What advances in gaming blew your mind the most?

Probably been done before, but was thinking about this recently. For me they are -

3D graphics.
This might seem completely simple now, but I remember the first time we got a 3DFX card on our home PC. The only game we had that could utilize it was this demo for a motocross game and remember being so amazed by the change in graphics and the use of rag doll physics when you crashed your bike.

Soundblaster
Again this might sound so simple now, but I remember the first time we moved from computer audio, the irritating whirs and clicks the computer would make for sound effects, to proper sound. And even voices! One of the first games I can think of that utilised this was Discworld.
There was a funny time where I had been playing it, but had to go have dinner with my family, so left the PC on. For anyone who hasn't played this game, it follows a character called Rincewind, who was voiced by Eric Idle, I believe. Anyway, we were having dinner and next thing we hear is a knock against glass and someone saying, "hello? Heeellloo?". Turns out that if you left the game for idle too long, that's what would happen.

Scared the bejesus out of us!

Not sure if it works that way, so if not .. https://youtu.be/nEjmQ1xw3gA

Temptamperu

Havok Physics.

ShadowHearth

World of Warcraft.

I was a huge fan of Warcraft games and its lore. The idea that I could visit places in Lore as a simple foot soldier just blew my mind. First few years of WoW were magical, I would kill to have that feeling again.

Aenaes

GTA III.

I remember going to a friend's house and playing it. It blew my mind.

Grays Sports Almanac

For me it was Mode 7 on the SNES.

blatantrereg

yeah 3d graphics. gotta be that for most people who are old enough for it to be significant. I found the original Quake mind-blowing.

RopeDrink

RopeDrink wrote: »

Nothing much has blown my mind, really. I've been gaming so long that you adapt to the fact that it is going to grow and change drastically at set intervals very early on. The only time I was like "Wow" was going from Spectrum 128k & C64 to the Amiga 500. After that, little surprised me.

There's a huge difference between getting your ass handed to you by a pixelated Dizzy the Egg platformer, compared to getting ravaged by a rotoscoped Flashback, for example.

Goddamn Dizzy the Egg was the sh1t, wasn't it?

Outkast_IRE

First time playing Half life...........................

It changed everything, before it FPS games usually had little to no story.

With half life you felt you were in the middle of the story just trying to survive. It felt like being in the middle of a movie.

5uspect

The huge step up with older consoles was something else. I went from a SNES to an N64. It's aged pretty poorly but GoldenEye showed what a proper 3D world could achieve so early.

Then there's the move to PC gaming and mucking about in game files. Editing player textures in paint ftw.

There nothing like putting a new build through its paces on games that ran like a slideshow on your old hardware.

the_syco

Battlefield 1942. The ability to fly planes, drive tanks, or just run about in one game was awesome, and it having multiplayer was awesome.

Outkast_IRE

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

First time playing Half life...........................

It changed everything, before it FPS games usually had little to no story.

With half life you felt you were in the middle of the story just trying to survive. It felt like being in the middle of a movie.

The interactive intros were amazing, where everything happened around you and you could be involved in them as opposed to being completely static. I think the first Medal of Honour did it great as well.

It's probably been done before in other games, but playing Fallout 3 for the first time and seeing NPCs actually interact with each other was great. It was such a simple touch, but added so much.

The first 3D game i saw was tekken on the PlayStation in smiths, it was incredible at the time. It would be some time after before we actually had a PlayStation of our own and then tomb raider was out and that was mind blowing.

kevin2800

Den14

Been playing games since the commodore C64 days and I have seen many advances in my time. The one in particular that blew me away was playing Oblivion on the PC for the first time. Thought it seemed okish when wandering around in the dark cavern at the beginning but when I first emerged out into the open landscape and its vastness, it was just awesome. Beautiful scenery just waiting to be explored.

TerrorFirmer

Oculus Rift is definitely the main one for me in recent times. It's just such a new direction and the potential is staggering.

When Crysis came out in 2007 - a game so ahead of its time that almost eight years later it's visually on-par with a lot of today's latest games.

As a PC Gamer the console transitions didn't really grab me too much, though GTA3 on the PS2 definitely deserves a mention.

When video cards in PC's started to become both mainstream and affordable as well was an incredible period. Going from playing the likes of Quake and Unreal on software renderer versus on a dedicated card was just mind blowing.

Halo, not just for being the best Multiplayer shooter to hit consoles, but for showing PC gamers that consoles can do it just as well as PC's, which would have been laughed at prior to Halo.

5rtytry56

Microprose GP4 in 2002. By Geoff Crammond who subsequently vanished from the games scene. For Windows PC only. A console version was talked of, but never got off the ground.

