What is the best gaming experience you've had?

Last one: Playing FF3 (6) with my best friend. Most of middle school he would make fun of me for playing stupid RPGs where ypu had to read. One stayover in the 9th grade he got FF3 when it came out and we played it to completion that weekend. Ever since then he was hooked on jrpgs.

This response might garner some eyerolls, but playing Pokemon Go when it first came out in NYC was really amazing. Just going out in the nice weather, walking around parks knowing that most of the people around you were doing the same thing was so cool. I ended up talking with a number of random people who were just as excited about the new game as I was. Initially, I just went out with my one friend, but our group grew to 5-6 people over the course of an evening. One time, we went to Central Park within a month after the app came out, and everyone was running around, laughing, yelling about a rare Pokemon showing up. It was really special.

Metal Gear Solid.
First "cinematic" gaming experience back then... and still the best.

Pictured: Four-year-old me playing Super Mario Bros. 2 (US) for the first time. It wasn't "Reskinned DDP!" to me yet (I mean, I still love the game to this day). It was this massive step up from the original Super Mario Bros. Different characters, different abilities, secret areas, really crazy looking enemies compared to the first game. The game had it all. The US box art for the game said "MARIO MADNESS" and for me at that time it had absolutely lived up to that.

Tomb Raider was my first 3D game ever. I remember well, I bought it with PS console and first five hours of it I was just looking around in game and amazed by it. It was mind-blowing.

Phantom Thief said:

Breath of the Wild, especially the first 20 hours, and the sense of wonder and discovery, as me and my friends went through the game together, eagerly and excitedly sharing our discoveries, and the possibilities of a world that seemed truly infinite.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

This and dmc3.

I fondly remember playing 8 player Daytona at Sega World in London. Hard to beat.

One of my fondest memories are playing the campaign of Super Smash Bros Brawl with my sister. Because of this, Brawl is my favourite Smash despite some balance issues (I'm looking at you Meta Knigh).

That's tough but it was probably the first time I played Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow on Xbox Live. The Spies vs Mercs gameplay was awesome and it was the first experience I had with online gaming. It blew my mind when I was 13 and since playing online was basically nonexistent among my friends in those early years of Xbox Live it truly felt like an exclusive experience.

Playing Super Mario 64 for the first time at launch is an experience that will probably never be beaten.

I won't lie, some of the most fun I've ever had was playing Naruto: Narultimate Hero 2 and 3 at anime conventions 15 years ago.

There are a few that stand out. First time realising how huge, open and alive Morrowind was is one of them.

It's hard to nail it down to just one thing I think. I suppose two of my fondest memories are linked to video games and family in a way, and that may constitute as my favorite game experience/experiences in some capacity, so I'll just mention that. When I was pretty young, (not too sure how young, but I'm 31 now and this would have been at the launch of Donkey Kong Country 1), I remember my father, who I really don't speak to much anymore, watching my brother and I play Donkey Kong Country for the first time. He was not at all into games, and clearly thought they were a dumb hobby, but he was completely enamored with that game in particular, to the extent that I remember his hilarious in retrospect statement, "It's like there's monkeys in the goddamn TV!" Lol, that still gets me when I think about it, and it's basically the only time in my life that my father showed interest in anything I was passionate about, so I'll probably always remember it. Notably, my recent happiest gaming memory was playing through Yoshi's Woolly World with my daughter on the Wii U in its entirety around two years ago, and we just had an absolute blast man. Every stage had her awing, pointing, laughing, giggling, singing, dancing, and just genuinely freaking out over how fun and cute everything was, and I'm pretty sure that game holds the distinction of being the game that got my daughter into games. Now she regularly cleans up people online on Splatoon 2, and she's 7. I know she's a hell of a lot better than me at it.....anyway, whenever I think of how games have impacted my life and how they've given me irreplaceable moments, those two are always the ones that pop up in my head.

Ultima Online.
I played with a group of dudes I knew from an AOL chat room, paid with a "Visa Buxx" prepaid card that my parents helped me get set up.
We would spend most of our time fighting skeletons or leaving trapped treasure chests around the bank.
Went on one "raid" to some sort of cave area, our healer guy morphed into a slime and scooted around yelling "HI GUYS" and we all got slaughtered by beasts.
Best online game experiences I've ever had.

