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For Love of The Game
A feature from Gamespot this week is an interesting look at gaming moments that moved you as a player. Emotional moments for several of the editors are explored. From the article: "This isn't an article about violence in video games. It's a chance for us to consider some of the moments in our lives as game players that made us feel strongly about something that, in the grand scheme of things, is probably pretty trivial. These are cases in which games drove us to relative emotional extremes. This is both how and why we play." What would be a gaming moment that drove you to an emotional extreme?
I got really angry and depressed when I saw that people were asking retarded questions like this. What's next here, favorite aftermarket game controller roundup? Forget I said that...
The FMV cut scene that involved the death of Aeris. That sucked, mostly because I had invested a lot of time getting her character leveled up.
I'm very responsible, when ever something goes wrong they always say I'm responsible.
I remember when I was heavily into GTA:VC...long after I had actually completed the game, I would still start it up and tool around Vice City, looking to get into some trouble. Sniping multiple targets from the roof of a building or leading police on a mad chase with a PCJ was very relaxing and thereaputic after a hard day at the office.
After doing this for a while, I noticed certain thought patterns while out driving...like veering toward pedestrians, unconsciously judging the distance to the nearest self-serve car wash, and reflecting how easy it would be for me to just jump out of the car, run to the crotch-rocket idiling a few lanes away, giving the rider a smart rap in the face with my elbow, and jump on...the cop three cars back will never catch me...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
When I slide down the shaft in Sorcerer and came face to face with myself in the time travel puzzle. That just blew me away and I had to stop and contemplate the whole thing for a bit. I still remember my time with that game fondly.
the first Legend of Zelda... I was in like 6th grade, and I remember how amazing that game was, how I would dream about it... up 2 screens, left 1 up 2... etc... great game.
Then, of course, Tetris, I STILL HAVE TETRIS (DAY)DREAMS!
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
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One I can think of recently is the very beginning of Half Life 2. The woman waiting for her husband. In 15 seconds of interaction, you understand her entire life and feel terrible for her because you know that her husband is never going to arrive, but she'll probably wait for him until they remove her. I'm sad just thinking about it, and she's not even real.
among Chessmaster characters. Ennemies too...
/wrld
I could name several examples of memorable gaming moments back on my Commodore 64, usually involving the Ultima series. But the most memorable was hacking games with hex editors, and seeing my name "inside" the game ;-)
More recently, getting totally freaked out by the top-notch ambience in Thief: The Dark Project and its sequels.
Finally beating Mother Brain in Metroid, feeling like a god, and then realizing I have a time limit to escape before the whole place explodes, and the rush of getting out in time and winning after so many months of playing was joyous.
And to this day, Metroids scare me. Metroid Prime / Echoes, when I see a Metroid I get the heeby-jeebies/willies/shivers whatever your dialect calls it.
And I'm almost 30 years old. Sad, huh.
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I remember the first time I let that ball slip past me in Pong. I felt like I'd let the entire world down. Man, that was such a crushing defeat for me. I don't think I've experienced anything quite so humiliating since then...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I second the Celes thing. To me, it was worse than Aeris (but then, I liked Tifa anyway. Then, for the boobs, now for the fact that she's a Betty to Aeris' Veronica).
:D
Yasunori Mitsuda's overworld music in Chrono Cross made my eyes water one late night playing it just from the sheer emotion behind the strings. As long as he's not doing battle music the man is a god.
Though another favorite is the joys of screwing around in GTA. Nothing more cathartic than throwing grenades at strangers in the subway.
I cried when I beat Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. That last cutscene where Zelda sends Link back in time was just so, so, so sad for me.
Also, that scene in Beyond Good & Evil when Jade is talking to her dog after the kids have been kidnapped and the lighthouse destroyed... Oh man, what a good scene.
Yes, I am a HUGE geek, sue me.
But if you really want "connection" then play Xenogears... Holy ****! That was a game where you had to sort of feel sorry for Fei and Elly(main chars). Plus it has the most beautiful intricate story of all.
Granted, it may have something to do with the fact that it was 2AM and I was somewhat sleep-deprived, but when I made it back to the starting room of Ico and had to fend off all the little shadows I was...mildly annoyed.
Then I noticed that all of them had tiny horns, just like me, and I put that together with the fact that they were coming out of the caskets I had escaped, and...I didn't want to fight them any more. I wanted to put the controller down and let them take out their ghostly despair on my hide. I felt a profound sadness, pity, but to save us all I had to first beat them down.
That moment will stick with me a long time.
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Getting the top score in Stroker was definately the high point of all my gaming experiences.
Both the cutscene and the end of the level when the trow finally comes out and starts kicking your puny butt up and down the snow bank.
I think it was actually the second level on the demo, so that was before the game even came out.
"It's a chance for us to consider some of the moments in our lives as game players that made us feel strongly about something that, in the grand scheme of things, is probably pretty trivial."
:)
:-P
For me it's an opposite experience, but still applicable to the article's request, I think
I was playing UO, which is an MMORPG, set in a 2d top-down view of the world. I was in a town called Bucaneer's Den, fighting evil players around the town, and having a good time. Sometimes it can be frustrating fighting people, though; frustration and cursing are trademarks of the town.
Anyway, I was mounted on my horse, standing by a bridge, when suddenly more than three people starting casting damage spells at me! I ran, of course - northeast, toward a cluster of buildings I thought I could hide behind.
I ran behind one of the buildings (in 2d,) and two of my pursuers gave up the chase. But one kept following me, ripping around the building's corners toward me. I ran to the other side of the building.
For *45 minutes* this guy and I dodged around the building, me staying on the far side of it away from him whenever he moved toward me. We were both really determined; he could have given up, and I could have run away, but the chase was too fun. Every few minutes he would get a crossbow shot off on me, but I'd be gone around that building's corner before it really hurt much, and healed up by the next time he could shoot.
It was so hilarious that we both spent so much time playing around that silly building, that I was giggling after 30 minutes, and at 45 minutes I said "LOL" with my character and came out in to the open. He started to kill me, then stopped before I died, and said "lol" too
We both thought it was great, funny and fun, and became friends - what an experience! What I took from it was that while I'm a hardcore gamer who takes games pretty seriously, sometimes interacting with people in a sketchy virtual world can show how trivial the whole thing is-
-Sahrs (Sonoma UO)
Scoring a winning point or TD in the last second can be quite thrilling. The other week, in FIFA 2005, winning the game with an amazing bicycle kick that I had not converted ever (which was probably 5000 matches), into the top corner was enough to make me jump out of my chair...then I realized that it was a game and no one other than me really cared :)
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
I remember when I got the end of an endurance race in GT2 at 2AM and I finally went to the bathroom and peed. What a rush!
First time I played Doom on a Best Buy computer...I would go to Best Buy just to play it because I didn't have a fast enough computer at home...that first level of Doom...the first taste of shooting my way out of hell, a 13-year old boys wet dream - a shotgun and saving the world (fantasty of women came shortly after this, FYI)
Arguably the greatest game of all time.
Anyway, I was at the end of the game, playing on the most difficult level, trying to kill the giant big-head-floating baby thing...I was pretty messed up...and found myself completely out of ammo. For a while I ran around trying to dodge all the shit giant space-baby was throwing at me, when I got caught by that green teleporting attack and found myself in that chimney-like structure. After fighting off the hordes of little floating space-babies and making it to the top, I found myself in possession on one rocket. (As I selected the rocket luncher, I conjured up a mental picture of Gordon kissing the rocket before he fitted it to the end of the launcher.) I aimed very carefully, and let fire. Fortunately, the one rocket was what was needed to finally take out the giant space-baby thing and win the game.
I screamed with triumph for about five minutes straight...it was the best boss-victory I've ever experienced.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I was in a Eagle mark 2 (The starting ship) with a 5mw laser if i remember correctly and had foolishly saved just after being attacked by an Imperial cruiser (The beast of a ship from the starting credits) maxed out with shields and plasma accelerators. It took the destruction of my atmospheric shielding, hyperlight engine, scanner, targeting computer and automatic pilot and all my thrusters except the ones for reverse - but I won.
I then managed to pilot to a space station backwards MANUALLY taking about a month of game time for repairs.
I think I pretty much felt every emotion there is that day
Of course, nearly every comment in this thread will be a spoiler, but:
In Thief, when your client for whom you endured legions of undead morphs into the Trickster, and snatches your eye out of your socket and leaves you to die, bleeding. I was absolutely stunned that a game could have such an unpredictable turn of events.
In System Shock 2-- the initial glimpse of a zombie chasing down a Von Braun crewmember behind the fogged, reinforced glass window. Later, cowering and sweating behind collapsed file cabinets, out of ammo with a broken gun and no other weapon-- all the while listening to them call to me "join us... join us... the Many sings to us..."
Emotional games, those.
Ah, there's something to wax poetic about when you hear the sound of the recoil from the rocket launcher. (keep your ears open - you hear that sound effect used lots in movies and ads for movies). Even the first time I got my hands on the chaingun in Doom 2. Had a new Soundblaster card with speakers with an actual subwoofer. I couldn't help but grin like a maniac. Won't ever forget that moment.
There was a point near the end of MGS2, where Raiden, Snake, Otacon and that girl are together, and basically everyone realizes it's going to be almost suicide to get off the rig with all the guards there. It was done with an extreme cinematic flair for the dramatic, where everyone kinda resigns themselves to their fate and presses on. The music was great, the cinematography was awesome, and the voice acting was top notch that could you couldn't take your eyes away from the scene.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
The ending sequence of events kept me up late one weekday night. The sequence with Eva driving and Snake gunning actually had me laughing out loud due to how much fun I was having. The actual non-interactive ending (not going to give it away) with its twists had me caught up in it. A game hasn't had me that engrossed for quite awhile.
I got really pumped at the part where Squall and that soldier are hanging by a wire from that hovercraft thingy, having an aereal fistfight while flying over the gardens. In fact, that entire battle scene just kicked tons of ass.
