When I was in middle school, I bought Arkham Asylum and later City on my MacBook without my parents knowing. They didn’t like video games and didn’t want me owning a system or anything, so I made my own App Store account to get what ever I could. I liked Batman, and the Arkham games looked cool from their App Store pages. I played through both with a track pad and keyboard, honestly blown away that “app games” could be this amazing! I had no idea they were so influential, famous, and important games in the genre, nor that they are often regarded as some of the best ever made (obviously up for debate, but the point stands as the Arkham games are almost unanimously praised).

Later, in college, my room mate had a PS3 and would let me use it when he was busy. He had a girlfriend he spent most of his time with, so I got to play a ton and he had Red Dead Redemption. I had a similar experience of going in blind to games in general and just how lauded that game was.

This pattern was broken at this point because I became aware of online gaming discourse and the landscape of the medium in general. But I find it cool that I was playing truly great games as a blind introduction to gaming.

Does anyone have similar experiences?