Paradox grand strategy games. I hated them at first, then invested more time in then and begun to like them :)

Final Fantasy VII. I'll never forget it.

I've always loved gaming, but my hardware was always kinda old. I got my first computer when I was 8, when my cousin gifted me his old Amstrad as he had just bought an 'state of the art' 486. He gave me a shoe box full of game floppys, but without a hard disk, it was mostly arcade-like games with little depth to them. Then, I got a 486 when it was discarded at my father's company, so he brought it home instead of throwing it away. On it, I played games like TIM, centurion or Pole 500.

And then I got a 'modern' computer. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it had a CD drive and I was able to go to the rental store and try out some games. I remember my first game was Carmaggeddon, followed by Commandos and Beast Wars. Good times. It was on that computer when I first played Deus Ex, too, although I was barely able to run it.

Anyway, in one of those escapades, I saw a game with a guy with a sword bigger than him on the cover, and that got my attention. I read the description on the case, saw RPG, and thought: "huh, never tried one of these. Might as well try". So I took it home.

First contact was horrible. No voices at all? I enter combat, and I have to choose what to do from a menu? And did that guy just merge with my character? WTF??? So, I go attack, I choose a target, the guy goes and slashes the enemy, and the enemy dies. Yaaay, so much fun. I was real close to just going back to the store and claim it was not working on my computer, so I could take another one instead. Thankfully, I didn't. I think it was raining and I was too lazy to go out? Anyway, I was on holidays with nothing better to do, so I was able to have some time with the game. After a couple of hours, I kinda started to see the point of it. After 4-5 hours, I was absolutely glued to it. I ended up extending the rental time a couple of times so I could finish it...

Funnily enough, with being a retro gamer there has been a few games I have tried that I couldn't get to grips with back in the 80's.

Main one for me as of late has been The Goonies on C64, I aquired it from a friends original on tape and he didn't know how to play it either as was missing instructions. I couldn't even do the first level, had no idea what I was supposed to be doing.

A few weeks back I managed to source an original copy for my C64 and I decided to watch a few Youtube longplays on what you are supposed to actually do. Now I can get pretty far on it with knowing the way the game works. First level is simplicity in itself, turn on money making machine which draws the woman outside, change to second character, go to bottom of house, knock water tub over the fire and drop into hole, then take second character once a bank note starts to drop and run for same hole and done.

Love the game now

Hitman: Codename 47

I picked it up right after having played the bejeebus out of Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines. Looking at the box art it looked interesting: be a killer, use stealth, plan ahead, execute cleanly. Much like the Commandos premise, but more individual, and in 3rd person perspective.
So I bought it, read the manual in the car with the targets depcited in them, and couldn't wait to strnagle Lee Hong.
Then I booted it up. The tutorial mission went ahead as expected with little to no problems. Killing the orderlies was a piece of cake, and I got out of my prison, onwards to Hong Kong.
But the first mission in Hong Kong annoyed me. I had no idea what I had to do. I wasn't fast enough to strangle the blue guys without being shot to pieces, and when I did manage to kill one I couldn't get their uniform, the disguise I thought I so preciously needed. I played around with it a bit, but ultimately, I got bored.

Some months later I found it in my closet again. I decided to give it another go, reading the manual again during installation. Then my eye fell on some artwork therein: a drawing of 47 on a rooftop, looking over a park with a sniper rifle in his hand. That park looked a lot like the one from the mission I never finished. And that's when it struck me :)

I played through the game, discovering tactics as I went,b ut this time enjoying it and knowing the challenge could be beat with whatever was in my inventory or in my brain. I've replayed this game around 30 times I think, mastering every level and still enjoying to discover some new approaches or challenges. But I'll never forget when I truly acquired my taste for this game, when stumbling on that piece of artwork of 47 sitting on a rooftop, ready to blast that Red Dragon negotiator in the head.

(edit: and obviously loving its sequels too, though I haven't played Absolution yet)

First-Person Shooters.

I just didn't like them, because I seriously sucked at them. The only FPS games that I could tolerare were GoldenEye (64) and Unreal Tournament. All the rest were a major turn-off. The turnaround occured when I got Timesplitters: Future Perfect. No, I won't say it was the best FPS ever, neither even among my favourites. But let's just say that after playing the hell out of the game (getting gold medals and unlocking all characters), both single and with friends, I soon developed a liking for the genre and now, I consider it among my favourites.