EverQuest 1

There was a rare world spawn that popped and I was kiting it with my druid while my guild assembled and prepped to kill it. Another druid showed up and tried to pull the dragon to the other side of the zone where his guild was assembling and prepping to kill it. Thus started an epic 20 minute back and forth tug of war between myself and a druid from a rival guild. I was in constant communication with my guild and I'm sure he was too. The moment I will never forget is when I had aggro and was pulling the dragon up a large sand dune. At this point, I could see a couple of his guildmates rushing out to meet the dragon in mid field. I told my guild what was up and the entire guild mounted up, epic weapons in hand, and crested the sand dune just as I was about to get to the top. My guild was in full force and immediately engaged and defeated the dragon. It was fucking awesome. I was given the loot due to how integral I was in making the entire raid happen.


OR!

When a rival guild all died in the Plane of Fear and had to come crawling to my guild for assistance to recover their corpses. It was delicious.

Another one for Pokémon Go. EVERYBODY was playing, it was so cool. And it was so much fun going out with friends and discovering the secrets. I still play it, but the launch was definitely the high point for the game, and gaming in general, imo.

Mostly some nostalgia stuff
Playing Dragon Age: Origins during fall when I was 15 I think. After school I rushed home, made some cocoa, grabbed blanket and played. Good memories. So comfy.
Another is experiencing parkour in Assassins Creed 1. It was so fresh back then.
Aion- raids, war with another race, zerging them, them zerging us, protecting low-lvl players from them, interacting with people from my guild. It was the first time I've experienced something like this. Tried many other MMOs later, even returned to Aion after several years, but it wasn't the same.

From newer games- Bloodborne. It was like a whole new genre for me. To be honest, I always avoided high difficulties in games, I just wanted to beat games faster with no frustration (and I always thought that higher difficulty- bullet-sponge enemies). Bloodborne was different. Same with other Soulsborne games. And level design! My god, that level design.

Also, Detroit: Become Human. I had no idea a game like this can be sooo much enjoyable! Like holy shit, they (QD) finally did it right!

I could pick a lot great gaming moments, but if i only look at this year standouts for me are definitely Detroit Become Human and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Detroit was just a phenomenal experience throughout, never had the urge to play and finish a game like this in years. A great and unique gaming moment stretched over 4 days.

RDR2 is a game filled with great moments. Currently in chapter 3 and holy molly, the quality on display is just mindblowing. The slow pace, overall gamedesign and emergent situations make this game a sublime moment in my gaming history.

Playing crash bandicoot warped with my older sister for hours on end during the evenings in the summer of 99. And in early 2007, oblivion was one of the first games i got for my new 360. It was my first elder scrolls game and really first big rpg and i was completley absorbed. I remember staying up really late on school nights in front of the crappy little crt i had in my room at the time playing oblivion and most vividly going through each guild one at a time

FF7. Sure there are lots better now. At the time I was blown away like never before or since.

I would have to say playing GTA III the first time. My brother's friend brought over a PS2 and the game when it launched, and after they passed out I remember just hovering by the television in amazement. I never felt that level of freedom, I spent hours just listening to the radio and cruising around the city. Flashback 95.6, a Banshee stolen from breaking the window of the Auto shop, and freedom. I convinced my brother to save up for weeks to buy a PS2, and our parents were very strict about not spending money or time on videogames. So on a dinner out for my birthday, my brother brought his huge down coat and we paid for the PS2 and GTA III sand kept it wrapped in the coat - we were wild, baha. I remember that sense of wonder and amazement that truly captivated me like nothing else, it was one of the best Fall seasons I have ever had in my life - racing back from school to sneak in an hour or two to wreak havoc.

I think my second favorite gaming experience was buying Max Payne 2 - I had an after school tennis match, and I purposefully lost so I could get to the mall to pick it up. I got to the counter, the employee forgot to ID me and I raced home to install it on the old family desktop. I spent hours diving in slow motion into walls and objects, and it cemented my love for Remedy and all things noir. Mona Sax remains one of my favorite video game characters of all time, and that cello solo theme is forever etched into my mind.

