Cyberpunk 2077.

It's one thing to read a cyberpunk novel or watch a cyberpunk movie and "get" the moral of the story, which is usually "misuse of technology is bad".

But it's another thing to actually spend time in that world; to feel the effects of corporate corruption on your community, to experience the addiction to mind- and body-altering technologies, to watch loved ones - who you've spent hours looking directly in the eye and having conversations with - have their lives taken from them unfairly so that the richest person in the world can get 0.0001% richer.

I'd always been wary of techno-corpo bullshit. But that game instilled an all-new level of hatred in me; a hatred toward billionaires and megacorporations, toward oligarchs and aristocrats, toward those with the resources to change things for the better but too apathetic to stick their necks out.

Johnny Silverhand was right.

Outer Wilds. A game that genuinely made me reflect on my place in the universe.

The Witcher 3! I never played 1 or 2. However 3 did a great job of story recap and finishing up said story. DLC was a must as well. All in all, I was engaged with the story.

And of course, RDR2.

Homeworld. The end credits were so beautiful. It still gives me frisson thinking about it.

Recently beat Portal (first one), for the first time. Please play if you haven't!!!

Undertale. That was the game that really changed my life. I never did complete the bad ending route because that game is my comfort game, and it made me want to be friends with the world. I was kind of a jerk in middle school and highschool, but Undertale, which I played in my Junior year made me feel so guilty about who I was being. I think it also saved me from going down the rightwing extremist pipeline because of how much it touched me. I thank Undertale for making my life better.

Deltarune also means so much to me.

dark souls 1. wife passed in that year and i just rolled through it completely distracting myself from reality and it helped a ton.

Bastion made me feel like that. I couldn't stop thinking about it for days.

SOMA

Kerbal Space Program changed how I understand space flight.

Factorio changed how I approach programming

Modding original Doom and GTA vice city taught me 2d and 3d graphics as well as hacking and programming.

RDR2

Dance Dance Revolution 3rd mix. It sounds stupid, I know, but hear me out. I really sucked at this game at first. My friends use to play every weekends at the arcade, so I really wanted to get better. So I really trained hard and became the best player in our group. People gattered around the arcade when I was playing. I was good enough for tournaments.

Now when I face something difficult, I'm confident I can overcome it if I really want to. I wasn't like that before. Thanks Konami.

Dark Souls.

I used to play mostly FPS. Now it's all soulslikes and practically nothing else.

Dominion

I loved and competed in various trading card games throughout high school however once married with kids I could no longer afford the hobby. Dominion caused a surge in the deckbuilding genre and ultimately led to my first published game design. Now board games and tabletop RPGs are a favorite for spending time with family and friends.

Just some of them: Hollow Knight, Undertale, Ori and the Blind Forest, BioShock, Dead Space, Max Payne, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.

Spec Ops: The Line. Probably kinda dated now but there were multiple moments in that game where I had to cool down after some heavy shit happens.

Disco Elysium

Halo 3 to cap off the original trilogy

System Shock 2 - The only game to have truly scared me. This was one of the first games that I played when I switched to PC gaming since my HP Pavillion at the time couldn't play a lot of the newer games. The rest was history

Deus Ex - This game still informs much of my world view

Thief 1 and 2 - While SS2 scared me in absolute terms, Thief gave me a sense of dread and isolation coupled with amazing stealth mechanics

Skyrim - My gateway to RPGs

GTA 4 - SA was my introduction to the series and, while I enjoyed very much, 4 was just blew me away.

Planescape: Torment - The most beautifully crafted RPG ever

Fallout 2 - I'll be honest: I only played and beat the first two Fallouts just this year but, man, do I wish I played them sooner. FO2 in particular change my relationship with the series.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Minecraft lol

I studied cs because of it, hell I even wrote about minecraft in one of my admission essays. Something bionicles to minecraft to stem pipeline as I would call it

I also really like PGR. It's a gacha game but I met a really nice community from it

If we're talking about great story driven games, signalis and nier are always my top favorites.

I’m not a gamer and I know I’m missing something when I see this comment section!

Metal Gear Solid 2

me, 12 years old in my room, with little awareness of 4th wall breaks:

mom! The TV is talking to ME, MOM!

One that should get way more attention: Little King's Story. It presents as a cutsie Pikmin-like, but is actually a dark, metaphorical tale about abuse and trauma.

Most recently, the final choice in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 gutted me.

In recent memory God of War got me pretty good. The struggles that Kratos would go through attempting to communicate with his son reminded me all too well of my dad's relationship to me. I'm fortunate enough that I don't have the same issue with my children, and that game definitely had me doing some self reflection.

Can't say any one game was life changing for me. They are more a collection of experiences that I reflect upon. Hundreds of games, that have refined me my thoughts and feelings over the decades.