Mawd

Our favourite moments of play

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I did a cursory search and couldn't find a thread of a similar subject.

Anyway I thought that it'd be nice to have a thread for talking about moments of particular games that remind us why we play 'x' game, why we game in general or just to celebrate a particularly fun stunt that anyone would like to share.

It might be a story of that ice embark in Dwarf Fortress, or that time you roleplayed a particular experience in Gone Home, or when you cleared the best Fade during that NS2 scrim.

Anything really. I just seem to notice a lot of discussion about the current 'meta' or news of games and not enough campfire stories.

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Ok, to get us started, here are a couple from Far Cry ONE:

 

When I first encountered the big military plane things that you have to shoot from the sky, I managed to bazooka it and watched proudly as it exploded into large pieces. Then I realised that it wasn't simply going to disintegrate or fly off smoking to crash offscreen as I was used to in video games, and that I was standing directly under the largest plummeting piece. Splat, reload.

 

When I first encountered the smallest Trigens, in the lab complex, I was about to head down an open stairwell when I noticed one heading up towards me,a few flights away. I positioned myself to aim for the bottom of my flight of stairs, and waited for it to stupidly trudge right into my line of fire. Then it got to the flight opposite me, saw me, and leapt up over the bannister, across the stairwell and straight at me. I wasn't used to FPS enemies doing that, and took the Trigens a little more seriously thereafter.

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Cool! I remember moments like those. The Trigen really kicked my butt!

I remember when I was in the final moments of Metal Gear Solid 3; when you finally defeat The Boss and she asks you to shoot her. I delayed it for what seemed like forever. It wasn't just out of respect for my own emotional journey of the story, I was trying to simulate Big Boss' own feelings. It was one of those forced moments in gaming I really enjoyed even as I experienced a sense of loss for completing the mission.

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The sand surfing in Journey. Especially with the way that game uses music and lighting.

 

Also, the Koloktos fight in Skyward Sword, because so much of that game is a disappointing mess and yet it somehow has this absolutely perfect boss fight in the middle of it.

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Freespace 2 is full of stuff like that for me, which is probably why I love it so much even though I don't care for flight sim games.  On missions that require you to patrol, I'd actually patrol despite knowing where and when the enemies were going to come from.  I'd equip my wingmen with what I considered to be tactically appropriate weapons even though I knew it wouldn't matter. 

 

It also contains one of my favorite gaming memories.  At the beginning of a particular mission, the moment you come out of the subspace jump you see a HUGE capital ship coming straight at you.  The wing leader yells out "DIVE DIVE DIVE HIT YOUR BURNERS PILOT" as you see your squad frantically try to avoid becoming bugs on a windshield.  Nearly fell out of my chair the first time I played it and in fact got turned into space roadkill because I didn't react in time.  It was such an unexpectedly amazing moment that still stands out to me after all these years.

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The first major boss in The Wonderful 101. The music that plays, all the different manoeuvres you've executed to get them low health. The "QTEs" where you jump from falling debris to falling debris. The cheesy 90s power rangers feel to the whole thing. 

 

Just thinking about it makes me smile. What a fantastic moment. 

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I jumped off the a path that went through a pass-way for many vehicles which were zooming by in Bernband. I tried to go into the dark horizon, but hit an invisible wall. Then I saw that there was a lit doorway. I grew up near the Chesapeake Bay and there is an underwater traffic tunnel in the area. There are these access doors in the tunnel, but of course I could never see what's in them (As a kid I imagined that water would flood the place if you opened one).

So I went in the lit doorway and saw a figure whose groaning I could hear now that I had moved a bit away from the noise of the traffic. They were bloodied. I'm not sure if they had been beat up or if they were diseased. I stood there for a while watching them die alone, unable to do anything about it. It was awesome.

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While playing Dark Souls with a friend, I was a phantom in his world on what was both of our first playthroughs. We had no idea where we were going in the Depths, and I ended up falling through a hole I hadn't noticed, directly into a huge swarm of enemies that curse you (a horrible affliction that persists through death). Despite the fact that my friend had much more to lose in this situation than I did, he didn't hesitate for a second before deliberately jumping down after me. What followed was a tense, chaotic brawl through a claustrophobic series of chambers in which we desperately attempted to fend these creatures off and watch each others' backs. It wasn't just a great gaming moment, it was actually a great moment in our friendship.

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I just played some Rust. The experimental server is still broken. After getting shot at when collecting wood, I ran to the next valley. Someone in chat said that they killed the guys that shot at me and I could have their stuff if I came back. I politely said "no". The sun was soon setting and the only meat I had seen was on live bears and wolves. Since I had nothing but a stone axe, I continued running through pastures. I saw a guy with no clothing running down the road being chased by a wolf. Dying from hunger I went after the wolf hoping that my good-faith gesture would create enough of a friendship that we could divide the meat and cook it together. I killed the wolf but it took a chunk out of me and I was still losing health from hunger. The guy continued to run away. I bandaged up and crafted a campfire near the road. I put the wolf meat on the fire and died from hunger immediately after. It was awesome.

