Oh ****, there are so many, I'll have to post the more significant ones, and maybe multiple posts as well cause I don't feel like doing a single long ass one.
I guess gotta start with my very first videogame ever, and it's a legendary milestone which kid me at the time didn't even realize.
Unreal Tournament was a gory, gruesome, high octane , fun ass experience for me that I poured countless hours in. My parents gifted me the game for Christmas, absolutely unaware of the level of violence in it. I still remember one day my dad was walking by while I was playing and blowing a bot to pieces with the flak cannon, he stopped by and looked at the screen (old ass 4:3 CRT monitor, remember those?) and went "What are those? Chunks of meat?" in utter disbelief.
It was a fascinating game to me because of the gore, I loved how all the guns felt and sounded, but it was also a time when internet was not available all the time to me, so multiplayer was off limits. I mostly spent times in custom games with bots, but I still had tons of fun. Bots in this game are such trolls. They taunt you and emote you when they kill you, man. That's right, I lost my teabag virginity to Unreal Tournament's AI.
Next up:
Listen bro. Everyone may be gushing over the M4 or the AK-47 nowadays, but back then, the M1 Garand was the ****. It was an era when WW2 games were running amock, and the very first Call of Duty was a game I was replaying over and over and over and over again. WW2 was a setting that really interested me, and this game looked gorgeous for the time. Hell, it's aged really well, I'd say, looks fine for today standards even.
The classic US, english, and russian campaign structure, the excellent sound and visual design that made you feel like you really were in the firefights, with MG42s and other firearms CONSTANTLY roaring through the speakers (yeah, speakers... no HDMI back then!), teammates yelling and the legendary Captain Foley (Captain Price who?) outshouting everyone with his incessant "Suppressing fire!" all made it feel like such an authentic game. Far from the over-spectacular, hollywoodian franchise it'd later become.
Moving on.
Neverwinter Nights is, like Unreal Tournament and COD, an absolute classic in its genre. A Dungeons & Dragons RPG, with one of the best expansions in gaming history, as well as unmatched atmosphere, the main thing that kept me hooked to this game. Another one that I replayed God knows how many times. This was the Bioware of old, rather than the shadow of itself that it is now. Incredible modding support have kept this gem alive to this day, with its amazing community having produced so many custom campaigns thanks to the editor the game comes with.
The multiplayer side was huge too and the best part of it, with many custom servers where you could TRULY role-play, and there was even coop capability to play the original campaign or its expansions with a friend party if you wanted. Really an immortal masterpiece.