Oh gosh, still one of the best.
The posts in this thread are literally like comfort food. The warm, cozy, feeling reading your stories is enchanting.
Like many of you, it’s that first time you get sucked in, that magical moment when times ceases to exist that holds a special place in your heart. Though there are better choices out there, one that that stands out a lot to me was SSI’s Secret of the Silver Blades. Better graphics, 3D towns, and such a vast open world. There was never enough time. Also System Shock 2, Witcher 3, Simcity 2000, and Civ- they need to go back and let us build palaces in Civ again. Alpha Centauri and Arena (pre-Daggerfall) and MoM.
It seemed like every game I played as a kid just drew me in, maybe because everything felt so brand new at the time. But the ones that stand out include:
Gato: I lost myself in the pink waters of the South Pacific for what seemed like years.
NFL Challenge: I pretty much learned the game of football by playing this game.
ROGUE: Once, while visiting my uncle, I loaded this up and had a really great run going. So much so that later that day, when we were going out to dinner, I put a book in front of the computer light and turned off the monitor so that no one would know that I’d left the computer running because I didn’t want to quit in the midst of such an awesome run.
System Shock: I’d never seen anything like this and it grabbed me hard.
Nowadays when I wish that I had a game that could capture the same feelings I had while playing the games listed above, I immediately think of:
System Shock 2: I skipped way too many classes playing this. For me, there hasn’t been another game that has quite captured the immersion factor.
Jagged Alliance 2: This game came along at the perfect time for me. It was exactly what I was looking for and the combination of a real time strategy with turn-based, action point tactical combat system just felt perfect.
World of Warcraft: Got the game at launch but it wasn’t until early 2005, when I started running instances that it really just clicked for me. I wonder how many times I must have typed in general chat “Rogue LFG UBRS: HAVE KEY”.
Voxels FTW. And… mortars. And turrets. Definitely turrets.
GOD I loved that game. That’s the standard by which games like Planetside and Tribes are judged.
Others on my list:
DAoC. Still the best realm vs realm combat anyone has managed. It takes 3, people… plus world persistence.
UT: instagib. So much fun.
Planetside.
Star Wars Galaxies: the best crafting and eco system ever devised for a game. Period. And may never be equaled, the way things are going.
WoW.
Daggerfall.
Funny, mine was one called Overdrive, hosted somewhere in California that I played while at TAMU around '94.
What a great thread. Off the top of my head I would pick:
- Skyrim
I’ve been hooked on Bethesda open world games since Arena but the older games always had some niggling flaws that pulled me out of the experience. Skyrim hit all the right notes. I picked up the SE addition to try out on my PS4 and was surprised how quickly I was pulled back in.
- Diablo 3
I was never a real fan of Diablo style action role playing games, but with D3, I finally get the appeal of sinking hours chasing gear and experimenting with different builds. I logged in just last week to futz around with my seasonal character and somehow lost 3 hours - on a weeknight. And I am getting way too old to miss that kind of sleep on a weeknight:)
At the end of '98 I ended up with 5 work days of unused vacation. Use it in January or lose it, my boss said. My wife said, do whatever you want.
So for a whole week I played nothing but HoMMIII epic campaigns and Planescape:Torment, both engrossing in very different ways.
I still remember that opening logo for HoMMIII. Never got tired of it.
Star Wars Galaxies without question. It is the only game I’m happy to not know how many hours I played it.
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Civilization - as a fresh out of college kid in 1991, I didn’t even have furniture, so I’d sit on a stack of pizza boxes and play this till the sun came up more times than I can remember.
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Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - I never played Everquest for whatever reason, but fell deeply for Brad McQuaid’s next effort. First time I’d really been part of a community online.
I just played Galaxies for the first time a few months ago, thanks to the folks emulating it’s servers. Was a lot of fun!
The game I’ve re-played the most is Jagged Alliance 2. There is so much to do, so many mods, campaigns, mercs, etc. I wouldn’t call it the “most engrossing” though since detaching myself from the game when I needed to wasn’t really that hard.
I tried it, it’s not remotely like it was back then. Thousands of people around making names for themselves was a heck of a thing. The SWG Emu is so underpopulated it’s like it’s recreating the Patch That Destroyed The Game era.
For me it’s Kerbal Space Program. I’ve spent 1400 hours by my estimate and it displaced Darklands as my all time favorite game. My second most engrossing game is probably Darklands :)
Morrowind was one of those games I played for many hours straight and then daydreamed about constantly when not playing it.
And I spent so many late nights playing Baldur’s Gate II back in the day. To this day my favorite RPG of all time. And one of the few RPGs I actually finished.
I played Resident Evil 4 exclusively, everyday for several hours until I finished it on the GameCube.
Oh, and i played a ridiculous amount of Dark Age Of Camelot, going on early evening relic raids that would last until the early morning hours. Never again! (but the fun I had!!!)
Thinking back harder, I guess TLoZ:OoT may have “engrossed” me for a few weeks when it came out.
No question whatsoever: Thief and the Fan Missions made for it and its sequel (Thief 2).
