What's your greatest "gaming high" you've been chasing ever since? Please take care not to spoil anything, if you are going to be story-specific.

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨eru777@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨retrogaming@lemmy.world⁩

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For 90s kids, there will be no explanation necessary. For others, well, pokemon was a phenomenon. It was everywhere, on TV, in magazines, toys, stickers. You could trade pokemon at the school excursion on the bus. You felt alive in this world, pokemon gen 1-2 were the pinnacle of pokemon for me. And in gen2, finishing the game, and lo and behold, there’s a whole other region (kanto) waiting for you to explore it. The night cycle in the game blew my mind in ways that I have been chasing ever since. I know it will never be reached again, but the memory will remain as powerful as it was that evening of the early 00s. What is your greatest gaming high, that you know will never be topped again, and that you have been chasing ever since?

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bradboimler@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not the greatest of all time I don’t think, but the greatest in recent memory

The Entropy Centre, end of Chapter 12, beginning of 13. I really felt like I was saving the world against all odds. If you’re curious, having a good setup (TV, speakers) helps a lot.

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- bradboimler@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Finally climbing the mountain in Celeste was pretty awesome too now that I’m thinking about it
  
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  - Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    THE Brad Boimler?
    
    Yeah the Celeste finale is amazing
    
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Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
black and white, and HSGSS, SINCE i never had a PC to own until late 2000s, then it was WC3/SC1 BROOD war, then off and on rs.

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AmanitaCaesarea@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Man a lot of recent games have been amazing. God of War 2018. The return of Kratos in a whole new setting and gameplay style.

Elden Ring as my first souls game. Being an absolute souls noob, my build was shit. Every boss defeated truly felt amazing. The journey was long and hard to become Elden Lord. The environments, enemy design, it is truly and outstanding game.

Kingdome Come Deliverance 2. Has to be one of the best RPGs. It commits to what it is, and I have probably learned more about Bohemian history from the game than in school.

Baldur’s Gate 3 as my first Baldur’s Gate game. Nothing needs to be said about this absolute master piece. Except Laezel > Karlach > Shadowheart.

So many more games that I wish I could erase out of my mind to experience again for the first time.

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- SaraTonin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If we’re specifically doing recent games, then Outer Wilds really is a once-in-a-lifetime gaming experience. Which, if you’ve not played it, you really want to play with as few spoilers as possible. It’s genuinely one of the most profoundly moving experiences I’ve had while consuming any media.
  
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  - AmanitaCaesarea@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Will check it out, lots of people praise it. I have a certain love for Starbound. Very different kind of game, but also on the vain of Space Exploration. So i’ll give it a go soon!
    
    Right now playing through Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. If u need something to hit that Elder Scrolls spot then u should try it!
    
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JigglySackles@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Xenogears. It was a life-changing game for me. The concepts and philosophy it introduced to my teenage brain tangibly altered my world view over time. It broke me out of a mold I didn’t even know I was in. Nothing compares to it for me. As a game, it’s well made, but has it’s share of sticking points. But it did for me something no other game has.

I’ve had similar feelings of wonder and awe in other games but not the same life altering impact to my world view.

In a more light-hearted “omg such game, much amazing, very nostalgia” category though, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 1, HL1, Stalker, Morrowind, and Oblivion all hold special places in my memories.

Three more modern games that really brought a sense of wonder to me are Nier Automata, Mirror’s Edge 1, and Outer Wilds.

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- samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  As an aside, Xenogears is awesome with a higher resolution and widescreen. It’s BS that it can be done emulated, but they’ve never bothered doing it officially. Uh, we’ll just pretend the second disc never happened, though…
  
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  - JigglySackles@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I wish it’d getca proper remake, with the second half fully fleshed out. I’d even take a remaster with the second disc content fleshed out. Lol
    
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Cordyceps@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Vampire the masquerade bloodlines 2 (god, what a mouthful of a title) is still the best rpg ive played to date. Troika games created a masterpiece here, even if it needed an unofficial community patch to be playable. The story is engaging and it is very easy to get immersed into the game world. It is a shame it does not get mentioned more often. As for a more mainstream fantasy rpg, yeah I am with everybody on Oblivion. The first time you exit the dungeon, with the whole world right there for you to explore, was truly magical. Halo : CE was the first game I split screened with my dad, and we spent hundreds of hours on it together. I remember the first time we beat the game on legendary, that final car ride was really something. Only wish I can someday share that feeling with my offspring.

