Throughout the life of a gamer, there are certain games that make us cross over from the realm of casual gaming to being a hardcore gamer. If you look back at your gaming life, you can probably remember what the first games were that you kept coming back to. Those were the games that you did not just pop in to play casually. Instead, these games kept you coming back for hours. After hundreds of hours, you moved onto the next game, and before you knew it, you were hooked to the world of video games.
When I look back, there are a few games that stand out to me as the first games that really brought me in and made me a gamer. Some of them are really old, and came about when I was around 5 or 6 years old. Other ones happened later in life. Some of them are games you might expect, as they are the ones that many people get hooked on, and some are a little on the odd side, but one way or another, these are the first games I got hooked on, and the ones that made me the addicted gamer that I am today.
Snake Rattle ‘N Roll
This is a pretty obscure NES game, but it is the first one I really remember coming back to over and over. It’s brutally hard (I own a copy today, and I still struggle with it), but when you figure out how to beat a level, it was so satisfying. One of my first memories of a video game was Snake Rattle ‘N Roll. I remember playing it with the help of my mother, and I remember playing it on my own. I loved Mario too, but Snake Rattle N’ Roll is the game that I could not stop coming back to time after time.
Age Of Empires II
This was my first experience with a competitive game on the PC. I came home from junior high school every day and played this game against other people online. It might not be the deepest RTS ever made, but it was so much fun, and it had a very robust online system that worked surprisingly well for the time.
It was more than a battle of building lots of units; there was a “rocks, paper, scissors” element of building the right units to counter your opponents. While most people were playing Starcraft, I was hooked on Age Of Empires II.
SOCOM II: US Navy Seals
SOCOM II was the first console shooter I ever really got into. I remember running out to the store to get the broadband adapter for my Playstation 2 and going online and shooting it out in some third person action. I remember many days being half asleep in high school from being up far too late playing this game. I hooked up with a clan, and we spent countless hours playing.
That was my first experience with forming a clan with strangers and those people became more than my teammates; I was as close with them as I was with real life friends. I was never a fan of Halo, and while everyone else I knew was hooked on it, I was on my PS2 playing SOCOM II.
Battlefield 2
I stayed on SOCOM for long after it was released, but then, a cyber cafe opened in my town. I did not have a gaming PC, and I was content to be a console gamer. A few of my friends and myself decided to go and check out the place. The owner was all about Battlefield 2, and we decided to check it out. I never played SOCOM again. I was hooked on the depth of Battlefield 2, and I went out and purchased my own gaming PC to play it. We still went to the cyber cafe at least once a week to play in the same room. Sadly, it went out of business, and were forced to play online, but it was still awesome.
Call of Duty 4
The final evolution for me as a gamer is Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. The day this game hit the Xbox 360 everyone I knew ran out and purchased it, and we’ve been playing Call of Duty ever since (except World at War – I hate that game). As you’ve probably seen in my other articles, I collect classic games, and I play most major releases on modern systems, and plenty of random obscure games. I even dabble in MMOs and have some level 90s in World of Warcraft. That being said I always come back to Call of Duty, and it is a game that has gone a long way in defining me as a gamer today.
Your Turn
Now, I turn to you, our loyal readers. I want to know is what games turned you into the gamer you are today? Which games do you remember becoming hooked on? Hit the comments section below and let us know!