And finally, my favorite gaming experience of my life was playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time with my brother. We were growing up fast and our interests were diverging a bit - but we loved to explore and share things we respected. We slept in the basement on weekends, trying to pretend we were asleep when our parents came down to make sure. We passed the controller on every death and shared our knowledge to try to get past the time bending puzzle mechanics. My brother got really sick shortly after that, and there wasn't as much time or freedom to be terrible kids blasting old Hot Boyz tapes and staying up wickedly late to wall run in the kingdom. And it was truly the last single player game we shared together, we got older and our interests diverged as we grew up. To this day, when I end up playing a game I love or am excited about, he comes by to watch and offer advice. Around this time last year, he watched me play through the entirety of The Last Guardian and it felt very nostalgic - much like The Sands of Time adventures of our youth.

Daytona USA's six player arcade cabinet with my college buddies

Speedrunning Sonic Unleashed day levels. I put severals hours on those!

First level of Saturn's Panzer Dragoon

Street of Rage 2 coop with my brother

A web browser based rally game with my brother as copilot telling me their pacenotes! What a time!

Finishing my first Undertale neutral run and immediately going for the true pacifist ending. I was not prepared for any of it. In that single sitting, it went from being "good" to one of my top 10 games of all time. I've got high hopes for Delta Rune and anything Toby Fox makes after it.

Dragon Age Origins, I hated western RPG until I played this. Music, Story, Characters, even combats, I love all from DA.

WoW at launch. Even with the server issues and stuff. It was great.

Shenmue back in the day. I remember feeling blessed with that experience and thankful when the credits rolled by. Today I realize Shenmue II is a better game, but it didn't blow me away like the first game did on the first playthrough.

Other great experiences were BioShock Infinite, The Last of Us, and Tearaway. Looking back further, Sonic 2 on my Mega Drive was a game I couldn't get enough of. It's still good.

Peak WoW (for me).
TBC or WoTLK around Ulduar. Nah TBC was better.

Final Fantasy XI, too many to list. Man what a game and time.

One for the thread.

Leveling Beastmaster in FFXI's dangerous world feeling no fear and feeling like after so long of respecting the world I was finally able to use it's power to my advantage. I got to chill out in places few would travel alone, taking in the beautiful art, scenery, and sounds. What a beautiful game.

Played Halo 3 legendary day one with a group of friends online. Stay up that night, got drunk, and just played.

That was pretty fun.

Oh playing Morrowind for the first time on Xbox, no internet help. I've never lost myself in a game like that before.

Completely forgot the most important:

Mechassault on Xbox Live. That was the absolute best. Small community but it was close knit as fuck. 1v1 in that were just the best.

Beating WoW raid endbosses with guildies.
Winning our first PUBG squad games.
Playing the WoW beta.
Immersing myself in the storytelling and atmosphere of the first couple of Fallout games.
First time through A Link to the past.
Mass Effect, going in blind.
Battlefield 2, 3, 4 squads with friends.

I don't know if I could pinpoint a best, but here's some career highlights:

• Halo 2
• Half-Life 2
• MGS2/3/4
• Max Payne (2nd was better, but first blew minds)
• Breath of the Wild
• TLOU
• Uncharted 2
• Splinter Cell
• Perfect Dark
• Mass Effect 2
• TES3: Morrowind

RDR2 is on its way there, but isn't yet....time will tell.

Playing through God of War 3. Most epic game ever made.

I started that guild brand new with 4 friends in November. Killed Heroic Lich King 25man in July.

Still my best experience in gaming. I made so many mistakes, and at times was a pretty despicable leader. But I've learned a lot, and to date, it's been my best experience in gaming.

Other highlights:

• "Saria will always be your friend" from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. As a pretty young child, I thought this was a great lesson on transcendent friendship.
• The Last of Us ending. I hated the game for its clunky gameplay (especially the stealth sections), but they did a great job with the story.
• Perfect Dark 64 - My brother and I played the crap out of Grid. Hundreds of hours. It was a great bonding experience for us as kids.
• Banjo-Kazooie - Also with my brother, we couldn't find the last puzzle piece. We spent hours and hours. Finally, my mom took us to the bookstore so we could look at the strategy guide without buying it. If you're interested, it was this Jiggy (go to 3:20).