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I was playing Mercenaries 2 and was working on capturing High Value Targets. One was on an offshore oil rig. I took a boat out to it and started to fight my way up to the top of the structure. It was a pretty intense firefight and by the time i had knocked the HVT unconscious the AI had thrown enough grenades to start the oil rig exploding and sinking. I quickly picked up the HVT and ran to the helipad. I dropped the smoke grenade to call for extraction and loaded the HVT into the helicopter that came. As the helicopter took off  water covered the helipad and my character did the idle animation where they rest their gun on their shoulder. Then the oil rig finished sinking into the sea.

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I love fucking up the worker bees' chant in Grim Fandango. I feel like I have amassed a few hours doing that among multiple plays. The first time I figured out I could chant out of key like an asshole I was on the floor.

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Getting the ice key and secret eggs in Banjo Kazooie.

 

I rarely got new games as a kid so I had to squeeze every fucking drop of entertainment out of any game I played. The tiny, entirely irrelevant secrets of that game did so much to make that game feel electric with possibility. It made me feel like, if I just tried hard enough, I could poke through the proscribed path somewhere and discover more of the game world, hidden from regular view. I didn't really think very hard about the plausibility of creating an expansive world, only to hide it from players, but at that age games might as well have been magic anyway.

 

I loved that game so much.

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Finishing Journey with a randomly matched player was a huge one, but that's kind of cheating because that's basically what that game is all about.

 

There was that one time I took out an entire team in Gears of War multi. I was the last one standing, killed them all in the space of about ten seconds just by shimmying around a single piece of cover and blasting them with the shotgun as they tried to rush me. I don't normally gloat in multiplayer but they got an earful in voice chat on this occasion.

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Every time I win a game of Dota 2.

 

No joke, that always makes me feel insanely good. But, of course, losing makes me feel like shit.

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I also have a lame ass one about Journey.

 

Early on, I met up with the random player who clearly knew what they were doing. They showed me where to find all the collectibles and took me through the whole game up until... the snow mountain. As soon as we went into the snow mountain level, the other player sat down cross legged. I didn't entirely know what was happening at the time, but after I waited for a minute the player disappeared and I realised that they were gone. Disappointed, I was getting ready to leave when I saw a player run up. It wasn't the same one as before, this was a new one. And pretty quickly it became clear that they were just going to follow me, even though I didn't know what I was doing I had swapped roles and had to lead. I managed to fall off a cliff twice while leading them, but in the end I managed to get us both through it alive.


It was so good, as someone with a general dearth of empathy it was a really powerful experience.

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-Getting the Super Gameboy.  Plugging in Bomberman for gameboy.  Plugging in the multi-tap.  Having my first 4-player same-couch video game session.

 

-Learning what leveling up is in Illusion of Gaia after trying to beat the first boss for over a year. (this is what taught me to always read the manual)

 

-Listening to Nirvana's Nevermind on repeat in the basement with my brother while trying to get anywhere in TMNT2.  (This is why I'm happy games have a better range of easy-hard these days)

 

-Plugging in a random string of numbers someone gave me in an AOL chatroom and playing my first online game. (Warcraft 2)

 

-Listening to Idle Thumbs.  (awwwwwww)

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Also, the original Digimon, which were just Tamagotchi basically, but you could fight them if you connected two cartridges together at the top. The battles must have been determined the instant they were connected, because you could then separate them and the fights would play out the same on each cartridge.

 

In first grade, a friend and I would take turns getting up in class to "grab a tissue" or something, and surreptitiously connect our Digimon to fight. We thought we were so clever.

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I always forget what Digimon originally was. I used to love messing with those original LCD thingys. I remember thinking it was awesome when I got the guy on fire.

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I remember in the earlier days of Guild Wars 2 I'd specced out my thief for maximum stealth. I used to go headfirst into dungeons or WVW events and it took so long for people to kill me because I could just invis and roll away that I'd often be able to creep back to res my allies and frequently that was just enough to save the day and push the enemy back.

I remember once in a full wipe on the second path of the Arah explorable I managed to stealth and heal long enough while fighting the gigantic boss that I managed to bring the whole team up, we wiped twice; it must have taken us three times as long to complete the dungeon than if we'd just left for a new party but it sure as hell felt like a great victory when we finished it.

Also any time I try teaching the basics of lerking or skulking in Natural Selection 2 and the newb gets it and starts doing well feels great.

'nother NS2 story; back in my previous clan the captain and I found a voice morphing program. He went for a deeper cheesy 'demonic' preset while I found the squeakiest anime girl preset I could. So we linked them to mumble while also using them in game while aliasing. I think prety much the whole server had us muted but it was so much stupid fun.

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Also, the original Digimon, which were just Tamagotchi basically, but you could fight them if you connected two cartridges together at the top. The battles must have been determined the instant they were connected, because you could then separate them and the fights would play out the same on each cartridge.

