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Biggest initial shock and amazement of your gaming life.

I am surprised at the lack of mention of Dead Rising

that whole game was spectacular, IDK so much in it that shocked me

the crazy people the cult, the super soldiers

getting captured was a surprise instead of dying
but the main shock was playing the demo




and then in KOTOR, not just the huge shock, but getting off the initial planet and realizing everything you could do

GOD I miss that game... a well done KOTOR 3 would be so much better than a KOTORMMO

AND THE NIGHT THAT GTA3 CAME OUT

I remember looking forward to that game for AWHILE and when I first got it and started playing it, OMG I can remember that well

and NINJA GAIDEN.... that whole game... beating ALMA FUCKING FINALLY

IDK I didnt know ANYTHING about KOTOR, Ninja Gaiden, or Tales of Symphonia till the day it came out and I played it and just being blown away

Last gen was full of suprises for me... this gen not so much so far... a few awesome memories, gears, oblivion, Dead Rising...
 
bcn-ron said:
Dungeon Master

What are those heavy footsteps?

HOLY SHIT ITS A DRAGON!
Click to expand...
Dungeon Master was one of those games, surely..

Also, Descent deserves mentioning. It was so fucking crazy to navigate in full 3D, the first time I played it, I became physically sick.
 
A lot of the stuff I would pick has been mentioned (Bioshock, Kotor, OoT, etc). Here's one that I still think about from time to time :

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Still my favorite opening to a game. It's almost as though the first level is a prologue or something, you basically learn everything you need to know about the game in 5 minutes...wonderful.

Edit : It's called "Another World" or "Out of this World" depending on when and where it was released. It was an early 90's puzzle/platfotmer, which also incorporated a little bit of a shooting mechanic (A mechanic that I've surprisingly yet to see really duplicated....the shield/gun thing would actually be very cool in a modern FPS). It had a very interesting art style, purposely clunky control style, and as I said, one of the more memorable openings in a game (At least for me).
 
Botolf said:
orange_box-1.jpg
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Rez>You said:
Looking back over Half-Life 2 after finishing it and realising how fucking amazingly well-crafted the entire experience was.
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Halflife, Ep 1, and Ep 2, played one after another is my favorite gaming experience of this gen. I wish that more characters like Alyx Vance were in games.

From an emotional standpoint, I guess I would say that I was a bit amazed at how fond of her as a character I was. When she's not with you in the game, for me at least, my drive for completing the objectives often has more to do with getting back to her then it does completing the game or advancing the story....Valve really hit the jackpot as far as NPC's go. Boy or boy do I wish that Valve would make a Bioware type RPG...they would be able to do so much more with the party system.
 
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX2): you could record the anthem on a tape and play it when soldiers are near. They then stand still to honor the anthem. If you use it too much, the battery dies and the music starts to sound bad.

SD Snatcher: go into a movie theater and watch a (Godzilla) movie.
 
Recently (well, a year ago) it would be the twist in BioShock. Hey I played System Shock 2 and it's great twist and I thought I had it all figured out, but no. The idea itself, the telling and the execution was amazing. AMAZING. I live near 2K Australia and I wanted to go there in the middle of the night and fuck the mailslot on their door. Unfortunately BioShock started to take a turn for the worse after the twist and so the cocklust for Ken Levine and co faded away.

My earliest recollection of an "initial shock" moment in gaming would be when I approached a phone in Duke Nukem 3D and it "worked" :P
 
Probably the Arcanum demo, and eventually the final game.

I played through that demo, quite literally, 20+ times. Constantly making new characters, sleeping over and over until the blacksmith got new stuff, hunting down EVERY animal I could find, etc.

For me the whole game just clicked so damn well. Insanely original, interesting, and fleshed out premise, cool gameplay mechanics, and the best and most detailed role playing game since Fallout 2 and Planescape Torment.

I -always- have the game installed, as I keep coming back to it.

Mario64, of course, is an absolutely classic 3D experience. It was one of those "I CANNOT BELIEVE I AM PLAYING THIS" moments.
 
"Sonic joins the Brawl" SSBB trailer.
Not that I wasn't expecting it, but that video made me feel warm in my heart as a gamer.

Guitar Hero 3: Beign able to finish "Through the Fire and Flames" on Hard for the first time. I felt like fucking Petrucci or something.

Mario 64: Flying with the winged cap, it was so beautiful.

Shadow of the Colossus:
-jumping on the back of the 3rd? bird-like colossi. My jaw was on the floor of the amazement.
 
