[Closed] Your greatest video game moment

I remembered a moment on the original Resident Evil last night,

I was talking about that only the other day. It's right near the start too, so you're still working out what the controls are. Definitely an iconic moment, I pooed myself.

The technology and money behind them has allowed the creation of a new form of art that is not quite like cinema and not quite like a novel, but related.

That's only part of it though, the palette with which games are drawn has expanded beyond all imagination through things like MMOs, user generated content, motion sensors, mobile interfaces. Lots of great games, Minecraft, WII Sports and Angry Birds for example, are still just "a bit of fun" and lean heavily on the classics of the past* whilst making use of all the advantages of modern technology. Simplicity is still a massive part of gaming, it's just a lot more complicated than it used to be...

*interestingly in all of those occasions the classics they lean on aren't just computer games.

First game ever where I've been genuinely nervous entering a new room.

Silent Hill could really screw with your psyche too.

The game hopped between your reality and a 'nightmare' reality which was the same map but hellish, with everythng decaying and... 'stuff' dripping off the walls.

There's one point where you're milling about and there's a filing cabinet starts rattling about to itself. You go and tentatively open it and... a cat leaps out. Phew.

Later on, you're in the nightmare realm, and encounter the same cabinet...

Oh,

Remember Dungeon Master? 16-bit dungeon crawler based over several levels (15? Maybe). Every time you went up and down between levels, it'd load in the next level from disk. Other than that, it didn't touch the disk.

Except, every now and again, you'd get to a corner or something, and the disk would spin up. "What was that?" you'd think, "what the hell has it just loaded?" Properly tense.

Years later I read an interview with creators FTL, and they were asked what it was doing. Turns out, it wasn't loading anything, they just put it in as a feature to freak people out. Sneaky bastards.

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So much nostalgia! I remember lan parties at uni playing ghost recon death matches. Killing friends with silenced sniper rifles was so satisfying.
more recently I've just finished The Last of Us for the first time (got the remastered version for PS4) and that game is a real journey. I have never before had the way I play a game altered so much by the story!

Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer, Desert Strike and Flashback all consumed my teens.

Well GTA3 is 14 years old and still plays well enough - albeit it looks quite naive by comparison to GTA V. The GTA series are arguably another example of the importance of writing.

This.

Sensible Soccer

Mongies United FC* for the win!

*Apparently I was a very inappropriate child.

Chinese dude I used to live with completed Street Fighter 2 Turbo (snes) with sound only - ie monitor unplugged!

Booting up the SNES
The nintendo sound
The opening notes of the Legend of Zelda themetune - a surefire precursor to an afternoon of superb gameplay

never really had that feeling again until Portal 2 nearly 20 years later.

Oh and getting just about any tape based game to load without crashing.

The Portal series is great, loved all the hidden rooms and clues about RATMAN

Earthworm Jim, cannon fodder seconded. Duke Nukem 3D

GTA V was no where near as good as IV, despite what modern rhetoric tells you. If story telling is part of the game, then V was rubbish.

Hell, the Lost and the Damned was better than the whole of GTA V, as was Gay Tony. Story was king.

However, one of the most stunning games ever, from an atmosphere point of view, was Shadow of the Collosus.

An absolute masterpiece of feeling in games, along with Ocarina of Time and Fallout 3.

Every second of Shadow of the Collosus was a best moment.

for me there were certain milestones..

the jump from spectrum to amiga

the jump from amiga to ps1

to be honest were spoilt now and most games dont have the playability of the old days, yes i have rose tinted specs on but very few games of late have made we go WOW!!

apart from

The last GTA
The uncharted series
And assasins creed blackflag

In fairness i dont think ill upgrade the ps3 to a ps4

omg..

Some great calls there. Cutting off heads in Barbarian had to be one of the most satisfying moves in gaming, the goblin booting the head off screen was just the cherry on top.

totally forgot about that!!

Once upon a time, I could get up late, slob about with breakfast watching Discovery channel, go for a ride, come back and play video games all evening.

I mean, I love my wife and kids and all, but at the same time I really miss those days!

botanybay - Member
GTA V was no where near as good as IV, despite what modern rhetoric tells you. If story telling is part of the game, then V was rubbish.

San Andreas > IV

V is all about the multiplayer though.

Agree with you on Shadow.

GTAV was the first decent GTA game since Vice City.

San Andreas, really?!

I enjoyed SA. But yes, IV was the best for story, but V managed to equalise with cool stuff and the landscape is fantastic.

botanybay

GTA V was no where near as good as IV, despite what modern rhetoric tells you. If story telling is part of the game, then V was rubbish.

That's your opinion and of course your entitled to it, but I don't agree. I fount GTA 4 to be clunky and lacking in the same wit or spark that San Andreas had. I didn't really connect with story. It's the only GTA I haven't played all the way through.

