Ask HN: What is the most memorable game you played?
I am interested in any and all titles, as long as they held some significance. A specific moment/feature/oddity would also help, but please include spoiler warnings as needed for other readers.
Thanks for participating =)
135 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadI was pretty disappointed when I finally hit the end. I tried Andromeda, but it just lacked something and I got bored pretty quickly.
I believe it is the only game I didn't sleep until I finished. The intro sequence captivated me into the story as I played through it.
Echoes of the Eye did the same thing the first time I walked into the main environment and looked up.
If that sounds interesting, seriously, DO NOT LOOK UP ANYTHING, do not read anything about it, just buy it and play it blind. You won't regret it. The mystery and wonder and surprise is the whole point.
EDIT: one caveat - if you are on PC, do yourself a favor and use a gamepad rather than a keyboard. You'll get way too frustrated with digital inputs rather than analog.
When I was first put onto the game I was lamenting the state of media lacking alternatives to "punching your way to a solution". This game is a first person shooter that replaces guns and violence with science equipment and archeology. It is a breath of fresh air.
Also, I love surface to surface space travel, and have to say that I found more enjoyment from a solar system of ~9 imaginatively unique planets with distinct biomes and gravity to the slew of other popular procedurally generated alternatives.
I recommend it to just about everyone and have known many people who stopped because the flight mechanics were difficult initially; abandoning the game saying "this must be for people who can actually fly this thing". Truthfully, you will get good at controlling your ship and suit, but also, crashing is ultimately a hilarious "part of the gameplay".
The music is excellent and integrated into the gameplay in a meaningful way. I found myself playing the game with a guitar nearby so I could take a moment to jam with the characters in the game.
The expansion is perhaps my favourite planet, but play through the main game first!
System Shock 2 was memorable enough that I couldn't play it in the dark and had to cheat just to give me the courage to finish it. I'm a glutton for punishment so I tried a few times to come up with a solid prompt to recreate SHODAN as an AI assistant. The goal was to balance our interactions such that we're both using each other to achieve our goals, but she always ends up becoming an unhelpful, Narcissistic, shrieking banshee like AM (from "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream").
PROTIP: All of the conventional adjectives used to describe her (megalomaniac, Narcissistic, sadistic, etc.) on the Fandom wiki tend to result in all of those traits being played to annoying extremes; she loses her chilling femininity when the only topic up for discussion is her aggressively screaming at you in all caps about how much better than you she is (that's a man, baby). I'm still working on it myself, but recommend ignoring all existing lore and rewriting her character using lesser/alternative adjectives like "helpful, cold, cutting, manipulative, and resentful of your humanity."
So many stories around it. So many interesting openings I tried. So many metaphors for real life. So many interesting characters in the history of chess.
So many interesting books about it. Coincidentally my favorite is "My 60 Memorable Games" by Bobby Fischer.
About one move in a game, Fischer writes "Sherwin slid the Rook here with his pinky, as if to emphasize the cunning of this mysterious move". Since I read that, now whenever I make an unusual move, I prefer to do it with my pinky.
There is also nothing better then finding an old chess game in a bar or cafe and then spontaneously playing a game. On a summer evening. Putting a candle next to the board.
The game mechanics with bullet time was just the cherry on top.
A serious and imaginative story, amazing art, memorable and interesting characters who had to make hard (and sometimes heartbreaking) decisions, and a huge world full of secrets and adventures to explore — that (spoiler warning) halfway through the game is essentially destroyed. I was in disbelief after the floating continent and ruin section - absolutely audacious. And it all comes together beautifully.
In the modern era, I would say Bloodborne. It so perfectly and completely achieves exactly what it sets out to do in gameplay, storytelling, and art that it sort of demotes every game to a lesser plane, even Elden Ring, which I loved.
Or Cave Story. Same reason.
But then there's Angband.
Final Fantasy ..9? 10?
It does have a bug in the rebels phase - they can wipe out your entire fleet, and it's all but impossible to recover from.
Completely (too?) ahead of its time on a lot of fronts, from its sandbox, open-world design to social economy, deep crafting and the MMO game tech itself.
Memorable also in bold early ambitions and for, effectively, losing its entire playerbase overnight due to corporate greed from SOE with its NGE update.
But more memorable for me is Larry Laffer 3... spend hours with my cousins playing it ;) many jokes and sexyness, would be probably not okay to produce a game like this nowadays.
Biggest addiction I had was with Super Mario Bros on NES.
Tangent-- modern Doom games have all been underwhelming, but the Brutal Doom mod (and non-MIDI soundtrack) for the original's WAD files evoked the same feeling of rediscovery for that franchise too. Duke has his own similar renovation project (eduke32 IIRC).
1) MS Flight Sim, starting with version 4 in 1989.
2) The entire Descent series from Parallax. Playing heads to head on 14.4k was a lot of fun. Later, Internet play became possible. Having bots jump out at you from nowhere lead to some nearly falling-out-of-chair-screaming moments!
3) Portal and Portal 2. The cake, was in fact, a lie.
Later I learned to cheat by duplicating stuff with a pile of coins, and the difficulty of the game was lowered so much.