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- samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 comes out this month (and is guaranteed to be nowhere as good as the first one).
  
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SleepyPie@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Siralim Ultimate

You like Pokémon but could leave the anime? You like building decks in Magic or some such tinkering?

This might be the last game you need to buy for years.

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- BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I wanted to get sucked into it so bad when I heard the pitch. I played for a couple hours, but unfortunately it didn’t happen for me.
  
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  - SleepyPie@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’d say the game starts when you beat the “story” and start aiming to power up the different god relics for team comp ideas you might have
    
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DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The last time must have been when Valheim released. That shit got me hooked. Now I am waiting for the Deep North biome to finish development before I play it again.

Now that I think about it the last time was when Schedule 1 released.

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- krooklochurm@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Valium was truly magical for me too.
  
  I played on a custom server with four friends but I had, like, way more time for gaming than then.
  
  Or rather I made the time.
  
  We had a mutual base it eventually I just said fuck it and went off into the world and built my own. I went absolutely apeshit. Giant walls, neatly organized chests. I was obsessed with making an indoor dock big enough for a boat to go in. I ended up besting the game while they kind of just gave up but the first time I got on a boat and just kind of sailed into the unknown was absolutely magical. Of course goblins and mosquitoes killed me more times than I can count but I’ll never forget that feeling.
  
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- WhiteRice@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  soft smelting and forging sounds beckon
  
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wide_eyed_stupid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Ragnarok Online. Before the third jobs, and without donation items and high rates. I played on the kRO server for a while and afterwards for many years on a 5/5/3 private server. I still remember how it felt, the first time I played it. Never found anything like it again.

Now, I’ve played a lot of amazing games and some of them really hit me in the feels, but this was the first MMORPG I played, ever. I was like what, 15? when I started playing and I played this game with the same people, for years. In the same guild, over Ventrilo, I knew these people. From all over the world, we’d even set alarms and such to make sure people were there when WoE started and half of us were sleeping due to time zones, or to make sure we could keep the MVP boss schedules. Some of us even met in real life, we talked off-game as well. We grew up together, quite literally, from teenager to adult. It’s not surprising it left such a mark, I guess. Nowadays… well I’ve tried MMO’s but it just isn’t like that anymore.

I only have to listen to the soundtrack, music from Prontera or Amatsu, and boom, nostalgia!

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finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
So just shy of 10 years ago me and the dudes were playing a lot of Dota 2, we had played since early Beta. At this point in time the game was still young and hip so the ratio of casuals to sweaty mlg was much more forgiving, which was great because it put me and the dudes in the upper bracket especially when combined with shenanigans, nowadays we’d probably only be in the top 60 percentile at best.

Very few people knew about this or utilized it but you could put your level into stats instead of an ability, so I would find weird builds to focus on only 1 skill and stats. We discovered this build called Sand King Jesus where you could use a character called Sand King to sit, invisible, in sand storm AoE DoT effect on the lane and just never leave but the tradeoff was the inability to move without cancelling, items focusing on regen and armor items as well as utilizing another little known mechanic where you buy 2 stout shields: they used to have a 50% chance to reduce damage by 20 (almost all damage a creep can do) and it would run that 50% check for each individual shield. At the time there was an exploit where if you move, cancelling the Sandstorm ability, but recast it before the particle effect dissipated… Uh Oh! The particle stays put but the Sand King and the AoE radius both moved. That made him not immune to non-targeted stuns or hooks but it did make him extremely hard to hit with them. It also made it difficult to avoid the DoT if you couldn’t see where it was. Now there is an immortal, invisible, constantly damaging enemy on the lane, but sure you can still buy wards or keep firing shots in the dark until something hits: but Sand King has another ability called Burrowstrike. Burrowstrike is suppose to be used to instantly travel in a straight line towards enemies and stun them momentarily. But instead, you can burrowstrike away from enemies and then cast Sand Storm as soon as it comes off cooldown. All of this culminates in “Sand King Jesus” because much like the mythical Jesus it would take forever to try and kill him and often still fail.