I graduated high school in 1994. I didn't come from a wealthy family (hell, we were barely blue collar) but I got into a good college on scholarship. My inclinations were always towards math and science so I spent all of my graduation money on a Hewlett Packard 486 sx 33 Mhz (not top of the line by any means but the best that I could do with no outside help). I had just enough money to buy one game, which took forever for me to decide on. I took everything home, cleared off the dining room table and fired everything up. It was late so all of the lights were off and after what seemed to be an eternity of load time I hear John Williams triumphant score and see the words X-Wing scroll across my 14" svga monitor. One of the most satisfying moments of my young life.
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
I'm a sucker for adventure games. Altho my favorite game series is Ultima (an RPG) my favorite moments come from adventure games. I love a good story when it's well executed.
In "Grim Fandango", when Many is trying to get an incriminating picture from Lola, who is dying. He is obsessed with getting the picture to the point of ignoring her suffering. His motivations are understandable: the picture will allow him to blackmail somebody who will let him go rescue his true love, yet I can't help but flinch when she asks him if he could have loved her, and he insist in his obsession. This is the only game I've found that contains a truly Noir atmosphere, and it doesn't even resort to the "hard boiled detective" cliche.
The final scene of "The Longest Journey". Of course you know who the old lady is long before the end comes, but seeing a white feathered Crow hop over to his friend and ask for a story truly bought a tear of joy to my eyes. It reminded me of "Driving Miss Daisy" final scene with Morgan Freeman feeding Jessica Tandy.
No sig
When Raine finally finds her mother, who abandoned her at birth, an she, for the first and onjly time in the game, lost her temper, shoots at her for a long while.
It was not a great plot twist, but it was so shocking and, yet, in-character, that it really impressed me.
Celes' attempted suicide when Cid dies (if you fail to catch enough good fishes), combined with accompanying music, is a very heartbreaking scene. For me, Aeris' death doesn't come very close to that.
Another emotional moment was in Unreal: when you escaped the planet (at the end of the game) and saw your drifting ship in the orbit of Na Pali.. with the epic and kind of sad music in the background and the epilogue, it was a very powerful moment.
at 13 years old on hour 9 of a long roadtrip, i fought and killed final fantasy II (for gameboy)'s final boss: creator (god). that was memorably freaky.
The first moment of true drama I ever remember in a game was Rescue on Fractalus. I suppose I mean drama beyond the excitement and frustration cycle that keeps people playing any game.
Rescue on Fractalus is a 3D flight simulator, in which one lands on fractally-generated terrain to rescue downed pilots from hostile territory. They run up to your ship, knock on the door, and you open the airlock and let them in. As the levels advance, the defenses become stronger.
At a certain stage, you find that the astronauts you're rescuing start to have green skin. If you let them in, they start sabotaging your ship. because they're aliens. The ideal way to deal with them is to turn your ship's systems back on before they reach the airlock, as the shields will kill them.
If, however, you don't open the airlock for them, instead of knocking politely, they jump in front of the windshield in brilliant full-size animation, scream at you, and scare the bejeepers out of you if you're seven years old.
Or, as it turns out, fifteen years old.
moment 1: towards the beginning of the game, before Kyle's powers are restored, you drop out of an airshaft to a battlefield. the music kicks up, and there's an AT-ST "chicken walker" bearing down on you, while a bunch of rebel soldiers fire on it from a ridge to your side. i remember thinking at the moment "wow, i'm IN Star Wars"
moment 2: toward the end of the game, i came across a lone dark-side user standing guard in a tunnel, one of the tough ones with the black Cortosis armor, cloak shield, and force crystal. i approached with my saber off, he turned to face me and just stood there, i remembered from the movies that the Jedi never draw first. I thought about how a real samurai sword fight would typically end in one single cut, right from the scabbard, none of this hollywood 30 minute-long fight stuff. I switched to "heavy" technique and took a single step toward him. His saber flashed to life so i ran and pressed attack, as my blade ignited it swept up in one motion and cut him right in half. I yelled out in triumph as my computer snapped back to reality around me. I don't think i ever felt more drawn in to a game than that moment.
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
..in real life. I was staying with my brother, and playing Unreal Tournament 2004 on his beefy system.
I joined an online game where we were all tiny, blasting away in a living room, and I got REALLY into it. I wasn't very good, but I DID NOT LET UP. I just kept after the guy that was doing the best,(he was unbelievably good!), getting destroyed time and time again, but I did not quit, for like four hours.
Everyone else had left the game, and in the end it was just me and him, bounding around this crazy living room, four inches tall. After a while, he started giving me tips, training me on how to kill him better. (Anticipate where he'd land, shoot the ground in that spot, etc..) Simple stuff, but I improved a lot. We had a really great time, bounding over the sofa and coffee table, firing rockets and lasers from the staircase...
Here was a guy, hundreds of miles away, at four in the morning, teaching me how to kill his tiny avatar more proficiently, for no reason other than his respect for my tenacity.
I was touched. I still think of it as one of the best experiences of my life, and man, I've had some great times in the meat world!
I think that no game, nor any character, has managed to so deeply touch me as the character of Deionarra in Planescape: Torment.
I was therefore pleased, recently, to read an article on the site Gamer's With Jobs expounding on the virtues of the same character and game.
The episode "Longing," particularly, discussed in that article, and ultimately the character herself are kept just far enough from total exposition to be maintained as a tragic mystery whose explanation will be kept eternally just out of reach.
There's nothing quite so tragic as the loss of memory. You need only ask someone who has had a very dear loved one succumb to Alzheimer's disease to know this is the truth. And though it may seem a strange connection to draw, Planescape: Torment evoked for me the very real tragic quality of memory loss better than anything else I have experienced. And so yes, I do believe that games can speak to profound realities in our every day life.
When I was younger I was seriously hooked on a game called Wonderboy... even got my parents to buy me a Sega Master System. Anyways I was on one ice level, and I could'nt make it past. Spent like a week trying to make this one jump then FINALLY I made it... I was sooo happy I had to tell someone so I went to hit the pause button..
:-(
Anyone that may have owned one of these systems may remember that the PAUSE button is right beside the RESET button. Guess which one I pushed in my rush of happiness. I cried
In Super Metroid, where you have to use your missiles to push that creature into the acid. You then run back the way you came.... I remember jumping out of my chair when the skeleton of that thing popped out of the acid again...only to crumble again. Also, basically the entire ending of that game...it invoked a lot of emotion without ever having one word of dialog...
It was 2 am and I was running through the end of RCR, and at one point you run down this loooong hallway. I started to nod off as my character was running, but when I got to the end of the hallway, I saw Tex and I actually threw my controller in the air from fear. Luckily he gives a speech before the fight so I was able to recover, but I've never forgotten the shear terror those big pixelated eyes did to me.
I remember spending hours and hours on this old multiplayer telnet game called Paintball-Net that had horrendous graphics, but great teamplay and community (which is what kept me playing it). I remember -- after years of playing -- finally being promoted to being an admin for the game. It was such a rush, and then I walked across campus to go to lunch that day (yes, I was a freshman in college and still playing the game), and as I looked around and saw all of the other college students I realized that none of them could identify or appreciate my status in that game.
It was humbling, and left me feeling a little hollow.
Although my entry into video gaming was through RPGs, specifically Wizardry and the Bard's Tale series, the game i most remember for making my jaw hang open was Mechwarrior 2. the graphics for the time, the soundtrack, the totally customizable chassis. Man, I would just play for hours on end. It hadn't really occured to me until then what gaming was capable of. The immersive experience.
I was in high school and going through the usual geek/teen problems, stumbling home depressed at night to play Wasteland. I'll never forget the scene where, after gathering chemicals and other inventory items, you help those two guys with radiation sickness back to health (Metal Maniac and I forget the other's name).
The NPC sits up and says, "Let's go kick some ass!"
I remember thinking, "Yeah, it's about time for that, isn't it?"
That's one of those moments that really changed me: tenacity and humor after near-total defeat.
Alien vs. Predator. On the Jaguar. Big speakers. Great graphics. First time I played, when I heard a Predator do that growl/cluck thing right next to me, or when I turned a corner and ran into an Alien...scariest gaming moment I've ever had.
Moo.
A cut scene shouldn't count in this thread, right? Since it's basically just a movie sequence (no different than any other passive entertainment).
So my fond memory of an ACTION oriented game moment would have to be in Half-Life 1, where you have reached a point in the game where you know you're close to the surface. All the while, other NPCs have been cheering you on to help them get rescued. Then there was talk that the military was on its way. Everyone is so eager to get rescued. You make it to a point where THEY ARE HERE! Some scientists run, ecstatic towards the soldiers... --AND THEY GET SHOT AT! What a mind-fudge that was, discovering they weren't here to rescue anyone.
I used to play Alpiner on the TI-99/4A. It was a mountain climbing game.
There were 5 mountains of increasing difficulty. I never got past mountain 3. One day i was playing at a friends house, and felt a bit on the relaxed/bored side. As I was playing through the game with little excitement, I realized I was on mountain #5!(everest).
I got far enough in the game to see the snowman go by, on skis.
That was the only time that a feeling relaxation let me Zen my way further in a video game. Never could do that again.
I have never been more on the edge of my seat in a game than after destroying a reactor in Descent I/II and scrambling to find the exit before it blows to kingdom come! Descent was an awesome game, well ahead of its time... ahh, the hours spent in youth!
Change your name to Homer Junior! Your friends can call you Hoju
But yeah, there are so many moments in Torment that are incredibly memorable. One of my favorites is from right when you are about to enter the Fortress of Regrets, and Morte tells you that he had been there before, and knew all along that the portal was right where you started the game:
Morte: The other YOU, he... he didn't care very much for anybody. For anyone. We could have ALL died in the Fortress, and he wouldn't have blinked. So... I just want you to hold on to your differences, because... well, I like this *you* better. A LOT better.
The Nameless One: But that's not all you want to say, is it?
Morte: No...There's one other thing - I may not have liked that *other* you very much, but he was one smart basher - the smartest basher I've ever known; he always had every angle covered. If he died at the Fortress, that means... well...
TNO: You don't think I can succeed, do you?
Morte: No...It's not that, chief. Because it's not always who's smartest, or who's the most powerful, or who's the toughest... sometimes it comes down to who you are and what you *really* want. I mean, once you wanted to become immortal - but in the end, is that *really* what you wanted? Just be sure of what you want this time, is all I'm saying.
This sig is only here so people stop skipping the last lines of my posts.
