Gaming

One that should get way more attention: Little King's Story. It presents as a cutsie Pikmin-like, but is actually a dark, metaphorical tale about abuse and trauma.

Most recently, the final choice in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 gutted me.

I’m not a gamer and I know I’m missing something when I see this comment section!

Binding of Isaac.

Played it as I was coming into adult life. This was my first roguelite. It sounds dumb....but it really stuck with me as a life lesson:

You can try your best and make sacrifices, and still end up unlucky with poor rewards. You get the opportunities you get, but even in this seeming randomness, you make choices to make the most of them. Training and skill makes up for some of the poor opportunities. Life is a roguelite.

Now I've got BoI on my Retroid Pocket 5 now. Still playing it.

Metal Gear Solid 2

me, 12 years old in my room, with little awareness of 4th wall breaks:

mom! The TV is talking to ME, MOM!

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Disco Elysium

EverQuest. But it never ended, I just stopped playing (and paying).

I don't know that it "changed my life," but DAMN Yakuza 0's ending hit hard.

Wouldn't say changed my life but the ending of Liberty City in Cyberpunk and Stray, both great story writing

Half-Life 2. It brought me into PC gaming, as well as introducing me to Garry's Mod, a relatively simple sandbox tool for creativity, complete with a wide array of assets to use.

I also really appreciate its moody world design that doesn't often explain things directly to you.

The first one - Planescape: Torment.

The second one (accidentally): Baldur's Gate 3.

Accidentally, because I fell in love with the characters so much that I started watching the actors' streams on Twitch and learned that I probably have ADHD.

Minecraft lol

I studied cs because of it, hell I even wrote about minecraft in one of my admission essays. Something bionicles to minecraft to stem pipeline as I would call it

I also really like PGR. It's a gacha game but I met a really nice community from it

If we're talking about great story driven games, signalis and nier are always my top favorites.

Life is Strange 1 - There are just a lot about life that I wished I could change. Lots of regrets. I think about the idea of butterfly effect a lot. I know a lot of movies also show this, but they often portray in a very "high stakes" scenario which its hard to feel relatable to, since its so far detached from realism. Meanwhile, in LiS, the portrays a scenario that's more localized, it "hits home" stronger, especially that part where...

Life is Strange: True Colors

Some people might relate less, but for me I can relate to the Alex a lot, the emotional aspects of life. I wasn't an orphan, but I feel practically like I'm one. I wasn't originally supposed to be born, I kinda feel like this life, this "timeline", is an anomoly. Everyone in my family hates me, kinda like how

ahhh Planescape Torment...

There's a number of the games that notably effected me after completion. Star Fox (SNES), Halo: Combat Evolved, Morrowind, KOTOR 1&2, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Dead Space, Hotline Miami, Undertale.

I'm probably forgetting some.

Silent Hill 2. And not even just the first time.

And not even just the original game, the remake also had me like this.

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (the first one). This one was my complete entrance to the RPG games and i was so soaked into the atmosphere and the characters. And well of course Witcher 3. For me the best game ever. Setting, characters, story, choises…

I'm getting old so there have been a few.

Super Mario World (SNES) - my first video game and the reason I eventually wanted to learn about computers

Final Fantasy VIII - my parents accidentally bought this for me instead of VII that I asked for. It was not a good impact, it was during formative years of my life and I looked up to the broody/loner main character and tried to emulate him, but in real life that just made me act an asshole and be lonely

World of Warcraft - this was probably an addiction and took too much of my college life. Haven't played an MMO since I quit. Still reminisce about it.

SimCity 4 - forced me to think about systems, which I think indirectly shaped my career path

Kerbal Space Program - made orbital mechanics intuitive and made me interested in all things space

Osu!, but not in the good direction... the game might have deleted what little confidence I have left in myself and gave me crippling perfectionism issues. Also permanently changed my music taste. May or may not have set me up on a hyper-competitive career path as well so there is that. Upside is... I'm fun at the club and the arcade maybe??

Both Psychonauts games had this exact same dopamine release. I spent all of my time playing both as they both came out right around the time of a close family member dying and the games were my outlet for those emotions at the time. Very special games to me.

Fez.

I made everyone play the intro/tutorial. Most of them thought they broke it.

Not really computer games.

Camarilla. A LARP that I was part of for about ten years. I met hundreds of people. A few girlfriends. There were chapters all over the world with a couch to crash on and a group of nerds into the same shit I was. I drifted from my local group and they fell apart a few years later. I've recently reconnected with some remnants of that group and in the blink of an eye I've found twenty friends and have a busy social life.

JiuJitsu. I don't see it as an art. I don't see it as a way to beat someone up. I see it as IRL PvP. I got into it from the early Joe Rogan podcasts where he had obscure interesting guests rather than the coco bananas direction he's been on for the last 10+ years.

World of Warcraft 2. A pirated copy got me a job at my local collectible card store. They had a computer in the store but weren't IT nerdy kids like I was. I'd downloaded it from a pirate BBS, YES BBS, that a friend at school ran. I like that Steam sees developers getting paid but man was DOS piracy next level easy, you were more likely to need the "decoder" that came with the game to act as the license.

Kingdom Hearts II.

There was something about that summer, and the way this game (especially through Twilight Town) delved into the theme of an "everlasting summer" ..it was a magical year. And that year of my life still resonates with me till today.

Plus, I thought Sora and gang to be so wholesome.

Mother 3

Final Fantasy 7, the first two Fallout and Disco Elyisum, Shenmue to an extent, but the Yakuza / Like A Dragon franchise probably tops all of them. I had stopped paying attention to video games after the dreamcast (I considered Shenmue the apex of what I liked in video games and couldn't find something similar), discovered the Yakuza franchise through Judgment in early 2020 and I was hooked, it was everything I had ever dreamed of in a game. I bought a PS4 specifically to play them, bought 0 to 6 during covid lockdowns and pretty much blasted through the franchise in a year. Rekindled my interest in games and in Japanese stuff, made me take my ass back to martial arts and generally pay more attention to how I behave and look after bad breakups and depression. Disco Elysium came very close to the same impact, I might add.

It wasn't the story of the game that was life-changing, but I met people on PSO that encouraged me to pursue a different career. Without them, I don't think I'd be the person I am today.