Ico: the bridge, pretty much the defining moment in all of gaming so far for me. I play a lot of games, and many of them are 'good', I can enjoy them on a superficial level. I would happy call something like Uncharted 2 an incredible game, but in reality, the gulf between Uncharted 2 and Ico is a gaping chasm so large as to almost separate them as a medium. The bridge is that perfect instance where game design crossed with storytelling in a way that actually elevated video games.
Braid: the ending, another instance of what I mentioned above. The story of Braid is obtuse, by design, it's a puzzle, which doesn't come into focus until you have every piece. Lots of games do twists, this just did it far better than others.
Journey: the antagonism. Flower did this in a way, I was surprised when Flower turned a darker tone, and actual conflict was introduced, but I was pretty stunned when Journey did it, I was actually fearful too. The lack of UI means you don't really know the repercussions of being attacked, you have no sense of the strength or mortality of your character when you're faced with stone dragons, but they're large, and foreboding. It was wonderful.
Nier: the ending. Specifically the first ending. Unlike much of GAF, I hate the other endings, and don't think you ever need to play the New Game +, because it tells you nothing you shouldn't have already known, it's like watching Contact after watching 2001.
Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen - massive battle near the end between two raging armies and you. Brought the PSone to it's knees.
FFVII: All the beautiful cinematics, Nobuo's music, and that first summon.
Half Life: the opening tram sequence had me hook, line, and sinker.
Ultima VII: when I left the opening town of Trinsic for the first time, with the iconic 'Stones' piece playing in the background, and realising that I could go anywhere and do anything.
Wing Commander III: landing on the TCS Victory.
Uncharted 2: Nepalese village and the ice cavern.
Dead Space 2: At the Marker artefact and the station is shaking on it's foundations.
Mass Effect 3: enjoyed it all the way to the ... end.
Journey: the sequences in the gifs, and at the end where that beautiful theme (Apotheosis?) accompanies so fittingly.
There's a part in Fear Effect where one of the three main characters you play as
gets his arm lopped off about three quarters of the way through the game by the big bad. That left me pretty stunned by itself, but when he regains consciousness in the last act, leaving you to play as a man only able to wield one firearm instead of two, that was unexpected! With half the firepower, it made an already difficult game that much harder.
The eagle-like colossus in SotC. Figuring out for the first time that you have to grab onto it as it flies towards you, and then actually pulling it off. It was just insane.
FF7 (dat nostalgia)
Shadow of the Colossus
EVE Online (for the sheer scale of things, the battles, the resources, the logistics I had seen being part of a huge corp.)
Just Cause 2
Journey
Xenoblade (via Dolphin)
Psychonauts - Black Velvetopia
You have to admit, Psychonauts looks sometimes really like an uprezzed N64 game. But man, they really tried to push the graphical limitation and use it in such creative ways. They managed to do such impressive stuff with that tech and it's absolutely wonderful. And not just from a graphical point, later you're also doing some Wrestling.
Psychonatus has more creativity in one level than many games in their entirety.
Mischief Makers - Ceberus Alpha
Another game that shows that having good graphics doesn't necessarily mean that it is awesome. What's not awesome about a boss who rides a wolf-motorcycle-transformer while you ride on a mecha-cat who's on a missile and where you catch missiles laser beams and send them back? And that's not nostalgia, guys, I played that just one year ago.
Beyond Good and Evil - The Chase Scenes
One of the first heavily scripted action scenes I ever played and it still holds up well. This comes right after a stealth section that does everything right. There is also the fight against the first two bosses, one that happens five minutes into the game (Zelda creators, takes notes) and one that is a smoother version of the volvagia fight from Ocarina of Time.
Minish Cap - Gyrogs
After some excellent temple Link encounters a pair of oversized Gyrogs. The best part is that the whole fight takes place up in the sky, while the bosses are moving in high-speed and you actually jump between them to defeat them. One of the best Zelda fights ever created.
Final Fantasy XII- The whole thing
One of the most wonderful RPGs I ever had the pleasure to play. The scale and level of detail in this game is simply amazing, and there are so many hidden areas many players won't even notice. Sure, some of these suck, like the northern sandsea, but it's still a very impressive game. Everytime I got into a new area, I was in awe.
Condemned: Criminal Origins: Chasing (or being chased by) a serial killer around a desolate, abandoned farmhouse, in the dark. Also, those fucking mannequins in the department store.
