Games to get someone into gaming for the first time?

When I read the title of this thread, immediately the name The Walking Dead jumped to my mind, amazing game for people that have no knowledge of how games have evolved since Pac Mam.

I'd say also Brothers a tale of two sons and beyond two souls.

Those are just games that sorta mix movies and games perfectly, if that person enjoys movies he/she will love these games.

There's also a variety of games out there that are more "games" per se, it depends very much on the person, but games like Doki-Doki Universe are awesome for non-gamer people, my wife loved it for some reason, I fail to see the appeal

My father loves (literaly putting thousand of hours into each game):

- Civilization 5

- TES Oblivion & Skyrim

- Anno series

- Total War series

- Mount & Blade

He started gaming only a couple years ago and his motor skills are really bad but that doesn't stop him to enjoy the games. What the old folks lack in skill is compensated by their enthusiasm. They are literaly like little kids enjoying to play video games because it's new to them and they didn't grew up with it. My mom is the same. She's bad at pretty much every game but puts thousands of hours into Mario, Zelda etc.

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I think you might wanna consider shooters pretty soon, just make sure he plays singleplayer on easy. Depends on how bad he is atm of course. Walking Dead is a good fit probably, agreed on that. Maybe Portal games? If he likes puzzling.

+1 for Zelda!

Yea Zelda is what got my father into TES games. He liked it on DS but his fingers are too big for it so i suggested Oblivion for an adventure on PC. First he was afraid of this sort of game because of his bad motor skills. But starting to play on easy fixed this.

It's fun he played like 2000 hours of Skyrim but occasionaly he still asks me to find his way out of a dungeon.

Any of the last COD SP's. Those games basically play themselves.

solitaire

journey maybe ?

I hear Dota 2 is easy to learn :troll:

I suppose thinking games, management or turn based are a good bet, then building up to real time games in the future. Was hilarious to see my mum try and play Crysis when she never played a shooter before, was quite eye opening for me actually because you easily forget your first time

I guess - starting from scratch it's more about the pressure in needing to perform lots of quick actions to win the game, so anything that allows you to stop, pause and do it at your own pace is great to start with.

What sorts of books/movies is your dad into? If we knew the genre giving him a game in the same genre may be a good start.

Racing games aren't that bad. My Ex-gf wasn't a gamer, but she had plenty of fun with NFS Underground

Quote from Chimeray

Action/Thriller mostly. He's into the Godfather, Band of Brothers, James Bond, The Bourne Identity, Ocean's Eleven, Deadwood. That sorta stuff, can't really think of stuff that's comparable in the gaming realm cos mostly they don't have a narrative that's as suspenseful or strong. Perhaps a heist game like Monaco might be up his alley, I'll ask.

So far he's enjoying the Walking Dead, at first I thought it would be too hard but it's surprisingly easy, even when he uses the trackpoint on his laptop! Succes!

Your father has excellent taste. In that case I would go for The Wolf Among Us as well. Look in the adventure genre. Think games like the Monkey Island remakes and Siberia 1/2. I recently bought the Steam version of the RealMyst remake for my wife. Dragon's Lair and Space Ace both come to mind. Almost no game play and lots of entertainment. You can't really go wrong with these.

Last but not least, give him the new XCOM. It's easy to get into but has a lot of depth. Same goes for Wasteland 2.

gta half life quake 3

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Haha , even better would be a 1vs1 deathmatch on Quake 3

Quote from 2d-chris

Was hilarious to see my mum try and play Crysis when she never played a shooter before, was quite eye opening for me actually because you easily forget your first time

You got a point there as the gap between gamers and non-gamers is actually huge with regard to reflexes and motor coordination; we simply fail to see it as we benchmark ourselves against fellow gamers

I recently wrote an article about this issue: Gamers Reflexes and Eye-Hand Coordination

@ Chimeray: I believe a good start would be a GTA game where he can freely roam the city and learn the controls and fine tune his eye-hand coordination without getting pressured by the game objectives/mechanics/story.

Eventually, if he wants to improve his motor coordination, then fast action games (shooters especially) are the way forward

And you sharing some game time with him will help a lot

Good luck for your dad.

Dark Souls.

Anything RTS is a really good shout, play on the easier levels of difficulty and they can take their time. I've managed to get my gf hooked on Prison Architect too, she's really not a gamer so it's been hard to find some games to introduce gaming to her.

Avoid MOBAs imo, the learning curve is just too steep for a non gamer I find. Simple free to play MMOs such as RIFT really help with getting to grips with using WASD and hotkeys too.

Quote from Chimeray

Action/Thriller mostly. He's into the Godfather, Band of Brothers, James Bond, The Bourne Identity, Ocean's Eleven, Deadwood. That sorta stuff, can't really think of stuff that's comparable in the gaming realm cos mostly they don't have a narrative that's as suspenseful or strong. Perhaps a heist game like Monaco might be up his alley, I'll ask.

Hum... Godfather... maybe some of the Mafia games (Mafia 2 for example) orrr... L.A Noire ?