"Wow" moments in games?


Recommended Posts

Walking out of the sewer in Oblivion, and thinking: "****, where do I go now?"

Thinking the exact same thing after the intro in GTA3.

Getting the ugly zombie cutscene towards the beginning of Resident Evil.

First time playing Final Fantasy VIII, seeing the CGI.

Agree with everyone who talked about HL2. Simply so many great moments (tho I haven't played Ep2 yet).

Playing Silent Hill 1 @ 3am in a very dark and old house :)

A few off the top of my head are: The ending of COD4, you just get so attached to the characters, it was an insane ending.

The ending of HL2:ep2, WOW

Ending of portal

Most WW2 games do a great job immersing you into those battles, just get a good headset, crank the volume, and step into an Omaha beach level in COD or MOH, amazing.

Normandy beach in Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault.
Omaha beach on Call of Duty i think it was.

Amazing, especially on hard.

That, and Stalingrad...

Any of those Normandy ones were just crazy. I had just watched "Enemy at the Gates" in a social studies class and then played COD2...That boat crossing scene was near identical it scared the crap out of me.

Playing Bioshock for the first time... More specific the intro to it...

I would have to agree. It was like you were stepping into a whole other universe and there was so much detail everywhere!

I just took my quotes off the first page because I need to go to bed soon, but those examples above were some of the ones that stuck out for me. The ending of HL2 had me going because I had gotten attached so much to the story. Bethesda also has a pretty good lock on initial "wow" moments near the start of their games as well.

Out of all the CoD4 comments, I'm surprised no one mentioned the entire sniper level. Actually the entire two sniper level. Lets recount shall we?

At the very beginning, when your eyes are just adjusting and your partner pops randomly out of the grass. Wtf?

When you had to crawl past a million soldiers and their tanks. It just got nerve wracking when you had to actually do it. But there was one moment when you JUST saw the patrols appear from the horizon and your commander tells you to let them pass. At first your like ok w/e until you realize just exactly what he was asking you to do. That was wow.

Right after that. Run across the street! What? There are some big trucks? Crawl under and hide! Wow.

Take your target out. Oh btw watch for wind and the rotation of the earth. The scope of that challenge when you first heart it. Wow

Watching your bullet actually friggin curve. Wow

Taking out the helicopter pilot to buy extra time. Wow.

Repelling off a building as it explodes...uhhh Wow.

Taking out the second helicopter and watching your commander getting s** faced and for 5 horrible seconds thinking your gonna get s*** faced too. Wow.

Had to carry your commander around. Wow (annoying :p)

We will be here in 10 minutes just hold off the entire army of whatever country you were in? uhh yeah. Wow.

I'm sorry. I think I'm just gonna go and replay those two levels now....

Zone of the Enders 2. The huge battle just before you enter the game's final stretch (Fortress of Aumaan). I've never seen that much insane sh*t going on all at once in a game. I'm generally less than impressed with Hideo Kojima as a game designer, but goddamn, he gets full credit for unleashing a can of whoopass for that scene. It was the most intense, balls-to-the-wall sequence I'd ever played when I saw it and even now, some 7 years after the game's release, I'm still impressed beyond belief.

NeoXY, I think the initial wow moment when you realize what you have to do was pretty cool. The feeling quickly left me though when I was crawling underneath the trucks etc. because it seemed so unrealistic that nobody would see you. Seriously with the truck that high off the ground and camo against concrete just seems pretty obvious, but oh well. :p

MechWarrior 3 (PC): I was playing a random mission and I decided to fly past this bridge in my mech. When I reached the other side, I used my boosters to fly as high as I could making sure I made the best of every boost I had. I timed everything so perfectly and pretty much hit an imaginary ceiling in the sky. To my surprise, I plummeted back to the ground so quickly that I actually went through it and ended up in some secret bunker. I literally yelled "Woooooooooooow!". My friend was with me and I think he nearly fainted.

