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A TOP TEN LIST.
Feb. 3rd, 2010 12:53 amYes kids, it's time for another one of my top ten lists. These happen to be events in video games that just make me look like this: :O Events big or small that just change the course of everything and make me feel like I'm actually immersed in something rather than just sitting in front of a screen mashing some buttons. Now, this is obviously not an OF ALL TIME and crap list, since I haven't played Every Game Ever -- this is just a personal list of amazing/favorite OH MY GAWD DID THAT JUST HAPPEN moments. Those ones that always make my jaw drop and slap a big AWE. AWWW YES. across my face in giant IMPACT LOLCAT FONT.
Note: I have included no spoilers in these top ten. The videos that have spoilers are marked. Anything that sounds like a spoiler isn't really a spoiler. You know all the people in ObsCure die, you know Megaton blows up if you want it to -- any real spoilers have been left out of this list. You can click on the videos at your own risk (if the videos have super mega real spoilers, I will mark them).
TOP TEN FAVORITE "OMG WHOAAAAAAAT?" VIDEO GAME EVENTS:
10.) ANY DEATH IN OBSCURE II (ObsCure II: The Aftermath) -- sure, it's pretty much a parody of slasher films and the controls are kind of off and the game has a certain layer of cheese spread all over it, but every time you get to a point and one of your friends dies, it's just like, WAIT WHAT. They aren't just characters who have kind of popped up and been like HEY LET'S GET DRUNK. You actually play as pretty much everyone in the game at one point or another, so in one moment you could be controlling someone who makes you laugh (Stan) or makes you roll your eyes (Corey) or makes your fanboy heart go pitter-pat (Amy, usually -- but Shannon is hotter ;D) and the next moment their blood is running under everyone else's feet. It works. Another reason it really works? Because you know people who fit these characters.
VIDEO: NO! Not my viking! (lol spoiler a little?)
09.) THE FINALE OF DEAD AIR (Left 4 Dead) -- It wasn't hard to pick the most epic moment of this game. Truly there are many moments where you're like, "WAIT, DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?" But the plane flying straight at your team of four standing on a loading platform, the plane on fire and about to crash, and then the four exclamations, usually something along the lines of "DID YOU SEE THAT?" and "HOLY SHIT!" definitely makes my list. Everytime I step out of that safe room and I know it's coming, I always have to stop and watch it (sorry Bill, Francis and Zoey) -- wait for it to finish it's descent and listen to the exclamations. Then I can start fighting zombies.
VIDEO: Did you see that?!
08.) THE FINAL LEVEL IN BRAID (Braid) -- I didn't play this myself, but I watched the boyfriend do it late one Saturday night. It was quick-paced and pretty cool, but once Nate got Tim to the end of the level and the Princess was asleep in her room... and once everything started going the other way, my jaw dropped. It was so seamless. Everything Nate had made Tim do on the way to the end was being done backwards and it looked so right that I suddenly was squealing, "IS THIS THE SAME TIM?" This had to be one of the most brilliant level designs ever. MY MIND. SHE IS BLOWN. HE'S COMING TO GET YOU, SISTER.
VIDEO: Hold up. Rewind. (This video contains spoilers you probably won't really get if you haven't played the game. ALSO, WATCH IT IN HD. WATCH IT IN HD.)
07.) KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City) -- This is the final mission in GTA:VC and boy is it a doozy. Let's just say there's lots of betrayal and lots of guns and Tommy Vercetti taking over this poshMiami Vice City pad is quite an ordeal of amazing proportions. As I was spraying enemies with a machine gun from my office and then chasing some sumbitches to the roof and sniping some other sumbitches (names all withheld to prevent spoilers lol), I realized what a big pile of YES PLEASE WHAT this mission was. It was a perfect gigantic bang to end the game with (well, end the main missions with ;D). BULLETS EVERYWHERE! P.S. Ray Liotta rocks. so. hard.
VIDEO: Say hello to my leetle friend. (SPOILERS!)
