One of my previous blog posts was why I wanted to forget about a game (Pokémon) so
that I could play it again for the first time. I figured that it would be good
to do a follow up post about games that I find unforgettable, either because of
the time of my life when I played them or because they represented such a
significant shift that made them totally important to me as a gamer.
This
list is, of course, going to be mostly just a few titles with a lot of
overthinking between each one, as per my usual method. Of course, this is all
from my own perspective; games, like any other media, do not exist in a cultural
vacuum and suck in all kinds of associations, good or bad, of the world around
them. Why don’t you let me know what games you find unforgettable? I want to
test out my commenting system after all!
Minecraft
The
first game that is on my list is also one of the most obvious. Minecraft is
such a massive title, so many millions of gamers play it daily and it has made
entire YouTube careers for some people. Minecraft is one of those titles that
has totally threaded itself into the public consciousness, so much so that many
would consider it more as a phenomenon than as an actual game. You may roll
your eyes at reading this, as the block-building game is one of the most talked
about, unavoidable things on the Internet, much to the annoyance of many, but
that is exactly why its impact cannot be understated.
(Video credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLRwxgccZt0)
For
me, however, Minecraft’s big impact predates it hitting the big public
consciousness, and is less about the mainstream phenomena and more about the
game itself and what it represented and came to represent. For me, Minecraft
represented a shift that gaming needed.
Looking
at the time before Minecraft was available to the public (2009, almost 8 years
ago…), there was a big problem in gaming regarding creativity. Gamers
everywhere were fatigued with Call of Duty rip-offs and generic FPS titles, and
it felt like gaming was at risk of becoming stagnant. This video, released just a few years later, attempted to pull apart the reasoning behind this fatigue.
Minecraft
certainly didn’t solve the issue of innovation in gaming; if it had, the video
that I had linked wouldn’t have been made. However, it had started a trend towards innovation. Between all of the ‘me-too’
copies and survival games that came out trying to emulate the success of gaming’s
newest darling, what Minecraft showed was that indie gaming was viable.
Pre-Minecraft, yes there were a few indies, but not at the level that it is
now. I think that Minecraft was the smoking gun that launched the rise of indie
gaming to the level that it has gotten to now, for better or for worse.
Why
else I won’t forget Minecraft as a game? That reason is simple; it is a good
game. I loved it, the charm of the graphic design (again, a show of aesthetic
over horsepower), the satisfying loop of mining and crafting, the music and the
sense of doing something productive, turning what would otherwise be hours
spent shooting monsters into hours spent making
something, even if nobody got to see what I made, at least I made it. It was a paradigm shift in
terms of the trend and in terms of the game, and I love it for that.
On
top of that, Minecraft was enjoyable and relaxing. It was a game that
understood that games can be played to unwind. For a long while, my go-to
option when booting up a PC and trying to decide what game to play was to shrug
my shoulders and play Minecraft until I made my choice. It had a very easy
point of access.
For
me, Minecraft represents gaming in its purest form; discovery, creativity,
enjoyment and relaxation, and ultimately coming away feeling like you got something out of the whole experience.
That is why I find it an unmissable, unforgettable game.
Halo: Combat Evolved
I spoke previously about Halo: CE as an excellent co-op split-screen title, and that is part
of why it is on the list; the multiplayer aspect of the game has been some of
the purest fun that I have had with other gamers, ever, and the maps are so
memorable I still have the memory of how Blood Gulch looks in my mind’s eye to
this day.
But
the second part on why I put it on this list is because of the time my Xbox 360
red-ringed; lacking a current-gen machine I was forced to play the original
Halo on the original Xbox. However, that was where I discovered a love for the
single player campaign. For the time, the graphics may not have been at the top
of what the generation could offer, but the atmosphere, the use of colour, and the
way the sound melded into the gameplay, rendered the experience one of the best
I have ever had in a single player campaign. My favourite time in Halo will
always be flying a Banshee across a snowbound crevasse at twilight.
Halo
is on this list because it is overall a great game that is brilliantly made and
designed, and while it isn’t particularly
amazing or paradigm shifting as other games, it is still very worthy of
praise for being just a good game.
Pokémon Red and Blue
The
reason that I blogged about this being a game I want to forget is because this
game is so unforgettable. That is a strange statement to say, but so much about
the game was so iconic that the enjoyment of any Pokémon game is subject to criticisms
of the game being formulaic. So much about the original Pokémon games were so
memorable that they created a formula that was as instantly cliché as it was
iconic, like the ‘I am your father’ moment of The Empire Strikes Back; if any
other property attempted to do the same thing as Pokémon it would result in a
lot of eye-rolls and derision, much like how any attempt to pull off a villain
being a hero’s father in a film is incredibly difficult thanks to the fame of
the given example. This is probably why it is difficult to find a Pokémon clone
that truly captures the original’s magic.
(Video credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj8k9ajTe2g)
Pokémon
was uniquely placed in the time that it was significant, and is so wrapped up
in its time that it has been used as a descriptor for a generation of people.
It is telling that one of the greatest fads of mobile gaming hit at just the
right age to capture the generation that were the right age for it to become a
fad on mobile. It may have been excellent marketing, but I think that there was
something so magical about the first two games that I have already gushed
about; the sense of adventure, of coming of age and becoming stronger, the
strong relationships developed with the Pokémon themselves thanks to the design
of the game, the collect-‘em-all gimmick along with creature variety so wide
enough to make it vital, the music, the graphics, all of it was so uniquely Pokémon that it became a massive, significant
part of many gamers’ lives, mine included.
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