The endscenes of Zelda:OOT had to be one of the most moving things I've even seen on a TV Screen. The scene where Link goes back to being a kid, the Master Sword is sealed back in its stone, and his fairy, Navi flies away to the sky. He watches her fly away, gives one more glance at the Master Sword, then turns away and walks out of the Temple with the greatest music ever. That gets you pretty shaken up, then it comes back with him finding Zelda and the two seeming to meet for the first time again...it was amazing.
The other game that meant a lot to me was one I beat as a kid, Captain Comic 2: Fractured Reality on my IBM 286. It was an amazing, long, and great game. At the end, after getting the six crystals and destroying them together to release the souls, you find out that while you were in the temple, your ship was stolen and you are stuck on the planet. Knowing that the local population are far away from having space technology, your only choice is to use the time machine that was recovered from one of the worlds you saved from the evil crystals. You just set the time for 1000 years into the future, and step into the time door. Then the game just ends. To this day I still wonder what became of Captain Comic...
*spoiler ahead*
When Ninten's great grandmother died in "Earthbound zero", it was just so touching to see the whole Magicant to fall apart. While "Earthbound zero" (or as I rather call it, Mother) is a old NES game, it was quite rather touching. It was the only time I remember crying in any game.
A shame that Earthbound zero/Mother actually never got released in US...
I had nightmares for weeks after seeing Master-D's head explode.
This base will Explod in 60 seconds.
Agreed in full.
Additionally, I was very moved by Final Fantasy VI's ending. When Terra removes her hairband and lets her hair blow in the wind, I couldn't help but feel her happiness and freedom after all the crap she had to endure during the course of the game. When "The End" came up, I clapped, even though I knew that nobody could hear me.
Perhaps I was more impressionable as a middle schooler, but even today FFIV is my favorite game.
OK, I'll bite on this one. I'm going to break this down into different types of "emotional" experiences, as trying to lump them all together under one heading is perhaps unhelpful.
I'll start with the generic sadness/surprise/exultation feeling that I think, looking at the other comments here, are what most of the other readers are thinking of. These kind of emotions are generally most commonly evoked by RPGs, as these have the time to establish characters and make you care for them. However, it's not exclusive to the genre.
Final Fantasy VI: I suspect I'm fairly unusual among the people posting comments here in that this is *not* my favorite installment in the Final Fantasy series. However, it's undeniable that it has a good plot with some pretty emotional moments, particularly given the technology it had to use. For me, the most powerful moment comes in the World of Ruin, when Terra decides to fight again.
Final Fantasy VII: Ok, "that" moment in this game has been mentioned by quite a few of the people posting above this and it certainly deserves to be. Plenty of other good moments in this game, though; personally, I liked Barrett's back-story.
Final Fantasy VIII: A slightly odd inclusion here, as this game's plot is really quite weak and a lot of the moments that Square clearly intended to be emotional just fall flat (eg. the bit where the main characters regain their memories of their childhood). However, the scene where Seiffer's side-kicks basically give up following him and ask Squall to beat some sense into him struck me as pretty powerful and well-done.
Final Fantasy X: Two real scenes stand out here; Yuna's "I can fly" moment in the wedding scene and the scene where Auron confronts Yunalesca.
Final Fantasy XI: Yes, the MMORPG. The cutscene you get when you enter Norg for the first time after beating the Shadowlord is actually incredibly well done and sets a hell of a tone given the limited tools available. Of course, the fact that getting this far is the culmination of months of effort also helps.
Wing Commander III: While cheesy, the cutscenes you get after the Kilrathi blow up the big Death Star alike and you see the full version of Angel's death scene made quite an impression on me at the time.
Wing Commander IV: The final section of this game, where you confront Tolwyn in the debating chamber is superb. Not only is it a rare moment of decent acting in these games, but it's an incredibly brave way to do the final obstacle in a space-shooter - not through a big space battle, but through a debate.
Knights of the Old Republic: The scene where the main character's past is revealed is utterly superb. I'd suspected there was a big plot twist coming, but this just took my breath away. In the course of one cutscene, the entire game-world is turned upside-down. The parallels to the famous "Luke, I am your father" scene in ESB are undeniable, but in many ways this is even more shocking. Further proof that Bioware can write much better Star Wars than George Lucas can these days.
Ok, now I'm going to move on to perhaps the second most common emotional reactions that games seek to inspire; fear.
Doom 3: A flawed game in many ways, but the first few hours of this, until I worked out the tricks the game used, scared the crap out of me.
Silent Hill 2: The first three installments in this series were all great (although the fourth is a big let-down). However, I think that on balance it was 2 that did the best job of scaring me. There's no one scene I can really point to; the whole game is just plain creepy.
Darkseed: an old adventure game, which in many ways is utterly forgettable. In most respects, this was a distinctly average game; the gameplay and the quality of the puzzles were far inferior to what Lucasarts were doing at the time. However, the location and creature designs, by H. R. Geiger (think Alien) were creepy as hell.
Kingdom Hearts: Ok, I admit this is an odd choice for this section. It's a Disney game
Man, I am with you on the Final Fantasy 7 one. When Aeris is stabbed I was so angry. Not because I used her a lot and was one of my more useful characters...but just because it was awful. I kept playing thinking that somehow they would bring her back to life...I had to bring her back. Oh well, I guess I will always be soft for a cute girl.
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Taz, one of the best games ever, released for the atari 2600. I had played the game since I was three, each level had a food item: Hamburgers, Icecream Cones, Apple Cores, etc. however the last level was listed as a Question Mark. I kept my atari 2600 and Taz Cart. vowing to someday find the secret item. At 16 years old I finally did it, now that's dedication and quite moving. But damned if I can remember what the secret item was now. The only thing to come close is the most used momemt ever in FFVII.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I still have to leave for work now, but at least I'm doing so with a smile on my face.
:D
Thanks again!
At the end of the Convoy level there's the button on the final crawler which has the missile, whilst the other team try to stop you; typically they camp out.
Anyway, I used to make a career of trying to finish the level; after battling my way to the crawler, often killing one or two on the way, I found that by jumping down the side of the crawler with the rocket launcher already loading I could suddenly appear and take out 1-2 of the enemy without them having much chance at all to get me.
Then I would fire the rocket launcher to where the enemy usually stood, often taking out another 1-2, and then with a bit of mad jumping, skipping and dodging with a bit of luck another 2 would fall to the rocket launcher splash; or flak cannon. Obviously it helps if they had been softened up before I got there, but it didn't always matter.
I would then rush over to the button and crouch behind a shield while the enemy respawn, without much hope of getting to me in time, whilst 6 dead bodies lay around the crawler. Sometimes a less cluefull defender would jump down into the crawler and shoot at me with something that couldn't penetrate the shield. That usually made it even funnier, since it probably meant they were using the wrong gun.
I felt like a game God when it worked. There's something about almost single-handedly taking out >6 campers/defenders in one spawn to make one feel good about a game. :-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"In System Shock 2-- the initial glimpse of a zombie chasing down a Von Braun crewmember behind the fogged, reinforced glass window. Later, cowering and sweating behind collapsed file cabinets, out of ammo with a broken gun and no other weapon-- all the while listening to them call to me "join us... join us... the Many sings to us..."
I agree that the atmosphere in System Shock was excellent at drawing you into the game, but why in hell did you not keep your wrench?!?!
Dungeons and Dragons.
I don't think I emotionally connected to a game experience more than I did with D&D. I had characters that survived for years. I believe D&D provides the greatest mechanism to put more of who you are, or perhaps who you want to be, in your character than any other game. The reasons for this are obvious since nearly every aspect of the game comes from your own imagination.
When my oldest, greatest character died...through a scummy DM plot, I might add...I lightly burned the char sheet and buried it in a forest in a mayonnaise jar. I dug it up years later and began playing him again...rez'd by a cool DM plot!
For video games, I've got to say solving Myst, and that last Warthog drive at the end of Halo were pretty damn cool.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
There's a sad story up on progressiveboink.com called Illusion of Gaia and my cousin David that's rather relevant.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Lots of emotional points in this game. Near the end when Vyse and crew are outgunned by Galcian, then all of the folks that Vyse has met and befriended around the world show up to help out... for some reason that always gets me choked up. So sue me! ;-)
I've experienced this more than a few times, but the really good horror games are the ones that stand out in my mind.
Resident Evil 2
I remember running through the Police station, near the beginning of the game, having to run from zombies because I didn't have enough bullets to kill them (and there was no way in hell I was going to take them on with the Knife). I got to a room - there was a window right next to the door that lead to the next room. Right as I walked up to that door, I saw something vaguely human-shaped crawl past the window really briefly. Right then, I knew that I would have to face it in the next room, and it took me a minute to muster up the courage to go on.
Eternal Darkness
The only game I know of with a "sanity meter". It started off mild, by tilting the camera slightly, progressed to your main character 'hearing voices' and loud noises (the sudden, loud knocking sound with no apparent source really messed with my head), and finally, total hallucination. I remember walking into a room and running around for maybe 20 seconds with no problems... then my arm fell off. Then my other arm. The twisted minds behind this game still gave me enough control to run around for a bit before my legs and head fell off.
This is the greatest Slashdot article ever.
Terror:
Aliens Vs. Predator 2. The first level of the Predator campaign. Tee hee, what fun. You start off on a precipice overlooking unknowing, pathetic humans. You cloak. You aim. You fire. All of a sudden, someone's head is impaled on a wall.
You do it some more. You are fast. You are efficient. You are alien. Soon, the whole of the group of the humans is wiped out, without them ever knowing you were there.
You start getting cocky. "Just a tutorial mission", you say. Sure. You begin to feel like a God. As you progress through the level, you watch your Predator compadres` mercilessly slaughter the humans. You begin to think this mission will be a piece of cake.
After a while, you come across a lake. There are humans in it. You smirk, turn on the cloak, and get ready to let the blood flow.
About ten seconds after you land the first shot, you turn around to a human who is shooting you. You aim. You then see a huge, black... CREATURE land next to said human, and rip him to shreds. In fear, your finger flexes. You shoot. Nothing happens. You keep firing. The animal has noticed you and is beginning to tear towards you with horrifying speed. The same weapons that killed humans in one hit for the whole of this mission does nothing to this beast. It doesn't even flinch. Boom. Boom. Boom. You keep firing your weapon, wondering if you will make it out alive. A nanosecond before the Alien gives you a claw facial, he keels over, and dies. Fifteen spears sticking out of him, all from you.
