(Saw this question asked on another popular link aggregation website and it got me thinking)
If you could play one game for the first time all over again, what would you choose? This might be because you want to do it all again, or because you don't think you got enough out of it the first time. It could be experiencing the game exactly as you were back then, or experiencing a game with what you know now.
For me, it's Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, experienced exactly as I was back in 1991.
Nothing comes close to how jaw-droppingly amazed I was by that opening sequence. The epic orchestral score, the cinematic rainstorm, creeping around in the dark... it was a generational leap above anything I'd played on 8-bit computers and consoles, and even the Megadrive. I'd love to play it again without thirty plus years of Nintendo/Zelda knowledge, or without knowing about the dark world.
Dark Souls 1
Part 2, 3 and not even elden ring did manage to reach the same athmosphere and i mainly atribute it to leveldesign: Dark souls 1 is an apocalypse brought about the fact that every last being is slowly but surely driven insane before losing any semplence of self altogether and bekome huskless zombies. And the world is reflecting this: It's like a surealist painting. When you zoom in very far everything makes sense, ther is a wall and a medieval city and beneath is some sewers, but when you zoom out the city is actually in front of the wall, but then you are on top of the wall which is kinda acting like an entrance the the next area and not like a wall at all. In the other directen you go down the sewer, but then drop into a hole to be on top of a wall again with another city beneath you. And you can go even further down, either to a hell like environment to yet another city even lower, or throug a giant dead tree to come out on a beach with a clody sky above which absolutly does not make any topological sense at all. And yet this map is intricatly interconnected with several passages and elevators. Not from me: It's like with the first flame fading it's not the dead rising, but time and space itself is collapsing, that's why you can't die, that's why other players can be summoned to your world, and that's why the whole world, while still being connected, makes no sense at all.
Also 2nd choice: Obligatory: "Spec Ops: The Line"
If you haven't played it yet: Do it without reading any Spoilers.