly felt you had a massive army. I liked Age of Empires and Age of Mythology, but the fact that cavalry always stopped to use their swords annoyed me .

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

I got to Venice in Assassins' Creed II and immediately was taken back. So goddamn pretty...

Then there's Dark Souls, when I realized that I see a good chunk of the world on top of Sen's Fortress. And also the fact that I came that far. I eagerly await the Ash Lake.

It would be nice to be able to bring someone along to hold your hand and just walk slowly up and down the sandy beach of Ash Lake.

OT: 'Wowed'? Hmmm.

- Wizball, for being a unique and good fun gaming experience. Awesome, awesome game.
- Cauldron II for being so damn hard (control a bouncing pumpkin, now, will you??)
- The Barbarian with that spinning overhead chop, and the little green guy that would... clean up.
- Project Firestart, felt very much like something out of Alien(s) to me... with blood on the walls and great suspense and jump scares. Can't remember the name.
- Barbarian by Psygnosis for the Commodore Amiga. What an excruciatingly hard game. Beautiful and fun, too
- Silkworm, Firepower for their fun gaming and awesome sounds of explosions
- Wings of Fury, after I finally managed to not crash when taking off
- Just about every SIERRA adventure game up until they stopped coming on floppy disks
- WipeOut, Rollcage & Rollcage 2 for being so damn easy yet relying on mastering intricate details for total control and perfect runs

etc.

And, yes, the last time I was genuinely in pretty much a permanent state of being impressed and experiencing video gaming bliss was Dark Souls. I 'enjoyed' a lot of other games since then, but none of them made me go 'wow' in any way whatsoever.

Captcha: hard captcha is hard

 

[Tharwen]

I don't really know. Maybe the first time I played a game ever...? That would be minesweeper for Windows 95. I remember being pretty impressed by that.

The most definite one I can remember is Minecraft. My brain just kind of went a bit mental imagining the extent of the possibilities it offered...

 

[Judgement101]

My first major wow was from Fallout 2 when I realized the immense freedom that I had to do pretty much whatever I wanted. The most recent wow was in Dark Souls when I realized how massively nerfed the Dark Wood Grain ring was.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

My first major wow was from Fallout 2 when I realized the immense freedom that I had to do pretty much whatever I wanted. The most recent wow was in Dark Souls when I realized how massively nerfed the Dark Wood Grain ring was.

Aye, but then again - if people wouldn't have mass smurfed and mass abused the DWG, we all could have had our little PVE boost and like it. The way a large number of folks approached PVP was just condensed trolling, with no honour and very little fun attached.

 

[Icehearted]

Ultima 7 on PC. You have to understand the time, but our games came on large floppy discs, it even had voice over work, but I could believe how deep and intricate the game was. Characters had their own schedules; they slept they ate meals, they conversed with others. I've seen plenty of JRPGs in recent years with less than a 10th the depth of this classic. Visually it was a stunning game, the world was so expansive, even books on shelves had writing in them.

I hate to make the comparison because it wasn't a combat-heavy game exactly, the combat was ass, but it was all about the story and the immersion anyway, but it was TES before there was TES. It was also my firs VGA PC game, and it blew my mind. The second part, The Serpent Isle, was an even more gorgeous game with an even better story to tell, and an expansion that to this day remains one of my favorite PC expansions of all time.

 

[Bad Jim]

The first game that really made me go "Wow!" was Turrican on the Commodore C64. The game world was huge compared to all the games I'd played previously. I had no idea the C64 could handle such a big game.

 

[Alexander Thirlwell]

I think i'm the first to mention It but it has to be Morrowind. Having that beautiful music play as the game started, and being "woken" up to this, at the time, beautiful rich world where I made lasting desicions on the world. Playing through the story and becoming a hero in a world that treat you like one astounded me. Especially when you finish the main missions and everyone recognizes what you have done sent shivers up my spine. It has certainly left a huge impressions on my gaming since and will, to me, always be what rpg should strive to be, and what oblivion and skyrim, while they are dam good, sadly fall abit short.

Anyway sorry for the long post.

P.S. Yes I am aware of the games flaws to all those ready to point them out. I loved the games story and world, also it pretty old so cut it some slack.