VR (2014)
No specific game here, but just VR in general.
I couldn’t wait for the retail release of the Oculus Rift, so I ordered one of the developer kits back when they were still selling them to anyone crazy enough to buy one. When it finally arrived, I spent about three hours trying to get it to actually work (it was a dev kit, after all). But when I finally got it up and running, wow, was it ever worth it.
I felt like I was playing Ocarina of Time for the first time again. I was doing things that simply weren’t possible before, things that I couldn’t have imagined because I had no reference for them. It had been a very long time since I had felt that way about a video game, but the effect was strong enough that I knew I was all-in on VR from that point forward. Even games that can be played on a regular monitor, like the space sim Elite: Dangerous, are taken to a whole other level in VR. The feeling of actually sitting in the cockpit of your spaceship is so convincing that sometimes I still get confused when I move my hand in front of my face and don’t see my in-game hand do the same. It’s also stomach turning. But who cares?! I’m in a spaceship!
*Honorable mentions: Pokemon Red, Resident Evil, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, and Hearthstone.
Words by Chris Parbery