GTA 5 to me felt like a return to form and then some. I think the story suffered from having three characters (two would have sufficed) but it felt like a return to the same GTA universe and continuity as San An.

San Andreas [i]was[/i] V, but it had a decent story. And Vice City was the worst of the 3D GTAs apart from the soundtrack. Started playing IV again recently and there is honestly not one thing I like better in V. The handling, the soundtrack, the setting, the darkness, the feeling, its all there. Subtlety.

San Andreas was a cultural reference masterpiece of the early 1990s. Blink and you miss them references that enhance the experience, but don't detract from it if you don't get them.

GTA V had no subtlety, a problem with a lot of modern games, music, tv. It took the good bits of all the previous games and turned them into what Family Guy is to the Simpsons. A brash piece of shit. It may be wacky, we can all laugh at the silly jokes, but ultimately it has no soul, no heart.

That's what I was going to say. V and III were darkly comic, IV was overall quite serious. A matter of taste, but that's the problem with trying to do something new - people will always complain it's not like the old. TBH, IV could have done with being called something else - the arnarchic crime spree aspect didn't quite fit.

III was black, V cranked up the satire to frantic levels.

I found the 3 player thing to be a massive gimmick, along with the individual 'skills'. Haven't played the story game for over a year though, multiplayer is sooooo good.

Yeah Cougar, for sure, I've put more hours in SA than any other game I reckon, it had its annoying bits (having to go to the gym, eat, girlfriends) but that was less annoying than the bloody phone going off all the time in IV "Hello Nicko....IT'S YOUR COUSIN" the driving was awful too.

San Andreas had jetpacks, jump jets, two player local mode and a massive map. It was incredible!

botanybay

GTA V had no subtlety, a problem with a lot of modern games, music, tv. It took the good bits of all the previous games and turned them into what Family Guy is to the Simpsons. A brash piece of shit. It may be wacky, we can all laugh at the silly jokes, but ultimately it has no soul, no heart.

Again, it's a subjective matter. Your opinion is nothing more than an opinion but well done for asserting it as if it's fact. I liked it. I think that what it lacked if anything was layer and depth, and that is most likely a side effect of it's absolutely huge size and scope relative to the others. The humour, the subtlety was spread slightly thinner.
Calling a game that revels in robbery, murder, drug abuse and prostitution brash is a bit moot tbh. I think it had as much soul or heart as the others, it was just a black heart rendered all the blacker by it's leap forward in technology.

That's just like um, your opinion, man.

Anyway, my opinion IS fact, because I have actually [i]played[/i] GTA IV all the way through. Three times.

Plus, I'm right. And you know it.

No, that proves you're mad! Or a sadist. Or both. Or all three (four?).

Maybe, but apparently I have been granted the right to have my own opinion, which is rather deliciously kind. 😆

I didn't have to play it through to realise I didn't like it. The world was restrictive coming from SA. The driving and combat physics had been meddled with to their detriment.
The character of Nico was an unpleasant psychopath with no redeeming traits (at least Trevor has humour) and was impossible to engage or empathise with

The missions were formulaic and repetitious with little variety or freedom. The game lacked any defining "moments" that the others had.

It was a clear attempt by Rockstar to craft a slightly edgier and realistic world, but due to it's restrictive nature actually backfires.

GTA V might be brash, but it's brash in exactly the same spirit and tone as it's predecessors (except 4). And that's a fact.

Hey, don't express your opinion as fact. You're entitled to it and everything, but it's just your opinion.

I don't really get the love for the last few GTAs, Vice City was fairly involving and innovative but subsequent releases haven't really brought anything new - just polished the basics.

The missions are much the same, the gameplay has bigger cut scenes but that's about it, the general public are still essentially irrelevant due to their lack of AI and the police are still border-line omnipresent.

Best moments I can recall are wandering the wasteland in Fallout 3 for the first time, most of Shadowrun and winding some bloke off the clock on bf2 Kharg Island by sniping him and moving position - everytime he came for revenge I was somewhere different and by the time the round finished I was something like 11-0 up and got a load of incoherent abuse in a direct message after the game.

The scenery did it for me. Being able to steal an airliner and cruise around the landscape, and all the other crap you can get up to - it's great 🙂

You know, you can call me a heretic but I just have never ever 'got' the gta series! Just didn't appeal to me at all, I don't know what it was but even after hearing all my mates (who generally played and enjoyed the same games as me) rave about it, I just never saw it.

Now fallout 3, that's a different matter...

Yawn fest! Walk walk walk. Shoot zombies/mutants. Pick up cans. Walk walk walk.

Being able to pause during battles and use first aid removes all peril.

I played it a lot and really enjoyed discovering different bunkers etc but just got sooooooooo repetitive.

winding some bloke off the clock on bf2 Kharg Island by sniping him and moving position - everytime he came for revenge I was somewhere different and by the time the round finished I was something like 11-0 up and got a load of incoherent abuse in a direct message after the game.

