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Games you were playing during a specific time in your life.

What are some games you were playing during a memorable time in your life and still remind you of that time? For me.

The Evil Within. Started playing this around the time our air conditioner broke. It was one of the hottest summers ever and I remember us putting ice water into a spray bottle.

Halo Infinite. First played this when I got Covid19. My Smell was all distorted and I've never been that cold before.
 

teezzy

Banned
Played Goldeneye campaign as a kid coping with the death of an uncle who OD'd

Deus Ex Human Revolution after a real bad breakup

Ummm... I can't think of anything else
 
Halo 3 and COD4 I have a lot of memories attached with. Used to come home from school and play it with a bunch of friends. I always associate those games with some of the happiest years of my life.

2007-2008 were so good.
 

ViolentP

Member
I remember getting sucker punched by some dude with a ring on at the basketball court some 20 (fuuuuck) years ago. Tore my lip in 2. I spent the next week in bed taking painkillers and playing Vice City and Metroid Prime as they had just come out. That week was battling for the best and worst week ever.
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
About 14 years ago during my first real (bad) break up, i was depressed for about 4 months straight. In that time i barely ate or slept, but i played a shit ton of spiderman web of shadows, and need for speed most wanted (2005) on my xbox 360. Im pretty sure i got all the achievment points in both games during that period
 

nivix

Neo Member
All of the memories that popped into my head were fairly close together. Must be my golden age. Lol

Mechwarrior 2 on the new PC in 1995. We had an old IBM from the 80s up to that point. It was like jumping to light speed.

Goldeneye, must have been the summer of 1998. My high school friends and I played it all summer. I remember that as the summer of fun. Goldeneye, summer running camp with all the cute girls, a brief summer fling. It was a great time.

Unreal Tournament 1999 at college on high speed internet, with mods, playing with all the guys in the dorm. It was pretty crazy yelling at the guys down the hall while playing.

EverQuest was an interesting game because it was a catalyst for ideas. I remember staying up all night because I couldn't fall asleep thinking of how the world was gonna change. Virtual worlds and all this metaverse type stuff that never really materialized.

Special mention, Halo, playing online with that third party app (I can't remember the name). There was so much lag. The host team would always win. My roommates and I would always agree to switch hosts after we hosted the first match. Then we'd leave, lol.
 
FFXI from 2004 to 2011. it was so much a part of my life back then it's the closest I got to an addiction ever. it will always have a special place in my heart.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
2004: Im in 8th grade that Fall. Played Metal Gear Solid 3 as my mom and dad moved us into a new house. I associate mgs3 with that room where I played it now.

2005-2007: Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source in high school. Would play after school instead of doing homework. Would just wake up early to do homework real fast.

Fall 2009: Just playing a ton of call of duty that first semester of college. Said no to a girl inviting me to dinner because I wanted to play more mw2. Still regret it. Whenever it starts getting cold in November my body thinks of Call of Duty in college.

2010: Played mass effect 2 on first ever custom built pc at my dad’s girlfriends house where I lived with him for a bit. My door was a seethrough window so we put blinds on it but you could still see somewhat through a gap. One time she saw me jacking off in front of my pc.

2012: Played Sleeping Dogs and Faster Than Light for a couple months while I was high on hydrocodeine. I had had a surgery but they overprescribed me with a 2 month supply (I was only in pain for a few days). I somehow didnt have any withdrawals or cravings when it ran out.

2015: Playing MGSV, started drinking more and getting a six pack every week. I would just drink and play the game and watch anime. Sometimes I’d get vodka and mix with orange juice.

Spring 2021: Played yakuza series at home while I was in serious trouble, without getting into any details. It helped a little with stress.

TBH thats a lot of games I associate with certain times I could go on forever. All those mundane memories…
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Spring 1998. I had just graduated and I had a very long break. I bought FFVII, which I had doubts about but the reviews in PSM, Play etc made me want to try it badly. So I bought it. And I played it for months. Its still one of the best games I've ever played. Tekken 3 should also be mentioned. I played it since early 1997 in the arcade and never anticipated a home port more than this. I was over the moon when it finally hit console. It was there, in my home, on my TV. Surreal. In fact, I had just chipped my console and returned my EU copy when I saw a used US copy for like half the price. That was golden, since the EU version was shit (I knew because I was hooked to the coin op).

