The player is put into this spike trap by the antagonist (Wheatley), and at this point the chapter text comes up saying "Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You", you get an achievement of the same name, and Wheatley then says "Hello! This is the part where I kill you!"
The timing and delivery of it was so perfect.
GTA Vice City - taxi and ambulance driving
I loved the part of VC (and I think other installments have this too) where you jump into either a taxi or ambulance and you can then become an actual driver for them, earning money. Loved that minigame for being such a different thing to all the other missions.
Driv3r - the Bascule Bridge
In one of the maps of Driv3r (kind of a GTA clone), there was a Bascule bridge you could actually toggle, and so I'd usually get a wanted rating, bait as much police and cars onto the bridge (even blocking the roadway with my own car) and then draw the bridge up with all of them on it, and watch how the physics bug out and some officers end up in water (should never happen in normal gameplay) and the cars just all explode in the water.
And right before that, GLaDOS also says, "Well, this is the part where he kills us." Then the caption. Then the achievement pop. Then Wheatley says, "Hello! This is the part where I kill you."
I'm going off memory from 10+ years ago in my recount, and I suppose similar to those who played 8-bit or 16-bit games and swore they looked better than they actually do, I just fondly remember just how much the 4th wall was broken there and how so much integrated together in the moment.
Dude yes! I had an idea to play those in my car when I met up with a friend interstate, but I then decided to do something that was higher effort, and I made my own mock radio station where I was the host, heavily inspired by the VC radio stations
It started off completely normal with subtle hints (the station name was BSFM), and then started having odd songs play like Minecraft parodies, music from other games and small indie artists only we would know, and towards the end I did "talkback" interviewing all of our friends that were in on it, giving weird takes on bread of all things.
For a few months I experimented with extreme Part15. I had a big-ass antenna high on the roof (which is what made this a temporary hobby) and a deep solid ground contact. It was just slightly over legal in terms of wattage but managed to broadcast almost a mile -- including a school and some government offices.
That was like 15 years ago, when USA still had a little freedom. These days I'd be too afraid of ICE/Tulsi/Patel/Neom hauling me away in the night
Bioshock’s big twist was so well done. I still think about that one a lot especially in games where there’s no explanation for why you’re doing a mission.
The number of people that actually remember this line from playing the game, and those that just heard it are probably very different though. Not sure the distinction matters.
Neither am I. It seems unique because it’s actually become a tiny part of pop culture, which, to me, is what fits the definition of “memorable”. Nobody cares about some old guy in a cave distributing wooden swords.
I'm gonna give this one the top moment because while I only ever played like ten minutes of the original Zelda games, this scene is pretty clear in my head, and very few other moments in gaming are as clear
”It had to be me, someone else might have gotten it wrong”
This is even worse if you take the Renegade action, which tries to stop him from going up the tower to launch the cure. Shepard whips out a heavy pistol and shoots him as he’s getting into the elevator. He dies before ever being able to trigger the launch. But Shepard doesn’t just whip out any pistol. Shepard doesn’t even whip out the pistol you currently have equipped. No, that wouldn’t have enough symbolism…
Shepard specifically uses the M-6 Carnifex Hand Cannon. If you think back to when you first met him on Omega, he was the one who originally gave Shepard that gun.
Yeah, the game is designed in a way where your first encounter with a Reaper is probably going to be when you’re in a Seamoth. And you probably won’t have the electric shock module to shake the reaper off. It’s the best combo of “let the player potentially escape the attack” and “make the player feel completely powerless to fight back.” It’s also a great reminder that there is always a bigger fish, because the player usually feels pretty confident with cruising around after they build their first Seamoth.
Hmm, there are quite a few of those, I think. Let's see.
Bioshock reveal. A man chooses, a slave obeys.
First time talking to Sovereign in Mass Effect, oh and the ending sequences from going through the Conduit and Sovereign attacking the Citadel, the Alliance fleet coming through. The cinematics and music were just so well done.
D:OS2, fighting Alexander when Battle for Divinity starts playing. Or the end fight, with Sins and Gods. The soundtrack was a delight.
The Witcher 3, the first time you arrive in Skellige, the landscape and the music, it just made me feel these things, it was beautiful.
The Deep Roads in Dragon Age:Origins, when Hespith starts reciting her poem and the Broodmother afterwards. Oh dear lord, I still remember the first time I was there, it was so fucking creepy. "First day they come and catch everyone." Truly superb.
In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, when you're forced to flee Skalitz, but you're so incredibly noob that you can barely ride a horse, and you realize this game is different from many others, because you're really just a nobody without any skills - and you'll stay a nobody, pretty much. This entire game was a joy to me.
There are also some games that are entire masterpieces, where I can't really pick a single moment but the entire game would count, for example Disco Elysium, a true masterpiece. This game made me experience the entire rainbow of human emotions.
