Intro to Half-life. Come at me.

**** you hipster

tony hawk 1 at the warehouse dropping in over the halfpipe

I actually didn't like HL2 EP1 that much, EP2 was much better though. And the reason the end of EP2 is so good it's just ****ing bat **** crazy. Plus gravity gun imo.

CSB

The fifth colossus in Shadow of The Colossus. I guess it doesn't have much replay value, but the first time through you think you're starting to feel like you've got the game down, and then they throw this guy at you and it's just like wtf? Sense of accomplishment when you figure it out and pull it off is amazing...or at least it was for me.

Isn't the consensus best level from HL1 "We've got hostiles"?

goofyballer- Yeah, and while the level involves the parts before and after that(apparently, I obviously looked up a walkthrough to find the name/number of that chapter), the specific part I'm talking about is just the mortar part. Ditto on it being one of the few times where a video game made me feel something, and it's pretty much the only time where a game made me feel something by actually using the interactive nature of the medium.

Like, nerds everywhere cried when Aeris died in FF7, but that would've been just as sad if it had been a movie. This was different. This was a complex and nuanced metacommentary on player agency and the gritty modern military shooter subgenre.

If I was posting in this thread before playing Spec Ops, I probably would've written the AC-130 mission from CoD4, which I must have replayed 30 times. Heh.

there are probably better answers but first thing comes to mind is the CIA level in the first splinter cell

Water temple, Ocarina of Time. It was hard enough to solve this three dimensional puzzle but having to understand how the water level changed how the levels of the dungeon related to each other was pure brilliance. I think this level is hated by most but it's still the best designed level of the whole Zelda series.

I made a great custom level on super mario for the ti 83+. I used the black boxes as the ground but would throw in some random holes that looked exactly the same. There were also a lot of high/low splits and if you chose wrong you'd run into a wall and have to restart the whole game

Treasure room, Super Castlevania 4.

Honorable mention - Clocktower level.

I've been racking my brain but I can't think of better, even though I'm sure there are plenty.

Saints Row 2 and 3 had some really great levels, but the side mission stuff is so much fun. Insurance Fraud and the one where you have to destroy a ton of property are worth the price alone.
GTA VC mission where you ramp the motorcycle through the buildings is one of my favorites.
GTA IV bank robbery is great.
GTA SA when you get the jet-pack.
The Spec Ops portions of COD MW 2 and 3 are by far my favorite things in all of the COD franchise. Sniper Fi and Suspension in #2 and Hit and Run, Toxic Paradise and Flood The Market I had a blast all 500x's I had to play them to finish them in Veteran.

People terrible at games were all like "Never got past that level" because... they were terrible.

I have no plans on playing spec ops so by watching it on youtube I probably am missing some of the pacing. Still, I can see how this level would be really moving to play through. I do think games are only going to progress as a distinct artform if they are able to differentiate themselves from other artforms. Like you said, ff7 made gamers feel but it's the artform of movies that made them feel not the actual game part. This was Eberts whole point when he wrote those articles that angered the gaming community. Obviously he doesn't play games and hasn't seen the few games like spec ops that hint at how video games have the potential to become their own artform. I have always thought that if the point of art is to transmit human experience then video games have the potential to be the purest of art forms.

Obviously it's a hard thing to sustain for a whole game but there are a handful of games that have tried. Some on my list would be fallout 2, modern warfare 1, mass effect (sort of), and walking dead. That's a pretty short list and I would love to see more attempts at this in the next generation.



Great pick

God I love that game, absolutely awesome, I was prob exactly the right age to enjoy it when it came out but I'd still pick it up today and play it.

Well that certainly sounds like the WOAT. Player death or success should be decided by skill, not luck.

lol, the first time I played it I died after you see the portal and I went back and ran into it every time after and never did anything else on other play throughs.

Though I died a bunch forgetting which barrier it was in front of.

The warehouse is one of the woat levels imo. School II and Venice all the way. The school has the Carlsbad Gap (RIP) and Venice has that sexy double set.

I picked up Spec Ops because of all the raving over how engaging the story was, and now I'm beginning to think I might be a callous monster since I didn't feel anything after finishing except a little boredom. It's an extremely tightly scripted and linear game, with one or two scenes where you can choose one of two equally questionable actions with no recourse to not choose - like one of those childhood games of which would you rather eat. As a result, I never cared about the characters or the story, everything felt forced on me and hence unable to make me feel guilty or responsible in any way.

Also, the QTE cutscenes seem to jump around a lot and in this particular scene, the fact that my character was responsible wasn't even immediately clear until your companions mentioned the cause. That's a common occurence in my experience.

Also, the shooting and cover mechanics are just terrible, so that didn't help my immersion. I applaud the effort to tackle a serious storyline in a big budged FPS, but the training wheels need to come off and the developers need to not make the gameplay take a backseat to get my attention.

Bark at the Moon - Guitar Hero

OK, it's not the best level in a game ever, but I thought it perfectly wrapped up that game, was super challenging and gave me a great sense of accomplishment when I beat it, and I felt like I was a goddamn rockstar when I played it.

I remember playing GH3 ttfaf on hard and being super happy about it. I was never able to beat Devil went down to Georgia on hard, literally only song I never was able to beat on hard.

But yeah after beating some songs for the first time on hard/expert in GH that **** felt great. Also the first time I perfected a song, on medium, that was cool too.

first level from shadows of the empire, badass

weevil- How many of the Call of Duty-style modern shooters have you played? A lot of what you seem to identify as flaws were like, the point. This discussion would probably be better in the Spec Ops thread rather than this one, though, idk if we had one at the time.

Super Mario(nes) World 1 Stage 1

Many levels on Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven. Amazing game.

gay