Spyhunter (PS2): The first PS2 game I ever played. I remember how eager I was to set up my PS2 and play it. At the very beginning, there's some training level you have to do (I think). I was driving around in the tricked out car and I went over this ramp. As I was flying through the air, I noticed that the road ended. Instead... there was water. I was like "Awww man.. I'm gonna crash now". Instead of crashing, the car did some crazy transformation midair and changed into a water vehicle mode. It definitely made me say "Wow".

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident (PC): This is perhaps the best PC game I've ever played. It's a real-time tactics and space combat simulator. Every mission just pulled me into the game more and more. The graphics were the best in its class. I've been playing it since '06 and I just recently beat it. Everything was just perfect - the story, missions, and graphics. Wow. Just wow. I'm having a hard time explaining how good the game is. It's just ... too good for words to describe. Try it out for yourself. You can buy it on STEAM for $9.99 (click here). This is the kinda game for Homeworld fans.

I'm running short on time but I'll be back to post some more.

Watching the moment you arrive at the bridge in Hyrule and the camera pans back to show you just what Nintendo are trying to create with each new console. That bridge, for a Zelda game is huge!

Also the end sequence when you finish the game and realise what happens with the Twilight Princess, was very sweet.

When you first arrive onto Hyrule field in Ocarina of Time, wow, it's big.

Metal Gear Solid (PS1) when you finally finish the game and listen for the audio sequence right at the end.

+1 for the scene when you first played Tomb Raider on the PS1 and you step out into the Lost Valley and see the T-Rex for the first time. Crapped and pants was my reaction. Plus when you first step out into the room with all the Gods challenges (can't remember their names right now), looking down made me feel like I was sitting really high myself!

CoD4 and Chernobyl. That level is amazing with the stealth and sniping sections being the most exciting and tense I've played in a game in a long, long time.

Umm i have a few, when you first come out of vault 101 in Fallout 3 and see the landscape made me go wow. As did HL 2 when i first opened that up. Also, when i was driving really fast in GTA4, i miss judged the off ramp and hit that at an angle which made Niko go flying through the windshield, that made me go wow.

CS: Playing on "de_inferno" in a local tournament's semi-final game. The result was 15-12 for our team. We were winning the last round (the game ends when a team reaches 16 rounds) and all of a sudden, a guy from the opposite team knifed 3 of our guys. We were like... :omg: And they got banned. :laugh:

Seeing Shadow of the Colossus gameplay. Amazing.

For some reason, seeing the seagulls and just being on the ship on Metal Gear Solid 2. That really impressed me how they did that.

The areas on WoW make me say WOW. So detailed and intricately done. The caves, forests, trails. It may be addictive but damn does it look good.

The Boss vs Big Boss final battle and the entire ending - Metal Gear Solid 3

Final Fantasy VII's Flashbacks

When you discover Dr Polito has been dead all the time - System Shock 2

The entire Half - Life 2 experience, but specially the ending of Episode 2

The first time you fight pyramid head - Silent Hill 2

The first time you play Max Payne (That feeling carry on over the second game too)

The entire Deus Ex game

Mass Effect's final hour of gameplay + ending

When the AI glitches on Metal Gear Solid 2, letting you know the true intentions of your superiors.