06.) DISCOVERING THE WHARK/WAHRK & THE GALLOWS (Riven) -- When I hit Village Island in Riven, I remember coming across an interesting contraption that I was forced to ride up. Later learning that it was basically a gallows that Gehn used to sacrifice people to a beastie he owned in the water below known as a wahrk, I felt an empty pit in my stomach. I rode up the thing that people were forced to ride down on to get eaten. After the pit went away, there was a wash of THAT WAS CLEVER AND AWESOME over me. Cyan never failed to amaze me with their design and storylines. Later, I managed to come face to face with said beastie (and said beastie got mightily pissed at me when I kept calling him and didn't feed him - HE IS SO CUTE) and after that, every single time I had to get in those little subs to ride around underwater, there was always a blanket of unease that settled. I knew the beastie was somewhere out to get me. D: When you can manage to smack me in the face with that uneasiness (and also manage to try to force me to find ways around getting into the subs) then you definitely win at atmosphere and gaming in general. Good show, Cyan.
VIDEO: Feeding time!
05.) CHAPTER 7 - THE FINALE (Phantasmagoria) -- Oh lawd, Sierra. I can't even begin to get into this crack. The year was 1995 and the chapter number was 7. There was a time limit, there was a husband with a demon inside him, there was a wife I was controlling -- a wife who had lost pretty much everything since she moved into this craphole mansion. Don chased after Adrienne like a maniac and by the time I was old enough to play this by myself (my Mom was playing it the first time I saw it) I had the final chapter down to a science. It scared me so bad. I didn't want anything horrible to happen so I would do every motion and every action as quick as my finger could click. I didn't want Adrienne to get sliced in half, I didn't want Adrienne to get her face ripped off by the demon, I didn't want Adrienne to fall to a bone-crunching splat in that hole in the secret passageway, I didn't want Adrienne to have to watch her husband die. The graphics aren't up to today's standards and yeah, the acting can get a little cheesy but the whole chapter still makes me shudder to this day. (And Don's cackle gives me nightmares.)
VIDEO: What a happy marriage! <3 (SPOILERS! And this dude kills the chase sequence - LONG VERSION. I love it. I could never master the long version. ALSO, OLD SCHOOL GORE/BLOOD WARNING, LOL~)
04.) BLOWING UP MEGATON (Fallout 3) -- An event this big is surely saved for late in the game when the player needs a GASP moment, yeah? Not this one. Once you make it out into the big,beautiful empty Capital Wasteland, you stumble your way into a city called Megaton. Megaton is named this way because it is a city built around a giant, unexploded atomic bomb. You can be a good samaritan and use your skills to disarm said bomb, or you can be a giant dick and get paid a lot of money (bottle caps, in this case) by a man named Tenpenny (through a little snake of a man named Mr. Burke) to blow the sucker up. If you do this, you get to watch it from a distance with Tenpenny and Mr. Burke at your sides in the safety of the giant Tenpenny Tower. And you know why Tenpenny wanted the city destroyed? It was an eyesore and "ruined" the view from his penthouse landscape. :|
VIDEO: Oh Tenpenny. You card.
03.) THE CABIN (Resident Evil 4) -- This is SO DAMN FUN. You have control of your man Leon S. (Sex, lol) Kennedy and you're fighting alongside the hot Luis (and Ashley Graham is cowering around and stuff here too) in a cabin/barn that's being attacked on all sides by Los Ganados. They're coming in the door and through the windows and finally you're cornered on the second floor where they begin climbing up ladders into the windows and charging the stairs. It's beautifully executed, wonderfully scored and knows how to keep you right on the edge of your seat (if you're low on ammo Luis holds out on you until the very last moment then finally tosses you some). Plus, Luis + Leon = SEXCELLENT. This has to tie (in this game) with one of the coolest boss fights ever -- the Lake Monster, El Lago.
VIDEO: Talk about adrenaline rush. (Bonus! Leon in his pimp suit!)
02.) MEETING ANDREW RYAN (BioShock) -- This was truly badass. This whole area. Finding the room with the pictures, meeting Ryan, listening to Atlas spill it. Once you hear it all and think back to what has transpired previously in the game, your jaw just kind of drops. Then the fact that they strip you of everything you've built up and drop you somewhere you aren't used to and just pretty much go, "HAVE FUN WITH THIS." I love it. Loooooove it. Also, GOLFING NEVER LOOKED SO MUCH FUN!
VIDEO: A man chooses, a slave obeys. (SPOILERS.)