Another example would be Deus Ex, which to me will never get old, however bad the graphics might be.
Let's stop here, before this turns into simply a list of my favorite games. :D
That moment in Final Fantasy 7 when Sephiroth, um, drops in.
Gotta be up there.
Or in Deus Ex when, if you haven’t been paying attention (or just running through killing) the twist hits. I saw it coming but still. “That’s right JC. I’m [redacted].”
That time I was playing Quake and I said 'I'm cocked, locked and ready to rock' and someone else said "You shouldn't lock your cock. Cocks should be free!"
It technically happened in a video game and I will never forget it.
Don't button mash, either. That damned owl has whatever repeat command mapped to the primary/affirmative button, so he'll just start all over again 🤷🏽♂️
LAN party 2012ish. Playing Farcry 2 team Deathmatch multiplayer on the Clear Cut map. First team to 100 kills win. I got 60 of the 100 kills to win and from that point forward I was no longer permitted to use the 50cal sniper rifle.
The funny part is that this mission is actually laughably easy… If you follow via the road. Following by driving directly on the tracks, (which is what everyone does), throws off his aim, and you’ll almost always fail. But if you drive next to the train (on the road that parallels the tracks), he’ll hit every single shot and you’ll breeze through the mission.
The entire ending of portal 2.
::: spoiler spoiler
From the part where he kills you all the way up to leaving the enrichment centre. It's all done so well and it made me realise this time there was no fakeout, this was actually goodbye and we will never get a portal 3, not with Chell at least.
:::
Reaching the peak of celeste was an incredible moment for me and the summit chapter is such a good "final" gauntlet. I've gone on to beat everything but farewell and the entire game is so well made. (My thumbs really hurt though)
Not going to look the same to everyone, but being scammed in runescape for the first time. I remember trusting someone taking me to their training spot in the wilderness to level up prayer, and got back stabbed 😆
The moment in Phantasy Star III on Sega where it is revealed that the entire world was actually just one node in a vast interstellar ship
EDIT: Originally posted the wrong one (PS IV). Please forgive me; it was like 30 years ago and I was drunk AF when it happened. I may have wept a little at the time. It was a special moment. I almost called my parents.
When does that happen? I’ve played through that game a couple of times but I don’t remember that reveal. It’s cool seeing someone mention it though! I feel like that game doesn’t get enough love but it’s in my top 3 RPGs.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
tapping directions on the D-Pad and checking your map for corrections
:::
, not even knowing for certain that it’s doing anything but insatiably curious, until you finally hear: “DIIIING…”
It’s very hard to describe and sounds externally like a grueling ARG, but the incremental way the game set that up was actually incredibly fun, and helped to build confidence in that kind of secret-finding.
When I was a kid the live-action opening of Resident Evil 1 scared the shit out of me. Especially when that guy picks up the pistol from the ground and it still has a hand attached to it.
More recently I think "Spec Ops: The Line" twist(?) really stuck with me, I was an ideal player for the game because I just blindly carried on, questioning very little and shrugging it off as "accidental" or "needs must" until being faced with everything at the end.
I remember playing Hollow Knight lost in an area really needing a bench. I found a coin slot in a room and put a coin in. A bench popped out of the ground and unfolded for me. Then a speaker popped out the wall playing some mellow music. There was a little glass window with fish swimming on the other side. I really liked the game. After that I loved it.
I don’t know why, but the King Zora Sliding scene has probably stuck with me the most. Not for being annoying or amazing, but because it has been the memory my brain has used to understand so many situations in life. Like the just impossible to avoid, watching paint dry boredom that infects so much of life.
Jumping through the first painting in Super Mario 64
Bad:
Playing LoL the first and only time
Playing Burning Crusade for WoW at release and picking up the first blue item in the first area that made my Tier 3 items I worked months for, completely obsolete.
When Joel has to choose to save Ellie from having the brain surgery or not in The Last of Us. When Monika in Doki Doki Literature club removes other characters in the game from the player's file + when she breaks the 4th wall. "It's just a prank, Han!" from Until Dawn.
Tha bit in Mario Kart when you finish a circuit and your guy rides up to the podium and suddenly there's a huge motherfuckin' fish and you're like, "what's this puffy guy gonna do?" and then ba-boom it fuckin' explodes and there's your trophy
There are many for sure, but now that I thought about it a bit, the strongest has to be me booting up and logging into World of Warcraft for the first time. Gave me such sense of wonder. And the world opening up more and more with every zone...
It's beem years since I played it the last time but the game still sticks with me anyway.