That is what happened in the first mission of AvP2, and never have I experienced sheer terror like that, gamewise or otherwise, elsewhere. I honestly got so into the game that I feared for my life.
The whole purpose of that mission was to lull you into a false sense of security with your character, and then tear it to shreds at the end. Sheer brilliance.
You need to play it to understand.
I think FFII for SNES was the first real RPG that I got into, and I think it has some of the most memorible momments that I will never forget:
- Cecil confronting his darkside. After fighting his Dark Knight form he turns into a Paladin.
- Tellah fighting Golbez to the death after his daughter was killed. He ends up using Meteo, which cost him his life and he ended up only damaging Golbez.
- Yang the karate man staying back in one of the rooms in the Tower of Babel because the cannon or whatever it was, was going to explode. He sacrificed himself to save the party.
- The two mage twins turning themselves to stone to stop the walls from crushing the party.
- Cid and the party using the airship to escape the castle that was being bombarded by the Red Wings. The music that went along with flying the airship was superb.
I can't remember if it was the EGM/Hero Super Tour 2 or some other game magazine that hosted this particular game competition but the excitement of being there was a great moment for me.
After seeing "The Wizard" I wanted to be in video game competitions more than anything. I finished 1st in my area during the Blockbuster Video Game Championship only to lose out in the regional games at FunSphere. The next year I finished first in my age division while my younger brother took 1st place in his. We played in the 1st EGM/Hero Super Tour and brought home various little prizes for the mini-competitions they had. A year or two later we attended another video game tournament hosted by some magazine at a mall in Dallas. We knew they would have some sort of competition but we didn't know what game would be involved. After playing the various demos and new games they announced the tournament would be played on Primal Rage. Not the most popular fighter by any means and a game that neither of us had played more than a few times. While waiting for the tournament to start we practiced on a demo machine, exchanged ideas and techniques and wished each other luck. We played through the competition, slowly moving up the ranks until it was the final battle...and it was between the two brothers. It was so exciting for us to hear them announce our names over the intercom system, calling it the family battle and to have all eyes on us for this final moment. I felt like a celebrity. When the dust finally settled it was my younger brother that took the victory. Even though I lost I had a blast making it to the end and playing against my brother. It's something I'll remember for a very long time.
My Xbox Live Gamer Card
Half Life 2's Steam activation sent me to emotional extremes...
I was playing my favorite online thriller when all of a sudden I saw something I had never seen before. At once about half the players decided they needed to leave their mark on it first. We all made a mad rush, bringing the server to its knees. When the dust had cleared I found I had achieved frist psot and the rest had to settle for throwaway remarks regarding hot grits. As you can tell, it utterly failed to change my life, but was still deeply satisfying.
I really found UO to be very emotional in my life or at least really the most fun I have ever played in a video game.
I'm still bitter EA ruined the game...
I still look at Ultima Offline servers and contemplate joining one.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The biggest gaming rush I've had in the last few days is finally beating Dust Man on Megaman IV a couple weeks ago. His stage completely stopped me from beating the game when I was 5 or 6, and I finally made it through now that I'm 18. Took me a few years, but I finally did it. :) /. with it, While listening to a NSF rip from megamanVI.
The game I've played that's the most pure fun in the past year has to be Katamari Damacy. It doesn't exactly have much depth to it, but it's just fucking awesome to pick up everything in the world, then make the moon out of it. Hell, I'm grinning IRL right now, just describing it
My favorite all-time is Tetris and Tetris Attack. No other game I've played I didn't get bored playing the same round for such a long time. Level 16 is fucking hard, no matter how old you are.
Honorable mention to Stepmania, just because it's managed to keep me playing the same songs I repeatedly fail in a hail of arrows. Each time I get a little bit farther through, little bit more, little bit more. Plus being able to add songs whenever I want is cool.
And of course, the best geek moment for me in the past while is getting gnu/linux up and running on my personal home computer, getting the damn wireless working, and posting on
X-Com: One of the early missions, when squaddies were getting mind blasted, one gal was positioned next to a barn door. Little Sectoid guy comes out, looks around, and she blasts him right through the door at point blank range, leaving alien guts and a smoking door ruin.
Apple Adventure:
Go: Snookering a 6-dan and having him say (mostly jokingly) "I hate you."
Doom: Playing with the lights out the first time on a machine that could run things halfway decent enough and exploring a warehouse that while well lit, was immensely freaky.
Wing Commander: Somewhere in there actually developing a sense of relation with the other pilots... very odd.
And many many more. I didn't even cover some of the seriously atmospheric effects of Thief, Half Life (the original) and System Shock 2. Those seem almost too easy to draw experiences from due to the immersion level.
Playing Tradewars2000 on an old BBS, using a modem, floating around in space. I played an evil pirate so all the good players wanted to kill me. The phone rings and knocks me offline, ony 3 sectors away from the stardock, my sister answers the phone and talks for twenty minutes while I bite my nails and jump up and down in frustration/anticipation. When I finally get back online, I have been killed. I slump in my seat and then go on to read the logs, then I remember that my ship was loaded with corbomite and see that when I died I blew up took out the #3 ranked good-guy in the game when he killed me. I lost my ship and all my turns for the day but I gained a whole lot of experience and jumped up in the ranking tables quite a bit. But for those 20 minutes...the most important thing was getting back online and into the game...whew.
and the realization that games could be that well written. And without further ado, here's the three stages of playing Torment:
Stage 1: The aformentioned realization, and a desire to write my own Planescape stories.
Stage 2: The realization that I suck as a writer, and can't come close to Torment.
Stage 3: The final realization that the game more or less bombed, and that they'll probably never be a game with that much effort put into writing again.
It's the kind of game I wish I'd never played so I could go back and play it again.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I knew people would start posting about Final Fantasy stuff. So, to keep proper balance in the world, here's some from Ultima series.
Wayyyyyyy back when I was kid. My very own Commodore 64. Watching Ultima V's intro scene and such (since that was pretty much everything that worked properly in the warezed copy =) I didn't know English very much at the time, so I was just looking at the pretty pictures. Then I realized something very very odd: This game thing actually has a story. You know, video games were supposed to be about shooting things and stuff. (And this was in the C64 era. You couldn't really fit a very long story in 64 kb =)
Wayyyy later (but while I was still quite young) I got a legit copy of the PC Ultima V. I had realized that you can simply press enter to end dialogue instead of saying "bye". Heee! I was going to become a Metagaming Teenager! But then I ran into this one guy in the game that just told me that it was impolite to run away like that! Hrrrm... so much for becoming a Metagaming Teenager then.
Fast forward to last year...
In Ultima VII, one beautiful day, I had throughoutly wasted time in the mines of Minoc. No apparent clues could have been found, let alone anything that could have possibly helped me financially (how un-Avatarlike for me to think of such matters, but hey, this is Ultima VII part 1, no so Everlasting Goblet yet and money buys food). I stepped out of the mines, back to the bright daylike. And my eyes actually hurt. I noticed that the immersion was actually working really well. I was actually filling Avatar's part of the dialogues in my head. (that's what makes this role-playing game, see?) I felt the need to shout at fools who blocked my horse cart's way.
And of course, here's the obligatory EA-bashing bit - note, spoilers for Ultima IX. In the end of the first dungeon, I talked with a Wyrmguard who claimed that he was Iolo, and said that I could easily note that he was who he said since his bow and lute were in the other room. That sounded like the most dumb set-up ever. The guy must be holding Iolo up somewhere, I guessed. Besides, Iolo uses a crossbow! An obvious imposter, and a dumb one at that. So I killed him. ... Too bad the setup actually was that dumb. That was Iolo. I killed Avatar's best friend due to a colossally stupid set-up and a factual error in weaponry. I was very, very angry at myself and really hated EA for rushing this travestry to the market.
Even back with Civ I, this game was able to put me into an incredibly imaginative state...like reading a really good book, when you're just there.
I remember one particular moment...it was the middle ages, and I was on the move around the world. There was one other, very aggressive, group that kept trying to take over a section of my main land. I managed to drive them out, but instead of going back to their own land they regrouped on a medium size peninsula at the far end of my domain.
I had to get rid of them, so I gathered my forces and spent a good 4 hours in a strategic and tactical battle with knights, catapults, and legions through mountains and plains. When I finally defeated them, I could just picture my victorious units on the barren battlefield, banners snappping in the wind, my enemies lying broken on the ground. Awesome!
Facts are stubborn things.
Anyone who played through Another World right till the end will remember your character slowly crawling to freedom after having his legs broken. Added to the fact that your only friend in the game got killed trying to save you...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'll never forget the first time I beat Mike Tyson. My friend and I jumped up and down and hugged each other. Then immediately swore never to tell anyone that we, well, just hugged each other.
For me it was just after having finally finished the original Myst.
I had spent days on it, and finally finished, looked around the room and realized I was sitting alone in my dad's messy basement while my friends were out having a good time, partying and having sex with real live girls.
That moment changed me forever.
This space available.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (Origin Systems, 1992)
Not an extremely extreme emotion, but this was the first game in which I really _felt_ I was the character in the dank, gloomy caves. The sounds, visuals, adaptive music, physics, and environment rendering/interaction all fused in my mind to form a whole experience.
The emotion: I was frightened for my character as I crept through the abyss. A sound startled me and I (er, my character) ran back down a hall to hide around the corner. (Also, the demo offers no save game, which raises the stakes.)
I am adding these because many of the other games have already been mentioned.
WindWaker - the first time you go inside the Mother & Child Isle
and you see the main fairy who is a child and blows petals to heal you is just amazing.
You are awed at the art direction and beauty of the game that few can match.
RE4 - countless moments of fright/excitement when you know you will have to face an extraordinary opponent
or *SPOILER* when you see the TWO giants/gigantes coming through the door to stomp on you
or the first time you get your head cut OFF regardless of health.
Truly one of the best games ever made.
Susanna: NO! A si NO. Octavio: Pos...entonces como?
My finest moment with the game came while trying to play through the game without killing any enemies.
