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.