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What's a choice you made in gaming that altered your entire gaming career moving forward

Lunarorbit

Gold Member
Not sure if everyone has been lucky enough to have such a moment, but I'm asking because I was just thinking about whether or not I would pick up Demon's Souls when the Pro comes out.

On June 25th, 2010, I was on a mission to buy Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I had recently bought a PS3 BC 80G system and Naruto Ninja Storm from Gamestop a few months back second hand to play and wanted to see what all the hype was about with Uncharted.

Back at Gamestop, I find the game on the wall and take it to the register. Shootin' the shit with the Gamestop employee as they often do when the guy says "Yo, you heard of this game, Demon's Souls?". I hadn't, but decided to humor him.

He goes on telling me about how it's like a dark medieval game that's supposed to be extremely difficult. Huge boss battles, unforgiving enemies. He was really selling this...and I was into it. He was obviously trying to upsell me, but I didn't have enough money for both so I had to choose.

Get Uncharted 2 and discover what the hype was about, or take my chances with this unknown game....Demon's Souls. The "fuck it" in me said I already know what I'm getting with Uncharted...let's try this Demon's Souls out.

Get home, pop it in and play for 2 hours....3 hours...4 hours and I'm still on the first level. I still haven't beat the first boss. And I was loving every second of this pain. So much so that I ended calling my buddy and practically started begging him to buy a PS3 for this game alone. IT was good...too good!

Ever since then I been a die hard Souls fan...played and beat every game multiple times and in some way my opinion is always slightly jaded towards other games because of this one experience.

Ok...so shoot...is there an experience you've had like this?
Did you ever go back and talk to the gamestop employee again?
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Up until the Wii I was a Nintendo only gamer (except for some PC, and I had a Game Gear when I was younger). Then I got a PS3, and since then I'm primarily a PS guy. I do have a Switch though.

As for games, maybe the first time I played Dark Souls. Didn't think I would like games like that, but ended up loving it and have played all Soulsborne games from that point on (also went back and played DeS), except for Sekiro if you include it in that group of games.
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
Played Splinter Cell 3. And actually found out I enjoyed stealth games.

However, I've only played SC3, SC Double Agent, and SC Conviction. Have yet to play Blacklist, not for any particular reason other than putting it off (despite people saying it's real good).

Did you ever go back and talk to the gamestop employee again?
Actually yea, and I thanked him. It was my go to gamestop so I would be there sometimes just to play on the kiosks.
 
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Beechos

Member
For an og like me buying the original playstation and never looking back. All everyone known at that point was nintendo and sega. Ridge racer, ace combat, tekken and battle arena toshinden blew my mind as a young kid graphically.
 

calistan

Member
Choosing the inverted aim option in Turok for the N64.

To this day there are games I can’t play at all if they forgot to add inverted camera control.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Bought FFVII on a lark with no outside information other than "I heard this series was good," and "big fucking Swords are awesome,"

Was my second videogame.
 

AndrewRyan

Member
Needed a laptop in 2013 and ended up getting one with a discrete GPU that was in retrospect like putting my foot in the pool to test PC waters.

Fast-forward to that fateful day in 2016 while trying to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on release day only to realize said laptop was now a potato.

HTC shortly after releases their incredible Vive, which was the motivation I needed to learn to build a beefy VR rig. That's when the PCMR got me.
 

Represent.

Represent(ative) of bad opinions
Seeing Street Fighter Ex3 running on a PS2 for the first time at a friend who had one early. I HAD TO have one. That game looked like real life back then.

I loved my PS1, but it was the PS2 that made me a PS gamer 4L
 
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rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Back in 2006 a new PC was planned for my birthday but then I saw a video of the water of Far Cry on Xbox 360 and I knew that I need that instead. Strictly console gamer since then, I don’t miss the bullshit that comes with PC gaming.
The much better Far Cry experience is one of those bullshits.
 
The much better Far Cry experience is one of those bullshits.
It’s true, but what’s your point? It’s not like there are any pc exclusives I’m interested in that I cannot play on console. And by the time I had the 360 I already finished the OG Far Cry on pc. The main point was that I could get a much beefier box and use it for many, many years playing the newest games for the same price as I would have spent on upgrading my pc, without any of the bullshit that comes with pc gaming.
 

ssringo

Member
Quitting WoW in 2010 and never going back. Allowed me the time to experience other games that is not possible while playing an MMO.
Was literally about to reply similarly.

I quit WoW in 2012/2013 after Pandaria released. I had played the game since launch and while I played other games occasionally, WoW was what I primarily played day in, day out for nearly a decade. I missed a lot thanks to WoW.
 

