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Games That Made You Go... Woah

Metro

Arcane
Beg Auditor
Joined
Aug 27, 2009
Messages
27,792
Pool of Radiance
 
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AngryEddy

Self-Ejected
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May 5, 2012
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3,596
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Fuzzy Pleasure Palace
Halo 2. It had a lot of VERY pretty maps [single player and multiplayer] , and it's the game that started MLG, so it can't be all bad.
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

Guest
Final Fantasy VIII on PS1. Some of the attack effects looked too cool for a typical PS1 game.
Deus Ex: Invisible War on PC. While it was the first game of DX universe that I played and it was cool for me, it prepared me for original Deus Ex and made it less 'woah', but I still enjoyed both of them.
 

Jick Magger

Arcane
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New Zealand
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Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, if only for the insane amounts of detail Kojima manages to cram into these games for the sake of immersion. Little shit like Snake's eyes adjusting to the dark during the underground tunnel section in 3, or all the attention they put into the seagull AI in 2.
 

goatvomit

Eau de Rapax
Patron
Joined
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646
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boonies, Finland
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Chase HQ and Robocop were probably the technically best Amstrad games back in the day but I still played Head over Heels the most so I really was impressed with it. Graphic whoring shouldn't be that important but glquake with voodoo 1 did blew my mind. Then I noticed the vga was faster in tf and stuck with that no matter how ugly it was. On the rts front Total Annihilation set the benchmark with big battles (path finding is finally fixed with the latest modded exe ehh). When you get older getting excited becomes a chore so it's back to the good old bitching and moaning about how things were better before - not forgetting the cardboard box in bottom of the lake...
 
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AngryEddy

Self-Ejected
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Fuzzy Pleasure Palace
Just thought of another one:

Vectorman for the Sega Genesis.

Was a really weird game [You're a recycling robot that has to kill an evil nuclear warhead] that had a great atmosphere and an even better soundtrack.
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,105
Playing the first Myth game and realizing these aren't your stereotypical LET'S AXE THEM TO DEATH dwarves. Fact that I was afraid whenever the game gave me more than a pair speaks volumes. And then you kill half your guys because Molotovs fizzle, get reignited by OTHER Molotov and bounce back to your location because explosion physics hate your guts actually exist. Myth dwarves are still the most satisfying dwarven unit I ever played in any game.

3hB9hqF.gif
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Just thought of another one:

Vectorman for the Sega Genesis.

Was a really weird game [You're a recycling robot that has to kill an evil nuclear warhead] that had a great atmosphere and an even better soundtrack.
Fantastic platformer as I remember it.
 

Gurkog

Erudite
Joined
Oct 7, 2012
Messages
1,373
Location
The Great Northwest
Project: Eternity
Super Mario Brothers
Ninja Gaiden
TMNT: The arcade game
Super Mario World
Street Fighter 2
Final Fantasy 6
Wolfenstein 3D
Doom
Mario 64
Final Fantasy 7
Baldur's Gate
Fallout 2
Team Fortress Classic
Diablo 2
Dark Age of Camelot
Fallout 3
Dead Space
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
STALKER


roughly in the order I played them... that is all I could remember on short notice.
 

Cadmus

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2013
Messages
4,264
I totally agree with Operation Flashpoint. It was atmospheric as fuck and scary and unprecedented.
Then I also cried when I found the secret door to the cave in Morrowind with all the previous nerevarines and I was one of them and the music kicked in and bawwwwwwwwww:)
I remember playing the 1st Hitman was a shock at how amazing it is.
SWAT 3.
I think that's it.
 

warpig

Incel Resistance Leader
Manlet
Joined
Mar 24, 2013
Messages
7,364
Location
lmaoing @ your life
Fallout 1, I didn't play too many rpgs before Fallout, most of them had a fantasy setting and I didn't like fantasy too much back then. Fallout blew my mind. This game really felt alive, I haven't played a game before that allowed the player that much freedom and offerd so many diffrent ways to play it. I was really impressed when I talked with my friends and compared how different our experiences with this game were. I also liked the athmosphere of a dying world, beautiful music and artstyle.

Another World, I wasn't into games that much back then, and most of the stuff I played can be described as "kiddie games". Another World really seemed like serious business in comparison. The realism, a character that looked and moved like a real human being instead of some shitty cartoon character and he could die really easily. I also liked the variety this game offered, in a normal platformer when you played through the first level you knew what the rest of the game is going to be like. Not here, Another World kept me guessing whats going to happen next. The cinematic cutscenes were also a thing I haven't seen before, I watched that intro every time I started the game. Of course there's also the amazing athmosphere and aesthetics of this game. I remember being really creeped out, kind of scared by it, some weird combination of outlandish-ness, violence and totalitarian undertones.

Doom, the usual Doom stuff: novelty of the fps genre (I played Wolfenstein before but I wasn't too impressed with it), horror like feel, violence, visuals.

Frontier, I enjoyed playing Privateer more but Frontier had this huge and realistic universe and the ability to seamlessly enter the athmosphere that was really impressive. I remember that before playing it I was thinking that it would be cool if there was game that had this option but I also thought that this would be to impossible due to the technical limitations of computers. And that's the reason there aren't any games like that.

Dune (the first Dune, not the RTS sequel), mostly because of the novelty, there was nothing like it. Also incredibly athmospheric with an interesting story (though I already knew it from the David Lynch movie)

Wipeout 2097, it had a sort of "hypnotic" effect on me. The high level of concentration required to play it combined with extreme speed and awesome electronic music, I felt like I was in a "trance-like" state while playing.