Skerries

Hard drive storage and CD's

when I first heard of a cd that could be used for storing games that blew my mind because this was in the days when I was playing on ZX Spectrum where a game had to fit on 32k of space and CD's could hold 650mb!!!

The_Valeyard

Defo Half Life.



But also Duke Nukem 3D and the ability to mod it.

Tipsy McSwagger

Wireless controllers

Manach

Voices coming from the game, making a more immersive environment.

mark26ireland

Rainbow Six Vegas was my first real encounter of online gaming and was just totally immersed by it, my missus bought me a 360 for xmas one year and I would easily go for 6-8 hours at a time playing the Calypso Casino map. Was brilliant. Like some1 mentioned on this thread , i would love to have them feelings again!

mark26ireland

mark26ireland wrote: »

Rainbow Six Vegas was my first real encounter of online gaming and was just totally immersed by it, my missus bought me a 360 for xmas one year and I would easily go for 6-8 hours at a time playing the Calypso Casino map. Was brilliant. Like some1 mentioned on this thread , i would love to have them feelings again!

Mine was Quake 2. I believe.

RossD12

GTA V's graphics really amazed me, and they still do

Captain Chaos

The first time I saw proper water effects in The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind on my friends PC that had a GeForce 3 graphics card. It was the first "real" looking water I ever saw in a game. My PC at the time had a GeForce 2MX and didn't have the pixel shader to render the water the way his PC could.

Half Life 2 Source Engine 2 physics.

HDR lighting in Far Cry on the PC, featuring sun flare effects that actually blind you.

Captain Slow IRL

Zelda: Links Awakening, on the Gameboy.

Up until then, Dizzy on the C64 was the biggest (and best) game I'd played and this blew it out of the water - you could save your progress!

Halo 2 (multiplayer)

This was an incredible game and the first online game I ever played so I'm probably looking at it with rose-tinted glasses. But, even with the lag, it's probably the best online game I've ever played

um7y1h83ge06nx

So much.

Playing my very first games was amazing.

The amazing graphics and effects in Yoshis Island on the SNES, stuff I didn't think was possible on it.

PlayStation and Namco. Seeing an arcade game like Ridge Racer or Time Crisis on a TV at home was nuts. When the red letters of NAMCO appeared on a TV screen was always great.

Stepping out of the cavern at the start of Oblivion.

The Last of Us.

I'll probably be thinking of lots more later.

the raven 15

PAC man

Emerson Magnificent Crayfish

Emerson Magnificent Crayfish wrote: »

So much.

Playing my very first games was amazing.

The amazing graphics and effects in Yoshis Island on the SNES, stuff I didn't think was possible on it.

PlayStation and Namco. Seeing an arcade game like Ridge Racer or Time Crisis on a TV at home was nuts. When the red letters of NAMCO appeared on a TV screen was always great.

Stepping out of the cavern at the start of Oblivion.

The Last of Us.

I'll probably be thinking of lots more later.

In what way did the Last of Us advance anything? While it was a great game, if you remove the story and character development, then it was a pretty bog standard game.

ShaneU

Donkey Kong Country
Super Mario 64
Half Life 2

Hasn't happened since

Playing Gears of war on a big hd tv for the first time (yes it was only 720p from the 360). The last time that I was wowed.

Agricola

Main one would be Metal Gear Solid for three reasons.
- The first game I played which had aspirations to be something other than "just" a game. The long dialogue heavy cutscenes would bore me in later games but in 1999 they were so new and really compelling. It was the kind of game lots of us had probably been dreaming of playing some day.
- The quirky gameplay elements that made it so endearing and addictive. Planning out how you wanted to progress, trying different strategies, and toying with soldiers on patrol. The tension of hiding in boxes!
- All the fourth wall breaking stuff, Meryl's code on the box and the controller trick with Mantis. Amazing how such simple things were so jaw dropping at the time.

Other game that always springs to mind is GTA 3. A living breathing city in 3d. For a few months in late 2001 early 2002 it was the nearest I've come to addiction.

Quandary

The original Diablo blew me away, but mainly for it being such a complete gaming experience as opposed to it being an incredible technical advancement. That and all that glorious colour coded loot!

As far as technical leaps, then I would have to go for

- Doom was a real trailblazer.

- Descent - being able to fly through those 3d hallways was mind bending at the time

- Quake - the real blueprint for run and gun fps. Quake 2 multiplayer was incredible.

Kirby

Games that blew me away.......and that's the criteria here. Not just games you loved, but games that just blew your socks off.

A link to the Past. It was the first time I realised games could be something more than just.... games. They could be an adventure, a story.