1999. The entire year was my fave year in gaming ever. I had modded my PS1 the year before (I was a PAL peasant) and I was already hooked to RPG. So I got Parasite Eve, Bushido Blade 2, Xenogears, FFT. I bought all of them. FFT was my first SRPG. Then, the summer hit. And I played Ape Escape and an iso of JP Dino Crisis which I quit since I wanted it in English. Later that year I was hooked to RE3, Dino Crisis. And ofcourse the Dreamcast. Which me and some classmates bought. Great times. Special shoutout to Driver, which was our game of the summer. We would take my PSX to some guys place, who was home alone for the season, and played until morning while getting shit faced.

As good as the likes of FH5, Elden Ring and GT7 are right now, the above won't ever come back. Its not the same. First off I'm older, and gaming is so widely adopted nowadays, its hardly a community anymore. You know everything when a new console comes out. Its not like Dreamcast and PS2 and being fed hyperbole, and then still being mesmerized by the likes of Soul Calibur. Everyone plays Fortnite, or something big. I miss those days. Buying magazines, and using imagination and previews over how a game will play. What you get today is mostly what you expected.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
I can't touch neverwinter or new world again, and not for the obvious reasons.

I was playing both around December last year when my 4.5 year old daughter passed away.

I'm still working really hard to get over it, and I probably just will never be able to touch these games ever again.
 

Esca

Member
I can't touch neverwinter or new world again, and not for the obvious reasons.

I was playing both around December last year when my 4.5 year old daughter passed away.

I'm still working really hard to get over it, and I probably just will never be able to touch these games ever again.

I know what you are going through
I hope you are able to move on. It's been 4.5 years for me and it is like it just happened still
I wish you the best and if you ever need to talk to someone that knows that you are going through message me anytime
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
call of duty 4 modern warfare was the last game me and my dad played together.

skyrim i played at probably one of the lowest points of my life. my depression and anxiety was really bad and i would play that game for about 10 hours a day just to escape. today it's elden ring i'm playing to escape. depression is still here! yey.
 
During my teens, I spent 3 years living in our house alone, while Grandma took care of the bills, I did the lawns n shit, still in Highschool.
During that first year, I spent that time playing Xenogears, Imported, through a friend who taught me about imports and even the existence of PlayStation.

We found a good translation online and printed it... items, menus, story shit.. was about 300 pages or so.
Took me a month to beat it, but I played it again and took my time getting everything, and after I had beaten it... I moved on to Final Fantasy Tactics... You know what? Those were good times. I stood up late to play games, ate dinner on my own, when I wanted to, slept sometimes with the game on because some of that Xeno OST can knock you out better than a 1st round knockout can.

Xenogears will always have a special place in my heart. For real. I just wish they had finished it. :messenger_loudly_crying:
 
I got really deep into COD MW 2 when my mother was in the last year of her life fighting cancer..My closest friends all picked it up and we were playing it every night and just talking until like 4 in the morning that fall...Not even a big fan of COD, but that time I spent just kicking it with my friends every night really got me through that period big time, to this day I still thank them for it.

And another great period was when Final Fantasy 6 and both Chrono Trigger launched when I was a kid. My mom was a gamer and she loved RPG Games and I've mentioned it before but she used both of those games to refine my reading. She made me read the screen aloud before she would progress and its pretty safe to say thats why those games are my favorites to this day.

Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid on PS1 also...of course they're great games but I felt really grown as a kid when I bought them cause those were the first games I'd bought with cash I saved up and they were totally mine, not my older brothers or my parents :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
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retsof624

Member
I really got into Life is Stranger in 2015 after my dad died. I normally don't play those kind of games but around that time other games didn't interest me. LiS caught my attention on Youtube and I bought it on steam and played through it. I guess the depressing story spoke to me at the time or something because I really got into it. I haven't touched any of the other games in the series.
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
2010: Played mass effect 2 on first ever custom built pc at my dad’s girlfriends house where I lived with him for a bit. My door was a seethrough window so we put blinds on it but you could still see somewhat through a gap. One time she saw me jacking off in front of my pc.