Now this is silly at best but the true greatest gamer high for me was this one match where I used this strategy to dominate middle lane, cutting off the creep waves with a well placed sandstorm to both take out an early tower as my creeps poured in damaging either the enemy mid or the tower, chipping away, and I get all of the last hits uncontested, started roaming and ganking with the boys, and buying up hearts, assault cuirrass, vladmir’s offering, refresher orb and for added AoE DoT a Radiance, and I became so tankie and my team had me covered on healing and providing DPS that I was able to enter the enemy fountain and sandstorm in there for another 10 or 15 minutes before we had even taken down any towers before barracks. We were all laughing so hard at these real human beings on the enemy team reduced to NPCs unable to leave their own fountain and unable to do anything about it.

Awhile later they completely reworked the character.

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mrfriki@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The physics in Half Life 2 blew me away, I would stop every few meters pushing stuff around and then in the water bike part and the gravity gun my jaws would drop. No we just have shinier graphics but still waiting for sor something like that to blow my mind again.

Also the slowmo on Max Payne 2, can’t count the times I’ve replayed it because of that.

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WhyIHateTheInternet@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
When Myst first came out and then me and all my friends carrying our controllers around with us for spontaneous (but constant) quake 3 arena battles on the Dreamcast. Those were the days I’ll always remember but never be able to relive.

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urata@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The early days of Asheron’s Call. One of the earliest MMORPGs with a 3d game world. It was cool being in a giant world with thousands of other people who were all trying to figure out the game and explore the world. There were monthly updates that were adding all kinds of new stuff all the time. I don’t really care for MMOs any more but it was a cool experience at the time.

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otacon239@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I still chase after the first playthrough experience of Okami. It was a time before novel ways of interacting with the game world were the norm. Everyone I knew at the time was playing CoD (some even just played Zombies mode and nothing else), Battlefield, Halo, GTA, Pokémon, Mario, Zelda… all titles that “everyone” played at the time.

When I saw Okami on a commercial, I knew I had to own it. There was nothing like it at the time and the way it pulled from Japanese culture was such a new concept to me. The way you can stop time at any point and paint shapes on the screen was just too cool to pass up. Not to mention, the almost hand-drawn aesthetic was still one of very few at the time.

I will admit, I can’t stand the experience on Wii. I can only enjoy it on controller because of how awkward painting with a 6-foot brush is.

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atk007@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A lot of gaming highs from time to time that engulfed me into gaming completely.

The very first high was the OG Half Life. Before that I didn’t know that Games could have a story like that.

Then Max Payne 1&2, it was like playing a Noir Matrix movie.

Then GTA Vice City (and its soundtrack) hooked me up for a long time.

Then Far Cry 3 which has made me buy every subsequent Far Cry game ever since (yet to feel that again).

And the last one was “Assassin’s Creed Origins”, which being a fan of ancient Egypt, was a dream come true.

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- dbtng@eviltoast.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Far Cry 2 was the last good thing Ubisoft produced. And it was very good.
  Fuk Ubi. Forever. Never spending another cent on them.
  
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Underwaterbob@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I (horribly inefficiently) figured out a puzzle in Prime Mover last night that took me four hours over two days. It was a real hallelujah moment.

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QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
seeing the world of DOOM Eternal. It’s just so detailed and SO DAMN FUN!!

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Siethron@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The first time I beat the final boss of Sekiro. It was a culmination of everything you learned in that game and perfectly paced. Felt like being part of a well choreographed dance and like everything you had gone through to get to this point of the game was paying off.

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whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Accomplishment-wise playing in a few ProAm counterstrike tourneys, beating any of the dark souls/elden ring/Bloodborne was great, beating a couple of the xwing missions felt like an accomplishment too, topping the score board in online shooters like TF2, tribes 2, quake arena etc

Just overall hitting max level in wow and raid level in EverQuest back in the day, and a couple rpgs Chrono trigger, phantasy star 4, pillars of eternity 1/2 for the story and characters. Monster sanctuary ng+ randomizer is a lot of fun too

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RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The experience of a brand new game with a new computer build that upped the standards. Particularly from the ‘90s to ~2010. Games pushed ahead with more expansive levels, better graphics, better sound, larger worlds. All more incredible than what you’d ever played before. It was a joy just to see it and experience it on top of whatever storyline and toys were in the game itself. Every year there was a leap in some facet of gaming.