Chao said:
Shadow of the Colossus:
-jumping on the back of the 3rd? bird-like colossi. My jaw was on the floor of the amazement.
Click to expand...
5th, actually. ;)

I can't believe I remembered that. Good to know I have a store of absolutely useless video game related information locked away in my brain. @_@
 
-my entire nes gaming age-
Turtles in Time
Donkey Kong Country
Mario 64
Metal Gear Solid
Shenmue
Everquest
Return to Castlewolfenstein - xbox live
Shadow of The Colossus
Portal
Team Fortress 2


Those are all big wow moments for me that immediately jump to mind. I can literally look at each of those games as huge jumping points for my understanding of what a game can be.
 
Shadow of the Colossus: Finding out a few hours in that the Colossi can fly. And then realizing that somehow, I've got to get up on that damn thing and then somehow bring it down.
 
Retro said:
Shadow of the Colossus: Finding out a few hours in that the Colossi can fly. And then realizing that somehow, I've got to get up on that damn thing and then somehow bring it down.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Bird like colossi was full of win.
 
World of Warcraft - I had avoided Everquest because it was nauseating and ugly as sin. I couldn't even make sense of what was happening most the time. I got floored when I first logged in.

Legend of Zelda OoT - That very first forest village is fucking amazing. I remember playing that in Toys R Us of all places and just being hooked.

Kameo and GRAW - Hi2U Next Gen. Also holy fuck at Kameo's grass.

Area 5 of Rez

Banjo Kazooie N&B demo - I had read all this shit people were giving it about shitty controls so I was flat out floored when I got a hold of it and proceeded to fling the first parts box all over and crash my shopping cart into absolutely everything AND TOTALLY FUCKING LOVE IT.

Starcraft - OMGLEVELEDITOR. TOWER DEFENSE IS BORN. 30 DEATH TO LOSE.

TFC - Hi my name is conc jumping and I shall blow ur mind.

Test Drive Unlimited - Oh... Oh wow.
 
Super Mario Bros. was a big shock, going from non-scrolling games, games that usually were 1 stationary screen (Pac-Man, Ladybug, Popeye, Asteroids, etc.) playing this was like... holy fuck.

Sonic the Hedgehog was another big shock. So blazingly fast compared to the NES, I couldn't shut up about this for months.

But I think Shenmue was my biggest. The world is so big... so realistic. You can do the most mundane things, for days on end. I spent months (in game time) gambling, buying toys, and driving a forklift for cash, and the game never once said "Hey, enough bullshit go finish the story". It made me look at games in an entirely different way. Now I love (true) sandbox games.
 
Zone of the Enders 2. I enjoyed the first one, but TSR instantly made me into the big ZoE fan that I am today. The style, scenario work, music, gameplay, characters, everything, it all just fit.

.hack//Infection - Quarantine. Definitely not the best the RPG genre has to offer (which isn't much anyway imo) but the .hack// series still remains my favorite.


Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Beat the game the same day I got it and replayed it the next. Not a huge MGS fan but 3 really stood out for me.

Dark Cloud 2. Level 5 at it's best, very vibrant, long (usually a con for me!) fun RPG. Loved the dungeon crawling, the towns, world.


honorable mention - Kingdom Heart 2's whole Twilight town segment. I've yet to finish the rest of the game, lost interest after the steamboat willy world.
 
RE4. I had only played a little bit of RE1 on my friends PSX and picked up RE4 on a whim and knew nothing about it.

After making it to the village I was doing ok until the chainsaw guy came out. I freaked and kept plugging away (hadn't found the shotty). Then I made the mistake of reloading when he was close. He ran up and put the chainsaw to my neck and cut my head off. I just sat there with the controller for awhile. It was so gruesome and unexpected.

Re4 is also one of the reason why I try to go media blackout on certain games, no hype, no preconceived notions.
 
Glancing over a lot of these make me feel old....

For me, its defintely Super Mario Bros. After no video games for a number of years (due to the crash); out of nowhere comes this system and a game light years ahead of anything I'd ever seen before. Everything about it was revolutionary - the graphics, the music, and the gameplay. It blew me away.

and then I guess the next step would be Doom. Wolfenstien 3D was okay, but Doom was huge. Nothing has been the same since.
 
I've done a lot of gaming over the last 25 years, and I can honestly say that when SONY announced the PS3's $600 price tag, it was the most game-related shock I've ever experienced.

I was a huge fan of both the PSOne and PS2, so when I heard the PS3 was going to cost $600, I was absolutely floored.


Also:

Mario 64
Shadow of the Colossus
 
Seeing Mario 64 on a grid of 16 TV's at Toys R' Us.
Half-Life Uplink Demo
The first time I started up Mechwarrior 2
Gall Spaceport on Shadows of the Empire for N64
Seeing the ice level after finally beating the Snow Barrel Blast level in DKC.
Going to a friends house and seeing GTA3 for the first time. I couldn't believe you could just go anywhere, kill anyone, and blow up cop cars with a rocket launcher for hours.
 