The intro of Final Fantasy VI. For me, it was the epitome of literally being blown away after years of coverage, interviews, previews.
A nugget of info about the story and the lore. The march towards Narshe. The snow storm. The credits. The graphics. That music. Everything perfectly, expertly, beautifully woven together that brought and raised my anticipations to surreal levels. And it matched every single one.
Uncharted 2 - the Village in chapter 16. Astonishing, superlative moment in the game and an indication of what masters ND dev team are when it came to pacing.
MGS4 - Microwave moment, All Split screen moments in the game.
I might get flamed for this one, but Assassin's Creed III was visually impressive. Others would be:
Xenoblade: 100% of it. Seriously, best on the Wii.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution: all of it.
Far Cry 3: all of it.
System Shock 2: holy shit I'm 30 minutes in and this is amazing
The Last Story: visually impressive for SD, battle system, story, etc.
Sanitarium (PC): most fucked up game I've ever played. Awesome game.
Crisis Core: FINAL FANTASY VII: Probably the best game on the PSP, the visuals are crisp, the sound is great, and the story is great, too. Probably the best modern FF. (since X that is, looking forward to getting past the first 2 hours in XII though)
There's much more, but those are just a few I can think of.
1. Opening of DMC3 (the bar fight). Really set the tone for how great a game it would be.
2. Watching two older guys play Marvel vs. Capcom (original) in an arcade and performing all the moves my child self couldn't do. Especially with megaman
Halo 4 mainly because it's graphically leaps and bounds above the other Halo games. I just started it not having followed the game at all and was pretty blown away during the first few missions.
In one of the first mission, you're rescuing your informant from a casino. You bust him out of the casino, and as you're escaping, you're attacked by choppers. Now in any other game, you'd have to shoot down the choppers or go through some fancy QTE to escape. Not this game. No, in this game, you can grapple up to one of the choppers, throw out the pilot, and then use your commandeered chopper to shoot down the other chopper. I was laughing with glee at this point!
First time I saw a videogame at relative's house (Home Pong).
Sitting in the back of a taxi in GTAIV taking in the city and life.
First time immersing myself into a RPG / Dungeon crawler on my Amiga (Dungeon Master and Bloodwych). Spent up to 12 hour sessions on those at the time..
Mother 3: The whole game (ESPECIALLY the ending) hooked me, but I think this was the first big moment that really hit me and just amazed me with what they did with the game. Spoilers in the picture: http://nightmaremode.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Mother_3_1.png
Killzone 2 - First time I went through Salamun Bridge during the campaign. It felt like everything Guerrilla was trying to do fell into place and the game just felt beyond anything I'd played up to that point. Still one of the coolest, most amazing moments in this gen for me.
Final Fantasy VIII - The assault on Galbadia Garden blew my mind. More specifically, when you are fist fighting with a Galbadian soldier handing from the hover mech flying around both Garden's and then landing with Rinoa and running through the fighting on the ground. Actually playing the game while this incredible FMV is playing in the background absolutely stunned me. Something I'll never forget.
Super Mario World - Discovering and playing through Star Road was amazing in and of itself, but then you discover there are even more levels to be played after that which, when finished up, completely transform all enemies in the game. There were so many things to find and unlock in this game. So much content. It was simply mindblowing.
The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past - This game single handedly sold me on a SNES. At the time I was still playing my NES casually and disliked the SNES taking over. I already knew about Zelda through magazines, the saturday morning cartoon and the NES games which I played at a friend's. Then I met this boy at a camping spot where me and my parents spent the holiday sometime in 1993. He owned a SNES and had it with him together with Zelda. One day I watched him play it and I got completely mezmerized by the visuals, the music, the gameplay...everything about it was just magical to me. I clearly remember him being stuck on Aghanim since he didn't know how to defeat him and hearing stories about a second world where you turned into a rabbit. It really played to my imagination. I even remember dreaming about it several times. My parents must've noticed, because a couple months later they bought me a SNES. My life was never the same after that. It was what got me into gaming indefinetly. There's no other game in existence that made such a profound impression on me as this one.
Secret of Mana - Back then, there weren't many RPGs being released for consoles in Europe. This was one of the few and what an experience it was. Zelda instilled my desire to play more of these types of games and SoM more than delivered. The visuals, the music, the story, the gameplay, the scale, it was simply the best I had experienced in games up to that point.
Doom - I was so fucking scared of this game. So much adrenaline. So much blood and gore for such a young kid. So it was mostly the atmosphere of this game that really got to me. It wasn't until years later that I realized all the other genious aspects of this all time classic.
