If you could experience one game for the first time again...

Let's say you could forget everything you know about 1 game so you can truly experience it for the first time again. Which game would you forget?

Also, since I know some people will try to overanalyze this, let's say that you remember the game itself (that it exists) and that you like it, so you have some drive to pursue it again.

I would forget Resident Evil 4. This game's awesomeness blew my face off when I first played it way back on the GameCube, and I still play it here and there on the Xbox 360. The combination of action and horror was near perfect, with phenomenal atmosphere that can still get me even after all this time, and being able to upgrade and buy new weapons added even more fun and reason to replay it. On last count, I've played this game well over 50 full playthroughs, making it my most played game of all time, at least in terms of times completed. Reliving this experience for the first time would be nothing short of amazing.

Minecraft, Souls games, Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac. All were very secret heavy and are some of my favorite games.

Oblivion probably. Blew me away and got me into the Elder Scrolls series.

Terraria. Especially now with everything they've added to the game. Going into that game before knowing what the actual scope of it was, it seemed like the possibilities were endless. When I finally broke down and looked up the wiki, it didn't really have an effect on the amount of fun I was having, but the game lost some of its magic. Suddenly I knew what the scope was and I knew what the endgame was. I'd love to just go back and blindly explore for hours and hours with the sky being the limit again.

Mass Effect trilogy.

Or Streets of Rage 2.

Fallout 3. It was the first time I played an open world game like that. I had no previous experience with Bethsoft or Fallout games either, so I had no idea what to expect. A friend just brought it over and had me try it. I don't know in this age of me researching everything that comes out that I can ever have that feeling again.

World of Warcraft, easily. The sense of wonderment when I first started the game and actually feeling like a part of this fully realized world was unmatched. Now I know it too well and it's just another game - I miss the original sense of awe.

Uncharted 2 and Fallout 3. No doubt about it. Playing those games made me love playing games again.

hmmm. The problem with some games is that I'd want to forget everything that came out subsequently to them too. Like if I could rewind time and go back to 1998, I would fucking love to experience Metal Gear Solid again but now, with all the knowledge I have about the series and where gaming in in general has gone since, it wouldn't be nearly as cool.

Skyrim is another one.

I'd go for FF7 or Dark Souls. FF7 was my first foray into rpgs and the game that cemented my love for gaming.

Dark Souls to get all that original tension back. "This graveyard looks a nice place to go first", aww, look at these cute little frog-like critters" and "oh, it seems like I didn't hurt that ghost" are some of the moments I'd love to experience fresh again.

Bioshock. I didn't really pay much attention to the media build-up before release, so I came at it very uninformed. I think it will be a while before I get an experience that rewarding again.

No kidding. I remember when I was questing in Westfall, I looked at the map and looked at all the zones, and I realized that I've seen only a fraction of this humongous open world. The sense of awe and just pure excitement I felt then is something that I will probably NEVER feel again in a video game - hell, I remember getting completely lost in Elywnn Forest of all places. Exploring the world of one of my favorite video game franchises was just absolutely mind-blowing for me. I remember exploring the Dam in Loch Modan for the first time, exploring the outside of Karazhan before it was an instance, exploring Un'goro crater... Holy shit I could talk all day about my nostalgia for that freaking game.

Shadow of the Colossus is another game I think I'd love to experience again for the first time.

Maybe final fantasy 2 (4). I would love to relive that weird but awesome feeling when I slowly realized the random $65 game I picked with no foreknowledge would turn into one of my favorite games.

Surprised no one said The Last of Us yet.Even just to experience that opening for the first time again would be fantastic. Dark Souls 1 and Spelunky are good calls.

My backlog is too big to want to forget something and replay it just for the hell of it. :P

Either Fallout 3, Dark Souls 1 or Vanilla WoW.

Dragon's Dogma.

The combat was a revelation and the ending was the biggest WTF mindf%ck I've ever seen in gaming.