This is incredibly niche but in the Blue Planet mod for Freespace 2 you're on the losing side of a war for the whole campaign - your elite unit pulls off a bunch of small-scale clutch victories but overall things are not looking good. Near the end of the campaign there's an elaborate series of missions involving disabling a bunch of hostile ships, intercepting and manipulating distress comms, and otherwise setting up a trap for the opposite faction's command ship, the Carthage (culminating in a mission called, appropriately, "Delenda Est"). All the setup missions go smoothly, as does the first springing of the trap, but then
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
a counter-trap is sprung as soon as your forces are fully committed - another fleet's flagship and elite escorts who are supposed to be somewhere else warp in at murder range and start absolutely obliterating your people. The absolute dread as you realize almost nobody is getting out alive sticks with me.
At a LAN party 8 of our friends played Versus in L4D2 at the peak of our skill playing those games and the matches were very even and extremely competitive in a good way. I hosted a lot of LAN parties but that was the best of them all. The only game I ever surpassed it with hours played is Dead by Daylight.
The first time my friends and I got Resident Evil Outbreak Files 1 and 2 set up to play online via PCSX2 and the obsrv.org fan server. It's much easier now, but setting it up in the PCSX2 1.6.X days was awful. These games are so much better with voice chat. The only improvement I could dream of is a decompilation adding proximity voice chat. You already hear muffled commotion and gun shots of nearby players. Beat both games eventually on Very Hard difficulty.
The first time I booted up Roller Coaster Tycoon which I got in a cereal box for free. I'm still playing it via OpenRCT2! Parkitect is the true 3D fan sequel, fuck Planet Coaster. RCT3 devs kept making the same mistakes.
Walking into this in the first Watch_Dogs. (NSFW. Very much so.)
If you take the time to interact with all the hackables and scan all the people in this area you'll have revealed to you the incredible depths of depravity and cruelty going on here. It is incredibly fucked up. It was at this very moment in my first and only playthrough that I decided that no, fuck that. Aiden Pierce was now going to be murdering a lot of very specific people.
Yeah, that was pretty memorable. Like, it was pretty strongly implied but so much worse than expected.
Edit: oh! And the music as you slowly turn on the generators for The Bunker was the perfect amount of mysterious and exciting! Loved that part of the game
The servos were directly connected to the flight-control stick, without any inputs of what was occuring in the gameplay. This meant you could be upside down, even when flying level in-game, and you would have to bank and dive to level-out the game during quiet parts or at the end of stages. No chance of redout, but the harness was torso only and uncomfortable for longer times upside down.
This was created as a 'hack', probably by LAI engineers, and unauthorised by SEGA. I've met a couple of these Perth game-engineers since, and they are true pioneers. So much so, that SEGA took interest and flew out it's own engineer, Masaki Matsuno, to take a look, which inspired the creation of the R360.
Novel, but the lack of interconnect with gameplay made the experience clunky. Only played it twice.
Ghost Trick's entire second half is filled with them, but you cannot describe them spoiler-free... "When he looks at you" is the best I can come up with.
Return of the Obra Dinn, when you first look up in Abigail's death scene.
Someone asked about best games and I said ff10. Part of it was squares graphics compared to anything at the time were just on another level. The whole opening scene blew everyone away that I know at the time and same with some other scenes in the game right up to the reveals about some of the characters existence. So really great story combined with next level graphics in a very story centric game.
Lives, all mortal lives, expire
Souls go to their doom in flame
Forevermore
There are great examples in this thread of great games from years past. But from more recent games, everyone who has played BG3 to its close (or near it) will likely agree with me. It was an amazing buildup and amazing scene when it happened.
Honestly the thing that sticks with me more is the scene after defeating the final boss.
The game just does such an incredible job of starting with a local problem and then gradually, believably making the stakes bigger and bigger until you have to kill gods. And then when you finally do it, you remember that all of that was just to solve your first problem, a problem so local that it exists only in your character's skull. It instantaneously gave me the scope of everything I'd accomplished. One of the greatest pieces of media I've ever experienced. I wish it had been a movie so I could do it again and again.
A fair warning, that mine is “political” in some respects.
The 3 final enemies in Another Crab’s Treasure. I say “enemies” not bosses because two of them wish you no harm, and the last one isn’t capable of fighting back. But beating them feels so damn right and deserved.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
The final boss (not a human) is a capitalist who genuinely wants to help the denizens of the ocean, but believes in doing so via mass pollution and business investment. The final enemy is the person who stole Kril’s shell, and after hours of trying to earn it his way and getting nowhere, you literally just kill him in cold blood to take it back.
:::
The game definitely read as “Haha funny Spongebob Dark Souls parody” and at many times it is silly; but that often disarms you for the moments of pure character writing and active worldly commentary. I’d even say with the level of ethereal, unreadable high fantasy many Souls games use, it’s probably the best written Soulslike. I described the savage bits but there’s some heartfelt moments too.