Aenima

Member
One Christmas my older brother brought his PS1 to show me an amazing game he was playing called Final Fantasy 7. Once my bro left a few days later i found on a Blockbuster the Final Fantasy 7 for PC, i dint had a PS1 so i bought it to PC and not only became a huge fan of the franshise but also a fan of JRPGs in general, then expanding to try other kinds of RPGs as well. Untill today RPGs of all kinds remain my favorite genre.
 

EverydayBeast

ChatGPT 0.1
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Purchasing a psp “go” digital means a lot to people and this was a head of its time in that regard nothing but respect to that handheld
 
Had all Nintendo consoles/portable (from nes) until I bought Wii after all the hype for Zelda and controls, day one, i took the controls and realize I could shake them just a little for massive damage.
Sold it and skip generations of nintendo.

Got a switch Oled but I also sold it after a couple of months.

Still remember Miyamoto shooting arrows with the Wii, actually was barely point and press 😂
 

Varteras

Member
When I bought a 144Hz monitor and saw how smooth 144fps looked. Stopped focusing so much on resolution. I firmly became a framerate snob. Going under 60fps causes me physical pain. Though that could just be the chlamydia.
 

Lord Panda

The Sea is Always Right
Joining Xbox Live and chainsawing fools in Gears of War, with said fools becoming my closest buddies still to this day.

We hang out and now and again get together for gaming sessions, despite us now being married, becoming parents, etc.
 
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For me it was buying a network adapter for my ps2 to try Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow's Spies versus Mercs mode. It got improved with Chaos Theory but to this day, it remains my most cherished gaming memories.
 

Codes 208

Member
Halo 2 converted me from nintendo-only to xbox/nintendo, from 14 years old all the way up until my late twenties it stuck that way.

But about halfway through last gen, halo was getting worse with each iteration, mcc was broken and ms’ other ip’s (aside from gears which also started to slowly spiral downwards) just eient appeal to me and i made another switch to ps4/nintendo. Then i got a gaming pc to play with friends on pc and xbox, so i became a nintendo/pc/ps4/5 gamer.

If not for the current $350 price of an xbox series x, i wouldnt have next to interest in buying an xbox again.
 

MAX PAYMENT

Member
When the ps5 came out and it was slightly less powerful than the mid range PC I built two years prior, I decided to make PC my primary platform. I'd get consoles for the low res and/or 30fps exclusives.

Best decision ever.
 
Getting a Playstation.

Grew up with Sega my whole life. Had the SMS instead of the NES. Got a Genesis. Got a Game Gear. Got the Sega CD. Got the 32X. Yeah, the 32X. I had a Nomad. Still have a Nomad. A fricken Nomad. And my older brother got a Saturn, which meant that I got a Saturn. And then came time for a fateful birthday and Costco had some deal that came with a Playstation, extra controller, Bushido Blade, and Crash Bandicoot 1. The real prize, though, was that I had money saved up to also get Resident Evil: Director's Cut for my new PSX.

Soon to follow would be games like FFVII, FFVIII, RE 2 & 3, Megaman X4, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Crash Bandicoot 3 & 4, Xenogears, Blood Omen, Soul Reaver, Metal Gear Solid, .... Metal. Gear. Solid.

I never looked back. Unless you count getting a cheap Dreamcast at the end of it's life.
 

Naked Lunch

Member
It was the moment I finally realized the grift and scam GAAS games twist on its players - basically forcing you to play them constantly and ignore everything else. When you step back and look at it - GAAS and their limited-time events turns playing a game into going to a job of sorts. Just crazy!
For me - the game was World of Tanks - and I was addicted to it for quite some time. Never again.

Luckily that experience led me back to what I really enjoy about gaming - and thats all the older consoles/games ive acquired over the years - which were boxed up and sitting in storage for a long time. I did some serious researching and then bought some recently invented devices like upscalers and everdrives - its really helped me rediscover those old consoles and gaming's entire history in general.
From Sega consoles to arcade - old school NES games - to the 3DO, MSX, PS1, PCEngine. So much to explore and revisit. Been a blast.

Also I would say - for modern gaming - im such a huge Halo fan - that series overrides all others for my tastes. I go where Halo goes. Even with its rough patches thru the series' history, things always seem to work out in the end. There's always been the MCC to fall back on - and even Infinite's multiplayer its turned out really cool in due time. For the Halo series, theres only up from here.
 

