Your best gaming experience (I.E. your favorite game).

[Oskuro]

*ahem*

DoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooM

*cough*

Now that that's done with, my favourite experiences are clusterfucks, particularly if I manage to make it out of them. The game doesn't really matter, it can be too many monsterstm on a doom-style shooter, it can be a particularily virulent deathmatch, a bad pull in an RPG, incompentent players making things retarded in any game, or through the fire and flames.

I also quite enjoy how a lot of people get angry when their carefully planned strategies go to hell (particularly in mmos), yet I can't stop laughing.

[Stark]

Out of control situations are good because they're immediate. The best horde is oh-shit-what's-happening horde.

[Oskuro]

You also get a sense of achievement when you make it through them, since you're forced to improvise, and you're constantly feeling the cold breath of failure on the bakc of your neck.

[Starglider]

You should stick with 'your best gaming experience', it's completely and explicitly subjective, which makes it easier to answer than 'my favorite game' (which inevitably becomes 'games I think are the best').

My best gaming experience was definitely my first playthrough of Planescape : Torment, in summer 2000. This is the only time I have ever stayed up all weekend to play the game, then called in sick to work (on Monday) so that I could finish it. The game (mainly story and setting) was that compelling. My first playthrough of System Shock 2 trails some way behind, it was again engrossing and atmospheric enough to obsessively play through it in a weekend, but it wasn't as inventive or emotionally moving as PS:T. Multiplayer can be fun but I've never found it to be as engaging as a really good single player game.

[Isil`Zha]

My best gaming experience was by far Halo 2 multiplayer, for several reasons:

My work schedule was odd, so I basically would stay up late every night, usually playing from 10pm or 11pm to 2am. The thing is, almost all the people I played with, including Laird, got on at those same times - we'd always have a group of 6-8 for matchmaking games. If we had significantly more, we'd do custom games.

Always having a large team of people you know, able to put on good games constantly (not having to worry about quitters on your own team, for one), and since we played so much, we had so many totally awesome games and moments. If Halo 2 had the recording system of Halo 3, I'd have dozens and dozens of videos.

Those went back to the days of "stand-by" cheaters in Halo 2 (where someone with a standby button on their modem/router would hit it to briefly drop everyone else but themselves - run around to do what they want, then reconnect.) This would result in things in CTF like: "Okay, they're coming in right side..." *everyone goes to 'reconnecting' screen* "Damnit, they're standby cheating." When the connection would come back, they'd be driving off with our flag. :rolleyes: Well, we had gotten used to people pulling this shit, and would have people in position to take care of it if it happened - and this usually was me since I was typically the team sniper - *BAM* I'd headshot them out of their vehicle - with no time left for them to make another attempt. Oh man, the whining from the cheaters that lost was always so entertaining.

Oh yeah, played with a few of the RvB guys fairly often, too.

[Channel72]

My best gaming experiences were probably at the arcade - back when arcades used to actually exist. The single best gaming experience I can remember is probably when Mortal Kombat 2 came out at the arcade, and everyone scrambled to try it out. It was also a blast whenever a new Street Fighter version came out (there were so many...), but the social experience I used to have at video arcades is hard to match these days with home consoles.

[SecondStorm]

Jumping down from Empire State Building in Prototype.

[Sela]

By far too many 'bests' to count. An amazing gaming experience then:

So back in the day on an 8MB RAM computer, we had SC1, and had downloaded StarDraft and other programs that allowed you to patch it and change settings. I remember playing a round where all units and buildings were cloaked as well as detectors with only a few exceptions which could not detect. Awesome moment then was when I realized my opponent and I had simultaneously been building expansions near the same central mineral patch - buildings right next to each other - and I got the scout off first

[Stark]

I'm not sure you know what the word 'best' means.

[CaptainChewbacca]

My best gaming experience was a two-hour 4-on-4 game of Starcraft on battlenet. We got down 4 to 2, but we battled back and just worked across the map to crush them.

[Sela]

@Stark:

I would have thought that if ANYBODY on this board understood dry sarcasm it'd be you. I was casting aspersions that all the 'bests' described aren't really "best" at all . . .just the one event that screams loudest to the mind at the time for which under enough reflection there are doubtlessly several other 'bests' to take their place. Doing an empirical evaluation of a totally subjective state taht has passed by already is a futile exercise; better to just go with "one of the best" and not worry about hitting the exact right one.

[Whiplash]

@Stark:

I would have thought that if ANYBODY on this board understood dry sarcasm it'd be you. I was casting aspersions that all the 'bests' described aren't really "best" at all . . .just the one event that screams loudest to the mind at the time for which under enough reflection there are doubtlessly several other 'bests' to take their place. Doing an empirical evaluation of a totally subjective state taht has passed by already is a futile exercise; better to just go with "one of the best" and not worry about hitting the exact right one.

