Your first and any other great/bad online gaming experiences

[dataDave]

Quake. Summer 1997. P150. 16mb RAM. 33kbps. Free internet (as long as I played after 6:30pm when local calls were free).

[QualityChimp]

Lovely thread, thanks Hicks!

->Open Spoiler<-

"Hudson, Sir. He's Hicks."

My friends and I played some PC LAN games such as Aliens Vs Predator, No One Lives Forever and Unreal Tournament, but without a doubt, our favourite game was Half-Life. We had a bots mod to add a few more players and we hammered the Crossfire map, which is the bunker that lets you call a bomb strike that kills everyone not inside. Once the strike has been called, it's a frantic dash to keep everyone out or sneak back in without being killed!



I did play a bit online with my PC, but for me, It started properly with the XBox 360. I got it at launch and spent ages playing Perfect Dark Zero, especially the Capture The Flag mode. Some daring raids of the enemy base in a hovercraft made for some memorable moments.

The 360 was the perfect storm of :
Hardware - each unit came with a headset so people around the world were talking to each other.
Specifications - nobody had a better rig than anyone else, it was an even playing field.
Broadband - by the time it came out, nearly everybody had a decent connection compared to dial-up.

[Wools]

There were the best ever for me too. I remember trying to beat the times of mates on F355 too . Have some fantastic memories of Quake III on the DC where me and my bother would play the hell of that on-line and would make Sunday afternoon our main meet up on-line day , but the best ever was of coruse PSO.... I remember even staying in most weekends just to play that game during the 1st few months after the game shipped ;

I still stay in on weekends, I stayed in last Sunday just to play GTA V!

PSO was really special, it felt like you were discovering this beautiful world with all your friends and coming across strangers who were exploring too but in far off lands. It's stunning how far we've come in regards to online play but also how little we've yet taken full advantage of the possibilities. Demon's Souls is a glimpse into how far developers can push the envelope by mixing single and multiplayer.

QC, that Half Life video takes me back. I made so many maps for that game, really enjoyed the multiplayer side of Half Life and always felt that Counter Strike got the attention. Half life 2 Deathmatch was stunning with the physics implemented.

[hudson]

I'm a third or so through GTAV campaign. I'm thinking of go pung online with it when I'm s done. Any good?

[QualityChimp]

I tried it for the first time last week and spent a good chunk of my gaming time downloading the ten updates!

[Atticus]

My first online gaming experience was Lord of the Rings Online. It really blew my mind from the get-go, and I couldn't get enough of it. I remember that first sesh like I can remember real stuff; walking into a small town for the first time and seeing it teeming with life, some peeps running here and there, some just hanging out and playing music. It was a lot to take in. Bear in mind I'd never played online before, ever. Then during that first sesh, on my way to some mission objective, along come a couple of mates from work, bounding over the field waving. Cue many late nights. Many unscripted memories. And some discussions with my wife, who wasn't as enamoured as I was

[Team Andromeda]

PSO was really special, it felt like you were discovering this beautiful world with all your friends and coming across strangers who were exploring too but in far off lands. It's stunning how far we've come in regards to online play but also how little we've yet taken full advantage of the possibilities. Demon's Souls is a glimpse into how far developers can push the envelope by mixing single and multiplaye

Oh yeah you said it and its quite sad how nothing ever really came close to the friendship and sense of togetherness one saw in those early months of PSO . I remember getting on really well with some players from New York and after a few months we just played PSO together and even made sure to note the time differences and out days off played nights out - so we could meet up on PSO and even simple stuff like getting a message saying 'Happy Christmas from New York' with those lovely PSO smilely faces was truly magical back at the time.

Vegas, GRAW III and Chromehounds are for me the Online games that ever have come close to that sort of online magic.

[Asura]

My first online gaming experience was Lord of the Rings Online. It really blew my mind from the get-go, and I couldn't get enough of it. I remember that first sesh like I can remember real stuff; walking into a small town for the first time and seeing it teeming with life, some peeps running here and there, some just hanging out and playing music. It was a lot to take in. Bear in mind I'd never played online before, ever. Then during that first sesh, on my way to some mission objective, along come a couple of mates from work, bounding over the field waving. Cue many late nights. Many unscripted memories. And some discussions with my wife, who wasn't as enamoured as I was

I admit, I'm somewhat jealous of people who got to have their first online gaming steps in MMO titles like WoW, LOTRO, TERA, WAR - just the idea of a fully open online world, all at once. It really must have been mindblowing.