SenkiDala

Member
quitting pc gaming many years ago, makes me happier, less headadche. I still game on PC gaming once a while though.
Same here, tried to come back to PC gaming in 2020 but it sucks... Games crashing at launch, going through Steam or reddit threads to find a workaround, unoptimized games at launch and during months (years...) I'm more than happy on consoles.

For me the biggest decision was that when I was a kid I grew up in a quite poor family and my first console was GameBoy, I didn't have family/friends to try other consoles, so after the GB I wanted the SNES and I had to sell my GB and my games (never owned a game in box at that time) to get a used SNES, and years after sold the SNES for a N64. I was a Nintendo guy, it was my "to go" brand, I knew I won't be disappointed with them.

Then FFVII happened, I was already quite tempted by the PlayStation (Wipeout, Tekken, Bio Hazard that I could play complete walkthrough in a shop, Ridge Racer, Tomb Raider, etc) but OMG FFVII was hyping me hard, you might not care but in Europe FFVII was our 1st FF, before that our only JRPGs were only action RPGs (Secret of Mana, Evermore, Illusion of Gaia/Time, Zelda). That FF game came out at the right moment for me, I was 13/14yo, I dreamed of it, collected all magazines talking about it, reading every preview/articles/import reviews dozens of times everyday. But I was still poor and had to sell my N64 (broke my heart, like every console I had to sell before) for a PS1 around the release date of FFVII in France (the week of release).

From that day my vision about gaming changed. 1st I discovered that I'll be a fan of JRPGs, it became my favorite genre, it still is, FFVII became my favorite game ever, and maybe more importantly I discovered that playing on other platforms, not locking yourself in 1 ecosystem was a great thing to do. After that I managed by some ways to get basically every console on release date, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, GameCube, GBA, DS, PSP, 3DS, and so on, to this day. There's so much to play and the console ecosystem is great, competition pushes Sony, Nintendo, MS, to do their bests.

Without competition we wouldn't have games like FF to compete with DQ, Soulcalibur, Ridge Racer, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Xenogears, The Last of Us, Pikmin, and so on... Most of that makes the variety in gaming and every games dev team can feed from ideas of other teams before them to create new things, DQ devs being inspired by Wizardry, FF being inspired by DQ, Resident Evil being inspired by Alone in the Dark, and so on.

This is why I despise fanboyism. Having preferences is normal and fine, it's like having a personality. I love FFXV, Deadly Premonition, Blue Stinger, Jet Set Radio, Blue Dragon, etc, I dislike HiFi Rush, The Evil Within, Fortnite, Minecraft, I think BOTW is overrated, I feel that every Souls games are overrated and their creator is overpraised, in the other side I love every Kojima games. It's all a matter of opinion. But fanboyism sucks defending a brand whatever the games they make the decisions they take and shitting on the other side in the same way, is just so stupid.
 
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CGNoire

Member
Minority Report :Everybody Runs PS2.....a Beatem Up game?

My friend rented it and lost it so his rents where forced to buy it. He gave to me for free. I would have never even tried it even though I loved the film. It had alot of awesome moves, a cool ragdoll system, and a cool soundtrack. Still ppay it in 4k today.
 
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CGNoire

Member
Played Splinter Cell 3. And actually found out I enjoyed stealth games.

However, I've only played SC3, SC Double Agent, and SC Conviction. Have yet to play Blacklist, not for any particular reason other than putting it off (despite people saying it's real good).
Its really good.
 
Demon's Souls was a great game. I bought it because of NeoGaf, actually. There was a thread here and a lot of people jazzing about how great an experience it was and I just had to jump in without really knowing anything else. Still love the game to this day, probably my favorite of that whole series still.

But as far as personal stories - not really, except for maybe the first video game I ever played. I have these minor memories of seeing my sister playing Atari but I was never allowed to play or if I was I don't remember. But one day we went to my Aunt's house and though her kids were off in some other state, the Nintendo was still hooked up.. I asked about it and she told me I could try it (I had never seen one before or anything like it) and booted up Super Mario Bros.. I was floored by the whole experience and I've never looked back.
 
Giving Dark Souls a second try.

I was thoroughly bored and uninterested in gaming by the end of 2013 and thought I was done with the hobby, as everything had been congealing into the same fucking Ubisoft style open world or was a brown and gray military themed FPS or a GTA clone or, in the case of Nintendo, insultingly easy. I needed something different. Something that said fuck all the trend chasing. Dark Souls was it.

Once Dark Souls clicked, it immediately made me feel like I was playing a NES Zelda or Castlevania in full 3D and my passion for gaming was reignited. Since then, Fromsoft has continued to make some of my favorite games of all time. No other developer has come close in that time.
 