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - This game just blew my mind as a kid. Wait, you can BUY YOUR OWN HOUSE? And you can be thrown into prison? There's actual weather and a day and night cycle? You can ride a horse? The world is entirely open and you can basically go anywhere and do anything you want? You have to rest and feed yourself? The game was way too hard and too complex for my young mind at the time, but it did show me how huge an RPG could be. It's also one of the reasons why OoT, at time of release, never really managed to impress me with it's so called amazing overworld, horseback riding and day/night cycle. Daggerfall did all at least two years earlier.
King's Quest VI - Another game which was too hard for me at the time (you have to realize that English isn't my native tongue and the game wasn't translated to Dutch in any way) but it did leave a profound impression on me. It was just amazing to me that you could die in an adventure game by simply making the wrong decisions. It made the game incredibly tense for some reason. I was also very impressed by the photorealistic (for the time) faces and the FMV intro. Things I hadn't really experienced before.
Donkey Kong Country - The commercials for this sold me single handidly. Impressive visuals, impressive sound. Then that one level with the changing weather comes along and you are amazed again.
Super Mario 64 - Funnily enough, I never owned a N64 let alone this game. I did own a promotional videotape containing all the launch titles and there were plenty of demo pods scattered around shops. As a long time Nintendo/Mario fan, I was fully amazed by Mario in 3D. Especially since it was something I envisioned happening in the future as a kid a couple years before. I played that tape so many times, it's kinda crazy that I never actually got to own a N64 and this game. I became a full time pc gamer around that time actually.
Tomb Raider - Dat T-Rex!
Z - The concept of an RTS was still foreign to me at the time. We found a copy of this game lying around on a parking lot and took it with us, just to check it out. The game amazed me with it's unusual yet addicting gameplay mechanics. I became a fervent RTS player for quite some time after that.
Unreal - Amazing graphics! That's about it actually, since I never owned the game myself. It did make me realize that gaming had a bright future ahead of itself.
Half-Life - There are so many memorable scenes from this game. Probably since it was the first time a story was told in such an immersive manner from a first person perspective. Also, the AI was just crazy at the time.
Final Fantasy VII - Finally getting out of Midgar where a huge adventure was still waiting for me. The music was the perfect companion to this feeling.
StarCraft - This game was the first time I got fully immersed in the storyline of an RTS. Everything in this game worked so incredibly well. Still the best RTS experience I've ever had.
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn - My first serious foray into western RPGs and still the best. It starts out okayish while you try to escape the opening dungeon. After that, the game becomes completely overwhelming with all the freedom and options it presents you. Such an amazing game.
Final Fantasy VIII - Specifically the way it applied FMV's to overcome the PS1's limitations and still deliver an epic experience. I've never seen it used in such a profound way since.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Omaha Beach, that is all...
Max Payne - Bullet time, so shortly after the release of The Matrix, was just the best thing ever. I clearly remember how many people complained that it was such a short game (8-10 hours which is rather standard fare for an action game nowadays), but it didn't matter to me because it was all so good.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - The story was just completely insane, yet so incredibly immersive and unique. I never experienced anything like this from a story point of view before and ever since (MGS3 comes close though). Also, the first time I got to see this game was at a friend's place who just bought himself a PS2. Before seeing this game in action, as a pc gamer, I thought the PS2 was a piece of shit with terrible visuals. After seeing the game, I was thoroughly impressed. It got me back into console gaming (with a GCN at first though) and made me give up on pc gaming for quite a while.
Halo- I really liked the Silent Cartographer demo level which could be played at stores around launch time. I was very sceptical of the Xbox and was expecting it to fail miserably (it was overpriced in Europe and really didn't sell well at first), but Halo kind of managed to lay my sceptisism to rest, at least for a bit. Months later, I was introduced to it's four player multiplayer and I thought to myself: wow, this has loads of potential!
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Sailing out for the first time, seagulls flying overhead and dat adventurous music! Also,
descending down into sunken Hyrule
.
Metroid Prime - Stepping out onto Tallon IV for the first time, seeing the raindrops fall on Samus' visor. Such an amazing eye for detail. All the while the eerie music was playing in the background and this beautiful, well realized world slowly opened up to me. What an amazing experience!
Silent Hill 2 - Could never play this for more than an hour, maybe two...Which is exactly why it was so incredibly good and unforgettable.