Portal 2 - The Part Where He Kills You
The player is put into this spike trap by the antagonist (Wheatley), and at this point the chapter text comes up saying "Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You", you get an achievement of the same name, and Wheatley then says "Hello! This is the part where I kill you!"
The timing and delivery of it was so perfect.
GTA Vice City - taxi and ambulance driving
I loved the part of VC (and I think other installments have this too) where you jump into either a taxi or ambulance and you can then become an actual driver for them, earning money. Loved that minigame for being such a different thing to all the other missions.
Driv3r - the Bascule Bridge
In one of the maps of Driv3r (kind of a GTA clone), there was a Bascule bridge you could actually toggle, and so I'd usually get a wanted rating, bait as much police and cars onto the bridge (even blocking the roadway with my own car) and then draw the bridge up with all of them on it, and watch how the physics bug out and some officers end up in water (should never happen in normal gameplay) and the cars just all explode in the water.
And right before that, GLaDOS also says, "Well, this is the part where he kills us." Then the caption. Then the achievement pop. Then Wheatley says, "Hello! This is the part where I kill you."
He then fails to kill you.
The song that plays is called the part where he kills you as well
weirdly this video of a playthrough of it is not timed nearly as well as described by you guys
https://youtu.be/-A5B6jqtt-c
The editing of that video delivers the joke poorly
it's definitely not helping
I'm going off memory from 10+ years ago in my recount, and I suppose similar to those who played 8-bit or 16-bit games and swore they looked better than they actually do, I just fondly remember just how much the 4th wall was broken there and how so much integrated together in the moment.
I remember the moment having quite an impact as well
I just feel that they did actually miss with the timing a little bit
When you kill someone, steal their car, and the radio is playing Vice City Public Radio and you notice how insane the banter is.
I found a utility to extract those as MP3s and to this day I still play them loud in my car sometimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8pbnjvypQ0
Dude yes! I had an idea to play those in my car when I met up with a friend interstate, but I then decided to do something that was higher effort, and I made my own mock radio station where I was the host, heavily inspired by the VC radio stations
It started off completely normal with subtle hints (the station name was BSFM), and then started having odd songs play like Minecraft parodies, music from other games and small indie artists only we would know, and towards the end I did "talkback" interviewing all of our friends that were in on it, giving weird takes on bread of all things.
Pirate radio & Part15 radio <3
For a few months I experimented with extreme Part15. I had a big-ass antenna high on the roof (which is what made this a temporary hobby) and a deep solid ground contact. It was just slightly over legal in terms of wattage but managed to broadcast almost a mile -- including a school and some government offices.
That was like 15 years ago, when USA still had a little freedom. These days I'd be too afraid of ICE/Tulsi/Patel/Neom hauling me away in the night
When you first walk out of the shrine of resurrection in Zelda Breath of the Wild and view over the landscape
I'm old. I was thinking in ocarina of time enteric Hyrule Field for the first time 😅
I was thinking link to the past... Lol
Bioshock’s big twist was so well done. I still think about that one a lot especially in games where there’s no explanation for why you’re doing a mission.
“A man chooses… a slave obeys…”
I just wish they'd used actual clips from the game, instead of recording new dialogue of…
::: spoiler BioShock 1 spoilers Atlas literally saying "Now, would you kindly do this? Would you kindly do that?" :::
Really, really takes me out of the moment every time. 😬
“It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.”
I bet there are people out there who hate video games but recognize this line.
The number of people that actually remember this line from playing the game, and those that just heard it are probably very different though. Not sure the distinction matters.
Neither am I. It seems unique because it’s actually become a tiny part of pop culture, which, to me, is what fits the definition of “memorable”. Nobody cares about some old guy in a cave distributing wooden swords.
Which is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses.
I'm gonna give this one the top moment because while I only ever played like ten minutes of the original Zelda games, this scene is pretty clear in my head, and very few other moments in gaming are as clear
Thank you for the rush and immense chill bumps friend🥲
The first time a Reaper Leviathan attacks you in Subnautica.
The first time you launch a rocket in Factorio.
The first time you do a bunch of stuff in KSP.
Landing on the Mun was the first time I've ever jumped out of my chair and done a victory dance while gaming.
All of these are great picks. I'll add:
"It had to be me, someone else might have gotten it wrong."
This is even worse if you take the Renegade action, which tries to stop him from going up the tower to launch the cure. Shepard whips out a heavy pistol and shoots him as he’s getting into the elevator. He dies before ever being able to trigger the launch. But Shepard doesn’t just whip out any pistol. Shepard doesn’t even whip out the pistol you currently have equipped. No, that wouldn’t have enough symbolism…
Shepard specifically uses the M-6 Carnifex Hand Cannon. If you think back to when you first met him on Omega, he was the one who originally gave Shepard that gun.
