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.
Portal 2 spoilers The final fight where the ceiling crumbles and you see the moon and realize what you need to do is definitely a top 5 moment for me. Those games are so fantastic.
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.
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 FOUND IT! I ACTUALLY FOUND IT! I had exhausted all my more targeted ways of finding it and resorted to Google images searching for “point and click game bar” and found a screenshot I recognised.
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.
Same, but the Easter egg from the moon map on Black Ops 1. Me and my friend played everyday after school for months. It was one of the first that didn’t require a full squad and it was heavily chance based because of the stupid excavators. Finally got all the dominoes to fall in the right order and we got it done, which resulted in us blowing up the Earth. Mission accomplished I guess.
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.
Same, me and a friend struggled with that game for a while, but still remains an extremely satisfying game to have beaten when you couldn’t just look things up.
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.
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.
Meeting [redacted] on the [redacted] was such an unexpected and powerful moment for me as well. I don’t even usually get into lore that much in games, but Outer Wilds is so well done I nearly cried in that moment.
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.
No matter how many I may start, I always end up focusing on just one. I also find it difficult to get back into a game after I have stopped playing it for while, so these days I try to just start only one.
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