GTA: San Andreas - My hype for this game was through the roof at the time. It still managed to impress. I clearly remember the first time driving out of Los Santos into the wide open country side and being utterly amazed by the sheer scale of it all.
God of War - Hydra battle...Is this REALLY running on the PS2? It single handedly redefined the term 'epic'.
Shadow of the Colossus - Again, is this still the PS2 I'm playing this on? It starts out amazing you with it's wide open world and beautiful, bleak atmosphere. Then the first Colossus comes around and the game amazes you again with it's sheer scale. And then every single Colossus after that. The game never let up.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Getting out of that first dungeon and having this huge overworld right before you. It was my first experience on the Xbox 360 and then and there I knew the next generation had arrived.
World of Warcraft - My first (and last) experience with an MMORPG. So utterly immersive. There was so much territory to explore and beautiful sights to see. Everything else was secondary to me. I could just play this for hours on end.
Gears of War - Dat cover based mechanic. I was just amazed by how smooth the gameplay was and how great it all looked. It was also the first game I played in online co-op, which was a memorable experience as well.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - This was back when scripted, cinematic gameplay styles weren't as commonplace as they are now. In fact, this game kinda kickstarted it. I was thoroughly impressed by All Ghillied Up (that was the name of the mission right?). It was so incredibly tense.
Grand Theft Auto 4 - Funnily enough, this didn't really click with me until years after first playing it. As with San Andreas, I was very hyped beforehand. At first, the game seemed to deliver on all fronts, but I eventually got bored of it. After returning to it and playing it in a certain deliberate way, the game managed to immerse me into it's world like hardly any game has managed before. Easily one of the best realised game worlds ever conceived.
Assassin's Creed - We've all become so used to it now, but the first time walking through the crowds of people on the street, the first time climbing up a tower and taking in the sights, the first time running and jumping across the rooftops...it was all completely amazing.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - I never expected to become so immersed in such a staticly presented game just by virtue of it's writing. Just great.
Uncharted - Mostly due to it's animations. From the faces in the cutscenes to the way Drake moved around the world. It was truly on a different level entirely.
Super Mario Galaxy - An amazing, magical experience from start to finish. I clearly remember playing Battle Rock Galaxy for the first time; the gameplay, controls, level design, visuals and music fusing together in perfect harmony and halfway through the level it suddenly struck me: THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER MADE!
Bioshock - The first time stepping into Rapture is just unforgettable. The game is so tightly designed, it's really impressive. Also, you'll never forget your first running into a Big Daddy.
Braid - As soon as the music started playing and I started walking around in this painting of a world, it grabbed me by the balls and didn't let go until the very end.
Dead Space - People recommended me to play this on Hard. I'm happy I did. What an incredibly tense and frightful experience. So incredibly well designed. The second game was very good as well, but you never forget your first time, as they say.
Crysis - The first time I tried this game out, it didn't really click with me. I didn't get very far, was too obsessed with playing stealthily and it also didn't run all that well on my rig. At least not on the graphical settings on which I wanted to experience it. Two years later I tried it again on a better rig, the freeform gameplay clicked with me a couple hours in and I started to love it. Best shooter of this generation just by virtue of it's gameplay, not it's visuals.
Portal 2 - Yes, the first Portal was a unique and very polished experience, but it was the second outing which really managed to impress me with it's much lengthier campaign, a completely seperate and wonderfully designed co-op mode and of course the amazing last battle. Possibly the best finisher I've ever seen.
I wonder if there will come another game this generation which manages to amaze me as much as the games mentioned above. I have a feeling I'll have to wait until the next generation of consoles come along.
One moment you're on what seems to be it's own isolated level and the next it's getting ripped apart and you find you're self on top of a desert dodging debris from the level you were in to try and get to a parachute only to land on a "new" level, all without load screens.
I've had it lying around. I would have liked to finish it by including the laugh, but I don't think I have the editing skills to make it convincing during the zoom-in.
this area before 3rd Colossus in HD version gives me shivers every time I enter it. And all locations are a work of art. I'm even more amazed what the team could achieve on the PS2, it's mind boggling.
Most recently was L.A. Noire. Those faces were awe inspiring; never managed to finish the game though.
Fight Night round 3 is a moment I don' think will ever be replicated or beaten. I stood in front of the kiosk at GameStop for a good 10 minutes just staring at it.
I could go on forever, so I'll just focus on this current gen.
