I think my purest moment of gaming bliss was experiencing completely blind the last handful of worlds in Super Mario Odyssey while buzzed with a few whiskeys. God, my soul was in orbit with that experience. Pure, unfettered joy and whimsy through and through and cinematically epic when it wanted to be. I wouldn’t call it the best game ever or even my favorite game ever, but god damn it, it struck me just right way at just the right time. It was something truly special.
More games I will cherish will certainly follow, and have followed. But for that specific set of vibes and circumstances, I don’t know if I’ll ever top that peak from playing a video game ever again.
In 2005 I was playing Final Fantasy XI Online and met a group of 5 Japanese players in an expansion area. We wound up partying together for 8 hours straight. They all spoke English in chat for my sake, and we had an incredible rhythm together. We discussed new anime and a few English cartoons that had recently made it to Japan. We took a selfie together at the end of the 8 hours. It was the best gaming experience of my life. I’ll never forget it.
That entire game was just forever chasing the high you got from that one time you had a really good party. I’m already finding myself glossing over the fact that 99% of them were awful and you only settled for them because you didn’t want to wait around another 30 minutes for chance of a better one.
Top 3, no order (can’t pick):
Anytime a SoulsBorne game clicks, especially Sekiro
Winning a really tight match of Rocket League against people at a similar or higher skill level
Playing split screen Freedom Fighters with my buddy back in the day. It got so competitive we started taping cardboard on the screen to prevent screen-peeking
When I finished my first run of Subnautica, something definitely came over me. I ran around in my base cleaning up, I organized all my spare food and water in a cabinet “for the next person stranded here,” I released the fish in my alien containment, said farewell to my cuddlefish, parked my Seamoth in the moon pool, turned the lights out in the Cyclops, the whole bit. An amazing adventure was at an end.
Most recent one I can rememver was beating Tears of The Kingdom. I was SO invested in the final boss battle and I got really emotional. I was so immersed I was basically vocally taunting the boss for everything they had done. Only other time that happened was with Cyberpunk 2077 and only because of Edgerunners.
Then in the past (jesus has it really been more than 17 years??) the first time my buddy and I beat Halo 1 on Legendary after an all-nighter of gaming. That was awesome. Horrible smell in that room tho lmao.
Flawlessly clearing Genichiro in Sekiro was deeply satisfying. Parry parry parry, dodge, mikiri counter. Don’t think I got hit once.
Portal and Portal 2 are some of my all-time favorite games. They’re about the only games I enjoy watching other people play, primarily when they’re playing for the first time—it kind of lets me relive that wonder of the first play through. Going through those with my stepdaughter (only 10 at the time) not long after I married her mom was a highlight of my life and really helped us form our own bond. As we progressed through I realized that chamber 17 was going to be rather traumatic for her because she was going to absolutely love the weighted companion cube, so we stopped playing for a few days while I ordered a stuffed weighted companion cube and gave it to her right after the level. As we neared the end of the game I explained to my wife about the Cake. She owned a bakery at the time and we presented kiddo with a cake like the one seen at the end of the game when she won. We did Portal 2 as well, me watching as she played the solo campaign and then we did the co-op together. I’d highly recommend it for any parent who likes gaming to share these with your kids.
Probably local multiplayer with friends at school, like the DS and PSP, used to love playing Mario Kart and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite with others
At least in recent memory, it was Dragon’s Dogma 2 teaching me that I could pick up and carry downed party members by having one of my party members pick up another one and bring them over to me. There’s so much that’s possible in DD2 that just isn’t in a typical videogame, that throughout the entire experience I was mostly learning niche interactions from my other party members instead of my own experimentation. It was a really cool experience, and felt way more impactful then a text prompt just lecturing me about all the mechanics the game has.
Going to a big tf2 LAN in England and watching the games with a crowd of people that shared in the love for that game.
Made me realize for the first time why some people obsess over sports.
I don’t track or rank joy like that, but discovering the dark world in The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past is definitely up there. Just realising the world had this whole extra dimension to it.
I still love dimensionality / hidden depth in games.
I mean, who doesn’t?
Red Dead Redemption, when crossing into Mexico for the first time and the sun starts setting and Far Away by Jose Gonzalez starts playing. That shit blew my mind.
I still get goosebumps from that song for this reason! Nick Drake’s Three Hours gives me a similar feeling.
the ending of outer wilds, figuring out that the treasure really was the friends we made along the way, will always stand out to me as the most magnificent, joy-filled moment in my 25+ year gaming experience.
that, or getting the cool sunglasses in fez.
Outer Wilds is the correct answer. I wish I could unlearn that memory and play it again from scratch.
It’s been years, and I still haven’t recovered from the ending of Outer Wilds. I don’t think I ever want to either, haha
In college, quake 3 arena came out about a month into school. My roommate and I stayed up all night playing together. That was when we moved from roommates to friends.
Beating Link’s Awakening as a kid. No internet no hints or help just hours of exploring when I was stuck on a puzzle. It’s so hard for me to get lost in a video game like that now and not just reach for an answer or check the internet to see what I’m doing wrong. It’s a shame now, I know links awakening now like the back of my hand and I’ll never get to explore a first play through of that game ever again.
Same, me and a friend struggled with that game for a while, but still remains an extremely satisfying game to have beaten when you couldn’t just look things up.