 

In first grade, a friend and I would take turns getting up in class to "grab a tissue" or something, and surreptitiously connect our Digimon to fight. We thought we were so clever.

 

 

I remember getting in trouble in fourth grade because I was using my Digimon under my desk during class and got so excited when my dude evolved that I shouted out "I got ice-cream head mon!" while the teacher was talking. (I had the Japanese version 2 so I had to make up my own names for them.) Some of my friends back home still laugh at me for that.

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Talking about Mario 64 in a different thread reminded me of another amusing Mario moment.  In college one of my friends' parents sent her old SNES and copy of Super Mario World.  She's not really a gamer but she said she spent a lot of time playing the game as a kid and proclaimed herself to be an expert in the game.  I then spent the next few hours blowing her mind as I showed her things she never even knew existed, such as the star road, entirely from my own memory.

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I've got two, and one of them is a bit blue. I'll start with that one.

 

Remember demo discs? I used to get PC Zone every month, back when I was pretty young (about 10 or 11) and I played all the demos. All games were fascinating to me back then, whereas now I'll glance at a screenshot, "meh, looks like a JRPG" and shrug my shoulders.

 

One such game was Little Big Adventure 2, a quirky, non-threatening adventure game by French developers Adeline. Incidentally, I still play this game almost every year, usually wrapped in a duvet, smeared head to toe in nostalgia.

 

Anyway. In the demo, you could run around the first island and chat to people, but if you went into any interior spaces you were transported to a bastard hard cave full of bats and skeletons. So, I jogged around the island a lot, watching the rabibunny melbas go about their business, and chewing the cud with a friendly cow who introduced herself as Rosa. I also played with the behaviour settings, and noticed that the one of the forward dodge moves looked a lot like Twinsen was salaciously thrusting his hips. My mind took that ball, and ran with it.

 

Hip thrusting at the kid on top of the pharmacy was fun for a bit, but I struck gold when I tried it on the rear end of my friend in the pasture, Rosa. Not only did it look hilariously inappropriate, but I realised I'd hit the bovine bonanza when Rosa started paying off with extra lives! That was a good feeling. My first easter egg, and I'd done a lot for Quetch and cow relations, which would surely help in the trials yet to come.

 

My other fave memory was when I finished an arcade game with a single 20p piece. Me and my family had been on holiday to the same caravan park in Wales for a few successive years, and pretty much every evening I would be given about £2 and pointed in the direction of the arcade. One game there looked like a Disney cartoon, and it was called The Cowboys of Moo-Mesa. (I've looked it up since and it really was a children's cartoon)

 

It played a bit like Streets of Rage, except your cowboy hero (what is it with all the cows?) always had a gun, and could get powerups. Also you could do a dash attack which inflicted heavy damage and sometimes stunned enemies.

 

I played it a lot, and without really realising it I got really good at it. Like, back at the tent I could visualise each stage back to front, and where enemies would come from and when, and the powerups, and everything. There was a difficult bit where you had to track-and-field your way up a waterfall as debris fell down it, threatening to knock you back. Most people who I saw playing would lose all of their lives there, but I could do it easily. One day, my rapid button hammering attracted the attention of some kids, a little younger than myself, who wandered over to watch, presumably being all out of cash themselves. I was so focused that I barely noticed them, and just carried on, cruising through to the last stage, and putting down the final boss without a misstep. When I finally returned to the real world, I noticed how many kids were around me, all beaming up at me and saying "wow that was amazing!". Graciously, I handed over the controls, and stepped back to watch.   

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Some of my fondest memories are from the original Dawn of War. I played a lot of 4v4 online with other friends, sometimes all in the same room, so able to shout stuff to each other rather than use chat. We developed strategies that let units from different races support each other throughout very fast but otherwise catastrophically flawed build orders. I'm not very good at strategy by myself, but the four of us were efficient together, and it's one of the few experiences games have given me where it felt like we all had each other's backs.

 

In one game I raced to powerful, long range but weak artillery at the expense of pretty much any other units. Some enemy anti-vehcile infantry snuck around the map, I had no backup, so drove the artillery pieces in different directions away from them. Two of my three tanks were pixels of health away from death as I figured that out, and the enemy unit moved in a visibly confused and panicky way as tanks not intended for such short range work surrounded, cooled down and destroyed them.

 

Another game I played Eldar and built, at the cost of having any useful early game units, grav tanks (anti-infantry) and anti-vehicle infantry. Just as my three friends were getting pushed back by a well rounded enemy army, I jumped the tanks over the map, unloaded the infantry who then destroyed their vehicles from behind in seconds, and watched as the remaining infantry then had to retreat past the tanks, which they couldn't kill and lost about 70% of their guys to.

 

Oh, and sneakily building an Eldar gate behind an enemy base, baiting them into the middle of the map, then unloading your entire army directly into their base never got old. We loved the sight of space marines suddenly changing direction.

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