Games

I think my purest moment of gaming bliss was experiencing completely blind the last handful of worlds in Super Mario Odyssey while buzzed with a few whiskeys. God, my soul was in orbit with that experience. Pure, unfettered joy and whimsy through and through and cinematically epic when it wanted to be. I wouldn't call it the best game ever or even my favorite game ever, but god damn it, it struck me just right way at just the right time. It was something truly special.

More games I will cherish will certainly follow, and have followed. But for that specific set of vibes and circumstances, I don't know if I'll ever top that peak from playing a video game ever again.

In 2005 I was playing Final Fantasy XI Online and met a group of 5 Japanese players in an expansion area. We wound up partying together for 8 hours straight. They all spoke English in chat for my sake, and we had an incredible rhythm together. We discussed new anime and a few English cartoons that had recently made it to Japan. We took a selfie together at the end of the 8 hours. It was the best gaming experience of my life. I'll never forget it.

When I finished my first run of Subnautica, something definitely came over me. I ran around in my base cleaning up, I organized all my spare food and water in a cabinet "for the next person stranded here," I released the fish in my alien containment, said farewell to my cuddlefish, parked my Seamoth in the moon pool, turned the lights out in the Cyclops, the whole bit. An amazing adventure was at an end.

Top 3, no order (can't pick):

Anytime a SoulsBorne game clicks, especially Sekiro

Winning a really tight match of Rocket League against people at a similar or higher skill level

Playing split screen Freedom Fighters with my buddy back in the day. It got so competitive we started taping cardboard on the screen to prevent screen-peeking

Most recent one I can rememver was beating Tears of The Kingdom. I was SO invested in the final boss battle and I got really emotional. I was so immersed I was basically vocally taunting the boss for everything they had done. Only other time that happened was with Cyberpunk 2077 and only because of Edgerunners.

Then in the past (jesus has it really been more than 17 years??) the first time my buddy and I beat Halo 1 on Legendary after an all-nighter of gaming. That was awesome. Horrible smell in that room tho lmao.

Portal and Portal 2 are some of my all-time favorite games. They’re about the only games I enjoy watching other people play, primarily when they’re playing for the first time—it kind of lets me relive that wonder of the first play through. Going through those with my stepdaughter (only 10 at the time) not long after I married her mom was a highlight of my life and really helped us form our own bond. As we progressed through I realized that chamber 17 was going to be rather traumatic for her because she was going to absolutely love the weighted companion cube, so we stopped playing for a few days while I ordered a stuffed weighted companion cube and gave it to her right after the level. As we neared the end of the game I explained to my wife about the Cake. She owned a bakery at the time and we presented kiddo with a cake like the one seen at the end of the game when she won. We did Portal 2 as well, me watching as she played the solo campaign and then we did the co-op together. I’d highly recommend it for any parent who likes gaming to share these with your kids.

Flawlessly clearing Genichiro in Sekiro was deeply satisfying. Parry parry parry, dodge, mikiri counter. Don't think I got hit once.

Probably local multiplayer with friends at school, like the DS and PSP, used to love playing Mario Kart and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite with others

At least in recent memory, it was Dragon's Dogma 2 teaching me that I could pick up and carry downed party members by having one of my party members pick up another one and bring them over to me. There's so much that's possible in DD2 that just isn't in a typical videogame, that throughout the entire experience I was mostly learning niche interactions from my other party members instead of my own experimentation. It was a really cool experience, and felt way more impactful then a text prompt just lecturing me about all the mechanics the game has.

I don't track or rank joy like that, but discovering the dark world in The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past is definitely up there. Just realising the world had this whole extra dimension to it.

I still love dimensionality / hidden depth in games.

I mean, who doesn't?

Going to a big tf2 LAN in England and watching the games with a crowd of people that shared in the love for that game.

Made me realize for the first time why some people obsess over sports.

the ending of outer wilds, figuring out that the treasure really was the friends we made along the way, will always stand out to me as the most magnificent, joy-filled moment in my 25+ year gaming experience.

that, or getting the cool sunglasses in fez.

Red Dead Redemption, when crossing into Mexico for the first time and the sun starts setting and Far Away by Jose Gonzalez starts playing. That shit blew my mind.

In college, quake 3 arena came out about a month into school. My roommate and I stayed up all night playing together. That was when we moved from roommates to friends.

Beating Link’s Awakening as a kid. No internet no hints or help just hours of exploring when I was stuck on a puzzle. It’s so hard for me to get lost in a video game like that now and not just reach for an answer or check the internet to see what I’m doing wrong. It’s a shame now, I know links awakening now like the back of my hand and I’ll never get to explore a first play through of that game ever again.

WoW probably holds the most cases of this for me.

World PvP was one front. Early on, just winning fights felt good. Then, as I got better, it felt more normal when it was an advantageous matchup for me. But the peak for me was during TBC, I was leveling my rogue and a hunter jumped me as I was mining. This was pretty much a worse case scenario, especially because the hunter was lvl 70 (max at the time) and I was still something like lvl 65. But even at the same level, a) a hunter is a natural counter for a rogue, and b) I was mining so I didn't even get the stealth advantage.

So there was a lot of dopamine when I ended up getting to finish mining that node and the hunter had to walk back to his corpse after I beat him anyways.

