This game is probably the most astounding game Ive ever played. What game had a huge impact on you?

I was between games a few years ago and started looking up new games to buy or play through. I'm big on the emotional aspect of gaming and story telling so I went to Zero Punctuation for recommendations. One of his "best of 20--" games was Spec Ops: The Line. I didn't know what to expect from the game because none of my friends had played it and there wasn't much talk about it. It honestly just looked like a boring modern shooter where I would be killing brown people for really no reason.

Then I played the game

The game goes from this generic modern shooter to a dark adventure into the human psyche. It allows you to make decisions thinking that you're making a good and bad decision but really there are no good and right decisions. The game made me feel like a serial killer. There were times I had to put the game down because of an overwhelming guilt for the wartime actions I had committed. That and the loading screens will say bone chilling things like "The military doesn't condone the killing of unarmed combatants... but this is a video game so why should it matter?" The game had such a big impact on me because it was the first time a game had made me really look at the violence I was creating. I knew it was a game and the game even was aware of what it was but it challenged me mentally as a consumer of this medium. I wanted a game that had extremely high emotional gameplay and that is what I got from Spec Ops: The line.

So the week I played through Spec Ops i felt guilty and horrible about myself. Like I should've turned myself into the police or something. So i tried to move on from that game to a game I'm comfortable with like Minecraft or whatever but it just wasn't getting me out of my depression rut. I went back to the internet to see what games would be good to change my perspective on things. So I looked up IGN's top games of the year and a game I had never heard of before had won. The game was called Journey. I looked up reviews on it and luckily the reviewer was very murky about the game and what it was, describing it as an "Experience". And it was. I came home with the game, popped it in my PS3 and soaked in the beautiful colors and atmosphere of the game. It was like a moving painting. I could feel the sand I walked on, I could smell the air rushing around me, I felt amazing and free. It was like I never accidentally murdered women and children in spec ops. I played through the short storyline of Journey and felt much better.

The two games are completely different but are amazing examples of the immersion and emotional drive that games could cause. Video games are such a beautiful art form. If you want your week to be an emotional roller coaster then play these two games in succession.


tl;dr play Spec Ops: The Line followed by Journey for one of the most emotionally engaging playthroughs you'll have.

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