Probably Super Mario Galaxy for me. It came out at a pretty rough time in my life, I was just going into 9th grade and didnt have a single friend. That game just brought me such overwhelming joy and really helped to show me a light in my life. I even 100% completed it, which is very unusual for me.

Playing N64 with friends, Goldeneye, Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing, Rampage, WWF/WCW. Memorable times.

Connecting 2 Xboxs together to play LAN Halo.

Playing Halo CE capture the flag online.

Using a coupon from a magazine for Free Blockbuster Rental and renting Ocarina of Time and getting close to getting access to the Master Sword before having to return the game. I was pretty poor.

Sorry guys, but as a gamer for last the 40 years, there's simply been waaaaay too many great gaming experiences in my life to list just one, so off the top of my head here's....I dunno...22 in no particular order?


1)Getting an Atari 2600 for the first time in 1981 and spending hours into the night with my cousin playing all sorts of games for it.

2)Ditto with the Atari 5200 and Ms Pac-Man.

3)Going to Shakey's Pizza almost every weekend with my cousins and playing all the cool arcade games there.

4)Playing Donkey Kong Country co-op with my cousin in the 90's.

5)Seeing and playing the Deluxe sit-down cabinet version of Rave Racer at Pac-Man arcade for the first time. I knew I wanted to bring that experience home some day at that moment.

6)Going to E3 multiple times during the Sega Saturn and PS1 era. There was no other con in the WORLD as fun as E3 during that time. It was 1000x better back then.

7)Buying and playing Rage Racer for the PS1, along with the Mad Catz steering wheel, and not understanding how to drive any of the cars in the game for the first day or so, then having it finally click with me and discovering the fact that I can drift these cars around all the corners, while still maintaining speed. Blew my mind and got me completely hooked on the entire series ever since. Then proceeding to clock over 400hrs into the game.

8)Beating Dungeon Master on the Amiga for the first time and the last hour leading up that point.

9)Buying a Neo Geo for the first time, and having actual ARCADE games in my house!!! Then playing the Samurai Shodown series over the next few months with my buddy and getting my ass kicked lol. Ridiculously fun times!

10)Playing OutRun 2 on the OG Xbox online. Met a lot of cool friends.

11)Playing Ridge Racer 6 on Xbox 360 Online. A Ridge Racer game you can play on-fucking-line! Nuff said. An amazing couple of years.

12)Playing Ridge Racer 7 on PS3 online. Crazy good competition and a stupid amount of fun. Was hooked like a crack angel on the game. Arguably the best Ridge Racer game in the series IMHO.

13)Driving the Skippy in iRacing and getting my first win online. What a rush!

14)Getting my first Direct Drive FFB steering wheel a couple years ago and playing all my favorite racing games with it.

15)Getting GIMX working for the first time on PC.

16)Getting all Golds in the Gran Tursimo 3 License tests.

17)Discovering and setting up MAME for online network play with my friend for the first time using a program called Kaillera, and then again few years later using another program called mame Hub. Very fun times! Playing retro 2D games online WAY before Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony made it a thing.

18)Discovering the ridiculously awesome and underrated programs GGPO and Supercade and the fact that they allow you to spectate people playing all kinds of retro fighting games online with very little lag. Blew my fucking mind and delivered many hours of entertainment! Thankfully now we have Fightcade to continue carrying the torch!

19)Discovering that several games in my favorite racing series of all time...Ridge Racer, can be played on PC via emulation with a force feedback wheel, high quality pedals, and H-Pattern gear shifter, basically mimicking the arcade cabinet experience, was phenomenal to say the least. Particularly when I first got the original arcade Ridge Racer working in Mame with my wheel, H-pattern shifter and pedals, and beating it for the first time ever. Absolutely bananas. Ditto with Ridge Racer 2 PSP, a game that wasn't even designed for wheels, etc. Just madness.

20)Playing F-Zero GX for the first time, emulated in Dolphin, with full working force feedback and wheel support, and on my giant 110" projection screen running in 4K upscaled res, at 60fps. If there's an experience that deserves the label "Heavenly", then that was it.

