Moments of Amazement

[Jana]

I was reading something earlier that had been written by an MMO player in the late 90s, when it was a new and marvelous thing to play games alongside people continents away. The writer had been so amazed to be playing a game from the United States with teammates from Britain and Australia...

I thought to myself of other times I've been simply amazed by something in games. While playing Fallout 3, a game that takes place after a nuclear holocaust, I encountered an area that was filled with trees. Simply regular trees, with birds chirping and water flowing. After spending so much time fighting through sewers and train tunnels and a desert wasteland, I found this area to be simply... Amazing! :3

Those of us that grew up with gaming may find it harder to be awestruck by what we might consider to be an everyday thing, but I don't think we're incapable of it. Are there any moments in your mind that stick out like this?

[theshirn]

The ending to Terranigma.

:patriot:

[Esifex]

Sometimes it's just the surroundings themselves that catch my eye and make me go, 'holy shit, that's awesome!' For how simple the grahpics are now compared to the later games, Halo 1 really blew me away. After the one sequence where you extend the hard-light bridge, then drive up out of that huge-ass tunnel and you come out in this giant valley, complete with a little stream running through it - that was downright amazing.

There are some spots in World of Warcraft where I'll be coasting around, mining ore or pickin' herbs or whatever I'm doing at the time, and I just stop and look around, and go 'Damn. And a lot of players just blast right through here while questing, focusing only on the monsters they have to kill to complete the quest.' For example - Crystalsong Forest has this giant crystal tree. Most players only see it while flying by on a flight path into Dalaran, and during flightpaths is the highest likely time for a player to go AFK, cuz it's auto-pilot playing. But if you actually get in close and peer at it, it's got all kinds of outstanding textures and weird thingamajiggies about it that makes you stop and appreciate the work the graphics artists put into their games.

Then again, I'm a graphics whore, so, whaddaya expect.

Also, from Ace Combat 5 - spoilers, but if you've played the game, you probably know exactly what I'm about to mention -

Spoiler:

the death of Chopper. That one moment in the game just hollowed me out, and I was like 'oh FUCK NO YOU DIDN'T!' and proceeded to go on a roaring rampage of revenge.

I didn't quite expect a game to be able to pull that reaction out of me like that, just because of something that happened to an AI character.

[Hanzo K.]

Also, from Ace Combat 5 - spoilers, but if you've played the game, you probably know exactly what I'm about to mention -

Spoiler:

the death of Chopper. That one moment in the game just hollowed me out, and I was like 'oh FUCK NO YOU DIDN'T!' and proceeded to go on a roaring rampage of revenge.

I didn't quite expect a game to be able to pull that reaction out of me like that, just because of something that happened to an AI character.

You too bro?
Man, I turfed every enemy plane I could catch that stage after what happened there.

Spoiler:

Chopper

was a real bro, he'll never be forgotten. He was the best damn wingman I had ever flown with.

I think it's safe to say that just about everyone who played it reacted the same way as we did.

[Esifex]

After the fact, I found out that the enemy AI is actually dumbed down and your wingmates lethality goes up like a hundredfold, just to play on your rage from the moment. Very profound use of tweaking the coding; using a predicted reaction from a player, that you can reliably predict will cloud their judgement and perceptions just a bit to not notice that the enemy planes are flying in straight lines and not dodging missiles anymore.

I was literally locking on, firing a missile, and moving on, looking for a new target to smear across the sky.

[Hanzo K.]

Even though I used multi-lock air-to-air missiles that level.
Yeah, the multi-target Ar-to-Air/Air-to-Ground missiles are my favored subweapons.
It was so beautiful, seeing entire formations crumbling before my wrath-filled barrages...
And mind you, That time around I was beating it in a single session, non-stop Ace Combat 5, so that rage pretty much lasted me until the end of the final level.
Which by itself was amazing.
All those people banding together to cheer me and my squad on...That pretty much just cemented it that I was actually a hero.

[Kips McKipzerson]

Any Rockstar games. Seriously, Easter Egg's are my weakness. Along with any Valve game. It's like there's a bunch of easter eggs you wouldn't find out yourself unless you knew something about the inner coding of the game. Hell things are still being found in portal, And it's awesome.