The first time you hear a Howler in Clive Barker's Undying

Im sure I will remember more later.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Look up 'inflation' kid. Ask an AI for the numbers between both games.
    • Google reportedly set to lose two key Gemini and DeepMind researchers to Anthropic by Karthik Mudaliar Google is reportedly preparing to lose two more prominent artificial intelligence researchers, with Gemini contributors Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel planning to join rival AI developer Anthropic. According to a report from Bloomberg, both researchers are viewed internally as important contributors to Google’s flagship Gemini model family. Adler worked on Google’s AI coding efforts, while Pritzel was involved in the process used to train AI systems. Neither company has publicly confirmed the moves. The report also does not say when the researchers will formally leave Google or what positions they will hold at Anthropic. Training a large AI model requires decisions covering its architecture, data preparation, distributed computing infrastructure, and post-training methods that shape how the finished system behaves. Researchers with experience operating at the scale of Gemini are consequently difficult to replace quickly. Both Adler and Pritzel have previously contributed to Google DeepMind’s scientific research as well. They are listed among the authors of the company’s work on expanding AlphaFold protein-structure predictions across entire proteomes, alongside AlphaFold researchers including John Jumper. The reported departures arrive shortly after another important change within Google’s Gemini organization. Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI, after returning to the search company in 2024 through its deal with Character.AI. Shazeer is particularly well known as one of the authors of the Transformer paper, whose architecture became the foundation for most modern large language models. Anthropic, meanwhile, has been recruiting recognizable figures from other leading laboratories. OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic’s pre-training team in May. His move, followed by the reported recruitment of several Google researchers, suggests Anthropic is strengthening the research teams responsible for the core capabilities of future Claude models rather than concentrating solely on product and enterprise sales. The competition is complicated by the companies’ extensive commercial relationships. Anthropic competes directly with Google’s Gemini models, but it also relies on Google as an infrastructure partner. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded agreement with Google and Broadcom covering multiple gigawatts of next-generation Tensor Processing Unit capacity. TPUs are Google-designed accelerators used to train and run large AI models. via Bloomberg
    • This article makes my head hurt. Lots of confusing words
    • Google adds built-in computer control to Gemini 3.5 flash by Karthik Mudaliar Google has added Computer Use as a built-in tool in Gemini 3.5 Flash, giving developers a single model that can reason about a task and operate graphical interfaces across browsers, mobile devices, and desktop environments. The feature is available through the Gemini API and Google’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, although it remains a preview feature for now. Computer Use enables an AI agent to examine screenshots and return actions such as mouse clicks, scrolling, and keyboard input. A developer’s application must execute those actions, capture the resulting screen, and send it back to Gemini, creating a continuous loop until the task is completed. Google says the integration can be used for activities including repetitive form filling, application testing, research across multiple websites, and longer enterprise workflows. Gemini 3.5 Flash can work with browser, mobile, and desktop environments, whereas Google’s earlier standalone Computer Use model was primarily positioned around browser interaction. The main change is consolidation. Computer control was previously offered through the separate Gemini 2.5 Computer Use preview model. As Neowin reported when that model was introduced, it was designed to interpret a visual interface and generate actions without requiring a website-specific API. Google later brought Computer Use to preview versions of Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash in January 2026. The latest release now incorporates the tool into the stable Gemini 3.5 Flash model rather than requiring developers to select a specialized model solely for interface automation. Gemini 3.5 Flash itself was announced in May as Google’s latest fast model for coding and multi-step agent workflows. It supports a one-million-token input context window and up to 65,000 output tokens, along with adjustable thinking levels that let developers trade additional reasoning for lower latency and cost. Google also added that Gemini 3.5 Flash received targeted adversarial training for computer-use scenarios. The company is also offering safeguards that can require user confirmation before sensitive or irreversible actions and automatically stop a workflow when suspected prompt injection is detected. Its developer documentation describes configurable protections for areas such as financial transactions and changes to sensitive records. Google isn't the first to bring Computer Use to its platform. Anthropic has made computer control available through Claude, while OpenAI has continued improving computer-use performance in its recent models. Microsoft has also applied the concept to business workflows, including a Computer Use capability for the Researcher agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
    • After I installed KB5095093, the volume on my ARM laptop won't go above 20%. It's stuck on the hearing protection level, which is pretty much useless if you want to listen to anything. I rolled back.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Rookie
      +ChiefOfNeo went up a rank
      Rookie
    • One Year In
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      One Year In
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      463
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      177
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      124
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      79
    5. 5
      Xenon
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!