01.) ENTERING ROOM 312 (Silent Hill 2) -- Konami killed it here. Absolutely. This sequence and the emotion and music and colors and angles. EVERYTHING about it just sort of kicked me in the face and left me there for a few moments going, "really? really now? .......really?" Not to mention after you get over that, you're forced to run through a horrible mess of burnt hotel hallways and up a collapsing staircase to some form of the wife you've been looking for. The best part about though is the feeling... the feeling of playing through the last parts of the game with that lump in your throat and that gross ball of dread in your stomach from Room 312 -- that feeling of total betrayal. Why have you been helping this guy through Silent Hill? Well played, Team Silent. Well played.
VIDEO: I'm not your Mary. (MEGA ULTRA SPOILERS.)
IN CLOSING: I love video games. Screw the whole "psh, they aren't art" BS -- if music is art, movies are art, stories are art -- what do you get when you put all those things together and make it interactive? INTERACTIVE ART, NO SHIT.
Note: I have included no spoilers in these top ten. The videos that have spoilers are marked. Anything that sounds like a spoiler isn't really a spoiler. You know all the people in ObsCure die, you know Megaton blows up if you want it to -- any real spoilers have been left out of this list. You can click on the videos at your own risk (if the videos have super mega real spoilers, I will mark them).
TOP TEN FAVORITE "OMG WHOAAAAAAAT?" VIDEO GAME EVENTS:
10.) ANY DEATH IN OBSCURE II (ObsCure II: The Aftermath) -- sure, it's pretty much a parody of slasher films and the controls are kind of off and the game has a certain layer of cheese spread all over it, but every time you get to a point and one of your friends dies, it's just like, WAIT WHAT. They aren't just characters who have kind of popped up and been like HEY LET'S GET DRUNK. You actually play as pretty much everyone in the game at one point or another, so in one moment you could be controlling someone who makes you laugh (Stan) or makes you roll your eyes (Corey) or makes your fanboy heart go pitter-pat (Amy, usually -- but Shannon is hotter ;D) and the next moment their blood is running under everyone else's feet. It works. Another reason it really works? Because you know people who fit these characters.
VIDEO: NO! Not my viking! (lol spoiler a little?)
09.) THE FINALE OF DEAD AIR (Left 4 Dead) -- It wasn't hard to pick the most epic moment of this game. Truly there are many moments where you're like, "WAIT, DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?" But the plane flying straight at your team of four standing on a loading platform, the plane on fire and about to crash, and then the four exclamations, usually something along the lines of "DID YOU SEE THAT?" and "HOLY SHIT!" definitely makes my list. Everytime I step out of that safe room and I know it's coming, I always have to stop and watch it (sorry Bill, Francis and Zoey) -- wait for it to finish it's descent and listen to the exclamations. Then I can start fighting zombies.
VIDEO: Did you see that?!
08.) THE FINAL LEVEL IN BRAID (Braid) -- I didn't play this myself, but I watched the boyfriend do it late one Saturday night. It was quick-paced and pretty cool, but once Nate got Tim to the end of the level and the Princess was asleep in her room... and once everything started going the other way, my jaw dropped. It was so seamless. Everything Nate had made Tim do on the way to the end was being done backwards and it looked so right that I suddenly was squealing, "IS THIS THE SAME TIM?" This had to be one of the most brilliant level designs ever. MY MIND. SHE IS BLOWN. HE'S COMING TO GET YOU, SISTER.
VIDEO: Hold up. Rewind. (This video contains spoilers you probably won't really get if you haven't played the game. ALSO, WATCH IT IN HD. WATCH IT IN HD.)
07.) KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City) -- This is the final mission in GTA:VC and boy is it a doozy. Let's just say there's lots of betrayal and lots of guns and Tommy Vercetti taking over this posh
VIDEO: Say hello to my leetle friend. (SPOILERS!)
06.) DISCOVERING THE WHARK/WAHRK & THE GALLOWS (Riven) -- When I hit Village Island in Riven, I remember coming across an interesting contraption that I was forced to ride up. Later learning that it was basically a gallows that Gehn used to sacrifice people to a beastie he owned in the water below known as a wahrk, I felt an empty pit in my stomach. I rode up the thing that people were forced to ride down on to get eaten. After the pit went away, there was a wash of THAT WAS CLEVER AND AWESOME over me. Cyan never failed to amaze me with their design and storylines. Later, I managed to come face to face with said beastie (and said beastie got mightily pissed at me when I kept calling him and didn't feed him - HE IS SO CUTE) and after that, every single time I had to get in those little subs to ride around underwater, there was always a blanket of unease that settled. I knew the beastie was somewhere out to get me. D: When you can manage to smack me in the face with that uneasiness (and also manage to try to force me to find ways around getting into the subs) then you definitely win at atmosphere and gaming in general. Good show, Cyan.