[HakureiSM]

Those of us that grew up with gaming may find it harder to be awestruck by what we might consider to be an everyday thing

Are you kidding, the evolution of games from when we started to where we are now, and how much there's still to evolve simply baffles me, just think about it. :V


Also, scenarios. They're the soul of any game, the atmosphere, the fictional world you're diving in.
GTA IV's reproduction of New York, massive yet outrageously detailed.
Ace Combat games and their infinite landscapes, incredibly realistic, specially the snowy maps.
Every inch of Half-Life's Black Mesa, and HL2's new world after the cascade, the Aperture Laboratories in Portal 1 and 2, Valve's ability to create an immersive environment that sucks the player in and makes him forget about reality is endless.
The ruined world in Gears of War, some mixture of futurism and ancient grecoroman architecture.
Ninja Gaiden II(a severely underrated game, unfortunately)'s crazy medleys of towering skyscrapers and ancient Japanese architecture, futuristic highways and medieval canals.
I could go on but I won't, these are a few that make me jawdrop :V

[trancehime]

There's something to be said about trying your hardest to fight against opponents who do not only outclass you by terms of equipment, but have higher levels and no doubt have a definite chance of winning... Despite the odds, there's no recourse but to try your best and see how far you can fight on... Well, I don't think this will really matter to many people at all, but I was personally amazed at how far my squad managed to get in the fight. We weren't able to knock out anyone but I don't think we stood a chance...

Guild vs Guild Battle 5 ::  Lv51/50/51/51 (Club) vs Lv46/48/45/48 (Kaleidoscopic Dreams)
An exercise in futility
Winner ::

Spoiler:

Club

[Azure Lazuline]

Entering Phendrana Drifts for the first time. It was so beautiful, especially after trudging through a volcanic cave for the past half hour. By extension, a lot of areas in the Metroid Prime games have that effect (the next one that comes to mind is the first room of Bryyo, with the giant statues), but Phendrana Drifts was by far the best. And because of that, the ice area in Prime 3 was amazing as well - especially the little reference in the music! Too bad you only visit there once.

[Yukarin]

Okami's Shinshu Field Restoration cutscene.

It made me go "Wow" and I just sat there for like 30 minutes contemplating on how awesome that was, especially with the paper filter that the PS2 version has.

[Angelfire]

Also, from Ace Combat 5 - spoilers, but if you've played the game, you probably know exactly what I'm about to mention -

Spoiler:

the death of Chopper. That one moment in the game just hollowed me out, and I was like 'oh FUCK NO YOU DIDN'T!' and proceeded to go on a roaring rampage of revenge.

I didn't quite expect a game to be able to pull that reaction out of me like that, just because of something that happened to an AI character.

I remember that. I went into rage mode from that, and it sucked because I didn't have many missiles left, and I sucked with the guns back then. But I don't think the enemy AI dumbs down that much in Ace difficulty, but they DO fly more stupidly (Like, roughly at Normal-mode levels IIRC).

Meh, you've both said the best amazing moments in Ace Combat 5

Spoiler:

(Besides  Sea of Chaos, when Yuke ships join your fleet and Yuke ships are firing on Yuke ships and Osean ships are firing at you)

So, instead, have an epic moment from it's prequel, Zero:

Spoiler:

Pixy showing up after you 'destroy' the controls for V2 and FRYING PJ with his lazor. I mean, PJ was an annoying pain in the ass AND a rather sucky wingman, but that was really unexpected. Also, Pixy's superplane. It was amazing, it was amazingly difficult to shoot down, and, more importantly, it was a blast.

[noodles]

Ace Combat Zero?

The level "Diapason" where you are gradually taking down enemy installations in little sectors of the city, and as you do so, you hear the citizens rise out of their homes and shops and fight the enemy with you, yelling shit like RING THE BELL OF LIBERTY AND FREEDOM as you zoom around, the music pumping you up with a wonderful crescendo. I was like whoa, man

How about the moment right at the start of the last level of Ace Combat 04 where

Spoiler:

you hear the choir begin to belt it out in latin, and it peaks right as the obscene cloud of enemy aces shriek past you

The entire last level of Ace Combat Zero...

ugh, it's so good to know a ton of people on this forum have played that series, I know so few who have

Hmm, other experiences...

Running around in 3D for the first time in Super Mario 64, climbing trees and doing flips n shit. My brain melted.

The moment that the whole system of Djinn and Psynergy clicked in my head in Golden Sun. It was the first non-pokemon RPG that I understood...

Playing Metroid Prime when it came out, stepping out of the gunship on Tallon IV, looking up and seeing the raindrops hitting my visor

every second of Shadow of the Colossus

rhgher more to come

[XephyrEnigma]

Kinda minor, but that very first time I booted up FFXIII on my PS3. Once the title screen hit, my brain melted. Music rarely has the ability to do that to me.