Yeah, the game is designed in a way where your first encounter with a Reaper is probably going to be when you’re in a Seamoth. And you probably won’t have the electric shock module to shake the reaper off. It’s the best combo of “let the player potentially escape the attack” and “make the player feel completely powerless to fight back.” It’s also a great reminder that there is always a bigger fish, because the player usually feels pretty confident with cruising around after they build their first Seamoth.
I met the Reapers long before I had a Seamoth when I played :(
Terrifying game.
The first zombie in Resident Evil.
That uuh... thing that happens to Aerith in Final Fantasy 7.
Max Payne 3 in the airport level when Tears by Health starts playing.
Leaving the vault in Fallout 3.
The end of season 1 of Telltale's Walking Dead.
Season 1 of TWD was the first video game to make me cry. And I actually bawled my eyes out, too. It was pretty dramatic.
Aeris/aerith ff7
Kotor the big reveal
Halo when chief and arbiter team up
"Wake me when you need me"🫡
That first goomba in world 1-1
Counterpoint: that first pipe you go down, that first music change...
Yeah, that's actually a really good one. That second theme is so dark and mysterious sounding.
Hmm, there are quite a few of those, I think. Let's see.
Bioshock reveal. A man chooses, a slave obeys.
First time talking to Sovereign in Mass Effect, oh and the ending sequences from going through the Conduit and Sovereign attacking the Citadel, the Alliance fleet coming through. The cinematics and music were just so well done.
D:OS2, fighting Alexander when Battle for Divinity starts playing. Or the end fight, with Sins and Gods. The soundtrack was a delight.
The Witcher 3, the first time you arrive in Skellige, the landscape and the music, it just made me feel these things, it was beautiful.
The Deep Roads in Dragon Age:Origins, when Hespith starts reciting her poem and the Broodmother afterwards. Oh dear lord, I still remember the first time I was there, it was so fucking creepy. "First day they come and catch everyone." Truly superb.
In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, when you're forced to flee Skalitz, but you're so incredibly noob that you can barely ride a horse, and you realize this game is different from many others, because you're really just a nobody without any skills - and you'll stay a nobody, pretty much. This entire game was a joy to me.
There are also some games that are entire masterpieces, where I can't really pick a single moment but the entire game would count, for example Disco Elysium, a true masterpiece. This game made me experience the entire rainbow of human emotions. Another example would be Deus Ex, which to me will never get old, however bad the graphics might be.
Let's stop here, before this turns into simply a list of my favorite games. :D
That moment in Final Fantasy 7 when Sephiroth, um, drops in.
Gotta be up there.
Or in Deus Ex when, if you haven’t been paying attention (or just running through killing) the twist hits. I saw it coming but still. “That’s right JC. I’m [redacted].”
😭"I'll come back when it's all over"🫡
That time I was playing Quake and I said 'I'm cocked, locked and ready to rock' and someone else said "You shouldn't lock your cock. Cocks should be free!"
It technically happened in a video game and I will never forget it.
But also getting Strogified in Quake 4.
Not during locktober they're not
The Space Marines being subjected to scientific experiments: "It hurts"
That still gives me nightmares
Don't button mash, either. That damned owl has whatever repeat command mapped to the primary/affirmative button, so he'll just start all over again 🤷🏽♂️
Playing OOT for the first time was pure joy.
The cake is a lie
Hey, you're finally awake.
Would you kindly..
What makes thela5 work so well is that the twist works because of the format.
It wasn't mind control of the main character. It was mind control on the person holding the controller, and it WORKED.
Half Life when you reach the surface for the first time.
Same with Portal 2. That tiny bit of turret opera just gets me everytime
pwning and getting pwned by friends playing counterstrike dust 2 in the local cafe
I miss old CS so much
Rise and shine Mr Freeman. Rise and shine
The only time a video game got me choked up.
LAN party 2012ish. Playing Farcry 2 team Deathmatch multiplayer on the Clear Cut map. First team to 100 kills win. I got 60 of the 100 kills to win and from that point forward I was no longer permitted to use the 50cal sniper rifle.
ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS FOLLOW THE DAMN TRAIN, CJ!
The funny part is that this mission is actually laughably easy… If you follow via the road. Following by driving directly on the tracks, (which is what everyone does), throws off his aim, and you’ll almost always fail. But if you drive next to the train (on the road that parallels the tracks), he’ll hit every single shot and you’ll breeze through the mission.
The entire ending of portal 2. ::: spoiler spoiler From the part where he kills you all the way up to leaving the enrichment centre. It's all done so well and it made me realise this time there was no fakeout, this was actually goodbye and we will never get a portal 3, not with Chell at least. :::
Reaching the peak of celeste was an incredible moment for me and the summit chapter is such a good "final" gauntlet. I've gone on to beat everything but farewell and the entire game is so well made.