Spoilers: Although if you haven't played the game by now, who even cares.....
I was trying to sneak out of the UNATCO base after turning rogue, and had cleared the basement of hostile threats. Alex Jacobsen, the UNATCO tech guy, wouldn't give me the key to leave unless I kill Anna Navarre. Anna Navarre is a mechanically-augmented agent for UNATCO, which compounded with her ruthless-bitch-ness means that if I escaped Alex would be in a world of pain.
Well, I'm not a fan of killing, but Anna is pretty evil so I guess it's OK. But, she's flanked by two normal fleshy UNATCO MPs. I kind of feel bad for them; we've had some good conversations in the past. So, I need a way to seperate them...
I charge up the stairs to Anna and the two guards and fire my pistol in the air to get their attention. "What the..?" "Kill him!" Tracers whizz past my head. I turn on my ballistic shields and turbo-legs and leap down three flights of stairs. Anna and her two lackeys are no match for my nanoaugmentations, plus they're computer AIs and don't know how to jump, so they take the stairs one at a time.
By the time they even reach the stairwell, I'm already in the basement. A couch blocks the entrance to the stairwell, and I'm carefully hidden behind a potted plant for cover. I hear the chirping of one of my proximity grenades go off, and then an explosion. Coughing. The tear gas has the two guards wracked with pain, but they're not going anywhere anytime soon. Navarre, on the other hand, literally has iron lungs; no gas is going to stop her.
However, she blithely runs into my EMP grenade on the stairs. A blue glow washes over the stairwell as her energy for her augmentations (like her own ballistic shield) is dissipated. Now for the coup de grace! Navarre reaches the bottom of the stairwell, smacks into the couch, and smirks as she sees me behind my obvious cover. I smirk because she doesn't realize there's an explosive proximity mine on the ceiling just over that couch!
The smirk quickly disappears. Instead of the chirping of the proximity detector, I only hear the ricochet of the bullets from Anna's assault rifle. The leaves on my potted plant start shredding. Gack! The EMP blast disabled my explosive mine! I'm a sitting duck!
I take out my 9mm pistol. I've never used the damned thing, much less put experience into it. My hand quakes as I steady my aim on the stairwell. The plant has disintegrated by now, but Anna has to reload.
BANG
BANG
Two misses. Make this one count.
BANG-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
I manage to nick the explosive mine with a bullet, setting it off. Anna and the couch disintegrate, leaving only tattered upholstry and a motor oil stain on the floor.
I head upstairs, tranquilize the two coughing guards, and quickly make my exit with Alex's key.
- A woman who was severely ill from cancer thanked me for making her husband laugh. Those moments were few and far between for her family.
- I had several people professing their love, not for me but for one of the NPCs.
- There's a moment in the game where the player experiences a deep loss. A few people reported they were actually moved to tears.
I've decided that the best measure of success for a game is seeing how far I can emotionally draw players into the story. Emotions such as hate, joy, greed, and love are things core to the human experience. Even after all these centuries, the things that Shakespeare wrote can still move us.I have to admit that I'm not immune to that sort of thing. I remember playing GTA and then driving around afterwards. Things like curbs and stoplights seemed so unnecessary.
Everyone loves getting da headshots.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
a few of my top moments would have to be in these three games, in no particular order. there's more, but these are the ones that stick out in my mind the most at the moment.
,) and then, oops, you go back in time but you're too late, the AI has already taken over, and you seem to be the last remaining human flying over
list of games described with suitable {{SPOILER WARNING}} Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy Adventure, Space Channel 5, Fallout, and Omega Boost.
if you haven't played them, and intend to, you may wish to avoid reading my reasons, but they're mostly old anyway, so....
chrono trigger, with the really triumphant theme. the first time you hear it, Marle has just gone through the vortex, and Crono has to go and get her... and this heroic, epic theme starts playing. and it comes back at several other points in the game, too. sends shivers down my spine each time.
Final Fantasy Adventure (on game boy classic): this game is a TRAGEDY. nearly every character in it dies either a horrible death, or a sacrificial one. the game starts with the main character's friend dying.. and then he meets the girl, who's traveling companion has just been killed... then later on one character gets crippled after falling from an airship..... then later on a girl sacrifices herself to remove a curse from her brother..... then, at the very end, the 'girl hero' who is really a seed for the 'tree of life' sacrifices herself to become the next tree, so that purity can emain in the world.. and the hero swears his life to protect the tree so it never happens again. first time a game ever made me cry.
the ending of Space Channel 5. the game is very silly, but at the end you learn of a different bad guy, and since he controls the media, he cuts out the audio so you can't hear the rythm you need to follow. every character in the game up to that point, even all of the 'bad guys', comes up behind you, and starts humming the theme song. you beat the final boss with an acapella version performed by EVERYONE IN THE GAME, WORKING TOGETHER, FOR THE GREATER GOOD, dancing, singing, humming, snapping their fingers, etc. you kind of have to be there to get it, but it brings a tear of joy to my eyes and a smile to my face, every time (the game can be beaten in about an hour if your good, so sometimes i'll just pull it out and go through it for a quick bit of fun, HIGHLY RECCOMENDED TO EVERYBODY.) Fallout 1. the game begins with the leader of a "vault" community coming to you with a desperate plea to save them, and you go out, on your quest, to get the 'water purification chip' that can save the day... then, when you finaly do it, after numerous other adventures, and then stop a mutant uprising, going above and beyond what the vault dwellers had originally needed... the leader of the vault infomrs you that, since you've seen the outside world, and lost your innocence, you are no longer welcome there. the wastelands have changed you, and you no longer fit into that community, so you are cast out. cue closing cinema of the hero walking off into the sunset, away from the home he fought to save, while the song "maybe by the ink spots plays, and.. that was probably the third game that brought me to tears by its ending.
Omega Boost. its a silly 3d shmup game, with a cliched plot, that isn't even delivered in a new way. however, despite the cheese, a good soundtrack and a good sense of style save it, and elevate it. from the intro cinema, which has the pilot suiting up, getting into a giant robot, and then flying off to go back in time to prevent an evil AI from implanting itself into the first computer so it can get a head start on erradicating those pesky humans, while a kicking song plays, with lyrics that just plain work and make it feel more epic than it really actually is... from there, the flow of the game has you in space, and then on a planet, and then going down a 'time tunnel' (which has music that works well for what is really just a journey down a giant tube
Despite the 'freaked out' feeling you get when you first play DOOM (especially into the later levels), I would have to say the most siginificant emotional reaction I had was right at the end of Twinsen 2.
You work so hard at the game to save someone, and right at the last second they are taken away from you in a most gruesome way. Or so it would seem.
Talk about heart stopping. You feel so great, you just completed the big boss battle and your champ. And then your not.
That still sticks in my mind as the most significant emotional event I have had in a video game.
I still listen to the sound track from it and get little twinges of reminiscense from it. I think I need to dig that out again and play it. Hope it can run in XP.
1. FF VI: the bit with Celes jumping off the cliff.
Someone's already mentioned this. I kind of look down on it now (as most Final Fantasy games) as being shamelessly melodramatic, but it did have an effect on me. But there's a better example in the same game....
I always thought, since I found out about it anyway, that Shadow was a well-done character in that game. He's not just mysterious, he's *minimalist*. There are just not that many words expended on his behalf. He's the only character who can die permanently, and because having him survive into the second half of the game requires waiting until the last second to complete an important timed section, I reckon most people don't even know he can survive until the ending.
But anyway, Shadow has these really creepy dream sequences that occaisionally pop up when you stay at inns. He also has a daughter, who is never explictly named by the game, but the game gives you more than enough clues to piece together who she is. (Hint: Check the "useable by" list on the starting accessories of various party members if Shadow is available, and you'll probably figure it out eventually.) Because you have to piece that bit of the game's most enigmatic character's life together yourself, I think it's amazingly effective.
2. Lufia and the Fortress of Doom
The story in this one is grossly underrated, and is arguably the best thing about it. (The combat is interminable.) It's written with a style and wit that makes it worthwhile to wander around and just talk with people. And it's definitely an effective ending, though none of the later games ever adequately explain it. (Despite the ominious promise that appears onscreen if you wait for a while after the ending concludes....)
3. Grandia and Grandia II
Again, like Lufia, the dialogue is written with surprising livliness. Some people think it's a flaw in the first Grandia, but I think it's beneficial that for two-thirds of the game you don't really have a *reason* for wandering around and exploring new lands. The characters don't really need one, and the only really false notes sounded by the game come near the end, when some things happen basically because the plot demands that they do. Grandia II has gotten something of a bum rap, it may not have that adventursome theme and characters but the dialogue writing is at least as good as the first game.
4. Katamari Damacy
It's impossible to think about the world quite the same way ever again the first time, in the Make the Moon level, you get the ball big enough that you can roam the ocean freely. Once you hit 600 meters and can pick up the mountain, you're then big enough to grab everything in the whole game; nothing will ever bump you around again. It's an empowering moment.
Finishing the story and classic modes of Tony Hawk's Underground 2. After trying some of those challenges thousands of times I can finally relax hehe.
My favorite scene in Actraiser I, was in Kasandora, where one of your subjects is mortally wounded, and as he is dying on the steps of your temple his last request is to be bathed in the tears of his god..
.pdf that came on the CD, but it was facinating nonetheless.
Both the backstory and the opening chapters in Homeworld were really well done, and turned a space combat came into an epic. The backstory was just a
While the last scene in Halo has been mentioned already, I think it would have been 3202382 times better if they had licensed "The Touch" by Stan Bush to play, for the final driving sequence.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
A friend had the game, we took turns playing years.
After, my head was very into the game. Going home after, at night on the freeway, I went under a bridge. I was right under it when I heard a LOUD train engine blast from some unseen freight train going past on top. Shook me up.
Karateka(dos): Beating that stupid eagle and the shogun, while easy now, was really tough for some reason (I was young then, and my Video gaming skills were still in development ;) )
Yie Ar Kung Fu(arc): Finally beating those last two guys (the one with the two sticks and the clone of you) took basically years of effort. Pure elation.
Time Bandit(AtariST): Don't know how many people have played that. But finally beating that game was another very gratifying moment. Seems to me that beating games back then was truly gratifying, compared to now.
