12 year old me: “WHATTHEFUCKWHATTHEFUCKWHATTHEFUCK!”
I had no warning the first time I encountered the T-Rex and absolutely shat myself
No need to thank me for the sleep paralysis demons, I’m just passing the favor
Amnesia was great, lots of fun with headphones and no lights on.
You didn’t say it had to be a pleasant memory…
The D-Day landing scene in CoD 2 was i n s a n e at the time. Goosebumps
Shit I still remember this
No screen shot but MechWarrior.
- “Enemy power-up detected”. (Oh shit oh shit oh shit)
- “Shutting … Down” (override override override noooo)
These two sound clips haunt my dreams and form part of any pub session with the old friends. We’re such nerds.
Here I am, ten years old. Just got home school. Figured I’d get some prince of Persia in before my parents get home. I just got a soundblaster 2.0 and I’ve got BIG speakers, enjoying the amazing sounds at high volume. I’m puzzling, exploring, getting used to there being piles of bones here and there. I’m backtracking through level 3 and this skeleton fucking rises and draws its sword with an eery sound. I’m shitting my pants here and reactively press the reset button on the computer to get out of this.
Loved this game. It inspired the Tomb Raider series quite a bit. Including the Mirror Prince /Atlantean Lara part.
First time realizing you have to wait for the rat to come help you was mind blowing.
Hat scene where Midna explains how the twilight realm was used to calm the hearts of the ones in them
My first choice was already posted, so here is another moment I’ll never forget
That and ending the Quarian/Geth war.
I don’t know if this counts as a “scene” but the installer for Red Alert 2.
This was my first time experiencing a game installation experience like this and also probably my last time.
Launching the installer for Red Alert 2 and getting greeted with voice acting, game art and hype music was just so unexpected for me back then and really hyped me up.
It’s such a crazy experience, but it’s the type of experience that will likely never come back.
“Warning, Military Software Detected. Top secret clearance required”.
I loved hearing that every time
“Hell March”, right? Loved it.
You like playing Castlevania?
Bioshock infinite
I think these days bioshock infinite isn’t seen as that great of a game by modern standards but back when the game was first released I went into the game blind after playing the first game.
The introduction of the main setting of BioShock infinite blew me away. I didn’t expect it and I really loved the way the game introduces you to the world. Bioshock infinite probably had one of the strongest beginnings of any game I’ve played.
Going blind into the game I did NOT expect that!
The animation is crazy visceral. I had nightmares for days.
Tomb Raider (2013)
Played that series last year, (recommend them, fun games.) there were a few “Jesus fucking christ” death animations for sure.
There’s a clip of Conan O’Brien playing this, and you can tell he’s definitely not a gamer, and he’s so shocked by a death animation. I don’t really understand their place in the game, they are so disproportionately violent compared to everything else, and it’s random.
There is a novel called Blood Meridian that has a lot of incredibly violent scenes to the point many consider it unfilmable, but that violence is depicted as an almost detached spectacle, the prose is externalised and the scenes are never lingered on for pleasure. It’s generally considered perhaps the most violent classic novel, but the entire metaphysics and purpose of the book exists in this violence.
When I first played tomb raider, I didn’t notice half the violent scenes, because the medium is so unnecessarily stuffed with it. It wasn’t until replaying it after seeing the Conan O’Brien interview that I really honed in on it.
In comparison to Blood Meridian, it’s so much worse. It doesn’t really have a message or a story purpose beyond showing the setting as dangerous, and it lingers on the violence, taking pleasure in the sudden violence, that has befallen our protagonist who we deeply care about and can internalise her suffering easily. We see a young woman, who we live through and care for deeply, come to a brutal, sickening end due to sheer bad luck, and then we hit restart.
I’m not even really mad about it, like it said, I’m so desensitised to video game violence that I only noticed the brutality of these scenes after seeing Conan. Perhaps the creep of violence in the medium alongside the fact that in 10 seconds, she’s fine and you do it again is enough to justify it, but it’s weird that it exists so normally in the first place.
I don’t have any screenshots. Two that stick with me were:
The entire opening sequence for FF 10. It was hype for 2014 and still hits:
And my very first playthrough in Skyrim. The part where you open the door to Bleak Falls Barrow’s inner chamber. As you step through and start taking in the scene, the bats come flying out. Skyrim has a lot of jank but that was a very well crafted scene and sets the tone for the rest of the game.
I don’t mean to set the bar too high, but god damn, Chrono Trigger was the absolute goat
I miss the Squaresoft / Square Enix we had in the SNES to PS2 era. Almost every game they put out during that period was an absolute banger.