(My thumbs really hurt though)The closest we got officially was this, which at least had Alesia Glidewell getting the chance to reprise playing Chell in live-action.
The games that broke the 4th wall, specifically Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid or all of Eternal Darkness.
How to be me. Someone else might have got it wrong.
That scene still hurts .
Not going to look the same to everyone, but being scammed in runescape for the first time. I remember trusting someone taking me to their training spot in the wilderness to level up prayer, and got back stabbed 😆
Glados's anger in Portal
The ending of Dragons Keep in Borderlands
It's such a heavy and beautiful moment in a game with a pony called buttstalion.
The moment in Phantasy Star III on Sega where it is revealed that the entire world was actually just one node in a vast interstellar ship
EDIT: Originally posted the wrong one (PS IV). Please forgive me; it was like 30 years ago and I was drunk AF when it happened. I may have wept a little at the time. It was a special moment. I almost called my parents.
When does that happen? I’ve played through that game a couple of times but I don’t remember that reveal. It’s cool seeing someone mention it though! I feel like that game doesn’t get enough love but it’s in my top 3 RPGs.
I'm 99% sure he means Phantasy Star 3. On a side not though I agree. Phantasy Star 4 is basically a perfect rpg.
Arriving at the astral plane with the Amulet of Yendor.
Time to reach into that icebox for that cockatrice corpse, since pit traps aren't a thing there
Did you really manage to haul an ice box all the way up there? That's impressive.
It's actually not viable. I must be misremembering and was almost certainly wishing for a cockatrice corpse there.
Less than 1 week to TNNT!!
𝄢𝆹𝅥𝅮 𝆺𝅥𝅮𝆹𝅥𝅯𝄞 It's the mooooost wonderful time.... of the yeeeeeaaaarrrr! 𝄢𝆹𝅥𝅮 𝆺𝅥𝅮𝆹𝅥𝅯𝄞
So many moments in TUNIC, but the huge one when you find the Holy Cross.
Spending 30 minutes in front of a giant wall,
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler tapping directions on the D-Pad and checking your map for corrections ::: , not even knowing for certain that it’s doing anything but insatiably curious, until you finally hear: “DIIIING…”
It’s very hard to describe and sounds externally like a grueling ARG, but the incremental way the game set that up was actually incredibly fun, and helped to build confidence in that kind of secret-finding.
"Hey, Listen"
A certain sythe sweep near the end of Grim Fandango.
The dip in the river near the end of Bioshock Infinite.
Jumping into the thing near the end of Outer Wilds, and coming down where you come down going through what you go through.
The ending in the barn with John Marston. Red dead redemption.
Watching the credits for Super Metroid for the first time.
That end card probably stayed on my tv for for like an hour while I just sat there.
When I was a kid the live-action opening of Resident Evil 1 scared the shit out of me. Especially when that guy picks up the pistol from the ground and it still has a hand attached to it.
More recently I think "Spec Ops: The Line" twist(?) really stuck with me, I was an ideal player for the game because I just blindly carried on, questioning very little and shrugging it off as "accidental" or "needs must" until being faced with everything at the end.
The giraffe in the last of us
I remember playing Hollow Knight lost in an area really needing a bench. I found a coin slot in a room and put a coin in. A bench popped out of the ground and unfolded for me. Then a speaker popped out the wall playing some mellow music. There was a little glass window with fish swimming on the other side. I really liked the game. After that I loved it.
When I first got out of Midgard in FF7. I honestly hated the gameplay, but the story and level design kept me stuck.
Being given the Normandy in the original Mass Effect
When Majora’s mask grew legs. Freaked me the hell out as a kid lol.
Eric fucking Sparrow claiming credit for the chopper hop in T.H.U.G.
most hatable villain in any game, hands down
Absolute. Piece. Of. Trash. I don't think I'll ever forget that name.
That motherfucker.
Are you still mad about it? I'm still mad.
He POACHED our spot!
The name of the friggin' gnome in the original Kings Quest on the IBM PC. Turns out I had a version with a bug in it and a spelling error.
Ifnkovhgroghprm?
Yeah - something like that. Ended up getting it with a hex editor from the game files. :)
I don’t know why, but the King Zora Sliding scene has probably stuck with me the most. Not for being annoying or amazing, but because it has been the memory my brain has used to understand so many situations in life. Like the just impossible to avoid, watching paint dry boredom that infects so much of life.
Muh-weep Muh-weep Muh-weep
Good:
Lifting the Master Sword in Link to the Past
Beating Melenia in Elden Ring
Jumping through the first painting in Super Mario 64
Bad:
Playing LoL the first and only time
Playing Burning Crusade for WoW at release and picking up the first blue item in the first area that made my Tier 3 items I worked months for, completely obsolete.