For me, it was the first Halo game. Back then I enjoyed it after coming off of Halo 2 and HATING the single player campaign for being so boring and dull. The thing is, I still hated Halo because it was a console shooter and I grew up playing other shooters that did more than Halo did when it was first released that it was hyped from everyone. When I mean everyone, I mean the annoying teens that I was a part of being a teenager myself at the time. Recently I picked up the PC version just for the heck of it and to give a shot, and now I can definitely see why it is so revered. It isn't so much an evolution of the FPS genre, but a game that showed that a console could do FPS games and do them right. Plus it also helps that it reminds me a bit of Bungie's Marathon series, which I enjoy much more than Halo still to this day.

*laughing*
It's hard even for me to believe this but the answer is The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. My favorite RPG of all time (tied with Arcanum).

A friend suggested I try it and after a 5-6 hours I got bored with it, took me forever to kill a bloody rat and the quest were so confusing to follow.
But my friend keep telling me how awesome game it is and when later Tribunal expansion was released fixing some bugs and improving the diary system so that you can actually follow your quest I gave it another go. When I reached level 10 with my Breton scout the party really fired up, every second of playing was a gaming joy I'll never forget (and unfortunately probably never experience again). Exploring every pixel of Vvardenfell (still got some work in that department left) was melting hours without me even noticing.

The classic Tomb Raider games
The games were so hyped back then and the marketing exploited feminism in a rather awful way I should say I more or less dismissed them.
I had the first TR on my shelf for almost two decades and because I liked Core Design's Project Eden I decided to play it and oh boy did I like this game.
The TR games just slowly suck you in and I just want to keep playing until the end, the gameplay is so much fun, a lot of exploring and puzzles to solve and occasional battles with enemies to keep the tension.
It also shows everything that is wrong with AAA gaming today, TR hardly had a deep and involving story but it never shoved it in your face with extensive voiced cutscenes like these days where games have tons of cutscenes and little gameplay TR is the exact opposite.

Carmageddon.
Hyped to stratospheric levels because of it's violence.
Another game I owned for a long time, even though I played it occasionally it never really grew on me, that I had the censored zombie versions probably didn't make the game more fun either.
Maybe it was because I got to play it later when the graphics looked so dated that the violence really looked cartoony and at last I downloaded a patch which replaced the zombies with human pedestrians.
This game is probably the best stress reliever I can think of as it doesn't force you to play in any way apart from keeping the timer going.

If I recall correctly I was the last person of my elementary school (girls aside) to play Halo, since I didn't really play it until about middle school. It seems like everyone thought it was the coolest thing ever mostly because it was rated M. Then you play something like Rise of the Triad, Unreal Tournament, or Quake and you find out what M rated violence is actually supposed to look like, actually I'd be surprised if any of them have heard of those games even now. However, to return to Halo, I coulda sworn that the mission statements of games like Perfect Dark or Goldeneye were to show that consoles can do proper shooters, although I do see your point.

(I'll add my list of acquired taste games a little later, I need to dig up some memories.)

Turn based combat , outside of TBS. The first time I saw Fallout in a gaming mag, I completely dismissed it the moment I read : "...gameplay switches to turn-based in combat..."
I don't know if this technically qualifies as "acquired taste" (perhaps instead "ignorance") since when I actually played the game more than 10 years later I quickly fell in love with it. I agree though, that turn based combat isn't easy to pull of though as I recall talking to someone on the forum who hated turn-based combat, except for the Fallout series.

The Sims . The first time I played it I quickly became bored and stopped playing. After a week or two I decided to check it out again and became hooked.

Thief

When I played the original demo (on a woefully under-powered P166, 32 MB RAM without any sort of 3D acceleration) I figured it was some sort of medieval FPS. Needless to say, I got butchered within seconds and had to endure another 5 minutes of loading. The second attempt wasn't much fun either. It wasn't until "Thief Gold" was released, that I actually read some of the reviews. Once those filled me in on what you're supposed to do in this game (turns out it's not a medieval FPS at all!), I went ahead and gave the demo a second chance. Let's just say video games were never the same for me afterwards.

Baldur's Gate

I have finally dragged my dad out of pure FPS play with Deus Ex and Thief Gold. You are right, once it gets you, it just doesn't let go!

Bioshock series.

I borrowed a copy of Bioshock 2, I sat down and played it for maybe an hour... something didn't click for me, maybe I wasn't using plasmids or something, I just didn't like it.

We decided to give the series another go, so a few months ago my girlfriend bought me the Bioshock Ultimate Rapture Edition, we sat down and played through 1 and 2 and all DLC, and we both loved it! We also played through Bioshock Infinite a while later, and are looking forward to checking out the Burial at Sea DLCs eventually.