Allright, I'll check the demo. Btw, nice video, seems like GPL on steroids!

I haven't played Mario 64 in a very long time, so I don't know how it holds up, but when I first played it it was amazing (in fact it sold the N64 to me... oops). It was classic, tight platforming gameplay wrapped up in a new 3D world, and one of the very few games to have ever gotten that combination right.

Born to impoverished parents who blew their inheritance with infighting and died tragically young.
That is actually pretty close to real life.

And yes, I am referring to the folly amid SoJ, SoA, and SoE, plus the failed launches of the 32X, Nomad, and Saturn. Despite having some great games (Magic Knight Rayearth is one of the few games to have unique flavor-text on everything... and the only game I know to have it in triplicate for each unique party member.)

It didn't blow my mind, but I was very impressed with the depth. It had everything but the kitchen sink, and then they added a kitchen sink! It was the game that coined the trope: "The dev team thinks of everything."

Wing Commander. 'Nuf said! :)

I'm a taffer.

The Cat Lady is a really good story that deals with depression.

Bioshock one of course. The twist was spoiled for me by other people but it was still really great.

I've always been more the X-Wing/TIE-Fighter type.
It's certainly an awesome game. Unfortunately last time I tried it was running in slow motion only. I played a bit into it but moving around was just too painful. I think there was some update a while ago. Have to give it another try sometime.

Max Payne 1

For its gameplay. When I saw the screenshots, I thought it was another repetitive third person shooter in cliché environments (tenements...). And when I played it, wow!!! It's so incredibly fun.

Definitely Planescape: Torment. It literally gets even better with every playthrough. And I believe I have played through it more than half a dozen times in the last 15 years.

Gothic 1: My first open world experience back in the days. Still awesome, though in most aspects superseded by the second game. But the atmosphere is still unsurpassed. Unfortunately, it spoiled me for Morrowind for a long time, since after the story-driven gothic games (the first two, that is), I did not get into the real open world principle of the Elder Scrolls games for a long time. Now I clearly cound Morrowind to this list, above all because of its incredible modding capabilities.

Half-Life 2: It really was groundbraking when it first came out and the way the story is told is still unique and fascinating today.

Portal 2: How could they make it that much better than the already awesome first game?

Black Mesa: Best fan remake ever of one of the best games of all time.

Ultima IV, when I first played it a few years ago: Who would have thought what a complex and unique game was to be found behind these basic graphics.

There are probably more, but these are the ones I can think of right now. While there are a lot of other games I enjoyed, I tried to find those which really had a unique impact on me.

Just popping in to let you know that I'll do the drawing for the giveaway later tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on when I get back.

The people currently entered into the draw are:
Shadowstalker16
Oathe
Spassky
Vythonaut
TDP
pakopakojr
comradegarry
AttObl
adaliabooks
Daynov
theslitherydeee

Planescape Torment, Bioshock, Knights of the old republic and the Legacy of Kain series on PC
Final Fantasy X and Yakuza 3 on PS2.

One game that springs to mind was Omikron: The Nomad Soul. I only ever played the DC version, and I've been reluctant to pick up the GOG version for fear of becoming bored early into a second playthrough. Anyways...

For all its flaws, that game did a damn good job of unnerving me something massive when I played it. It was an open world to a degree, before I'd even played GTA III (you couldn't jack cars, but you could take cabs, if I remember right), which was impressive enough, but then I wound up in a situation that got who I thought to be the protagonist - Kay'l 669 - killed early on. My first reaction was panic, because I think I forgot to save for some time and I thought it was going to be a straightforward "game over", but then SUDDENLY, some thief comes along, only to get herself possessed by what I soon discovered was the true protagonist, that being the player.

It's difficult to explain, but it was refreshing to discover that I wasn't bound to a single preset character, in spite of the possible pitfalls that Quantic Dream threw in to limit the reincarnation system - for example, the process destroyed the old body and made it impossible to return to, so you had to choose whether taking someone else was worth the sacrifice. The protagonist was essentially yourself as the player and the storyline cemented that by taking the classic kid's cartoon plot of the game being a portal to another world and reworking it into this nightmare dystopia. Granted, it wasn't perfect, and some character dialogue came across just a bit creepy at times, but still, at the time I don't think I'd ever seen a game do anything remotely like it, and you still don't to this day.

And the winner is Spassky (not the first time in history either).

And this concludes the giveaway portion of this event. I think it was somewhat successful, all things considered. While I normally favour some sort of creative effort, this type of giveaway seems to have two big advantages. First of all, a simple draw is much easier than deciding between 5-6 equally good entries in a contest. Secondly, it doesn't clutter up the forum and rewards forum participation. The idea is to have a giveaway disguised as a normal forum thread as opposed to a giveaway where discussion of a topic is either encouraged or dictated by the rules. The drawbacks are the difficulties of coming up with good discussion topics and the risk of someone advertising the giveaway in the big giveaway thread, thus defeating the purpose of rewarding forum participation.

Congratulations to Spassky and thanks to Mrstarker for the giveaway (and interesting topic of conversation).