Another one:
tony-hawks-downhill-jam-20060824043622799-000.jpg


That was the first pic of a Wii game I saw back on e3 2006(?) and I was truly shocked.
It was like: "It has to be shitty 3rd party game's fault, I don't believe the Wii is such an underpowered system... It just CAN'T BE"

Oh well.
 
I'm going to add the Donkey Kong Country 2 music to this list.

My childhood mind could not comprehend DKC2 topping DKC, yet once it fell into my hands oh my god. Mind blow.

The music for that game and the platforming brilliance still holds a special place in my memories. Easily one of the best platformers ever made.
 
Chrono Trigger - I bought this game purely out of curiousity after reading about it in a GamePlayers magazine. It was my first RPG, and it blew me away.
Portal - Well, duh. One of the greatest 2.5 hours of my life.
Guild Wars - I was never really into MMOs until this game. The strategies involved as well as the teamwork was phenomenal, something that I still haven't found back when I used to play WoW.
Xenogears - Yeah, the story was convoluted, but I managed to follow it. Despite all of the forced symbolism and whatnot, it was still a fantastic game with characters that I actually cared about (for the most part. Fuck you, Maria and Chu-Chu).
Persona 3/4 - P3 for the most part. It sucked me into its world and I could rarely put the controller down. P4 is doing the same to me mostly, though the experience is a bit less novel at this point.
Edit: Shadow of the Colossus - How'd I forget this? Bringing down that first colossus was an amazing feeling, but it didn't really hit home until you had to fight the flying colossus in the desert. That was EPIC.
Edit Part 2: Curse of Monkey Island - I have never laughed so much from one game. I immediately went and played the rest of the series.
 
I totally forgot to add another one:

Wave Race 64. I hadn't seen water like this in a videogame, much less have it as the centerpiece of a racing game. I could've jumped waves over and over again without racing and still love it.
 
Biggest amazement would probably when I got my N64 on launch day. It was the first time I had ever gotten a console on day 1 add that with playing Mario and getting to stay home from school the next day, it was just awesome. Plus over the next few months I got Killer Instinct, Wave Race, Pilotwings, and Star Wars so it was prolonged continuous awesomeness.
 
89' : Altered Beast on Genesis (I was 5 at the time)

91' : Sonic the Hedgehog

94' : Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter 2

96' : Scud Race and Virtua Fighter 5 in arcades

98' : Dreamcast

06' : Gears

09 : Killzone??
 
bcn-ron said:
Dungeon Master

What are those heavy footsteps?

HOLY SHIT ITS A DRAGON!
Click to expand...


Yes! On the Amiga of all things, if I remember right. That was a 3D, first person revelation of a game for its time that really helped suck me in to gaming outside of the arcades.
 
Got another one: the first "holy shit, Faith, get out of there, NOW" in Mirror's Edge. I was so immersed playing with headphones, the game put me at the edge of my seat until I finally jumped on the helicopter. Fucking great sequence.
 
handofg0d said:
But I think Shenmue was my biggest. The world is so big... so realistic. You can do the most mundane things, for days on end. I spent months (in game time) gambling, buying toys, and driving a forklift for cash, and the game never once said "Hey, enough bullshit go finish the story". It made me look at games in an entirely different way. Now I love (true) sandbox games.
Click to expand...

there were bad endings though, if you didnt finish the game in time. youtube them
 
Famicom said:
Hmm...the BIGGEST shock was probably seeing a commercial for the NES for the first time, I think it had laser lights and shit. NOW YOU'RE PLAYING WITH POWER!!!! Had, had HAD to have one (Didn't get one until 1990-91 BTW). But that memory is so vague now I can barely tell if it really happened or not, so I'll go with the next big memory; touching Super Mario World for the first time.

It was at a K-Mart in a suburban area south of Chicago (it's still there, the one with the wavy roof). As soon as you walked into the store, I could swear heaven and earth split open from the front walkway and the lights of life lit up the area as a big kiosk with the SNES and this game were on display straight ahead. I ran straight to it in a full sprint. Unbelievable graphics, controls, the whole deal. Fortunately the wait to get this one wasn't as long. :D

I have a very similar memory of playing SM64 for the first time (just swap K-Mart for Best Buy), but this one happened earlier.
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WOW..and I was going to mention how the biggest amazement for me was Super Mario World as well! My very first time seeing the game was almost completely identical to yours, except it was in a Wal-Mart. Up to that point I'd seen the TV commercials and yes, while it sure looked amazing nothing compared to actually seeing it in person! As soon as I walked in I could hear Mario's jumping noise and the noise it makes when you make Yoshi stick out his tongue. I had to go check it out. It was definitely one of those "seeing is believing" moments. To see this 16-bit machine, basically the NES grown-up was just, I still don't know how to describe that. The colors were so bright and vivid. And the sound really was a huge step up from the NES too. I remember seeing the price for the Super NES and thinking I'd probably never get one. I walked out of the store that day wanting one a great deal. When I got home and played my NES it just wasn't the same after that I couldn't look at it the way I did that Super NES. I did finally get a Super NES the next Christmas, after renting one several times.