Also a lot of dopamine from finally beating raid bosses that my guild had been stuck on for a long time. Vael in BWL was the peak for that one IIRC.

Playing Solasta. Our D&D group had fallen apart, and we just didn't seem to be able to get a new game together. Solasta scratched that D&D itch like no game before it has. My wife got really into it, too, so we ended up adventuring for hundreds of hours together.

Growing up:

• playing Perfect Dark either story coop or battle simulator with my best friend or brother
• getting totally immersed in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask
• Silent Hill 2 and 3 with best friend
• playing Star Craft online until way too late, also with best friend
• not only joy maybe, but FFX was very memorable for me
• organising Xbox lan parties at our house playing 16 player death matches in Halo

Adult:

• Getting a Switch totally re-ignited my gaming passion. Having a full time work and family it is hard to find the time to sit down and focus on a game, the Switch with its quick sleep/on/off and tv/mobile feature changed that. I felt like a teenager again when I lost track of time (usually late at night) while playing Breath of the Wild and the Xenoblade series
• FFXIV and getting immersed once again in a game world

Don't share this.

Finishing the Easter egg at the end of origins in black ops 2 zombies after trying all night and seeing the special cut scene with my friends on Xbox 360 has to be up there as core gaming achievement.

A few years back, testing out new zombie infection game mode in indie VR FPS, 12 of us on the server including the dev. I'm last man standing, everyone else is infected, making scary zombie noises as I pick them off with my trusty bow and arrow. I eventually succumb to the inevitable and get piled on, they're all too distracted making brain eating noises to notice the martyrdom grenade fall to the floor...

That was peak gaming for me.

Red dead redemption 2 really made me feel thankful for experiencing the story. It was a different kind of joy but it was very sad too.

Wandering around in Morrowind before I really knew what I was doing, being happy just to find a few coins in a tree stump or a crappy dagger.

Other games have given more extreme emotions. But no other game has instilled such a joyous sense of wonder.

Life is Strange, with the final decision of Bae vs Bay. It made me quit the game for two days before I came back and decided (Bae forever). I love a good, story-impactful decision. That might be weird in this context, but it was so great, and that enjoyment came entirely from the game.

As a millennial, I'm probably not alone when I write Red Alert, Atlantis, Diablo and Fallout 2 on a computer without internet connection. Also endless demos from PC Gamer CDs.

The more unusual game I want to add is Warlords 3. Got it as a Christmas gift from my cousins boyfriend (he was maybe 20 years older than me). Probably because he wanted someone he could play shared screen PvP with. Spent a lot of time with that game. The same guy also gave me a pirate copy of Diablo. I should probably give him a call today and thank him.

Also playing Tibia on a 33k dial up connection was special. A very laggy and expensive experience. Always afraid that mom would just turn off the connection because she had to make a phone call. And the true horror I felt when I encountered another player or a new monster deep within an unexplored dungeon. I didn't like WoW when it came out. Probably because of emotional bluntedness that free PvP in combination with gear + xp loss causes.

And I'm still chasing the dragon.

Dialing in to a local BBS to play 4-player deathmatch DooM 2, circa 1995.

Not too long after it came out I was good at Siege and I mean good I was ranked in the top 1000 players and I thought that was pretty badass. I got a DM from some guy who was like "Hey I'm from TEAM and we wanted to know if you wanted to try out for our Siege squad?" I said thanks but no thanks, I have a mortgage and a full time and then some job. I dont want to take on the obligation.

I then went and googled the team, I was being courted by serious professional players. I still decided I didnt want that headache but as someone who has always been an underachiever it was like an IRL achievement popup or a level up notification. Like... look what I can achieve when I actually give a fuck and put the work in.

Clutch team killing in Rainbow Six Siege. A rare occurrence but so much adrenaline.

Hillcrest in The Last of Us 2. Never have I had so much fun trapping and hunting people down. It really brings out the psycho killer energy.

I don't know if that's count, but I spent one Summer almost every night playing on an almost dead private WoW-Server with my Brother and my best Friend. Since we were only 3 People and the Server was almost empty, it felt like we had the whole World for us. This was such a fun time back then......

Rock Band 2. Bladder of Steel achievement playing with a full band of 4 (locally).

It's playing the entire setlist of 84 or so songs all the way through in one sitting. Without pausing or failing.

We did it with all instruments on Medium, but we did it! (I could pass anything on Expert, but maybe not all the way through. My friends were borderline Hard players at best, so Medium was the only way we'd ever be able to do it together)

I've probably played an uncomfortable amount of FF7 to most. During covid, I recently became single so I decided to find some like-minded discord communities to pass that time. I met someone who was streaming FF7. I hopped into the stream and kicked it off with explaining how to get a golden chocobo to reach the final red materia. We're married now and have a dog :D

Getting to the top of the mountain in Celeste. It may not be the hardest challenge in the game (screw you Farewell), but just arriving there with the soundtrack swelling felt so good.

Completing the golden path in Tunic.

Any number of silly things in FFXI that at the time probably felt immensely important.

Probably back on dota1 before matchmaking and meta and all that crap, you could play any hero in any role on any lane and everyone was mostly just having fun

Staying up all night playing GoldenEye.

Playing Halo co-op with my wife.