Well aren't you the clever one. Hey everyone we have smart web comedian over here. *clap* *clap*

[Thanas]

Whiplash, STFU or you will get modded. If Stark wants to argue, he is perfectly able to do on his own.

What this forum does not need is one worthless poster who has not made a single good contribution to this board (i.e.: you) to get snarky to another new member.

[Whiplash]

Um, not trying to be a smartass with this question, but what exactly do you mean by a 'good contribution' in your context, or I guess the board's context.

[Thanas]

Not making smarmy one-line replies to people would count for once. Other than that, why don't you simply look through the posts of mods or long-time members and learn?

[tim31]

I'm not even going to try and nail down a 'best' gaming experience... I've never spent anything like the amount of time I devoted to COD4 multiplayer, and that had it's moments. But years back we used to crank up 1v1 GTA2 when we didn't have enough people to call drinking beers a party, this one time I blew up Ed with the ROCKET LAUNCHER and in a fit of rage he stole an icecream van and managed to run me over five consecutive times before we decided to go throw aerosol cans in a fire.

Christ but I miss being young and invincible.

[The Yosemite Bear]

since this is about computer games, what sort of mod would you use on Whip?, new skin?, purhaps one of those civ mods are really good, just stay away from the RPG naked mods....

[SushiMaster]

Shit, too many to count. I'm going to probably miss a lot.

Duke 3D was my earliest gaming experience, and boy was it fun. I even enjoyed it with cheat codes. Oh, and I still remember the titties.

Then I got my N64.I remember Ocarina of Time blowing my mind away . Hadn't played any RPGs before, so the freedom was great. Goldeneye 007, followed by Perfect Dark (self explanatory). The Rogue Squadron games for both 64 and GC satisfied my SW geekiness.

After the 64 and GC, I focused on PC gaming. Red Alert 2 was huge fun at the time. Half Life, Call of Duty, and the other bazillion shooters. Counter-Strike LAN parties absorbed my whole, sad adolecense. Of course, the absolute pinnacle of my gaming experiences, started and ended with Homeworld. Jesus fucking Christ, what a game.

[xthetenth]

I'd probably say Crimson Skies and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines just because I'm a complete sucker for a totally immersive atmosphere like they had, especially when it's something as novel as CS' (it felt like a '30's radio drama with its beautiful insanity), and Kotor 2 just for when playing through about the second or third time the whole plot finally clicked, and I really understood what all the characters were and what they were playing at (mostly Kreia). I can't think of another NPC that well done (although Planescape: Torment is kind of fuzzy in my memory, and I've been meaning to fix that).

[Tolya]

Hmm,

Viet Cong. One of the last games where the devs cared about shit like immersion. You had a very decent (even though it was pretty run-of-the-mill) story, likeable and believable characters, jungle combat was very well portrayed... even if it was not a perfect game, it was one of the better fps's that depicted a real world conflict. And I dare to say: the ONLY Vietnam shooter that didn't suck donkey balls. Remember the first mission? Where you could really feel like a bad-ass sniper by finding and putting a bullet in a VC sniper camped outside the village? Nowadays its just generic shooting to shit you don't even remotely care about, like in Medal of Honor (2010) or the latest CoD, which frankly just sucks.

Oh, and Half Life. And I second Crimson Skies and Masquerade:Bloodlines, but its really a shame that you had to wait for the community to fix the goddamn game enough so it can be actually played. Jack is one of the most iconic game characters.

There's many more but these are what I can think about right now.

[Darth Yan]

Ratchet and Clank 3. You can turn people into ducks that explode AND you can obliterate all that stand in your way. TREMBLE MORTALS AND DESPAIR. YOUR DOOM HAS COME! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Seriously though, it was a great game.

[inviz345]

shoot friends through wall on Perfect Dark on n64.

[xthetenth]

Oh, and Half Life. And I second Crimson Skies and Masquerade:Bloodlines, but its really a shame that you had to wait for the community to fix the goddamn game enough so it can be actually played. Jack is one of the most iconic game characters.

Yeah, I can't really get worked up about Troika going out of business no matter how much I'd like something else like vtmb. I think it has to do with them not actually supplying a working product. The cast makes it worthwhile though, I'd say that had more brilliant characters than are in a lot of video game casts. Plus, the malkavian dialogue was awesome, especially if you'd played before and seen the corresponding normal dialogue. Finally, the stop sign argument made my week.

[Whiplash]

Gonna throw out some of the boss battles for the No More Heroes games.

Destroyman, Bad Girl, and Henry for the first.

Nathan Copeland, Ryuji, Margaret Moonlight, and Alice Twlight.

[His Divine Shadow]

These are the games that pop into my head:

Doom 1,2
Duke Nukem 3D
Blood 1
Star Control II
Civ II

EDIT: Man how could I forget Command & Conquer 1.