This is gonna sound crazy but Star Wars Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. It was the first game I played on a computer we got when I was in the 4th grade and since then I've made it a tradition to make that the first game I play on any new computer.
To my knowledge it wasn't even a technical power house when it came out but it is always interesting to see it run at resolutions way higher than it was intended for
Flight Simulator 2020, went from a i7 4790k / 1080Ti to a 5800X3D / 3090, insane performance.
Don’t get me wrong my former build was insane, almost 7 years of use, and still kicking.
Pioneer, Ficsit will be upping all personal quotas related to Project Assembly. Currently 100% of your projects are related to Project Assembly. Projection of average quota increases will be directly related to the upgrades made on your new personal computer.
Hell yeah! I knew it was supposed to be good. Looks super cool. I played 2016 multiplayer a decent amount. I also tried 1993 around that time. Very dated, but I could see why it was so popular
DOOM Eternal. Really fun game if you're into fast paced shooters with fun movement mechanics. I loved the 2016 DOOM reboot and Eternal is even better in a lot of ways imo.
Is this some kind of joke I'm too young to understand...? Quake came out in 1999 yeah, that's like saying UT99 is a good benchmark, but I havent played on a pc that cant run UT99
I have an Odyssey CRG9. It seems so absurd at first, but after a while it makes using any 16:9 monitor feel cramped as hell. Just be aware ultrawide support is lacking at times, but nothing you can't tweak around. Took me about a month of use to get everything to where I don't have to think about it much anymore.
Ark Survival Evolved. Been playing it through two GPU-only and one full-PC upgrade. So satisfying to see the game situations which used to send FPS into the single digits, now stay above 60 FPS at all times. (Yes, the game is that horribly optimized.)
I've only technically upgraded twice in my life- First time when I got my first gaming computer, a Dell G7 laptop with i7/1060 MaxQ, and when I upgraded around a month ago to a proper desktop with Ryzen 7700X and Radeon 6700 XT.
For the Dell G7, the first game I remember booting up was Minecraft, since on my old ass laptop before, I couldn't run it without optifine, and even then, it was barely hitting 20 frames. The smooth camera movement was a breath of fresh air.
For the desktop I just got, I had a few choices, since there were games in my steam library that ran pretty poorly on my Dell G7 that I was waiting to play when got an upgrade. Between Days Gone and Cyberpunk 2077, I opted to test out Days Gone first. Still working on beating it, but the performance upgrade still amazes me
Playing on Linux, having updates in the background almost daily, so every game I guess, I only play DCS and a little war thunder these days though, so I think the answer would be DCS, flying a little bit through the beautiful sky and eternal insanity of the growling sidewinder.