I used to be blissfully ignorant, now I can't do anything casually. My experiences with games over the years, and how it has changed.

ok real quick. Im 28, Started young, Amstrad and NES was where it began. Then up to sega genesis, snes, n64, ps2, wii, some gameboys, 360, xbone. PC gaming was there throughout the years.

I first sucked at a game when Diablo2 came out. In diablo 1, the more skills you had the more you had to work with. That didn't work in Diablo 2. I died to Diabo 36 times before I defeated him. Learned from that.

Zelda Ocarina of time was the first mind blowing experience. It was adventure, puzzles and comforting in a way that youd just want to stay in some of those places. The water refraction on the walls, the hot atmosphere and frosty atmosphere of each of their environments is unmatched in any other game out there to this day. The only other time I saw something similar was the floating mist effects in diablo 3s old tristram but when I played, I didnt so much feel that. It's a big deal to me that games today lack atmosphere. Also replaying ocarina and it's still fantastic and as I remember it. Handheld versions the scale of the environments was shrunk to suit handhelds and some atmosphere was lost. Sad, not much into them for that. Moving on.

Next big hit- World of Warcraft. My brother played and my friends. It had every environment a person could want. Vanilla days were the best because the requirements for raiding were mostly just being high enough leveled. After a year of commitment, it was time I broke my addiction and got my account banned. I returned to play twice with expansions but the game had changed. People wanted dps numbers and skill and gear requirement. Peaceful environments like Westfall had been reworked as if to make them more interesting.. So suddenly there as war everywhere, chaos and a lot of those environments had lost their charm for me. I feel I outgrew it anyway. Maybe it's a familiarity thing. The bar had been set high by vanilla. Me and my brother both had pilonidal sinus around this time so we both had an operation that reduced our fullmoons to halfmoons. The lifetime of sitting and bad posture had caught up.

GTAV, minecraft and skyrim have been the most memorable games in the past 10 years. Everything else is rubbish to me. I only remember or enjoy games if I can take those memories out of it and share them with other people. Like either you're playing with other people you know and unexpected funny/cool/random things are happening.. Or you play solo in a game where you get to be creative or something random happens that you can tell a story from. Or on the end of the stick, a game has a certain attention to detail that impresses, except that just doesn't happen anymore.

So I'm experienced, the bar has been set high and game devs only cater to the lower generations of gamers. However, my friend has an Oculus DK2 so I've got to use it quite a bit. Pretty amazing, it's almost a necessity for me now. Except that it made me vomit once and I havent used it since (roller coaster). But I definitely see some deep experiences that will come with that. Things that will probably rival World of warcraft, and I hope eventually Zelda Ocarina of Time. Just, that atmosphere needs to be there.. and bugs under rocks. Particles in the air. Attention to details! And ambient music, not theatrical stuff that blizzard does these days, Bleh.

Never played LoL. Castle defence doesn't make any sense to me. A friend has been playing for a few years(?) and doesnt have a single story to share about it. Endless fighting, nothing to gain. It's like counter strike, just a little busier. But hey I haven't played LoL.

Bring on Virtual reality. The gaming industry badly needs it. And more indies.

/r/Games Thread