Raven117

Member
Getting a subscription to Nintendo Power as a kid in the early 90s and it came with Dragon Warrior for free.

I’ve played RPGs ever since
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
It’s true, but what’s your point? It’s not like there are any pc exclusives I’m interested in that I cannot play on console. And by the time I had the 360 I already finished the OG Far Cry on pc. The main point was that I could get a much beefier box and use it for many, many years playing the newest games for the same price as I would have spent on upgrading my pc, without any of the bullshit that comes with pc gaming.
Those bullshits like non crap resolutions, frame rates, graphical "downgrades", handicapped controllers, paid online, mods... /s
 

Edgelord79

Gold Member
Kings Quest, Space Quest and Manhunter series. I played these over and over on my Tandy 1000. I still remember my mom’s potato and bacon soup cooking and the smell while I played on the hallway computer.
 

buenoblue

Member
The day my mum bought me a megadrive with Sonic the Hedgehog. I now buy every sonic game knowing they are shit but I love sonic forever now 🤣😭🥲😭
 

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
Back in the 16-bit era. I had a choice of getting either a SNES or a Genesis.

I wanted the SNES, purely because of hype, but the Genesis was a little cheaper. I felt bad for my mom so I chose Genesis. That changed everything from that point forward. And I'm so glad I did that. Because my sister got the SNES later and we got so much more enjoyment out of the Genesis.
 
Buying Uncharted Collection for PS4 and loving 60 FPS. Really reinvigorated those games for me and I decided to get back into PC building. Now I barely play my consoles and tend to hold out for PC versions.
 
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Bernardougf

Member
Not sure if everyone has been lucky enough to have such a moment, but I'm asking because I was just thinking about whether or not I would pick up Demon's Souls when the Pro comes out.

On June 25th, 2010, I was on a mission to buy Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I had recently bought a PS3 BC 80G system and Naruto Ninja Storm from Gamestop a few months back second hand to play and wanted to see what all the hype was about with Uncharted.

Back at Gamestop, I find the game on the wall and take it to the register. Shootin' the shit with the Gamestop employee as they often do when the guy says "Yo, you heard of this game, Demon's Souls?". I hadn't, but decided to humor him.

He goes on telling me about how it's like a dark medieval game that's supposed to be extremely difficult. Huge boss battles, unforgiving enemies. He was really selling this...and I was into it. He was obviously trying to upsell me, but I didn't have enough money for both so I had to choose.

Get Uncharted 2 and discover what the hype was about, or take my chances with this unknown game....Demon's Souls. The "fuck it" in me said I already know what I'm getting with Uncharted...let's try this Demon's Souls out.

Get home, pop it in and play for 2 hours....3 hours...4 hours and I'm still on the first level. I still haven't beat the first boss. And I was loving every second of this pain. So much so that I ended calling my buddy and practically started begging him to buy a PS3 for this game alone. IT was good...too good!

Ever since then I been a die hard Souls fan...played and beat every game multiple times and in some way my opinion is always slightly jaded towards other games because of this one experience.

Ok...so shoot...is there an experience you've had like this?
Yeah the Souls series fucked up gaming for me either... gameplay became king and anything else just feels bland .... wich sux because I hated Elden Ring and if Souls games for now on becomes that... im fucked
 
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Mr.Phoenix

Member
I lived, breathed, and slept everything Nintendo. Down to the power glove. In a moment of weakness and impatience, I decided to push my parents to get me something called a Playstation instead of waiting for a Nintendo 64.

30 years on and I am still a PlayStation fan.
 

MayauMiao

Member
Fallout 76. I spent ridiculous amount of hours with this game and almost everyday fired up 76 just to grind a bit of level.
 

Corian33

Member
I bought EverQuest 2 instead of WoW. Both came out at the same time, but obviously one was slightly more popular.

I was in the camp of “I’m too cool to play WoW because it looks all cartoony, EQ2 is realistic and mature!” After that I was kinda done with MMO’s because EQ2 wasn’t that great and I was too stubborn to play WoW for a long time.

I think in so doing I dodged being addicted to WoW for the decade after.
 
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Corian33

Member
Talking to a friend a couple weeks after quitting on Dark Souls the first time.

"You know you don't have to go through the graveyard, right?"
A textbook case of the importance of conveying direction to the player through world design. The other path is way less obvious and the dialogue about where to go is vague. There must be hundreds of players who gave up right there.
 

Metalman96

Member
Probably when I asked for a pc for my birthday in 2012. It wasn’t a gaming rig but it actually did ok, was able to play deus ex human revolution (barely) with it. But that was the event that kinda solidified me going with PC primarily.
 
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