The PC Game That Blew Your Mind

Eh, it makes sense. Over the two decades I've been into gaming, only a few games "blew me away". That doesn't mean that I didn't like the rest. I have played and loved a lot of games, but they didn't leave me awed, "just" entertained and fulfilled.

 

Tbh, lots of games enjoyed but none really "blew my mind".

 

INFRA is starting to blow my mind here...24 hours in and still not finished. (COMPLETE edition, indeed)

I thought this was going to be a straightforward, slightly crappy walking simulator for geeks, but basically it's more like an engineer expansion for Half-life, be it without guns, mutants or aliens, yet having enough eye-brow raising moments in the storyline(s). So far I must have covered 50km^2 of roads, canals, tunnels, industrial/infrastructure plants and sewers...and still going strong. Great/absurd humor at times, nice level design (magnificent if you're into ageing concrete) and puzzles - involving machine controls, platforming, some keycards, keys- that are just right IMO (some can be pretty challenging if you lack the patience to observe pipe routing/wiring and think them over as there's always enough feedback, and they're not completely out there). No hand-holding, but a great sense of place in return, with Half-life, Portal 2, STALKER, Alan Wake etc. atmosphere/level design coming to mind at times.

And if something blows up (also sometimes by you), you photograph it to register the damage to the infrastructure, because that's the premise of the game LOL.

The graphics are decent enough in Source, with nice environments, water and lighting, hardly any glitches and zero crashes so far. The 'character' animations are the only downside, but 99.999% of the time you don't see anyone, and simply having traffic moving realistically in the background outside looks and sounds immersing enough. Alien: Isolation (as in a game that does a lot of things very well and deserves to be mentioned in this thread) has all these lovely character animations for all of Ripley's interactions, Infra is a little more straightforward/classic with the 'use' button doing the job, with the main difference being a 90-99% lower budget, of course.

9/10 from me, for what it is, i.e. a tribute to classic FPS adventuring and lost places/urban exploration, from a small Finnish indie developer.

 

No game will leave you in awe, it s not like ur travelling to the moon and back....but the games i mentioned before definitely gave me that sense of being totally immersed into its world and got out of reality without being turned back to it for a second...

 

Actually, seeing as my list consisted of old titles, because games don't really make my jaw drop, after all the years of gaming, I have to add that in the recent years, I have to say VR gaming definitely blew my mind.

Remember loading up iRacing in VR and sat in the pit lane of Laguna Seca for ages, just looking around. The scale of the footbridge above me, the car, the steering wheel, it felt like I was there. It was my first VR experience since the mid 90s (Forte VFX1) and I can honestly say it was impressive. VR porn, again, just wow.

 

There have been aspects of certain games that wowed me. But no full game has done it. still waiting.

 

The first Deus Ex has left me chasing games like it since it came out, and they always fall short.

 

Max Payne been mentioned?

 

ofc, first page, many mentioned

 

Fear. Ai and atmosphere was amazing

HalfLife Series. Best action games ever. The pacing is just amazing. I bought a Valve's Index just for the Alyx game.

Elder Scrolls Morrowind. The graphics and the art direction at the time were unbelievable.

Max Payne 1 and 2. No comments. Best presentation in a game. Just amazing.

Deus Ex. They don't make such games any more.

System Shock 2. Amazing atmosphere.

Bioshock. Amazing plot and setting.

STALKER series. Love them.

Witcher 3. This is how you make open world games.

Crysis. The graphics and gun play.

 

in max payne it s not about presentation, it s about the storytelling and the gunplay, a game so ahead of it s time..

 

I mean the story presentation that its like a comic with the amazing sounds in the backround. Simply amazing.

 

It flew under a lot of people's radar, partly because of some press mistakes in the pre-release build-up, but would you kindly give Prey (2017) a go? I think you might enjoy yourself if you do.

 

I will kindly do sir. I saw what you did there. With the way you said it I have to.

 

Presentation was a big thing to Remedy, they were just incredibly small and didn't have the resources to go all out.
So, they did the graphic novel pages, using employees, family and friends to stand in for characters. They used what they had, and still went all out to make it as stylish and atmospheric as they could.
This is what lead to Sam Lake being the stand in for Max in the first game. With Sam's mother being used as the character for Nicole Horne, among several other staff and friends.

It's why Max Payne 2 had actual actors, they finally had the budget and resources to match what they wanted to do.
But, they didn't want to drop the graphic novels because they felt they were important to Max, so... they did a mix. MP2 features more in game cutscenes, but still uses the graphic novels.

But, as with all Remedy titles, it's story first.

 

Report back after +/- 10 hours (or, if it's a complete failure, upon uninstall. )!

 

As someone who also loves System Shock 2, PREY is fantastic.
Love what Arkane did with it.

Little tidbit, they were working on the game for a long time. And were kicking around several internal titles trying to figure out what to call it. The main one the team liked was "Typhon"... but, several people wanted to find a way to fit "Shock" into the title.
But, in the end, ZeniMax needed to use the Prey IP for something so they didn't loose the rights, so... here we are.

 

i got prey never got thru the demo tho gonna try one day slowly working my way thru dishonored 2 but red dead 2 will put that off then the when doom out? yea prey might sit a long while in limbo.

 

DOOM Eternal is out March 20th, and then Cyberpunk 2077 is out in April.

 

The drawback in prey is the optimization, and the graphics as those to me leave a lot to be desired