Shining Force (Gen): I found that killing the final boss with the hero character gave you a special attack animation that is, AFAIK, is only shown in that specific case. Very cool and satisfying.
Mutant League Football (Gen): Discovering that you could win by killing off enough players from the other team. Not exactly emotional, but really funny and cool.
Xenogears(PS)- After spending nearly 150 hours on it (80 of which were probably cutscenes). Finally seeing the ending was very cool
Goldeneye(N64)- Finally beating the time on the very last secret level, thereby unlocking the cheat (I've forgotten what it was already), on 007 mode. That was gratifying (not to mention cool as my buddies were watching me trying to beat that last damn level)
FF8(PS) - The cutscene with the flowers all blooming. Very cool and moving.
There's probably more, but I'd better get back to work
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
probably more for the fact that he was able to cast some pretty heavy spells, and i missed having, say Fire 3, than that I really liked him. ;-)
i always wondered what would happen if you managed to level him up to 99 BEFORE that scene... would he be able to cast Meteo without DYING!??! i'm guessing no
I remember being so awesome at streetfighter, I played the next best person to my skill with my feet, on SNES home system. I schooled him pretty bad. He was a young kid at the time, maybe 12, and was sorta hyperactive about the whole thing.
God spoke to me.
It is a common human experience to re-experience our past when we witness literal or metaphorical reenactments of our past.
Sometimes, it is the inability to articulate what we are reexperiencing that causes us to expect other people to fail to empathize with us.
If you find a person that can connect with you emotionally about comic books or video games or some other form that is often derided in our society, consider yourself lucky. Someone that condescends to you may enjoy their feelings of superiority temporarily but the emotional nourishment of an empathetic emotional connection lasts a lot longer and is more beneficial.
Quentin Tarantino said something about enjoying B-movies more than more well respected movies because that the element of the film he enjoys about the film seems more pronounced. Perhaps that means that a movie that is "poorly made" in some respects makes it clearer to him (albeit in some esoteric way) what aspect of himself he needs to see reflected in the universe. I could see how the contrast of his enjoyment with other people's derision can highlight how his experience is shared by other people (i.e. since the element of the movie was created by the filmmaker, he and the filmmaker have a connection which may seem more universal than just a person-to-person connection because of the nature of film viewing). Viewing such a move is not a great substitute for empathy, but I suppose it's better than nothing.
Jesus saves....And takes 1/2 damage.
#3 - Deus Ex -- The death of Paul Denton. (If you're not careful.)
#2 - While playing in an RP-heavy text MUD. Take any of dozens of moments when the GMs or other players pulled at the heartstrings, as rarely happens in a modern MMORPG.
#1 - And weighing in at #1, the death of Floyd in Planetfall:
Steve Meretzky's like a tiny god. (To paraphrase Penny Arcade.) His game is one of the reasons I entered the industry.
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
"Oh well, I guess I will always be soft for a cute girl."
Speak for yourself. There are cures for that now.
Bork!
In castlevania Symphony of the night. You can play the game straight.
I was shocked to find out the castle flips over and become a whole new game.
I was extremely shocked to find out the castle is playable as the whip guy.
I was beyond shocked to find out the castle flipped is playable as the whip guy.
A Defining moment for me in Gaming comes from EQ. After jumping through all the hoops to do my first big Epic Quest (PoH). I planned it for 2 weeks and did everything I could to get everyone there on the right time/day. No one showed...
For me, the most emotion I've felt while playing a video game was playing the first 'Deus Ex'. I'd been playing the entire game with some kind of moral sense - I tried not to kill people (even if they were "bad" ... I only killed less than a dozen people the entire game), I chose "sneakiness" over blazing guns, and I tried to do the "Right Thing" (including not stepping on those damn alley cats.)
I remember the end of the game - you're presented with 3 mutually-exclusive options for the mission that will end the game. After I uncovered the 3rd option and I realized the choice I had to make, I actually stopped playing the game for about a week while I made my decision. It really was that hard for me. How to best benefit "society", and is the cost worth it?
In the end, I decided it was best to destroy the communications hub and plunge the world into a 2nd Dark Age. Man, what a decision! But I figured I couldn't trust the HELIOS AI or Morgan Everett.
This statement does have a spoiler in the story, make sure you read it at your own descretion. (Though anyone who hasn't gotten that far by now probably won't play through it enough to get there.)
Just realizing in the first place how close Cloud was to killing her in the first place brought me to a bit of shock. I couldn't believe that after all he had done with he along in the story (Especially if you use her during the fights), that he would even try that. I was glad when he backed down, but with a 5.1 sound system (though the PSX does not use 5.1) it scared the crap out of me when Sephiroth did the deed.
Empathetic-- 94% You tend to walk in someone else's shoes a hundred miles before pointing a finger.
Is lust considered an emotion in this context?
Seriously, though, really good music often moves me emotionally, and the Zelda series and Final Fantasy have some damn good music.
PoP: SoT and System Shock II are the two best storytelling games ever made.
Comment of the year
Fallout. M'kay, bye.
Did anyone mention Bubble Bobble? Because playing through _all_ those levels and beating the game finally...only to find out that you had to finish with 2 players to have a happy ending? Man, that pissed me off.
In WC2: When Spirit did a kamikaze run into the Kilrathi station that had her man captured. She knew that we had to destroy it, so she decided to go with it.
Or in WC1 when you are on the mission to take out the Dralthi ace (he must have been really good to be an ace in that flying deathtrap). You in a raptor, them in two waves of nine dralthi. Send your wingman home and take em all out.
Or near the end of WC1 (or was it one of the secret missions?) taking out the kilrathi strike force in your *hornet* when you are supposed to just be on a recon run. (You are actually supposed to destroy the strike force in the next mission.) The pilot commander berated you, "While I'm sure that losing their entire strike force will be a great psychological blow to the Kilrathi, that's not what you were ordered to do!"
Ha ha!
I'd dropped someone off at the subway station, and I decided to take a shortcut to my next fare by driving through the tunnel to the next station; something I'd done a few times before.
After a short distance, I caught up to a slow-moving subway train, so I pulled over to the left to get around it...when an oncoming train whipped around a curve in the track and ran into me head on.
I laughed so hard I almost pissed my pants.
--Chrono Cross, namely the FMV over the end credits and the music playing with it, and the fact that the key to getting the best ending is this little 7-note tune you've heard a couple times throughout the game - I was very moved when I saw it. Also, there's the scene near the end where you go back in time to the burning orphanage, and the scene where you see ghost likenesses of Crono, Marle, and Lucca.
--Metroid Fusion: there's this one spot a little more than halfway through where the power in the station goes off while you're on an elevator, and you have to get back to your shift by an alternate route. Shortly after that, you end up in a section of the station that is overgrown with plants and you have to find where the growth is coming from and clear it out, and as you make your way through this small passageway, you hear the SA-X's music and its footsteps, and you know there's an inevitable chase sequence coming up. I always CRINGE every time I get to that point, because I know the next 30-45 seconds are VERY stressful and it's a long way to backtrack if I fail.
--Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, when you get to the frozen Hyrule Castle, everything is in black and white and immobile with this kind of soft music being played backwards in the background - CREEPY!
--Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the escape sequence and the final battle - everything a final boss should be and a great rush of exhiliration to boot on Ganon's final appearance.
--Metroid: Zero Mission - not quite the same, but there's a HUGE rush of adrenaline and a feeling of complete and utter payback right after you get your Chozo Suit back with the high-powered Plasma Beam that cuts down those blasted pirates in a single shot - and the energized version of the Brinstar theme plaing the background helps too.
--Chrono Trigger: the scene where you go back in time to save Crono by replacing him with the clone - very moving.
--FF7, as someone stated below, the scene in the Shinra building where you follow the smeared trail of blood up to the roof - also creepy. I haven't played far enough to see Aeris's death yet.
You've hit on a few of the things that make Deus Ex so exhilarating. See, aside from the crazy storyline, Deus Ex has this whole notion of "Investment and payoff". For instance, as you progress in the game, you gather skills and items, and how you use those points defines how you make your approach later in the game. You put points into sniping and demolitions, you become a spy-like soldier.
Me, I also used leg augmentations and shields. I remember running as an alarm went off in one level, and I had to make a hasty escape. I remember turning augs on in a hurry and leaping from the fourth floor of a building to the first floor lobby, outrunning any of the guards in the area. It was exciting and I felt rewarded for being able to make such a retreat (which I wouldn't have if I had invested in silent running).
But the storyline in this game is also brilliant. It has you running around the world trying to find out just who you are, and who you have been working for. You switch sides halfway through the game, and it is one of the first games to try and make you realize the repercussions of your actions (run-and-gun or sneak and immobilize). Truly an amazing game.
Half Life 1 - Fighting with the female black ninjas... man, that was much better than the other wimps Delta Force - had a lot of those moments - sniping terrorists from far RTCW had some surprises as well Halo - for months afterwards, I'd see people far away, and wonder: man, this would be a perfect sniper opportunity...
My first Everquest character was an Erudite Wizard back in 2000 or so. I had been leveling in...what was that place called...Black Burrow? Yeah, Black Burrow killing gnoles until I reached level 8 or so. I suppose the xp was slowing down so someone suggested in chat that I head east toward freeport.
So I started along my way, zoned east into (western karana?) and was sneaking along down the road when I heard a kind of creaking sound. I turned and saw a 20' treant crossing the road just in front of me. I almost died right there on the spot. It was so creepy because of the way the horizon was designed, very dark red autumn colors with cornfields etc...the scenery, the music, the artistry of the treant...I was truly terrified. Most of the stuff I'd seen until then were beetles, bats, and a few gnoles. That thing almost gave me a heart attack. Luckily the treant wasn't KOS to my faction =). Being a noob I didn't know what faction was though, so I ran for dear life.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Oh you just brought back some serious memories.
I played it on the Amiga wayy back in the day, and you are right, that game (and ending) was awesome.
Funny story about that game. Do you recall the part where you befriend the alien (after breaking out of the jail), and he pats you on the shoulder and says something alien like, 'Mien tru-blaa'.
Well, when my friends and I graduated in 1993 from High School, sure enough, one of my friends upon receiving his diploma patted the principle on the shoulder and said 'Mein tru-blaa.'