There's nothing quite so much fun as dominating some poor sod in a variety of ways in TF2 and listening to the rage coming over the chat. These days it's mostly in incoherent Russian. 😀

Best moments - bits of the first Halo way back when, and bits of HL2 - Ravenholm and the bridge you jump across underneath on the girders with trains rattling the structure from above. So atmospheric.

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Lifer, well when you put it like that....

Battlefield Vietnam - Sneaking though the jungle, placing C4 in the back of enemy transport helis, getting in and crouching at the back, when everyones got in and we're flying.....proceed to run past everyone playing James Bond over teamspeak.....jumping out the back and parachuting whilst detonating the C4.

IL2 Sturmovik - in epic multiplayer dogfights with lots of co-operation.

Mass Effect 1 - so memorable.

Borderlands in Splitscreen

I loved HL3 mostly, the capital wasteland's just a brilliant place... But I got to disliking it in the cities when they decided to make it basically an enormous, slow maze, and at higher levels everything was just so bullet-spongey, so I just hung it up. Actually now I think of it I never finished Oblivion or Skyrim either, I just wandered around til I got bored of that and then moved on. Not really a bad thing that but I do like completeness

the bridge you jump across underneath on the girders with trains rattling the structure from above

Ooh, I forgot about that bit, a real feeling of vertigo.

One great moment that really struck me was in a game called Project IGI. It had some kind of terrain generator code in the game engine so if you went off into the wilderness that's exactly what happened. I decided to test it out be weighting the key on my keyboard pointing my character away out of the map. Went to the pub, when I came back the wee guy was still marching through the hills, many many miles away from where he was supposed to be killing bad guys. It had no real application in that game but it was novel nonetheless.

The same game was also one of the first where you could shoot enemies through objects if you had the right weapon. It was really well executed. Shame this hasn't been adopted by more games.

I never got the whole GTA thang either. Took my copy of SA back IIRC.

Moments that sit with me are more of how I felt while playing, ie combo of the game, any degree of evolution it brings, playing with mates etc. Never been one to patiently sit down and complete a game since my early teens.

Arcades

- Dragons Lair: laser disc visuals, sharing games with your mates so you each did the bits you were best at, playing cards (and that horrible yellow gum IIRC).
- Gauntlet: immense multi-player mayhem with mates or whoever. Often met the same people down the arcade each time we went on a Saturday.
- Marble Madness: frustratingly bonkers trackball craziness, leaning and contorting into all sorts of positions to guide that bloody marble around.

Vic 20

- Jelly Monsters: seeing PacMan brought into my living room was awesome.
- Skramble: as above.

Speccy

- JSW: epic. I remember trying to map the game and then a couple of days later a full version appeared in one of the magazines.
- KnightLore: a mate bought me it for Xmas but I was allowed to open it Xmas Eve 5pm, we played it solid for 12 hours! It also helps that I have a werewolf thing.
- Fairlight: awesome 3D visuals.

PS

- Tony Hawks: awesome fun with mates.
- Hogs of War: laugh out loud multiplayer war pig action.

Xbox

- Halo: mind blowing physics and so ahead of its time as a FPS.
- Pro Evo Soccer: was always way more 'realistic' than FIFA.
- Timesplitters 2: hilarious multiplayer mode.
- Fable: beautifully rendered environments but also bloody good fun.
- Half Life 2: probably the moodiest game ever produced.
- KOTOR: OMG how that game took over my life. Bought it the same day as a colleague and every day we shared mission updates. We took very different paths and that was obviously one of its strengths. Combat was intense. He also completed it before me, the bastard.

Have to say the first time I logged into X-Box live to play CoD MW2 multiplayer was a game changer. OK, I know the CoD titles are widely reviled, but after starting to play online I have never played a story mode game since. Looking back I think the most enjoyable FPS I have played is Battlefield 2. Some epic games on that, plus the choppers, tanks, role specific gameplay.

Actually is there a Battlefield out at the moment that has a decent XBOX player base?

Once upon a time, I could get up late, slob about with breakfast watching Discovery channel, go for a ride, come back and play video games all evening.

I mean, I love my wife and kids and all, but at the same time I really miss those days!

My first big dogfight over Baghdad in Falcon 3 on my dad's 486. Magic.

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And its sequel, Falcon 4. Consumed far too much time and money and still the best.

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You know, I mentioned this to a mate today and he reminded me that I hated COD MW2 when I first played multiplayer. I'd got so used to halo and the game play mechanics that switching to cod seemed really weird!
Why have I got to press an aim button?!
Where did that guy get that weapon?
Why can't I get it?
Hang on, so the guys who've been playing for ages, and are therefore better, get better weapons and skills too? How the **** is that a good thing?!
Then it clicked.

Greatest moment: Unlocking the 'Mile High Club' achievement on Call of Duty 4.

Favourite moment has to be playing Rainbow 6: Black Arrow on the original xbox. First real taste of online gaming.