Spring 2021: Played yakuza series at home while I was in serious trouble, without getting into any details. It helped a little with stress.

You've left me to speculate, and now I'm wondering if the trouble you got into was that you got caught in a decade-long affair with your dad's girlfriend. You dog, you. :messenger_smirking:
 

The_hunter

Member
World of Warcraft will always remind me of my youth. Wish I could go back to the days before the internet fast paced world we live in and get lost in WoW.
 

BaneIsPain

Member
The MS-DOS Prince of Persia introduced the gaming world to me in the early 90s. Subsequently leads to Simcity 2000, Sims, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, Theme Hospital in the early '00s. It's wonderful to think I used to play simulation games a lot back then.
 

supernova8

Banned
1996: We got a PS1 in 1996 which, looking back now, seems to be when a lot of the big hits came out. We got Crash Bandicoot, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Wipeout, and Die Hard Trilogy, but other than that I believe we just rented everything from Blockbuster. Plus, I remember buying every single PS1 magazine with a demo disc. I practically lived on demo discs back in the day as a child. My favorite PS1 games, though, were easily Ape Escape and Metal Gear Solid (the latter of which I would play with my brother, I think I was too young to really understand the game mechanics and the convoluted story).

1998: In terms of my own games I was playing Pokemon Red on Gameboy. Played the absolute shit out of that game. Other than that, it was the year our family got our first proper PC (with voodoo gfx I believe) for Christmas. My two older brothers had totally different taste in games - one got Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines and the other got Rainbox Six. I was the youngest so our dad let me choose which game we would play first. What followed was my two brothers bribing me with different sweets and fizzy drinks so that I would pick their game. We ended up playing Rainbow Six but I actually preferred Commandos. I was young at the time and I couldn't quite keep up with all the menus in Rainbow Six.

2000: Fucking PS2 babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. I remember renting ESPN Snowboarding and being absolutely fucking floored by the snow particle effects. I also clearly remember how we bought Zone of the Enders for the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo disc and ended up only playing ZOE once before trading it in for something else. Funny thing was the independent game shop we usually went to said that ZOE was practically worthless without the demo disc because the latter was what people really wanted (they were actually selling the demo disc standalone - probably weren't supposed to be doing that but things were lax back in the day).

2000 (still): FIFA 2001, baby. The graphical leap was mind-blowing at the time. Online wasn't a thing but my brother and I would play co-op tournaments on the weekend. Luckily my brothers were still spotty single teenagers with no romance prospects so I wouldn't be on my own playing games.

2001: Seven words. Metal. Gear. Solid. 2. Sons. Of. Liberty. That is all, thank you. Oh wait, also Grand Theft Auto 3. I think those were pretty much the only games I played for that entire year.

2002: Got a Gamecube and played the shit out of Wind Waker (but not much else to be honest, Gamecube was just a Wind Waker machine for me). Fun fact: my parents refused to buy the game and insisted I had to rent it, but I had them rent it so many times that it would've been cheaper to just buy the game anyway. Medal of Honor Frontline, GTA Vice City.

2003: Max Payne 2, Need for Speed Underground (get lowwwwwwwww get low get low get low get low - through the windooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooows, through the wwooooooooowlllllllllllllllllllll)

2004: Rise and shine... Mr Freeman.... World of Motherfucking Warcrack Warcraft, Far Cry, GTA San Andreas, MGS3, also ended up playing shit loads of Counter Strike Source.

2005: Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, Brothers in Arms, F.E.A.R., Guild Wars (because my parents would keep paying for my WoW subscription lol), TimeSplitters.

Comment:
I think for me (ie my personal tastes), 2005 was the last real heavy-hitter year for games that blew me away. The years that followed of course have some great games but I don't think any them topped what came from 1996 to 2005. Those are the golden years for my lifetime (older folks will probably see it differently but this is my personal history).

2006: Company of Heroes, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Rainbow Six Vegas, Project Gotham 3, Dead Rising, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Gears of War.

2007: Crysis (I thought it was a shit game but visually very impressive), World in Conflict, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare (this was the only game to overtake BF2 as my preferred online shooter), Stalker (super confusing game coming from majority of games that had tutorials or at least eased you into it, Stalker was just brutal and I never got much further than the start of the game), Halo 3 (the last good Halo game IMO).