I haven’t really experienced that since. PC builds are just way more expensive for minimal gain, franchises are just rehashes of old games, and it’s hard to find storylines and worlds that are fleshed out enough to make me want to invest the time.

On an individual game level, Battlefield’s Gunmaster mode is a real rush. Success can be ripped away instantly, you’re on your own skill, PvAll, and it’s a race to the top. Intense AF to win, got my heart rate up.

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- TechAnon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is how I feel as well. A new PC or even a new console was a gigantic leap forward in both visuals and gameplay. We’ve had a couple decades of diminishing returns.
  
  I think the next big leap will be something along the lines of AI building out the stories, missions and dialogs “on the fly” creating incredible amounts of immersion where no two playthroughs have to be the same.
  
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- LePoisson@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Gonna have to check out that gun master mode, hopefully it’s in BF6
  
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KokoSabreScruffy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In Division 2 before NY expansion:

So, for some reason they have set their maintenance 30minutes after reset time( so if reset is at 10am, maint was at 10:30). So, in their discord we gathered a random group and decided to challenge ourselves to complete it before maint hit. During the run we were all talking how somebody will get the unique AR right before the servers go down… Lo and behold it happened to me(sad the clip is gone after gfycat went down and I fried my old HDD) but we laughed for good 5 minutes and thinking if the AR will be there or not after maint… It was.

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Donebrach@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not really a thing I’ve been chasing but I did really enjoy the time I was home sick from work and spent all day playing Super Mario Odyssey back when it first came out. I really felt like I was a kid again and hadn’t felt that before or since.

Middle of the road millennial for age context.

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ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Two that come to mind:

One that I still remember from high school. It was just a simple Counter Strike match. But it was down to me and one other guy. I switched to knife, turned the corner, there he was, going the other way. He didn’t see me. So I followed him, riiight behind him, around several corners, while chat spectated. Still never noticed. I finally knifed him in the back, chat erupted, I felt like a god even though I sucked at Counter Strike.

Winning my first Rocket League tournament after years. It really felt like I’d done something that mattered.
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Pulptastic@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve had a few over the years. In high school I got all stars in Mario 64 and I beat Quake 2 without getting shot for the lulz.

In college I went through and beat all of the Adventures of Lolo games. I played hundreds of hours of FFXI but the real gem was later on when I could solo almost anything, including legendary Pokémon that normally take a party of six.

Portal and portal 2 are great experiences I’ve been through a few times.

I was obsessed over Pokémon Y. It was the first time I got into breeding perfect Pokémon with egg moves, hidden abilities, and perfect or zero IVs. I also tried for weeks to get 100 consecutive victories in Battle Maison but the third time I failed at 99 because the game cheats I threw in the towel.

In Pokémon Scarlet I really got into shiny hunting and have 200+ now. I also tried Masuda method for the first time but dang is that slow.

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slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
LAN party 2012ish. Playing Farcry 2 team Deathmatch multiplayer on the Clear Cut map. First team to 100 kills win. I got 60 of the 100 kills to win and from that point forward I was no longer permitted to use the 50cal sniper rifle.

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olafurp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not sure which one I would pick. Pokemon Blue, Oblivion, Star Wars KOTOR, Warcraft 3 or Super Mario 64 maybe. All of them were amazing and had a lasting impact on me.

More recently I played Enter the Gungeon, Slay the Spire and Return to the Obra Dinn

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fdnomad@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In Cookie Clicker when you manage to stack 3 fortune cookie modifiers. Numbers going up so fucking hard.

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brax@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I dunno if it was a high per se, but I used to love playing Dreamcast with my friends at lunch every day in high school. I dunno if I long to do it again, but the memories are nice.

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Arkhive@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not retro at all, but Destiny 2 Forsaken. I’ve always loved the Bungie game feel and gunplay, and I finally kicked my D2 habit right after Edge of Salvation week one. I’ve tried many single player shooters since and have yet to find something that comes close to scratching the itch.

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sundray@lemmus.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Metal Gear Solid V: Mission 16.

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poolhelmetinstrument@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Arma 3 Exile

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