This is a fun thing flying around right now, so let’s give it a shot.
In a nice change of optimistic pace for the hell site, the idea’s pretty basic. You nominate five games that essentially formed the foundation of you as a gamer — not talking identity per se, but maybe more in terms of the gameplay you liked, stories you search out for, genres that really stuck with you.
In a way, this could just be your five favourite games — but I think it’s more interesting if you think about it in terms of what games left the greatest impact on you. I’ll start.
Counter-Strike (1.5-1.6)
Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Myst 3: Exile
Day of Defeat
Freelancer
All these games had different impacts in different ways. I remember Day of Defeat because my brother introduced me to it in a netcafe in central Sydney once. I can’t remember what we were going into the city for exactly, but we had a few free hours to spend because Mum and Dad needed to take care of something, so we got to basically hang out and get romped by oldschool Kar98K rifles.
That was the first real taste of the multiplayer experience, since it was the late ’90s and online play was not really something you could comfortably rely upon. (We didn’t have access to Optus Netstats cable internet; most Australians didn’t.)
Freelancer was one of those formative games that got you dreaming about possibilities, and wishing there was more than the 10-12 hour campaign. Counter-Strike is a series where I met people, friends, rivals, enemies, many of whom I all still know or occasionally bump into online today. Some of those are still a part of the gaming industry in some way, and it’s all through the community that coalesced around Valve’s shooters. (Much of the esports world owes its structure to what Counter-Strike built, too.)
I could go on and on. And there were plenty of choices that I could have gone the other way on — Heaven & Earth or Gabriel Knight/Zork Nemesis instead of Myst 3, for example. And I included an image of Mirror’s Edge as the feature because that game did so much. Really wish DICE would go back to it some day.
Anyway, you get the idea.
So now it’s your turn. What five games made you?
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