2008: Grand Theft Auto 4 (the ragdoll physics were amazing for the time), Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (felt like this was the first game for me with over the top collectable skins etc., precursor to everyone charging for them many years later), Battlefield Bad Company (good game with cool destruction but I didn't like how clunky it felt compared to BF2, I imagine it would've been good on PC with higher mouse sensitivity but alas it was console-only), Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning (I love Warhammer so I was super happy when it launched, also enjoy the public quests).

2009: the year I went to university so I didn't play as many games, but I did (with my flatmates) play the shit out of FIFA 10. Also played a lot of Call of Duty MW2 (I must've played the Russian invasion levels hundreds of times).

2010: FIFA 11. Nothing else really stands out in my memory. Bit of a boring year for games I might be into.

2011: was out of the country for 2011 with no access to my gaming PC or consoles, but looking back it doesn't seem like I missed a whole lot other than Battlefield 3.

2012: Total War Shogun 2, WoW Pandaria (tried it got bored quickly), another pretty boring year for me.

2013: Definitely Battlefield 4 (played it online day and night) and then GTA V.

2014: Played a lot of COD Advanced Warfare. I liked having Kevin Spacey as a villain. Also enjoy Infamous Second Son. Ah yes and I spent weeks being amazed by Driveclub's visuals. Cannot believe what they achieved back in 2014.

2015: Got hooked on MGSV for quite a while. Tried to get into Cities Skylines and gave up pretty quickly. Really enjoyed Life is Strange and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.

2016: Uncharted 4 (awesome game, a good popcorn muncher), Fifa 17, Rocket League (was never very good at it but that didn't stop me enjoying it).

2017: Breath of the Wild by a long shot. Also really enjoyed Mario Rabbids. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 would've been good if it weren't for the dogshit voice acting. (you can tell this is the year I got a Switch).

2018: Honestly cannot think of anything I really played at any great length aside from Squad.

2019: Tried to get into Resident Evil 2 Remake but was too chicken shit to get very far. That's all I can think of, other than replaying Breath of the Wild and also dabbling in a bit of Mario Odyssey.

2020: I got Yakuza Zero and played that quite a lot. Not much else.

2021: Played a lot of Judgement (not Lost Judgement).

2022: Currently playing a lot of Metroid Dread.

-----

Wow that was a rollercoaster. Hard to tell whether 2005 really was the end of "the good times" or whether it's just when my interest/love/time for video games peaked. As you can see, fast forward to 2022 and I hardly play anything.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
1996 is absolutely underrated. It was the year of Duke Nukem 3D, but also Quake and deathmatch kinda. Diablo I think? Also N64 in Japan and US ofcourse with gamechanger Mario 64, and Resident Evil series began this year. And what about Tomb Raider. Most of these games are still relevant, like Mario pretty much being the benchmark for 3D platforming, online deathmatch in itself, and Resident Evil elevating the survival horror genre while Tomb Raider was a cultural phenomenon. The Playstation had its first full year in the west and started to get excellent software. With the Saturn offering VF2, Sega Rally and Virtua Cop 2.

In Japan something began to surface, its called Pokemon. And I believe its the highest grossing entertainment franchise of all time.
 
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TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Due to the nature of language, odds are roughly one hundred percent of games I or you have played have been at a specific point in you or someone else's (multiple people!) Lives.

Hahaha.

Ha.

See what I did?

ON TOPIC:

Skyward Sword was the last game I played before finding out that I was going to be a father.

Mass Effect was the game I played in the hospital to get my hand eye coordination back up to snuff after having a stroke.

I was playing Assassin's Creed (original) for the fourth time when I was first prescribed Cymbalta and was in the process of realizing it was basically like speed for me and I probably needed to try something else.

I was (and still am) running through Final Fantasy X-2 again right before (and after!) spending a week (last week) at the hospital for a surprise pulmonary embolism and pneumonia.
 

Vandole

Member
EverQuest while I was unemployed. Fortunately, one did not cause the other. But I had spent the last 5 years either working or doing a combination of work and school, this was the first time since highschool that I had any real amount of free time and I used it for an appropriate time sink.
 