Braid - That moment when you are so moved by the story, but you were not sure what it meant until you read up on it further. It forever solidified that game as a masterpiece in my mind. And knowing the deeper meaning of the story, that opening image just means so much more.
BioShock - The game sucked me in right away when I fell into the water and found that lone tower in the middle of the ocean. The atmosphere and story just got better from there.
Assassin's Creed II - When you realize how the side quests add so much color to the main story. Not many games get this right and the secrets you uncover make you feel like you're uncovering some actual truths in our real world. Super effective!
Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 - I was always disappointed that Nintendo didn't go HD last gen, but the Mario Galaxy games were just drop dead gorgeous from start to finish. Level design was also masterful.
Borderlands - When you realize the game really wants you to help your friends level up quickly so you can play together as opposed to punishing folks for not having time to play together all the time.
Batman: Arkham Asylum - Came out of nowhere and knocked it out of the park in every department.
Fez - Maybe it was made by someone people feel is a little abrasive, but this is a gamer's game. It demands you figure shit out without any hand holding. Just amazing.
Portal 2 - Masterful storytelling, fantastic characters and airtight level design. Not sure how Valve does it!
Red Dead Redemption - Loved what they did with the ending. I wish more developers would experiment with ideas like this.
I won't go into detail anymore, but these games are also just fantastic:
Mass Effect 2
Left 4 Dead
Grand Theft Auto IV
Professor Layton
Fire Emblem Awakening
Ni No Kuni
Bastion
Limbo
LittleBigPlanet
I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can remember. This generation has seen some amazing software. If I went further back, I'd take up 3-4 pages on GAF.
I could pick a ton if I could remember them... The most recent one would be Infinite Space on the DS, not a perfect game but overall it was a great experience. Spoilers if you haven't beaten the game... This thread is spoiler central anyway.
The entire game you're travelling an unknown (to you, not the characters) galaxy: the Small Magellanic Cloud. After 40 or so hours playing in it you finally go back to the Solar System, passing planets which the characters know nothing about (but you do), then you reach Earth and see how barren it is, the Sun is completely blocked off by a power generator. It just... I don't know how to explain that initial feeling.
Oh and there's Xenoblade. The final scenes in space were very similar to Infinite Space so it was kinda boring. But the landscapes in Mechonis Field, Gaur Plains and seeing the Mechonis from the Bionis were just spectacular; especially with the music. And when you realise Fallen Arm is a hand before you know the place is called "Fallen Arm".
The very first time it gets dark in Silent Hill. If I remember correctly, you pass through a particular house as it's the only way to get to the school, the first major area in the game. As soon as you exit out into the backyard, the sirens flare up, it gets dark, and enemies are everywhere. Incredible sequence as far as mood-setting stuff goes. Definitely better than anything RE's managed, at any rate.
I remember my friend in college was a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls games. He was telling me about Oblivion coming out and how hyped he was for it. I still had yet to get a new console, I pretty much only played action games on PS2. I remember watching him start Oblivion when it was finally released. The moment he stepped out of the sewers.....my mind was blown. I couldn't comprehend that you could go pretty much anywhere in the world. It was amazing. For the next hour I was just pointing at places in the world for him to trek out to and explore.
Holy crap that was mindblowing too. I remember playing that over a friends house who just got a N64. I never even entered the castle. I was amazed by just running around and doing flips and handstands in the trees.
Recently it was when i first saw Ni no kuni's world map.Even though i had seen it before (in videos and screenshots) when i first got a chance to play it in the demo my jaw dropped.
This gen? Playing Red Dead Redemption on my new HDTV absolutely floored me. I. Said. God. Damn. GoW 3 Poseidon boss fight was also orgasmic.
Last gen, I was blown away by the Ifrit summoning and overdrive animation in FFX. MGS2 was also pretty much "Holy fucking shit" the game the first time I played it. God of War 1 and 2... way too many moments to even count.....
Recently Witcher 2. I hated the first game because of the combat so gave up a few hours in but gave Witcher 2 a shot. Started off slow but grew to love it.
What amazed me though is the fact depending on your choice early on, the game almost takes on a totally different tone of sorts. There is a "what if" of sorts for many major events. I figured it was subtle but after ending it I saw a post stating one the characters is a fucking
Dragon
. I had no idea of that during my initial play through and fucking killed the
Dragon
with no care. I started a new game as I had to see how that played out and was amazed how it was almost a completely different game.
Witcher 2 stands as the only game I've every replayed from the near beginning to see how different the story unfolds..