I cannot count the number of times I’d been playing for very long periods of time (sometimes hours) exploring, thieving, finding items of interest or just plain looking around, then suddenly finding myself in an unwinnable situation and losing all progress because I’d been so immersed I’d forgotten to save. I “was” Garrett (the Thief) when I played. His actions were mine. His goals were mine. His thoughts were mine. To this day, I find myself quoting lines from characters in the Thief games (“Oh, well, must have been nothing”, “I’m as sure of it as the builder himself!”, “Rats! Always Rats!”, and MANY MORE!). I loved the “Thief-World” so much that I made my own missions for Thief (Fan Missions) and have played nearly all made by other “Fans”. There are hundreds of them, some of which are very, VERY FUN if you like the original games at all!
Myst & Riven: I was completely absorbed in the Myst worlds. I spent entire days (at a time that I had that luxury, never realizing that it would one day be considered a luxury) doing nothing but playing them, writing notes/drawing symbols, etc. It was absolutely the most fun and gratifying gaming experience I think I’ve ever had. Hindsight amplifies this dramatically because this was a time before “walkthroughs” and “cheats”.
Honorable mentions of which I’ve been completely “engrossed” in (spent dozens of hours without realizing it):
- Civilizations 2 & 3
- Doom 1 & 2
- All Elder Scrolls games: Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim (obviously)
This is exactly how I feel. I always saw the psychedelic loading garble of the Sinclair Spectrum as a kind of… ‘journey’ into the unknown, or a window I was eventually allowed to climb through. Often the only point of reference as to what a game would actually be about was some entirely misrepresentative (but cool) artwork on the cassette box! This made experiences even more unexpected.
Wow, they really were pink!
Honestly, I can’t really say I lost track of time much because I never really kept track of time to begin with :-) Time and I have always had a slippery relationship until recently (where it gets more precious as life fills up like a landfill) but if I were to look back on the games that I remember being utterly engrossed by then I’d probably say these:
FFVII This was mine and my brother’s first taste of an RPG and turn-based combat (which (hilariously, looking back) was super weird to both of us and our friends). We also found it weird how characters ‘merged’ with you and disappeared when they joined your party. I’m sure it wouldn’t hold up well today but at the time it was mind blowing, epic and thoroughly absorbing, helped immensely by the muscle of the PlayStation and Uematsu’s incredible score that can still give me shivers today. My brother and I had to take it turns, swapping over every few hours to jump back on to our own saves. I remember being 150 hours deep (disc 3, ready to venture into the crater) and my brother leaving it on the save screen (which looked almost identical to the load screen) and I spammed the circle button and overwrote my save.
Planescape: Torment I always used to say that Gandalf told better stories than Tolkien and I feel the same about PS:T. I was often captivated by the tales told by the weird and wonderful characters of Sigil and the denizens behind its many doors. What an incredible world (and story) to get lost in. “I’m gone.” You said it Nameless One.
Super Metroid, Metroid Prime and Echoes The seductive rhythm of metroidvanias aside, I don’t think many games do sense of place like Metroid and I put that down to the way the visuals marry up with the evocative music and sound and how each area has a wider context, connecting to others in unexpected ways. There’s an intimacy to the environments and a very real sense that these ruins were once Something, and that no-one has been here for A Very Long Time. I love that feeling of desolation and loneliness, and particularly the idea and visual power of nature reclaiming somewhere after its inhabitants have gone. Actually, this probably explains why I’m such a sucker for post-industrial sites. Anyway, these games take me far away from here, and for long stretches of time too.
STALKER Bugs, jank and wonk be damned, GSC’s game world was a nihilistic and unflinchingly bleak vista of anomalies, roving creatures, warring factions and all kinds treasures and oddities to discover. I couldn’t peel myself away from its unforgiving brand of misery, unpredictability and the unknown.
Thief: The Dark Project and The Metal Age I loved these games for so many reasons: the pacing and emphasis on being a professional thief and not a messy assassin, the level design and missions, the cutscenes bookending them and the lore steeped over this mysterious and unique world, the tools of the trade, the music and sound design. My god, the music and sound design. Preach @nogwart! I started developing a campaign with a friend but unfortunately we went to uni and it went off the boil. Loved some of the fan missions though. Equilibrium sticks out to me, and Saturnine’s The 7th Crystal.
“Vigilance is our shield, that protects us from our squalid past. Knowledge is our weapon, with which we carve a path to an enlightened future.”
Dungeon Keeper It was not only good to be bad, it was incredibly addictive and all-consuming too. I didn’t know anything about Dungeon Keeper until it finally got released to a 5/5 CVG rating, at which point I wanted to know more. That was the beginning of a love affair that would last until I reached a game-breaking (or more specifically, enemy AI breaking bug). Patch disks in the post didn’t fix it, even when the very friendly and helpful Danny on customer service helped me understand what the hell PKUNZIP was in DOS (I would have been… 14 years old). I enjoyed DK2 but it never really captured the grim dark comedy of the first game for me.
That should do it @jpinard :-)
Mass Effect 2. I don’t even know why. But I had such a great time playing that game that after I finished the main mission, I went back and did all the side missions. Just to spend a little while longer with my crew.