Rules: just pick 1 and explain why.
I’ve been playing since the NES and despite being from a low income family I had the luck of being able to play and own many consoles over the 3 decades of my life, plus some pc.
If you ask me right now? Resident Evil 4 (2005).
A before and after in gaming, to this day still extremely fun to play even for casuals but 20 years ago it was THE masterpiece. And everyone took notice of it, everyone played it, even players that didn’t cared about resident evil. The gameplay was so good that it got photocopied by everyone right after in the action genre.
Arguably the last big innovator in videogames minus Minecraft and… PUBG (Fortnite did it better I know).
Try to NOT pick your favourite game, that’s a different thing.
Grand Theft Auto 3.
You had to be there to see how absolutely groundbreaking that was at the time. Gaming had suddenly grown up.
It was like all the obvious limits in other games all just got pulled away at once. Explore a full city in 3D, drive around, shoot people, steal a tank.
And the sequel only improved on it, but I’ve honestly never been so awed by a game before or since. It’s like they were the first dev to finally figure out what the PS2 hardware was for. Everything before just felt like a slightly nicer version of what had come before. This was new.
I didn’t even look in this direction but I think you’re right