The Final Fantasy VII cutscenes stunned me. They look archaic now, but at the time they were superior to anything else out there for the mainstream.

Crysis blew me away by how pretty it looked. And not just in tech demo's, when you actually played it on your own machine.

Bioshock. You watch the intro and think "What the hell have I gotten myself into...." And then of course the "Would you kindly" twist made me do the citizen kane applause meme in my seat.

The Last of Us intro let me know I was in for something special. Riveting, adrenaline pumping and yet emotional. Those Naughty Dog guys are f*cking talented.

Caovyn Lineah

Final Fantasy VII - At the time we had never see anything like it, those cutscenes were incredible. I still remember being blown away the first time I saw the Knights of the Round summon.

Gran Turismo - This game, this bloody game!!! I read every preview i could get my hands on which involved lots of copies of Edge and CVG (RIP) for months before this release, I totally bought into the hype and it delivered 100%. The graphics in this game and the general game play completely changed the genre in my opinion.

Then you have the likes of Ocarina Of Time which was the most expansive game I had ever played. The first time you get to take the horse out in Hyrule was mind blowing at the time when that camera panned out and showed you the size of the map.

Zero-Cool

Total NBA 96. 1st game I played on PS1. Couldn't believe the amazing 3d effects. I looked it up recently and it looks cack :pac:

Resident Evil 1 is a big one. I remember watching a staff member in Game play it while a crowd of us watched in awe. He wouldn't let anyone play it but the fact he had the bejaysus scared out of him by that dog made it worth it.

Batesy

Shadow of the Colossus

Mr E

A lot of my favourites have been mentioned already - Doom, and the first talkie games (either Day of the Tentacle or Prince of Persia 2 for me, I think)

I think the Wii and DS also deserves a mention here. When Nintendo got it right, they really got it right.

Mr E

Mr E wrote: »

A lot of my favourites have been mentioned already - Doom, and the first talkie games (either Day of the Tentacle or Prince of Persia 2 for me, I think)

I think the Wii and DS also deserves a mention here. When Nintendo got it right, they really got it right.

The LucasArts point 'n' click adventure games were pretty much my childhood.

QuinDixie

playing halo 2002 . It actually blew my mind that a game could look so good.

Damien360

Heavy rain. The balloon scene. I have never been drawn into a game so emotionally before or since.

http://youtu.be/J8mWBKFWWzw

Mr E

Jaaaaason! Jasooooooooon! Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasoooooooooooon!

Pedro Monscooch

mark26ireland wrote: »

Rainbow Six Vegas was my first real encounter of online gaming and was just totally immersed by it, my missus bought me a 360 for xmas one year and I would easily go for 6-8 hours at a time playing the Calypso Casino map. Was brilliant. Like some1 mentioned on this thread , i would love to have them feelings again!

I loved the face scanning feature in that game. Can't believe how rarely its been used in the nine years since (especially the promises made when kinect was announced scanning your skateboard/ dress into a game). Sure, it was hard to get good results unless you really spent time on it. I remember someone scanned their baby. Maybe they stopped using the feature because this couldnt be bettered:

Eggonyerface

Tiger Woods had a feature of uploading your face. Worked really well

cherryghost

F-zero into Final Fantasy VII into Gran Turismo 3 into Half Life 2 into COD into Oculus

Damien360

For those of you a bit older like myself. On the C64, turrican.

Before I saw this game, everything was just vertical scroller, horizontal scroller or platform game. Turrican combined them all and the map was for it's time absolutely huge. It was fast and highly addictive.

The graphics were out there, turning into a wheel when you pressed space bar and go rampage. Sadly time has not been kind to it.

Retr0gamer

F-Zero: That super fast mode 7 scaling was like something out of the arcade. Of course it couldn't match Sega's Mode 7 hardware but it was close enough.

Mortal Kombat: It's one of the worst fighting games ever made but the digitised actors were so realistic to me at the time I thought graphics could never get better. It looks awful now and it wasn't even the first game to use that technique.

Doom: PC gaming was a total joke to me until I saw this game. At the time it was the most realistic 3D environment I had seen in a game. So bloody fast and the heavy metal inspiration hit my teenage self at the right time.

Daytona USA: Ridge Racer looked good but it just could not match Daytona USA in the arcade (pity the Saturn version was a dog). The firts ever game to use bi-linear texture filtering meaning it had no blocky textures up close. Still looks stunning in the recent 1080p re-release.