Super Mario 64 would be another. Seeing the gaming world in 3d was like putting on glasses for the first time.

Alan Wake, with runners-up Half-Life 1 and Deus Ex 1. Ocarina of Time was also real special.

Persona 3, I loved every second of it and the ending really hit me, but since then I've absorbed so much Persona that I'm a little burnt out on it and don't hold it as fondly as I used to.

Dark Souls I'd say. It's a game that benefits greatly from being played blind, and losing any memories of my last experiences wouldn't be as disappointing as it would in a more character/story focused game.

Journey, for sure. My first time playing that game was the closest I've got to a spiritual experience.

That game about darkened souls.

Super Metroid, hands down. Despite playing the game a hundred times I still have fun with it. I can only imagine my excitement if I got to explore the map and find all the powerups for the first time again.

TimeSplitters 2. Man I loved that game when I was a teenager.

I would choose to forget every game I ever used a guide or looked up help on, so I can play those games legitimately.

Well how do you know you liked if you haven't played it? oops was I not supposed to overanalyze that? >_>

I know it's lame, but... Mass Effect 2. I was giddy with excitement throughout that entire first play through. Ehh my real answer is probably Super Mario World. Yep, Super Mario World.

Either Fallout 3 or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Two epic games that if I had the chance to experience one or the other for the first time again, with another 100+ hour play-through to invest in.

FFX, though it would also help if I was 12 again as well.

Batman: Arkham Asylum. I went into that with the extent of my knowledge being that they'd gotten a huge chunk of the gang from Batman: The Animated Series back together and that it was a third person action-adventure game with stealth elements. I was a little nervous about whether or not it would live up to the hype, and it turned out to be %&$&ing phenomenal. It was, and is, one of the best games that I have ever played.

Gosh, it's hard to say without nostalgia coming into play. I'm tempted to say Grim Fandango as I loved that game but it did have massive flaws and parts I just hated (looking at you petrified forest). I have some great memories of the Monkey Island series too as some teacher in my school (who was clearly awesome) let us play it and when I got my first computer as a teenager my dad bought me a collection with Secret, Revenge and Curse. I guess many of my memories of gaming as a child also extended to outside of that game whereby the experience wasn't simply related to just the game itself. When I used to walk to school, my best friends brothers friend and I would talk about Shenmue almost daily. We weren't even close but we found this topic that both of us really enjoyed and while we both really liked Shenmue, we also used to make a lot of fun of the silly aspects like finding sailors, driving a forklift and how no one could say Ryu.

If I could relive one gaming moment though, it'd probably be Fez. There was something just very special about that game that I don't think a lot of people were expecting. It always had great style but on the surface it looked very much just like a simple platformer with this 2D look but was actually in 3D but the end result was just so much more. To this day I do wonder if we found all of the secrets that game had to offer.

EDIT: no changed my mind. PSO. I pick PSO with my original crew and using cheat shit to level 200 running around with spread needles doing max damage.

All of them.

Fable, The Witcher 1, Mass Effect series, Dragon age Origins

Red Dead Redemption, Persona 4, or season 1 of Telltale's Walking Dead.

Shadow of the Colossus. Its biggest flaw is that learning the puzzle of defeating the colossi never changes. Most playthroughs will be almost identical. I was so excited for the HD remaster only to zip through the fights in no time because I remembered it all too clearly.

I'd love to have that first playthrough again.

Honestly, probably Pokemon Red. I remember when I played Red for the first time when I was in fourth or fifth grade and not worrying about making a crazy high leveled team or worrying too much about type advantages. I didn't worry about grinding out a good team or anything like that. I just played the game without fully understanding the mechanics and learned as I went along.

If I had one other choice it probably would be Dark Cloud or Dark Cloud 2. I remember when I first tried to play that game I had no idea what was going on. I was probably too young when I first tried playing it. But I really appreciate what that game was doing, incorporating so many ideas into an RPG. Damnit I really want a Dark Cloud 3.