[Momijibot]

Seeing Justin get beat by Gamerbee live in evo 2010.

To put the fight into context, Justin Wong said before that Adon was a waste of a character slot and probably bottom tier. Vangief, a Zangief player, then knocked him out into the losers brackets, where he went to face Gamerbee. Watch the match here.

[shadowbringer]

- the train stage in Raiden Fighters 2, best train stage so far for me :p
- the third boss from Crimzon Clover, and the 5th stage after the midboss, where you're being chased by the stage 1 bosses and need to get through stage 3 bosses. Also, the first time I've seen the 5th boss' final attack :V
- the first time getting past stage 17 on Varth
- some moments in Der Langrisser (SNES) (having to run from the forest fire, and the way Emperor Bernhart kills B?ser)
- some moments in Breath of Fire 2 (SNES) (having to find the town's thief to clear his friend's name, among others)
- FF6's history progression (I like how it scales from you trying to hide and escape from the empire, then finally trying to take on it, and how you're going to save the world, or what's left of it, at the expense of making magic cease to exist. Imho, this detail really fits the series' name.)
- Shinki and Reimu, in Phantasm Romance, and its stages in general

[Jes_Isaive]

Somehow, just getting to the credits in The Dishwasher Vampire Smile was awesome. Also awesome is the fact that it was made mainly by three people, with a few people helping on other things.
(Spoilers in that video by the way.)

[ArteShy]

I was reading something earlier that had been written by an MMO player in the late 90s, when it was a new and marvelous thing to play games alongside people continents away. The writer had been so amazed to be playing a game from the United States with teammates from Britain and Australia...

I thought to myself of other times I've been simply amazed by something in games. While playing Fallout 3, a game that takes place after a nuclear holocaust, I encountered an area that was filled with trees. Simply regular trees, with birds chirping and water flowing. After spending so much time fighting through sewers and train tunnels and a desert wasteland, I found this area to be simply... Amazing! :3

Those of us that grew up with gaming may find it harder to be awestruck by what we might consider to be an everyday thing, but I don't think we're incapable of it. Are there any moments in your mind that stick out like this?

Buy New Vegas. New Vegas is so much better in terms of RPG's and Fallout series.

[Garlyle]

Kinda minor, but that very first time I booted up FFXIII on my PS3. Once the title screen hit, my brain melted. Music rarely has the ability to do that to me.

FFXIII kinda does that.  With music, or with its visuals.

It's very rare a game's visuals will ever do that for me, but FFXIII was a constant sequence of "oh my god".  The frozen lake, for instance, was absolutely incredible.

Getting to Gran Pulse just took my breath away though.  You can see it here.  It's the first time I've arrived in a place in any RPG which successfully created the feeling of this vibrant, living, and absolutely massive world - you'd spend all that time in Cocoon which looked huge only to realise how tiny it is compared to Gran Pulse, and how absolutely massive it and its inhabitants are.  It really gave a feeling of a world that was truly fantastic, and truly one in which humans are just a single part of it - unlike pretty much every other fantasy universe I've encountered.

[Azure Lazuline]

I forgot to mention one earlier: Getting outside of the dome in Custom Robo. I don't think I could describe it to someone who hasn't played the game, since the story for the entire game up to that point was building up to it. The final boss also deserves a mention, again because of the whole setup, and because he's still very difficult even with 2 allies on your side (so the boss feels as powerful as he was hyped up to be, for once).

For a game about child's toy robots fighting each other, it's surprisingly atmospheric and deep.

[The Greatest Dog]

Does Area 5 of Rez count? And the vast majority of Child of Eden, too.

After searching for Eden through the vast matrix of everything, cracking passwords and evading security and destroying Venus[Tera] and Uranus[Tera] and seeing the Roman and Egyptian themed stages...

You get to Area 5 with Eden's depiction of life as it evolved from the primordial sea to... Well, it's just art. It's an experience.

[Hanzo K.]

I forgot to mention one earlier: Getting outside of the dome in Custom Robo. I don't think I could describe it to someone who hasn't played the game, since the story for the entire game up to that point was building up to it. The final boss also deserves a mention, again because of the whole setup, and because he's still very difficult even with 2 allies on your side (so the boss feels as powerful as he was hyped up to be, for once).

For a game about child's toy robots fighting each other, it's surprisingly atmospheric and deep.