Resident Evil: Forget about FFVII, it was Resident Evil that fooled me with pre-rendered backgrounds first. I was wondering for a long time why the games backgrounds had such realistic lighting and none of the horrible 3D imperfections of other PS1 games. The game totally fooled me and it wasn't until a magazine review explained how FFVII worked that it finally clicked for me.

Mario 64: The first game to do 3D exploration right. The world design and movement were just perfect and made every other 3D game seem stiff and clunky.

3D accelerator cards: While most people had a 3Dfx I had a far superior Power VR card. Ultimate race was pants but looked spectacular while Tomb Raider at 1024x768 was absolutely stunning. It's a shame that 3Dfx became the industry standard

Unreal: I still think this game is a big old load of arse but the 3D engine at the time was so far ahead of everything else at the time. It even made Carmack and the Quake 2 engine look amateur which is some feat.

Sonic Adventure: The start of the 128-bit era, the game was awful but looked absolutely stunning, far better than anything I had seen before. The Orca whale segment blew me away. It was a long time before the PS2 caught up which brings me to....

Metal Gear Solid 2: The E3 demo of this game looked far better than anything else on any other console at the time. People thought it was all pre-rendered CGI so when the game was released, Kojima gave the player limited control of the camera to prove that they were in real time. The animation quality is still impressive. The tanker level just looked spectacular and it marked the point when the PS2 finally over took the Dreamcast visually.

Halo: For a lot of console people Halo's big open levels were amazing but for a PC player used to stuff like Operation Flashpoint etc. it was nothing new. However it was the first time I had seen pixel shaders used in a game. Turn on the flashlight and the textures are given a 3D depth that hid their low poly nature. PC games had support for this at the time but it wasn't widespread.

Gears of War: The 360 got off to a slow start but when Gears of War came out it was far and away the most visually stunning game on any platform. Even a few years after it's release it still looked stunning. The poor PS3 had a horrible time trying to match Gears of War, Resistance which looked like an upscaled PS2 game was laughable compared to GoW. It wasn't until stuff like Uncharted 2 and God of War 3 that the PS3 started getting games that outclassed Gears of War technically.

Damien360

Bought a HD TV for gears of war. Had a big ass TV for some of the game. Saved, plugged in new TV the next night and saw the flies buzzing around my characters head. Blew me away.

Den14

Deleted User wrote:

It's probably been done before in other games, but playing Fallout 3 for the first time and seeing NPCs actually interact with each other was great. It was such a simple touch, but added so much.

Deleted User wrote:

The interactive intros were amazing, where everything happened around you and you could be involved in them as opposed to being completely static. I think the first Medal of Honour did it great as well.

Damien360 wrote:

Bought a HD TV for gears of war. Had a big ass TV for some of the game. Saved, plugged in new TV the next night and saw the flies buzzing around my characters head. Blew me away.

The first Gears had the biggest visual impact on me. Graphics were generally darker and it looked very visceral with the blood effects and all that. The armour and skin had that sheen of light reflecting off it that made it look super real. The later installments were excellent gameplay wise but the graphics were alot less gloomy and were instead brightly coloured and suddenly it all just looked a bit cartoony

Fakman87

Like a few in here, leaving the dungeon and vault in Oblivion and Fallout 3 respectively. That's a feeling I haven't had before or since.

Another one was in heavy rain when you get out of bed and walk around your house doing trivial things. There was something very meta about it for me and I felt like it was a form of virtual reality developing.

johnny_ultimate

Less of an instant mind splat, and more a slow-dawning realisation - what digital distribution allowed games to do. I guess this can be pinpointed back to games like Geometry Wars (2) and in particular Braid earlier in the 360's lifespan in particular - the emergence of smaller, creative games, the type of game that certainly didn't exist during the previous few generations. One could argue though there was something of an equivalent during even earlier generations with 'bedroom programmers', and a less visible PC homebrew scene. But these titles opened up the floodgates. It's something that has continued since, where developers are no longer tied to big budgets, physical retail releases and strict commercial interests, and instead able to create games that are more narratively, formally, aesthetically, mechanically challenging and experimental. Where those sort of experimental titles were once rare treats (the likes of Ico) now it's near impossible to keep track of them all!

Certainly the last few years after the likes of Journey, Year Walk and Papers, Please and many more besides have made me increasingly delighted about the opportunities some of those earlier independent, digitally distributed titles opened up. Without any hyperbole they have irrevocably altered what games are are capable of, and it's a change whose magnitude is hard to measure since it's all still evolving. While there was definitely a sense of 'this is something new' when playing Braid for the first time, really the revolution has been a much more gradual thing.

Lemlin

GTA 3. It was such a jump from GTA 2 and PS1 games.

I don't think we'll ever see such a huge evolution again.