You got off easy.
When Joel has to choose to save Ellie from having the brain surgery or not in The Last of Us. When Monika in Doki Doki Literature club removes other characters in the game from the player's file + when she breaks the 4th wall. "It's just a prank, Han!" from Until Dawn.
The part where you launch white phosphorus in Spec Ops the Line
The ending of Telltale's Walking Dead season 1
It was in assassin's creed 2 when the precursor address the character in the Animus. You realize at that point they they knew. Mind blowing.
Red Dead Redemption. ::: spoiler spoiler John Marstons Death :::
The death of Deckard Cain in diablo 3 what a fucking crapchute.
When the shields on the Arsenal Bird go down in Ace Combat 7. Just the way the music swells and everything.
I was screaming and cheering. Just felt invincible in my beloved F-15E.
Runner up:
Learning about Revan in KOTOR 1.
I’m sure I could come up with so many, but these sprung to mind:
Tha bit in Mario Kart when you finish a circuit and your guy rides up to the podium and suddenly there's a huge motherfuckin' fish and you're like, "what's this puffy guy gonna do?" and then ba-boom it fuckin' explodes and there's your trophy
The end of chapter 6 in RDR2, pretty much the entire final mission but especially the final scene on the mountainside.
The Normandy level in Medal of honor was so thrilling. Also the submarine base level.
There are many for sure, but now that I thought about it a bit, the strongest has to be me booting up and logging into World of Warcraft for the first time. Gave me such sense of wonder. And the world opening up more and more with every zone...
It's beem years since I played it the last time but the game still sticks with me anyway.
He has a gun!?
Sekiro players will understand.
This is incredibly niche but in the Blue Planet mod for Freespace 2 you're on the losing side of a war for the whole campaign - your elite unit pulls off a bunch of small-scale clutch victories but overall things are not looking good. Near the end of the campaign there's an elaborate series of missions involving disabling a bunch of hostile ships, intercepting and manipulating distress comms, and otherwise setting up a trap for the opposite faction's command ship, the Carthage (culminating in a mission called, appropriately, "Delenda Est"). All the setup missions go smoothly, as does the first springing of the trap, but then
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler a counter-trap is sprung as soon as your forces are fully committed - another fleet's flagship and elite escorts who are supposed to be somewhere else warp in at murder range and start absolutely obliterating your people. The absolute dread as you realize almost nobody is getting out alive sticks with me.
Edit: found a video for the voice-acted version
https://youtu.be/tQ7hAdMAZZU
:::
At a LAN party 8 of our friends played Versus in L4D2 at the peak of our skill playing those games and the matches were very even and extremely competitive in a good way. I hosted a lot of LAN parties but that was the best of them all. The only game I ever surpassed it with hours played is Dead by Daylight.
The first time my friends and I got Resident Evil Outbreak Files 1 and 2 set up to play online via PCSX2 and the obsrv.org fan server. It's much easier now, but setting it up in the PCSX2 1.6.X days was awful. These games are so much better with voice chat. The only improvement I could dream of is a decompilation adding proximity voice chat. You already hear muffled commotion and gun shots of nearby players. Beat both games eventually on Very Hard difficulty.
The first time I booted up Roller Coaster Tycoon which I got in a cereal box for free. I'm still playing it via OpenRCT2! Parkitect is the true 3D fan sequel, fuck Planet Coaster. RCT3 devs kept making the same mistakes.
Too many to list.
Being airlifted over the wall into Anor Londo in Dark Souls. I had to spend several minutes collecting my jaw off the floor.
Walking into this in the first Watch_Dogs. (NSFW. Very much so.)
If you take the time to interact with all the hackables and scan all the people in this area you'll have revealed to you the incredible depths of depravity and cruelty going on here. It is incredibly fucked up. It was at this very moment in my first and only playthrough that I decided that no, fuck that. Aiden Pierce was now going to be murdering a lot of very specific people.
"Business must proceed."
Yeah, that was pretty memorable. Like, it was pretty strongly implied but so much worse than expected.
Edit: oh! And the music as you slowly turn on the generators for The Bunker was the perfect amount of mysterious and exciting! Loved that part of the game
:::spoiler Outer Wilds the begging when the gimmick is presented, and the end when everything is at stake. :::
Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Skip Button. It filled me with so much dread.
Getting hugged in VR chat during the pandemic.
Every time I played Dead Rails on Roblox. I even recorded it all.
I'm gonna go with a moment from Final Fantasy XIV. ::: spoiler spoiler "Remember us, remember that we once lived." :::
* ^But^ ^nobody^ ^came.^
(Undertale genocide run)
* It's you! (mirror at the first region of the game)
* Despite everything, it's still you. (mirror at the end of the game)
(Undertale non-genocide runs)
Being upside down for the first time in an arcade game, in 1989!