I don't know how the game would feel these days to a newcomer, but World of Warcraft would be an easy solution. Then again, if that would start another near ten year cycle of being hooked to a single game...

Grim Fandango would be a good choice...but then I'd have to leave that lovely world behind me again.

I have a few but at the top of the list I would probably say the first Max Payne. Though that game just hit me at the exact right time with all my teenage angst and love for noir crime dramas. I love that God damn game.

A close second would be Day of The Tentacle. And at close third I would go with Bioshock.

It's hard to top my first experience with any of these games and I would gladly wipe my mind of them so I could do it all over again.

I dunno, there might be a lot. Strangely I think the game that has had the most emotional impact on me that I would go for again was The Walking Dead Season 1. A lot of games that have crazy twists or surprising things happen I usually don't react to in the same way that other people seem to. Like Aeris dying or finding out that you're Revan in KOTOR. I was usually like oh... okay, and moved on. But that journey towards the end to get back Clem and then on the verge of death helping her survive on her own I thought was really endearing and heartbreaking.

Everquest when it was first released... minus the parents and dial-up modem :/.

I've thought about this all day. And I've come to the conclusion of no game. Because to experience an older game for the first time now, would ruin the game. It would not be as good as it was back then when it was new. Games progress rapidly. Tech improves every year. Graphics get better every year. Mechanics have come a long way in the last 10 years. So to try and experience an older game for the first time now, after having experienced other newer, maybe better games, would ruin that game. So you would most likely not have as good of an experience as the one you had the first time. Even a game from just a few years ago, you might not have the same experience. I mean what if you loved that game from two years ago. Had it removed from your memory. And then hated it the second time. That would kinda suck.

UC2, RE4, TLOU

last of us mgs4.

Quite a few come to mind but Minecraft would be high on the list.

Discovering the crafting, the recipes, and the rules of that game was a wonderful series of happy accidents. The slow discovery of that game's design was a series of great surprises. Eventually getting deeper and deeper has changed my perspective of the game. It's something to be won now, to find a state of balance with the design. When I first played it the game was actively challenging me but now it's just a puzzle with the same pieces over and over again.

World of Warcrafr was a huge innovation in game industry. I also enjoyed Fifa 98 a lot when it was released. Regarding iOS games, I loved cut the rope the first time I played it. Knight Withstand also is another great iOS game!

EverQuest.

Without a doubt EverQuest.

Minecraft (I remember being tense as hell on the first night of that game), Super Smash Bros for 64 (just pure joy all around), Shadow of the Colossus(getting to the end kinda hit me hard), Mario 64 (the freedom of movement was amazing at the time! and the world felt so alive!), and Sonic Adventure (I want my hero back :( ).

Journey & World of Warcraft

@sterling: While I said that you would forget everything you knew about the game, I think I should have clarified and said, "everything you remember about your experience of the game". For example, I could know what type of game Resident Evil 4 was. I just wouldn't remember any of the finer details of actually playing it. It would be similar to researching a game you're interested in now before making a decision on whether you think it's worth your money.

Also, I never said it had to be an older game. It could be a game you played 2 years ago, 10+ years ago or yesterday. RE4 has held up incredibly well, as have other games that are nearing 10 years old. Dead Space is 7 years old and is still fantastic. Gears of War is about 9 years old, and still has rock solid gameplay, and decent graphics. That is, they're not as distracting to some people as playing some old games from several generations ago.

I do somewhat understand the fear of not liking a game or ruining it though. Nostalgia sometimes gets the best of us, and we may remember things as much better then than we may like now. However, considering I've played RE4 throughout the passed decade, I'm going to say that it's all but a certainty that I would still enjoy it just as much. Oh well, I just thought it would be an interesting topic. To each his own.

I'm not trying to be rude. I was just clarifying, as it sounded like there might have been some confusion.

Civilization IV.

The amount of possibilities and paths I saw when I first started playing that game dominated my mind for years.

Persona 3, absolutely.