Wing Commander 2, first space combat game I played, made me go "whoah" mostly because I have never played anything like this before. I also really like spaceships and military sf so this was like a wet dream to me.

Independence War, just the awesome and novel gameplay. I was always wondering what a more realistic space combat game would be like and here was my answer.

Just from the top of my head, I could probably list a list a lot of games here. Generally I'm impressed by games that introduce some new type of gameplay or provide a interesting twist or refinement of the old stuff. Doesn't hurt if they're also athmospheric and stylish.
 
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ASTRAL

Arcane
Joined
Oct 8, 2010
Messages
674
Shogun:Total War
After reading the James Clavell novel with the same name there could not have been anything more awesome for a kid.
 
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vitamin

Augur
Joined
Dec 12, 2012
Messages
199
River Ride for C64 - my first computer game ever
Flashback for Amiga - because of its graphics which were like x1000 better than C64 (and it was actually also first game I saw on my friend's Amiga 500 back in the late 80's)
PS:T - after playing both Fallout games I was pretty sure I won't find an rpg game that I'd enjoy even half as much as Fallouts... I'm glad I was wrong about that
GPL with all GPLEA addons - a little masterpiece in terms of game modding, absolutely top quality all around that made this game pretty much everlastin
OFP - first proper fps game
 

markec

Twitterbot
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Croatia
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Freespace, when flying near big ships.

Gothic 3, certain locations were just WOAH.

Omikron the Nomad Soul, opening of the game with David Bowie and prospect of exploring open cyberpunk city made me go WOAH.

Carmageddon, WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH.
 

Skunkpew

Augur
Joined
Jun 17, 2013
Messages
138
Location
Ontario
Seven Cities of Gold for the C64 was the first mind-blowing game I can remember as a kid. The world was completely open and you could take multiple paths to victory. Nothing I've ever played since has ever beat the fear of wandering around the New World with no food, with the crew slowly dying as I desperately searched for my ship before we all died from hunger, and the 1000s of gold stolen from the natives was completely useless to us. The small view-window really added to the atmosphere of how alone and small we were in the world. And then with only a few men left, and the gold hidden away in a secret cache, I finally reached the place where I anchored my ships, only to find that they'd abandoned me and left me to die a slow death with the angry natives all around. When they talk about drug addicts trying to chase their original high, that's what gaming has been ever since for me, because in this age of save-states its impossible to ever recapture that moment of desperation.

But another mind-blowing game was obviously Civilization. I remember when my older brother brought me into his room and showed me the ships he'd managed to build, and he'd branched out to other islands and was successfully conquering other nations. And he refused to tell me how he managed to build the ships until I finally figured it out on my own. A few years later, I was discovering Space Flight before 1 AD. I always sort of disliked how the sequels prevented the player from rushing the technologies to such a degree.
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

Guest
Mordor: Depths of Dejenol.

This game almost turned me into a sicko. Little to no graphics, quite some information to keep in mind, minimal, grindy, but fucking enjoyable gameplay.
I got so addicted to it, even now I'm looking for ways to play it on Win7 (guess I found a way).
 

dnf

Pedophile
Dumbfuck Shitposter
Joined
Nov 4, 2011
Messages
5,885
Recently i got impressed with Star Control 2 and Darklands: So much cities/Systems to explore, WOW, now i understand the whining of codexers... Up until 10 hours later, when i see that it's all smoke and mirrors with so many repetitive content in both games.

Right now i got hooked with the psychedelic atmosphere of Hitman Contracts. The intro movie and the first 2 stages blow my mind (a night club in a meat house, what the fuck).
 

sea

inXile Entertainment
Developer
Joined
May 3, 2011
Messages
5,698
Probably at the time, Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The size of the world, and in 3D to boot, was really stunning at the time, and the world just felt like it was full of life and secrets.

Planescape: Torment, for being the only game at the time to give me a story and characters I was so invested in, to the point where I don't want to go back and ruin the magic.
 
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
1,875,973
Location
Glass Fields, Ruins of Old Iran
^First time I saw Hyrule Field, I thought it was awesome. "I can go anywhere, sweet"

Now I look at it and see a huge empty hub that doesn't actually let you go anywhere because this is Zelda and you have to do things in order. I want my soul back. :(


Still a woah game all around. I first rented it with my cousin and was frustrated because he won the rock-paper-scissors game to see who would play it first for the weekend. Later I bought a copy and didn't mind restarting because I could play through the segments he played.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,474
Location
California
Most firefights in FEAR

Offing the Vault Leader

Above all though, Silent Hill 2's "muffle" scene
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
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16,947
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Pannonia
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The first trailers of The Secret World MMO, which offered something unique.
The opening scene of Icewind Dale 2, with that amazing music. Seriously, I was in awe just listening to it.
The Hounted Cathedral in Thief, but in a "whoah, whoaaaah, OMG what is that sound, please don't notice me, don't notice me MR skull guy" way.
The Colossus vs Shivan Megaship battle in Freespace 2.
Looking up to the night sky of Gothic 2. Seriously Gothic 2 has maybe the most beautiful nightly skybox. It is nothing fancy, just darkness, clouds, moon and stars, but somehow it clicks together perfectly.

And a few other which I can't remember right now.
 
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