The best moments of gaming

[SpotSD]

What are your best, most exciting gaming experiences?

For me it is when I'm playing a fighter sim.

I get into a dogfight, which distracts me from my altitude. I wonder to close to the ground and before I know it I'm hurtling toward the badly rendered earth. With my enemy's missiles raining down around me I pull back hard on the stick and just when it seems a fiery death in inevitable I get my nose up just enough to miss the ground by inches!

I'm not talking about just low enough for the altitude alert to sound... I'm talking about the times where if my gear were down they would get ripped off

[Badgerius]

Longbow 2:

Sitting in a blackhawk, at night, with nightvision off. The night is bright and there's some light fog nestled in the valley. I'm cowering behind some buildings because I've stumbled into a major attack on my lines. As the enemy tanks come over the ridge, artillery, fighters, and attack helicopters from both sides begin firing, and AAA and SAMs open up as well. None of it is being fired at me, since I'm both hiding and not a threat. Tanks are blowing up not 30 meters from my position, and a building to my left gets wiped out by a stray artey shot. An apache goes down to my right, and a Mig is augering in on the ridge. Finally, the smoke clears (literally) and there's not an enemy in sight. I start forward to continue my mission, and fly over the blasted hulks of both friendly and enemy machines.

And that was BEFORE I crossed into enemy territory!

[ 11-22-2001: Message edited by: Badgerius ]

[Menchise]

My favourite gaming experiences come from my favourite game: System Shock. Walking into one of SHODAN's traps and getting out alive (or not) is unforgettable, especially when SHODAN taunts you.

One example is when I had to destroy Citadel Station's comm dishes to prevent SHODAN from uploading itself into Earth's computer network. I found the last one and attached the plastic explosive to it. As soon as the bomb was armed, a force field came up behind me and blocked the only exit. That's when SHODAN called: "Make yourself comfortable, hacker, stay a whiiiiille..." (shiver). I had about five seconds to hotwire the force field or get roasted. Either way, it was f***ing brilliant!

[Parias]

Oooh, too many. Seeing my first beam weapon in Freespace 2 for starters, blew me on my ass.

System Shock 1: YES. I remember entering the laser override code and running my way up to the laser firing room. I KNEW Shodan was watching me at that point, but what was freaking me out was that it wasn't doing anything to stop me. My nerves were nearly shot when SHODAN finally gave me the little surprise I was waiting for in the firing room...

Deus Ex. This line: "Denton? Walton Simons here. What an expensive mistake you turned out to be. I've ordered the guards to kill you because I don't have the patience to wait for one of those damn killswitches to work." Suddenly I felt really tense....

Terra Nova: Heh, I'll always remember the mission where you sneak into the pirate base wearing a captured pirate PBA. The HUD design seemed so strange and took some getting used to..

Homeworld: Well.. I don't think it needs mentioning which part all of us remember. RIP Kharak.

Operation Flashpoint: The "black op behind enemy lines" line of missions. Felt kinda nice seeing my carefully planted bombs take out an entire parked tank platoon while I comfortably watched from my cover of darkness (and a bush) from a good 800 meters away.

Hidden & Dangerous: The memories I have of going through that game in co-op.. ahhhh, loads of fun.

Mechwarrior 2: I remember first seeing it first in action when the most advanced game I had ever seen at the time was "Chip's Challenge". Heh, I kept going on and on about how user friendly the training missions were...

.....And probably a few zillion more I'll remember at 2 in the morning.

[Hunted]

the beam wepaons in FREESPACE 2 WERE OUTSTANDING!

um being an sfm in this game, nough said

x-com using my first captured plas pistol

[Gallion]

X-Wing - Blowing up my first ISD

Daggerfall - making my own Vampire Blade

BC3K - getting a script to actually work

BCM - listening to the curses from those that play my script ;p

TTFN

[ 11-23-2001: Message edited by: Gallion ]

[Parias]

Here's another.. Hostile Waters, sleeper hit of the year. The ending to the game is definately something I won't forget.. lets just say it's not your usual fare "go home and party" deal.

[LordDavid]

quote:

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Originally posted by Parias:

Here's another.. Hostile Waters, sleeper hit of the year. The ending to the game is definately something I won't forget.. lets just say it's not your usual fare "go home and party" deal.

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The ending for Anachronox (good game IMO) was very suprising!

[Menchise]

X-COM: When I saw Chryssalids attacking my squad for the first time, I knew I was in big trouble.

Fallout: A sad but exceptional ending.

Quake: The first time I encountered a Fiend.

[Guest]

Heh heh...

The defining moment of my computer gaming life was quite a while ago. We'd owned computers for a few years, and my favourite games up until that time had been Thexder and Silpheed.

Well, we'd just upgraded to a brand spanking new 386 (those were the days, alright). We were staying at my grandmother's house, and we had the computer set up on a couple of boxes. Well, we decided to go out and buy a new game, and off the shelf, without even seeing a review or hearing about it, we bought this new game called Wing Commander.

I was hooked. I was hooked from the moment I started it and saw the ready room with the pilots sleeping. And the experience that hooked me most was this.