Gandih42

Member
Kingdom Hearts 2 in my early teenage years when all my friends started ditching videogames to hang out with girls.

I was struggling with depression and being shy and introverted, and latched onto the story of friendship and adventure in Kingdom Hearts. Just the other day I showed my girlfriend the old "Listen To Your Heart" Kingdom Hearts AMV I used to watch on repeat, that shit is so cringe hahaha. That being said, even though I think the writing and world building in the series has only gotten worse (much worse) over time, the series still has a special place in my heart and I replayed the whole series in preparation for Kingdom Hearts 3 a few years back.
 

CyberChulo

Member
This is a tough one. My mom wasn't feeling well and went to work. She had blacked out and fell backward and hit her head on the hard surface of a Social Center. Unfortunately she had cracked her skull during her check in at the local hospital. On that morning I believe the Metal Gear Solid dlc or some sort was released for Little Big Planet. It was 5am. I loved the remix of the MGS soundtrack that I had turned it a bit too loud. My mom got angry and started pounding on my walls to tell me to turn it down.

I haven't listened to the music since then. But I just looked it up on youtube. Haven't listed to this since 2009. Here's to you mom.

 

fart town usa

Gold Member
wow pre tbc ( original release ), grinding some mobs for silk cloth to sell on the market with my fire mage. mom was dying of cancer so it was a good distraction in the hard times.
Love you brother.

My father was dying of cancer and my brother and I were able to get lost in Albert Odyssey on the Sega Saturn. Ocarina of Time released shortly after he passed and that game was the absolute best escape for a 13 year old kid.

Neither game is sad to play these days, they actually bring back great memories of gaming with my older brother and all the outpouring of support we got from friends, families, etc.
 
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Laptop1991

Member
i got divorced in 2000, but from then until 2004, i had to go to court for access to my kids many times as orders were constantly being broken, which finally stopped in 04, so games like Medal of Honor Allied Assault, COD 1, C&C Red Alert 2 remind me of those times, not good memories but the games were good.
 
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MiguelItUp

Member
12-16 was a pretty pivotal point in my life in regards to video games. In that time I got Jedi Knight, when I didn't even own a computer. I just wanted it really bad, lmao. But at the time my father's shop had a PC that could run it, which is why I went for it, haha. A couple of best friends at the time were surrounded by PCs too, so I figured we could all enjoy it together. I remember playing my first over modem deathmatch with a buddy of mine at my father's shop, it was SO good. I remember being blown away.

Around 13/14 my family got our first computer, which I asked to place in my room because I knew I'd play the hell out of it, and I did. Eventually we got a second LAN line, and it didn't slow down, haha. Quake 2 came out and basically took me over, lol. I played SO much Quake 2 online. It was SUCH a trippy experience for me to be playing games online with strangers around the world. I vividly remember the first time I saw people in the chat typing in a different language (ended up being French). It was mind blowing. Heat.net, Mplayer, GameSpy3D, all the player models, skins, sound packs, and full on mods. What a great time.

That was also around the time where I first really started getting into music. The Prodigy - The Prodigy Experience was the first CD I ever bought, shortly after that Garbage - Version 2.0. Not long after I discovered numetal and that became my thing. Slipknot dropped their first real LP around this time and I was HUGE into them. They were my first concert, one that I got to experience with a wonderful friend that ended up unfortunately passing just a couple of years later.

The next couple of years came Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Unreal Tournament 2000, Counter-Strike, and more. Met so many amazing people around those years. It was also close to the period of LAN cafes, where you could pay $20-$30 (depending on the place) to do a lock in that included food and drinks. As someone that wasn't 21 yet, that was SO cool, haha.

Video games and music are a huge part of me, so, for me this period is really important in a lot of ways. I could go on and on, but I feel like this may be enough. :)
 

drganon

Member
When my grandmother was in hospice care, I'd spend most of the day with her, along with the rest of my family. I'd go home at night and play the first danganronpa before getting some sleep and going back the next day. It was nice to get my mind off of things for an hour or so. She eventually passed away a week from the time we brought her there.

I had started playing the game before her health declined to the point we initially had to take her to the hospital before ultimately taking her to hospice care. I ended up beating the game just a few days before she passed away. Because of this, I heavily associate that game with that time in my life.
 
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