I haven't had anything amaze me quite like that since and doubt I will ever have another experience like it ever again. The closest I've come is Mario Galaxy but that was in my own living room and didn't quite match walking into the store and seeing it for the first time.
 
The first time I played Riiiiiiidge Racer on my PS1. My eyes almost fell out of their sockets because of my amazement for the crazy graphics.

You have to understand though: I had a shitty computer that could barely handle Leisure Suit Larry, my previous console was a NES, didn't have any friends with a system like the psx,... I was just completely uninformed concerning the level of games graphicswise and the PSX was an amazing console for me in that regard.

I've never had an experience like that again. Except maybe for Riiiiiidge Racer (not kidding) on the PSP. Again my first game for that console and I was blown away by the power of that little beast. I had seen the videos on the internet, but to see it with my own eyes... I have to say I'm still impressed with the PSP gfx.
 
When I was 6 and saw my aunt playing Super Mario 64 for the first time. That's when I knew I was gonna be hooked on this shit. I really liked Super Mario Bros 1+3, Super Mario World, and DKC, but it didn't amaze me like Super Mario 64.
 
Three pop to mind.

Exiting the first dungeon in Oblivion. I had never played an open-ended RPG before, and seeing this huge vista expanding in all directions, and the tower a mile or so off in the distance, was breathtaking. I spent weeks just exploring the country side before I ever engaged in a quest line.

Reaching the top of the Agency Tower in Crackdown, and then jumping off. Crackdown remains the only gave to give me a sense of vertigo when I play it, especially leaping between buildings, but jumping off that tower left my stomach on the ceiling.

The last is when the credits rolled in Halo 2. I was amazed, all right. 0_0
 
The only times I've really been taken aback by gaming are dramatically different:

The first was in about 1986, when I found an advertisement in the Sporting News, I think, for a game called Lance Haffner's College Basketball it was a text based college basketball game which had every team available to play. Haffner also released an NBA game, a NCAA & NFL football game and a MLB game, all of which I certainly spent more time playing than all the other games I've ever owned combined.

The second was the first Silent Hill at the beginning of the game. The sound of those sirens and getting trapped in that dead end with those little knife wielding bastards scared the shit out of me. I didn't think it was possible...
 
Another one would be, seeing Ridge Racer in motion for the first time in fall 1993

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21239002.jpg


Then playing a reasonablely decent conversion of that game AT HOME on PlayStation two years later.
 
The twist in KOTOR. So good.

Seeing Wolfenstein 3D on a PC for the first time.

Mortal Kombat. Witnessing Sub-Zero rip someone's head off with spine intact.

GTA3. "You mean I don't have to stop at the red lights?" Yeah, I actually said that.

Seeing Virtua Fighter the original in the arcade. The 3D blew my mind.

Mario 64. Single-handedly sold the N64 for me. And I'm glad I got it because it lead to my favorite game of all time...

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Every minute of it.

Everquest. Never experienced anything like that before especially when the people I was playing with were either in the room or in the next room over. Lots of yelling, haha. It's basically the reason I got kicked out of college. One of our first conversations while playing went something like this:
"I'm hungry."
"Wanna get some breakfast?"
"No, I mean my character's hungry."
"Holy shit, this game is awesome."
 
Confused101 said:
Everquest. Never experienced anything like that before especially when the people I was playing with were either in the room or in the next room over. Lots of yelling, haha. It's basically the reason I got kicked out of college. One of our first conversations while playing went something like this:
"I'm hungry."
"Wanna get some breakfast?"
"No, I mean my character's hungry."
"Holy shit, this game is awesome."
Click to expand...

Early EQ (up through Velious) was the greatest game of all time.
 
ShadyMilkman said:
Early EQ (up through Velious) was the greatest game of all time.
Click to expand...
Wow yeah, I played through Velious and stopped some time before the next expansion came out. I loved that game to its absolute fullest and, because of that, it completely consumed me. But it was definitely a whole lot of fun.
 
I'd have to say E3 2004 when Nintendo showed the new Zelda trailer on the show floor.

People were literally crying next to me.
 
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