We died laughing.
++Om
Abandoned Realms is a roleplay enforced MUD (a text based MMORPG). I played a thief character there at one point and befriended another thief. We ran into eachother alot and traveled around relieving other players of their hard won items. One day I was showing him a particularly nice item I had stolen earlier when he suddenly knocked me out, stole the item, and left the area. I felt so betrayed. I couldn't understand why he would sacrifice our friendship for a paltry item. Then I stopped for a moment and remembered I was playing a game. Fancy graphics and sound are nice and all, but they just can't compete with text when it comes to immersiveness.
OFP is a ColdWar FPS. Renegade Russians take over some islands and threaten to launch a missile. US Forces in the area fly in to clean them out.
The missions take place on 4 large islands. There are no levels. The whole island is accessable at any time, and different missions just happen at different locations on the island.
In the last level, you fly your Cesnaback to the islands 10 years after the events. You get in a civilian car and drive around the island to meet up at a pub with your friends.
As you drive around, you're going through the same battlefields that you fought on. It was the coolest feeling to remember the hard battles fought and the experiences you had.
I'm not a veteran, but I can't help but imagine that they nailed the exact feeling you'd have if you actually did tour your old battlefields.
I'd testify on the witness stand that the whole game was worth playing simply to be able to have that feeling on the last level.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
And just yesterday I had mod points. Oh well. Planetfall was a great game.
There was a mission on Dantooine where your character had to deal with a rogue jedi who was causing trouble. I did not have enough charisma, and so I was unable to change her mind about becoming a sith, and thus I had to kill her. When I returned to the jedi compound, one of her friends started yelling at me, angry that I had killed her friend. I was so angry that this jedi was accosting me; I had just cleansed the world of an evil.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
And what, pray tell, is wrong with Yasunori Mitsuda's battle music... other than "Gale"... and a couple from "Chrono Trigger"... OK, I see your point.
But yeah, I agree with you on the overworld music in Chrono Cross - between the quoting of the B theme from Chrono Trigger and the strings that reminded me of the 600 A.D. overworld music in CT, it's great stuff. I've listened to that soundtrack on so many occasions, it's almost not funny anymore. It's great music for PnP gaming too.
I'd just busted my ass for weeks trying to save the vault-dwellers, get to the end, and the overseer says "Thanks, but I'm not letting you back into the vault." Rather emotional.
I realized the line between the World of Warcraft and the real world was blurring when I caught myself searching the side of the road for herbs while driving to work.
"That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you." -A. Whitney Brown
I'll also never forget playing "Silent Hill 2," I'm in the old abandoned prison. I was in a bathroom with about 3 or 4 stalls, one of them closed. I "knock" on the closed one and the text on screen said there's no one there. So I knock again, for kicks. Huh, oh well. Start walking away and suddenly a loud BAM BAM BAM from the empty stall. I screamed. Loudly.
There were many other moments in SH2 that freaked me out but none of them gave me that kind of reaction.
The article isn't about moments in games that got you emotional, but moments in gaming, like real-life events that are related to games. For example, the "bow, nigger" article that's gained popularity over the past little while. That said, it's pretty difficult to remember moments like those since my favored form of video gaming is primarily solitary, so I'm going to go along with everyone else and list a few moments that really drew me in.
I'll have to agree with the Final Fantasy 6 opera scene, no matter how sappy that was. It's actually the only scene in a Final Fantasy that I can think of that really moved me in any way (I couldn't care less about Aeris, for example).
I also remember playing games like Resident Evil and Half-Life for the first time, before I got somewhat used to their penchant for suddenly throwing monsters in your path, thus scaring the hell out of you. In Half-Life's case, I'm thinking specifically of those ceiling creatures with the long tongues that try to eat you. You'll be walking along, not notice the black "rope" in front of you and snap! there you go towards the abomination's gullet.
Oh wait, I remembered a good one: Dogmeat in Fallout. Those of you who've played through the game know exactly what I'm talking about; those of you who haven't should go ahead and do so.
There might be others, but I can't think of them right now (unless you count screaming at the screen because you're losing, which I don't. Count, that is). I tend to get strong reactions more often from movies and books. Whether this is because of the relative maturity of the media, because of their relative quantity and variety, or what, I can't say.
Rob
Karateka - not only a great early fighting game (by the guy that would go on to make Prince of Persia, Jordan Meshner), but the first game (at least that I remember) with a cinematic feel - flashing to the villain as he sends the next wave of minions at you and to your imprisoned love. Everything was done with gestures and music - no words.
And later, when all of fandom learned Sierra was canning SQ7, and thus we don't know when we'll ever see Roger again. Thankfully, with the ACI And SCI emulators, I can revisit Roger and the Pirates of Pestulon anytime I want.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
This isn't a plot moment, which made it all the more powerful.
I'd played and beaten the game about eight times, and this time around was just playing a plain ol' horrible, horrible man. (Secret: If you have the "Gore" perk on, there's a few animations that are unlocked that can't be seen any other way. Like, um... critical hit with a minigun on a child. Like I said, I was being ~evil~.)
And in the middle of a massacre of about 20 children (in that area northish in New Reno), I finally sucked the Karma card hard.
Me: Wearing the best power armor in the game, wielding that bad-ass advanced minigun.
- Child throws Rock!
- Critical hit to Left eye!
- 212 damage.
- You have died.
That's right. A child, throwing a *ROCK*, crit-hit me for 212 damage. When I'm in the bloody power armor.
I just sat there and laughed and laughed, envisioning a legend growing up around the boy, the wasteland's newest David to my goliath, who singlehandedly slayed the scourge of the wastes.
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
Most people probably never actually got to the end of Rocket Ranger (on the Amiga, dunno about the PC), so they wouldn't know that after the shootout with the Nazi Amazon Women on the Moon, Cinemaware shows the typical ending splash screen proclaiming your victory! My friend Mark and I were rejoicing as we had worked together to win the game in the final battle, only for our cries of sucess to turn to screams of terror as the ending sequence graphics were ripped away and a giant moon monster started attacking us! It took everything we had to not get killed by the beast and finally take it out! Probably the most exhilirating moment I've ever had in front of a computer, made all the more precious in that it would be the last time I saw Mark; he died a year later.
Wing Commander III
The shock at Hobbes actually betraying the Confederation was almost too much. Seeing Mark Hammill's pissed off expression when he realizes the truth wasn't necessary -- YOU were pissed off! YOU wanted revenge! It was personal, and you couldn't wait to blow that furball into space dust as soon as you got the chance!
Bruce
He had to throw it away to make room for his booze and smokes.
I played Lufia 2 on an emulator at around the time Halflife 1 was released. Even though it had tiny sprites for characters I was still moved by the story. If you develop enough empathy for the characters it's not really important that they have high res graphics. If fact, as you approach photorealism you see the small defects all the more, while playing a game with crappy graphics forces you to imagine the details.
All you whipper-snappers and your bitmapped graphics.
I am a recovering nethack addict - i have ascended (won the game) several times.
one time, however, I made it all the way down to the wizard, killed him & took the amulet, and slogged my way up with the rotten bastard coming back as a reincarnation over and over.
One time as i was near the top, he got the amulet from me, then went "double trouble" on me. I killed one or both, and picked up the amulet from the pile. I went on and went up from dungeon level one, expecting to enter the first elemental level (i forget now which it was) on my way to the astral plane.
Except I hadn't cast identify on the stupid amulet, and I escaped the dungeon with a cheap plastic imitation of the amulet of yendor.
I think I was more crestfallen then than when my first girlfriend dumped me.
Any time Cloud did something that was beyond me control kept me interested (but yeah, that scene especially-- it still gives me the chills). I wanted to know who the character was and how he got that way.
(PS: Your username looks familiar. Were you on Gaming FM's forums by any chance? ^_~)
In the final mission where you kill Big Smoke and Officer Tenpenny - seeing their remorse/reaction to a life of corruption.
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
Every one of my classmates had already beat the game but me. I would play and get up to level 4 or so and then die and have to start all over. When I finally - finally! - finished the game, my palms were so sweaty and I was thrilled that I had accomplished it. I then packed up the NES and spent the rest of the summer playing ball with my friends.
I guess it's my age & maturity now, but I never got that same thrill again completing a game. I mean, it's just a game and there's so much more out there. Now I get a rush when I make $$$ on a big trade. You can say I graduated to the adult version of computer hand-eye coordination.
I was playing Operation Flashpoint, and it felt so realistic that I actually felt bad the first time I killed someone. I mean, for a moment, I really felt bad. It passed, but that moment stayed with me.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
One of my most involving scenes in games was surprisingly in an action game. The game was Steel Battalion. Here is a link if you don't know about this game: http://xbox.ign.com/articles/362/362157p1.html
In short, the game is played by three pedals, two joysticks and a LOT of buttons. This system can really immerse you in a game, especially if you die in the game you'll have to start the whole campaign from the start. The game is really evil, and really immersive. My moment was in a night mission, i was on a light VT checking through the canyons, everything was quite quiet some enemy VT's here and there, nothing special. Then i found a large open area with a huge blaster door in the wall. Of course i tried to open it. Waited for it to open.. OH CRAP, three or more BIG VTs against my tiny one. After peeing myself i started turning my VT and started to run with heat-sensing missiles closing in. In Steel Battalion if you turn too hard you are going to fall, and this happened to mee. CHAFF CHAFF CHAFF, whew, missiles missed. Get up get up get up! My small VT had a feature to use extra power to run really fast, but if you tax it too much you the VT is going to overheat, if you accelerate too fast you are going to fall. And in the panic i accelerated too fast and fell down, no chaffs left i ended up getting some hits. The next few minutes was zigzagging with the overdrive and barely making it out. I was so immersed in the game that my hands hurt after squeezing the joysticks too hard and couldn't play the game on that day anymore =)
That is Steel Battalion.
I didn't really like the game part of Morrowind. Combat was shallow, questing was mainly endless FedExing, travel was... pedantic. But here's why I liked it anyway.
The books. I have never played an RPG where the written record was so fully realized and consistant with how the writing of history actually works. I was about to throw in the towel on this stinkburger when I read a book proclaiming the island's God, Vivec, to be a continuation of the island's previous rulers, the "eveeeeeval" Daedra. Huh? I looked around for more.