VIDEO: Feeding time!
05.) CHAPTER 7 - THE FINALE (Phantasmagoria) -- Oh lawd, Sierra. I can't even begin to get into this crack. The year was 1995 and the chapter number was 7. There was a time limit, there was a husband with a demon inside him, there was a wife I was controlling -- a wife who had lost pretty much everything since she moved into this craphole mansion. Don chased after Adrienne like a maniac and by the time I was old enough to play this by myself (my Mom was playing it the first time I saw it) I had the final chapter down to a science. It scared me so bad. I didn't want anything horrible to happen so I would do every motion and every action as quick as my finger could click. I didn't want Adrienne to get sliced in half, I didn't want Adrienne to get her face ripped off by the demon, I didn't want Adrienne to fall to a bone-crunching splat in that hole in the secret passageway, I didn't want Adrienne to have to watch her husband die. The graphics aren't up to today's standards and yeah, the acting can get a little cheesy but the whole chapter still makes me shudder to this day. (And Don's cackle gives me nightmares.)
VIDEO: What a happy marriage! <3 (SPOILERS! And this dude kills the chase sequence - LONG VERSION. I love it. I could never master the long version. ALSO, OLD SCHOOL GORE/BLOOD WARNING, LOL~)
04.) BLOWING UP MEGATON (Fallout 3) -- An event this big is surely saved for late in the game when the player needs a GASP moment, yeah? Not this one. Once you make it out into the big,
VIDEO: Oh Tenpenny. You card.
03.) THE CABIN (Resident Evil 4) -- This is SO DAMN FUN. You have control of your man Leon S. (Sex, lol) Kennedy and you're fighting alongside the hot Luis (and Ashley Graham is cowering around and stuff here too) in a cabin/barn that's being attacked on all sides by Los Ganados. They're coming in the door and through the windows and finally you're cornered on the second floor where they begin climbing up ladders into the windows and charging the stairs. It's beautifully executed, wonderfully scored and knows how to keep you right on the edge of your seat (if you're low on ammo Luis holds out on you until the very last moment then finally tosses you some). Plus, Luis + Leon = SEXCELLENT. This has to tie (in this game) with one of the coolest boss fights ever -- the Lake Monster, El Lago.
VIDEO: Talk about adrenaline rush. (Bonus! Leon in his pimp suit!)
02.) MEETING ANDREW RYAN (BioShock) -- This was truly badass. This whole area. Finding the room with the pictures, meeting Ryan, listening to Atlas spill it. Once you hear it all and think back to what has transpired previously in the game, your jaw just kind of drops. Then the fact that they strip you of everything you've built up and drop you somewhere you aren't used to and just pretty much go, "HAVE FUN WITH THIS." I love it. Loooooove it. Also, GOLFING NEVER LOOKED SO MUCH FUN!
VIDEO: A man chooses, a slave obeys. (SPOILERS.)
01.) ENTERING ROOM 312 (Silent Hill 2) -- Konami killed it here. Absolutely. This sequence and the emotion and music and colors and angles. EVERYTHING about it just sort of kicked me in the face and left me there for a few moments going, "really? really now? .......really?" Not to mention after you get over that, you're forced to run through a horrible mess of burnt hotel hallways and up a collapsing staircase to some form of the wife you've been looking for. The best part about though is the feeling... the feeling of playing through the last parts of the game with that lump in your throat and that gross ball of dread in your stomach from Room 312 -- that feeling of total betrayal. Why have you been helping this guy through Silent Hill? Well played, Team Silent. Well played.
VIDEO: I'm not your Mary. (MEGA ULTRA SPOILERS.)
IN CLOSING: I love video games. Screw the whole "psh, they aren't art" BS -- if music is art, movies are art, stories are art -- what do you get when you put all those things together and make it interactive? INTERACTIVE ART, NO SHIT.