Thrilling for the time and very memorable.
It was Afterburner installed into a bespoke cabinet at Fremantle Timezone.
The servos were directly connected to the flight-control stick, without any inputs of what was occuring in the gameplay. This meant you could be upside down, even when flying level in-game, and you would have to bank and dive to level-out the game during quiet parts or at the end of stages. No chance of redout, but the harness was torso only and uncomfortable for longer times upside down.
This was created as a 'hack', probably by LAI engineers, and unauthorised by SEGA. I've met a couple of these Perth game-engineers since, and they are true pioneers. So much so, that SEGA took interest and flew out it's own engineer, Masaki Matsuno, to take a look, which inspired the creation of the R360.
Novel, but the lack of interconnect with gameplay made the experience clunky. Only played it twice.
Ghost Trick's entire second half is filled with them, but you cannot describe them spoiler-free... "When he looks at you" is the best I can come up with.
Return of the Obra Dinn, when you first look up in Abigail's death scene.
That fist slam onto the stove was both a big reveal, a tone shift, and an emotional character moment all in one.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Bet those broken bones hurt quite a bit. How does it feel? Does it make you feel alive? :::
Someone asked about best games and I said ff10. Part of it was squares graphics compared to anything at the time were just on another level. The whole opening scene blew everyone away that I know at the time and same with some other scenes in the game right up to the reveals about some of the characters existence. So really great story combined with next level graphics in a very story centric game.
Lives, all mortal lives, expire Souls go to their doom in flame Forevermore
There are great examples in this thread of great games from years past. But from more recent games, everyone who has played BG3 to its close (or near it) will likely agree with me. It was an amazing buildup and amazing scene when it happened.
Fools. Fools! how hard you have fought.
Brave, brave... But it's all been for naught
True souls, who couldn't be bought.
Doomed.
Detected.
And caught.
Honestly the thing that sticks with me more is the scene after defeating the final boss.
The game just does such an incredible job of starting with a local problem and then gradually, believably making the stakes bigger and bigger until you have to kill gods. And then when you finally do it, you remember that all of that was just to solve your first problem, a problem so local that it exists only in your character's skull. It instantaneously gave me the scope of everything I'd accomplished. One of the greatest pieces of media I've ever experienced. I wish it had been a movie so I could do it again and again.
The ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. It pisses me off to this day.
Sending Floyd to his death in Planet Fall.
Super Mario Bros 1, I pretended Superb Mario was the Pony Express and had to deliver mail ASAP.
Made me realise what metagaming and speedrunning was.
When the alien breaks into your spaceship in "Rescue on Fractalus".
The end of MGS2 was a prophecy.
FFX The sending (amongst the reveal moment of the summoner's fate)
Assassin’s Creed 2:
“It’s-a me, Mario!”
"It's a good life we lead, Luigi."
"The best. May it never change."
"And may it never change us."
Goosebumps every time. I'll never forgive Bowser for what happened.
The ending to crisis core. Even just watching it on YouTube makes me tear up every time
Where's everyone going? Bingo?
Zelda: Link to the Past, going through the lost woods. I can still hear the music.
The fight with The Boss in Rokovoj Bereg in Metal Gear Snake Eater.
Before, she opens up about herself like never before, and after... well, shit.
Elden Ring the first time the tiny knights attacked me
The ending…
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler …inside the Sun Station, and inside the Interloper… :::
..in Outer Wilds. And if you haven’t played it, don’t tap the spoiler before you have.
A fair warning, that mine is “political” in some respects.
The 3 final enemies in Another Crab’s Treasure. I say “enemies” not bosses because two of them wish you no harm, and the last one isn’t capable of fighting back. But beating them feels so damn right and deserved.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler The final boss (not a human) is a capitalist who genuinely wants to help the denizens of the ocean, but believes in doing so via mass pollution and business investment. The final enemy is the person who stole Kril’s shell, and after hours of trying to earn it his way and getting nowhere, you literally just kill him in cold blood to take it back. :::
The game definitely read as “Haha funny Spongebob Dark Souls parody” and at many times it is silly; but that often disarms you for the moments of pure character writing and active worldly commentary. I’d even say with the level of ethereal, unreadable high fantasy many Souls games use, it’s probably the best written Soulslike. I described the savage bits but there’s some heartfelt moments too.
In Far Cry 3 when you kill Vaas by dropping the knife from one hand to the other. No music, nothing fancy, just a look of shock on Vaas' face.
Waka waka
Ancient creators of Hyrule!
Beyond Good & Evil, lighthouse arc
The ending of "A Plague Tale: Requiem".