This. SO MUCH.
It took me ages to collect almost all the parts, even the forbidden ones!
I only used those in the main story if there was no other means to victory, a last-resort essentially.
You know what I liked about Custom Robo? The Shrike model along with the Stungun weapon.
I was unbeatable with that combo. Dash in, repeatedly shock the foe into submission, Dash away, repeat as needed until I won!
Yeah, cheesy way of winning fights, but I didn't need any forbidden parts beyond the leg parts, those were the only forbidden parts I'd use freely, anything else was a last-resort.

[Reddyne]

The fight to the death with Luca Blight in Suikoden 2. It takes a total of 3 battles using two different TEAMS again him, a barrage of arrows, and a duel to finish him off.

[Phlegeth]

Earlier playing Assassins Creed Brotherhood, I was doing a Manhunt mode.  My team was around 8ish and there team was 20ish.  But somehow we not only won, but bowled over them.  We were complete strangers, a lot newer to the game then the team, and none of us had mikes, but somehow where more organized.  But what really stands out in my mind is near the end when we were being hunted.  I saw someone following one of my teammates heading towards me so I did what anyone would do and stunned that guy, what I didn't see was the guy following me and my teammate did the same thing for me.  We stunned each others hunters at the same time.  We ended up winning by like 2000 points.

[Grand Octopus]

Somehow, just getting to the credits in The Dishwasher Vampire Smile was awesome. Also awesome is the fact that it was made mainly by three people, with a few people helping on other things.

Well said. It's hard to pick the most amazing moment from such an awesome game, but I'll give a shout out to the end of the intro, which had me selecting 'Unlock Full Game' about 30 seconds later.

Edit: Oh, also pretty much the whole of the Armageddon book from Odin Sphere. And that part in ICO between when you start the game and when it ends.

[Mr. Sacchi]

Persona 3's Story always blew my mind away, and that means all the 8 100% playthroughs I did of that thing (No seriously I'm probably the biggest fan of Persona 3 FES in existance) especially after I learned that

Spoiler:

Thanatos is the Greek God of Death and that

Spoiler:

Nyx is actually the Greek Goddess of the Night, is Thanatos's mother, and is actually the strongest goddess of them all, being created from chaos itself and being able to remove a god's immortality and turn them into little, pathetic mortals, hell, even Zeus was said to be scared of her.

The amount of mythology I learned from that game and the amount I've learned from the Social Links... Yeah, you can say the whole game just blew me away.
(Also, I have to confess I never noticed the changes in Aigis in the ending until recently and it took me forever to realize

Spoiler:

the importance of her crying

after the Final Final Boss.)

[Hello Purvis]

Chrono Trigger. Going to Zeal for the first time. This would have been back in '94 or so for me.

Firstly, for the absolutely graphical beauty of that map, after going through a rocky wasteland and a tundra, to easily the most bright and lush map in the game. And this was my first brush with the idea of a floating kingdom in that kind of way, as well.

Then the music. Time Circuits is a song what makes me smile to this day.

Thirdly: Because I had no idea it existed. See, I was reading Nintendo power pretty religiously back then (this is before the internet made magazines into shit), and I knew all about pretty much everything up until the fight with Magus; hell even knew how much HP Magus had. But it never even hinted that Zeal existed, or even Zeal's time period. On a game that I was thoroughly spoiled on, this came out of nowhere and just demonstrated to me why spoilers suck.

Then the plot really kicks its shit into high gear. Zeal is the best.

[Fetch()tirade]

Chrono Trigger.

Fuck, now I feel like playing it again. Had it on an emulator, but goddamn it became one of my favorite games instantly.

---

Majora's Mask, if it hasn't been mentioned already. I loved being in Clocktown during the last 6 hours, waiting until the very last seconds to play the Song of Time. The music, the rumbling, the atmosphere of those final moments really just blew me away the first time I stopped what I was doing and paid attention.

[Myschi]

Chrono Trigger.

Then the plot really kicks its shit into high gear. Zeal is the best.

Seconding the whole thing, special emphasis on this.

Also, the

Spoiler:

scrapping of Robo by his former comrades.

Until

Spoiler:

Nanako's 'death' in P4

, I have never raged so much at a game. I fight that fight with a special kind of brutality. Also (again), Frog receiving the Masamune and

Spoiler:

splitting the holy FUCK out of a big-ass mountain, like a boss.

Also, hearing the Mario 3 themes orchestrated in Super Mario Galaxy. Brought a god damn tear to my eye.