"Wow" moments in games?


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Ocarina of Time...when you leave the village and run to Hyrule, and the sun sets as you progress, just brilliant!

Also Tales of Phantasia on the snes. Not so much graphics, but it has the best sound on ANY snes game...period!

When the lady sings, a full song, it really makes you go wow!

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter...when you leave the temple and walk into the open field, the one with the three temples on the sides. It is mindblowing how massive the scale of the game is...

Chrono Trigger...when they try you for kidnapping the princess. The fact that they recorded your actions earlier in the game just blew my mind. (I won the trial the second time round :p ).

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter...The weapons in that game make you go wow!

Doom 3...The atmosphere in that game is brilliant.

the slippery ice levels in the first mario game, that was my very first 'wow' moment i think... i was impressed by the 'physics'.

the second half "Stage 8" I believe in Super Mario Bros. 3, the map was all blacked out!

lots of other moments. it's these 'wow' moments that i think gamers live for.. so many people are missing out!

Playing HL2 on the brand new computer for the first time and noticing how great games have gotten.

I was amazed when I walked through the train station and saw reflections from the floor.

As for surprising story lines, I'd have to say the end to KoToR when you found out you were Darth Revan all along.

Typing "run" after coding hundreds of lines in basic to get a slot machine game on my TI-99/4A, 27 years ago. The depth of the Sierra "Quest" games (Kings Quest, Police Quest, etc.). Castle Wolfenstein. Asheron's Call, my first foray into MMO's. Bullet time in Max Payne. Man, too many to list.

  • 1 year later...

Sorry for bumping the old, but this is a nice nostalgic thread and a good read anyway so..

Basically all of Fallout 3. That has gotta be the best game i've played since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Key moments:

Walking out of the vault for the first time and realizing that I could go wherever I wanted... Simply breathtaking.

Sorry for bumping the old, but this is a nice nostalgic thread and a good read anyway so..

Basically all of Fallout 3. That has gotta be the best game i've played since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Key moments:

Walking out of the vault for the first time and realizing that I could go wherever I wanted... Simply breathtaking.

Someone's obviously never played Oblivion...

Someone's obviously never played Oblivion...

Oh I know they're incredibly similar games, but Oblivion is not my style.. I dont like the whole magic and swords and horses type of thing. Ive also always been fascinated with Chernobyl and Fallout 3 turned out to be the game I thought Stalker was going to be...

Half Life 2 has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread. The ending of the original and Episode One. At the time those posts were made Episode Two wasn't released yet. Now that it's been out for awhile, its ending was the only time I yelled out WOW in disbelief. :cry: Episode Two and Portal were two games that I absolutely made sure not to read up on their endings. For Portal especially, I avoided downloading copies of Still Alive off the 'net before finishing the game for the first time. And it was well worth it :D

In recent times, I sometimes yell WOW in disbelief when I get "bull****!" worthy killed in TF2 and L4D. Examples being a spy backstab that happens out of nowhere, or in No Mercy and Blood Harvest's finales. There are two opportunities for smokers and hunters to permanently trap a survivor to his/her death - in Blood Harvest, the ledge before the cornfield, for No Mercy the roof on top of the ladder. Happened to me a few times in both locations, me being the victim :angry:

Other examples:

Call of Duty 4. The sudden, ahem, explosion. The intro AND final scene. Those were WOW worthy scenes. Another is controlling a bomber with an authentic looking cockpit view. That was amazingly well done. In fact, COD4 still has one of the best single player campaigns I've come across.

Prey. I liked how the ending came to a cinematic conclusion, thematic music and all. The large spoiler towards 7/10s of the game is friggin awesome, battling your girlfriend morphed into a monster while the background musical choir's belting out a chilling tune. The ending was great the first time, but on subsequent plays it just seemed a bit corny. Still great music though. (Y)

Need for Speed Most Wanted's campaign ending. A giant cop chase and a cinematic escape.

Max Payne 1's ending. Just wow. I'm really cheesed off they didn't recreate that in the movie :angry:. Not really a WOW moment, but the loud scream you hear when you run into a dead end in the nightmare levels - that is friggin scary even to this day. Max Payne 2's ending was okay, but its credits song made playing through the game all worth it.

And one retro WOW moment: playing the shareware demo of Descent 1 and running across the Level 7 boss. Got lots of shockers when I'm flying around and I get this giant wireframe thing materializing in front of me :p

Edited by rm20010
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