They had this whole Joseph Campbell-esque story of the dark elf, Vivec, who becomes the God of his people. The churches books tell the story... part of it. Then a book I found in a crypt suggests a little bit more background on the churches story... only this time, Vivec murders his best friend in order to become a God. And how did he become a God? Maybe by using the Heart of a God that fell to earth, and that might be powering his arch-enemy, Dagoth Ur, holed up in Red Mountain. The trail of who said what, who is lying, and on who's orders, became to obsess me. I didn't do any of the main quests, but eventually, I had a really powerful character anyway.
Also interested was the amount of things that your character could gain power from. You could enchant your own equipment from captured souls, but it had a very low chance of succeeding... unless you did it right. The stacking effects of well enchanted armor could make you completely invisible or nigh invulnerable. The transformation for burlap sacks up to glowing plate armored fiery sword badass, a staple of the RPG, was quite well done in Morrowind. The ornate armor and weapons covered by the color specific sheen of the enchantments you'd placed on them, all slightly transparent from your invisiblity magic, made a high level character look unstoppable, which they almost were.
I got far enough that I wanted to find out the "truth" about Vivec, Red Mountain, etc. Still, that'd mean going back and doing all those incredibly bad missions for several different fractions, even more boring now that I'd seen most of the areas.
If you killed any of the essential characters who give you the main storyline quests in Morrowind, you'd get this message that said "The thread of fate has been broken. Reload or persist in the doomed world that you have created." I'd killed one, intending not to actually finish the game. As a lark, I picked the lock on the door to Vivec's chamber. I figured this would result in my death. Instead, I finally get my long chat with Vivec... and then attacked him (expecting to do a quickload for my folly). But... I won. He's only got a few powerful spells, to which I have resistance potions. He eats my Daedric longsword, and I even trap his fucking soul in my soulgem, Azura's Star, Azura being the Daedra who vowed revenge on the motherfucker. But that's not all. He drops one of the items you're supposed to get from him... one of the magic weapons needed to activate and control Lorkham's Heart. Hmmmmmm! But, if you use it, you die instantly. Damn.
I keep playing anyway. There's so many backdoors, bugs, and just cool options in the game, I think I might still have a chance at bringing this thing to a conclusion. And then it happens: one of the high wizards in his secluded towers offers to train me in the use of the items I need to use Lorkham's Heart.
That was a great moment. I struck out on my own, investigated the most powerful organization in the country, killed their God with the weapons I made myself, captured his soul and took his most valuable object. Fuck the thread of fate! Fuck the main storyline! What does that matter when you're TOUGHER THAN GOD? Hell yes, children. I'm Leroy Brown of the Dark Elves, and I'm the baddest man on this whole damn continant. And now I'm off to Red Mountain, where I intend to kill the second baddest man on the continant, and then take his God machine and become the supreme God-Emporer of Morrowind myself. Can I get a CHICKACHICKABOWNOW?
Unfortunately, you couldn't use the Hea
My personal favorite is at the very end of the game. If you manage to restore all your friends to life, there is a very intense goodbye scene. I especially loved the words spoken to Fall-From-Grace and to Nordom. Other great moments are the confrontation with Ravel and with the Pillar of Skulls.
I still have those visions about him killing all his wives. Smashing her face onto a wine glass. mmm. i guess im scared for life.
Oooh, absolutely! Great call.
One of the most emotional moments i've had with games was in System Shock 2 when you reach Janice Polito's office and realize... well, what's been going on all along. Sheeze, that game was incredible. The atmosphere, it was so good - it's the only game which literally freaked me out. Enough to have to play it with lights on.
Remember those damn monkeys? Those cyborgs sneaking on you? The ghosts? SHODAN's creepy voice? Priceless.
Deus Ex was incredible as well (the original one), without such a dark feeling to it, but the way the history was presented actually made you care about what happened to the characters. I mean, who didn't feel awful about Paul Denton?
And the Thief series were excellent as well. They were the first "stealth" FPSs arround, and to this day they're still among the best. Moving arround in shadows, listening footsteps...
I don't think it's actually possible to save Cid. Also, they're not related, but she calls him Grandpa occasionally. Still, as cheesy as it was at times, I can't think of a game that moved me as much as FFVI. I always rank it as one of my favorite games of all time.
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
The first time I got Larry some pussy was a very emotional experience for me.
When you first start the human storyline... and the lights go out... and the strobes and alarms go off......... jesus, its just like the movie.
:)
DO NOT play that in the dark.
For me, the most moving scene in FFVI was the destruction of Doma. Man, wipe out everyone that Cyan has ever known and loved in one stroke. Talk about nothing left to live for, poor guy.
FFVI is definitely up there as one of my favorites. I really liked all of the SNES FFs. Honestly, I prefer the older tile and sprite games from Square to the newer 3D ones. For one, they left a little more to the imagination. Second, I find the stories feel more self-consistent and like they're about the right length. FFVII and up seemed to just drag on the stories always felt too convoluted. Maybe it's an age thing and I'd like the 3D ones better if I'd started with them.
Oh the horror when my Pac Man for Atari 2600 came home and was a piece of flickering crap. It was totally different from the arcade.
Oh the pleasure when Bionic Commando on NES was totally different from the arcade and was much deeper and more fun.
Unfortunately, both of these opened the floodgates to semi-sequel hell, when the games couldn't technically handle the game, they just threw something together. Also, Nintendo had that odd rule that the home game must have something more added, which often backfired.
When I started tooling around a game for the sake of doing so was after about the 10th time I beat Sonic The Hedgehog for the Genesis.
I called it "Explorimenting", I'd take as much time as I could to work out new techniques to maximize my score or find the shortest and longest paths to the objectives.
I could beat the game in either 15 minutes or an hour and not lose one sonic depending on my mood.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And the sheer reason why i got my first ever graphics accelerator (12mg voodoo2)
The moment at the very start of the game when you walk out side of the ship and hear the glorious music and see the water texture, the waterfall opposite the cliff face...... i have never been wow'ed like that ever since.
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned any flight sims, while they arent ever meant to inspire the same kind of emotion through direct stimulus, some of the most intense gaming expierences I have ever had have been wrapped around flight sims. My game of choice in that Genere is one of the newer versions of Falcon 4.0. first off, in order to be able to play falcon with any level of skill you have to spend some serious time getting to understand not only the avionics of the aircraft you are flying but also the layout of your partiuclar stick and throttle. This takes time and honestly makes sure that if you are playing this game you are comitted. Years into playing falcon I went out and bought the most high end joystick available (thrustmaster Cougar) which of course forced me to relearn a large portion of how I play the game. Long story short, I hooked up with an online squad, 8 of us go to bomb a missle site and airstrip in central Iraq. We lose one man on take off, the 7 of us fly about 500 feet above the sand in formation to the target area, 40 miles out we split then each 2 man flight breaks off to attack thier respective targets. SAM's get two guys above the targets, but all bombs get dropped sucessfully. We now have 5 f-16's left and 6 MIGs just launched to intercept us on our way out. We are in terrible position due to our lack of altitude and less then ideal fuel status, flight our way through, lose 2 more pilots I get hit with some cannon fire and am having some avionics issues (all lights and HUD in the cockpit are gone). my wingman and I hit the desk and go full throttle to home base when what do we see in the distance??? A friendly four man flight of f-14s coming to clear our tails. They smoke the migs, I limp home land with 400lbs of fuel and no lights . All in, it took maybe 2 hours total to complete the mission but I honestly couldnt have had more fun gaming, playing such a techincal game with other live people was ablast.
The sanity meter was an excellent concept to build the game around.
:D
I had lots of fun walking into rooms and seeing the obvious hallucinations - walking on celings, walls bleeding, one-time effects such as seeing myself in the bathtub dead with my wrists slit.
But that pales in comparison to the really good tricks they pulled. Once I KNEW I had cleared all the enemies in an area, then I went into a room, and freaked out when this maid approached from behind with a weapon...then my character woke up. There was also the fun time I was reloading a flintlock pistol, and blew my own head off in the process. I actually thought I would have to restart from a save after I saw that one.
Oh yeah, my favorite: one time I was playing late at night, lights out, when suddenly my TV muted. I looked around thinking I had sat on the remote, then freaked out when I saw it was on the table. Then my character in the game suddenly screamed "WHAT IS GOING ON, AHHHHHH!". Really well executed, that scare. Of course, they rendered a MUTE graphic on the TV, cut the sound, and I was so absorbed in the game I couldn't tell the difference.
The fun part is that they warmed you up with the obvious hallucinations that you laughed at...just so they could solidly freak you out with the good ones
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
And for me demonstrated there can be such a thing as a game that engages you too emotionally - sorry I gave up on System Shock 2 after that point. Silly, I know, but I've never been a fan of the horror genre...
I ... fixed your door. It was sticking.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
It still was my favorite game, too. I say 'was' because I agree that the game is ruined, and I no longer play...
:) Put "slashdot" in the subject line
I've played a few of the offline servers; I can give you advice on which ones are fun if you'd like. Also, I'm working with a team of people at my college on making a game with similar *principles* to UO (not similar story, gameplay, graphics, or anything.)
I'd love to hear what you liked about UO in the old days (so I can make sure I capture it in our game!) Shoot me an email if you want to be involved
The gradual realization that I'm being controlled by an AI that is completely insane: I almost feel sorry for people that have only experienced that universe via Halo: while the graphics are *much* prettier, I don't get the same mood as I did with the Marathon series and the storyline isn't even close.
Playing Marathon multiplayer and using the Napalm Projector on my friends was comedy: looking across the room and seeing their faces wash yellow as their screens fill with flamey death.
Deus Ex and FFVII were amazing as well, but they've been mentioned to death so I won't add to it.
The "original" Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple ][ : seeing the monochromatic Hitlers and placing the bomb... and then having to run all the way out again. Nothing worse than hearing the guard bark
World of Warcraft has really floored me: not just the environment but the team play has been (dare I say it) *as good as* PnP: Most of the guys I do PnP with have laptops and we'll all meet at someone's house and play that way: good fun. I'm not obsessed with PHAT LOOTZ though so that's probably why I'm still having fun.
- learn to swim.