21)Now take that same experience I wrote above in #20 about F-ZeroGX, and multiply it by 10, because that's what it's like when you add VR. F-ZeroGX in VR = ORGASMIC!!!!!

22)Last but not least, putting on my Oculus Rift a few months ago, and driving a modded track in Assetto Corsa called The Shuto Expressway C1 Loop which is a 1:1 replica of the real Japanese Freeway, and the same Japanese freeway the arcade game Wangan Midnight is based off of. Driving that track at night in VR.... That experience ladies and gentlemen, is just...well...there are no words to describe it. NONE!!!!

Gone Home. I was floored at how just perfect an experience it was. Using horror exploitation mechanics to tell an intimate family story in perfect length of time.

It was beautiful

TimeSplitters 2 because it's awesome of course but it was also the first game I played with my first kid so there's a lot of fond memories.

Final Fantasy VII was also magic to me at the time. My first RPG.

Destiny was my first real PvE type game and I really loved it for a couple years. It's still my favorite type of online game.

And now Fortnite is far and away my most played game of all time. I love that they constantly update, change, and tune it. I've never seen anything like it.

mooshie78 said:

Mass Effect 2 probably. Just loved the world, characters, story, combat etc.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

I was going to pick that but then I thought about Mass Effect 3, specifically the multiplayer. I spent almost two years playing the mp all day, every day and I still never maxed out all my N7 weaponry.

Unlocking the special art gallery in Soul Calibur II when I was 15 years old and horny as shit

(Re)Playing the Mass Effect trilogy in one week in the summer of 2015 was definitely one of my best. I played it on PC, sat about 2-3 feet from a 42-inch screen in a dark room and just lived it for 80 hours!

Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil 4, and Breath of the Wild are all up there too.

Half Life 2. It's what got me into games

Either Demons Souls, Fallout 3, or Persona 5. 3 decades of gaming all leading to those classic magical moments.

On a emotional level it's Journey. Without really communicating, finding a fellow player, than loosing him along the way and then later finding him again only for him to sit down at the base of the last mountain and vanish in front me made me almost cry, I had to to the last bit on my own and that music killed me, I was a wreck afterward.

On a holy shit look at this spectacle level it's Uncharted 4.

Also finishing Blood Borne on co-op with a friend was one of the best experiences.

Final Fantasy VII is the most I've ever enjoyed playing a game which is why it still sits on top of my personal favourite games of all time list.

The games which have run it close are Final Fantasy X, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 4, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Dark Souls.

Three expriences stand out for me.

Pokemon Blue. Had a GameBoy Pocket. Blew threw AAA batteries so quick. I remember sitting there for my family to get home with batteries. Just loved that game experience so much I could never get enough. I didn't know there was only one save so let my friend save over it, it didn't deter me one bit, just started again without hesitation. If my save game got lost nowadays I would abandon most games.

Second was Sonic Adventure. I played crazy amounts of this before the VMU came out in my country. Yes the console released months before the memory unit did. I could never save the game but I think I had finished Sonic's story before getting the VMU but never more than that, besides some dabbling. The night I got the VMU was my first allnighter ever. FInished all 6 characters and Super Sonic storys. Was a great night.

Third was Persona 4 Golden. I didn't love the opening hours but the game and cast grew on me in a way no other game ever has. Even years after the soundtrack alone can trigger strong feelings about the game and characters. I don't know if I could ever play the game again unless there was a huge remaster, but the anime is decent enough to remind me of the times I spent with the characters.

I have a few:

-Playing Ocarina of Time, after a few years of not playing anything it was my first 3D experience and it floored me. (I beat the game 8 times in a row)

-Playing NSMB Wii in "co-op" with my brother. Most infuriating and yet cried of laughter gaming day ever. (We've beat the game in one sitting together)

Then I had some really cool experiences with Dark Souls, Bayonetta, and most recently Breath of the Wild. But those two are more memorable.

Being 14 years old when Mario 64 released. I had been playing Playstation games at some friends' house, but holy shit that game looked and played like the future., especially for someone like me who came from the Sega Master system et piss-yellow gameboy.
I had a great time with other games since (World of Warcraft, Half Life 2, BOTW, Splatoon...), but nothing can beat the first few hours playing Mario 64.