It was early on in the game. I think I was flying with Paladin on my wing, in Scims - flying pigs, they were. It was a strike mission. I remember coming out of autopilot to see those Jalthis bearing down on me with a vengeance. We fought them off, and then began bombing the cruiser. Flak was exploding in little red starbursts all around me, the cruiser seemed to blur as we strafed it time and time again, pouring missiles into it. Finally, it voided, exploding, and we flew, exhausted, trailing plasma, back to the Tiger's Claw. For the first time, the Flight Engineer saw the shattered remains of my Scim and said "Must've been pretty hot out there."

I looked up. For half an hour I had left the dingy little room in my grandmother's house and been there.

And the funny thing is, with all of today's fancy graphics - no other game to date has ever given me that feeling again.

The next most defining moment in my CGaming life has been this. This community, this forum. Funny, it wasn't BCK at all, although I loved the game, played it a lot and (I believe) became quite good at it. The best part of the game, though, was outside of the game - the part I discovered when I first found the bc3000ad website and posted to a thread on the forum there that was entitled "Register your Vessels".

It's been a wild ride since then!

-GD

[Menchise]

Ahh yes, how could I forget the original Wing Commander (best game in the whole series)? It still is very immersive, and there are some gaming experiences in there that remain unmatched to this day.

My most exciting experiences were when I had to dogfight Jalthi and Gratha fighters at full throttle in an asteroid field. What a rush! This game was made back when asteroids were REAL asteroids instead of eye candy that sailed by.

Ironically, very few games since then have effectively simulated combat while dodging rocks, including the WC sequels (Privateer is a rare exception).

quote:

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The best part of the game, though, was outside of the game - the part I discovered when I first found the bc3000ad website and posted to a thread on the forum there that was entitled "Register your Vessels".

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I remember that thread (vaguely). That was way back when I was naive enough to believe that the GCV Grim Reaper was a cool name for a ship.

[Guest]

Aces High: Flying my expensive Me262 perk ride on patrol over the sea, its overcast with clouds at angels 12.. I decide to dive under the clouds to take a look... and momma mia! An entire enemy attack force of 8 b17's, 5 escort fighters and 2 C47 gooney birds. I pop up on the clouds, they hadnt seen me. I fly straight over where I think the bombers would be and dive past clouds at 500mph.. clear the clouds and see 3 buffs on my flight path. Blow them to heck and pop back up into the clouds. Repeated until all buffs and C-47's were dead, killed 1 escort fighter that was trailing me and exited at 600mph towards home. That was beautiful!

Longbow 2: I'd say popping up over a hill and seeing an entire enemy supply convoy a few meters from me. Used the cannon and rockets at the poor saps.

X-Com: Wiping out a Muton Terror mission by using only human weapons (Rifles, Pistols, Autocannon and Bazooka).

BC3K: Getting rammed by an enemy station (*cough*), and having massive damage to my bridge... and only ME, the Commander got hurt..with life down to 3% . I think I still have a pic of that perscan lol.

BCM: Hiding inside the station's solar panels from a gammulan Stormcarrier. My poor Questar was panicking on its own.

[Soback]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tac:

BC3K: Getting rammed by an enemy station (*cough*), and having massive damage to my bridge... and only ME, the Commander got hurt..with life down to 3% . I think I still have a pic of that perscan lol.

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RP

I am the commander, I decide when I need seatbelts and when I don't. Don't I look cooler without them too?

RP.

[jpprod]

Firing up Tie Fighter on my brand new AMD 486/80MHz rig with 1MB Gravis Ultrasound. Game's soundtrack really lifted this title from excellent space-sim/shooter to incredible one.

GUS had magnificent orchestral instrument set and crystal-clear audio quality. Tie Fighter had the famous LucasArts iMuse MIDI music system, which seamlessly created interactive background music for the game. Most important of all, the music was not ripped directly from Star Wars movies, but cleverly composed by mixing some of the familiar themes with beautiful new ones. (Face it - while original SW songs are excellent, we've all heard them over for a couple of hundred times.)

Defining moment in that game was experiencing just about any mission kicking into full action. Flying in friendly space the music was rather peaceful, combination of pizzicato strings, military snare drum, oboe. The suddenly, the tune changes to indicate an alarming turn of events: a fleet of hostile ships emerge from hyperspace. As you fly your ship to intercept them, the chords in the music are seamlessly turning more and more intense, and volume level is rising. New instruments join into playing the theme. As you're in weapons range and first laser shots are being fired, you'll find yourself engaged in full battle with music following all the way there! The iMuse truly was the next best thing to having an onboard London symphony orchestra

I fear we've lost the seamless interactivity forever with the widespread use of digital streaming music. Sure the sound quality is potentially beyond that of even professional MIDI hardware, but the flexibility of real-time playback is gone. Since there is no control information present, about the best you can do with digistream music is to crossfade between songs.

Provided the composer feels comfortable with the idea, I'm definitely going to try to develop something like iMuse for my upcoming game. Key is, I think, getting the control information ("beat") there and accurately syncronizing crossfades.

[Menchise]

quote:

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I fear we've lost the seamless interactivity forever with the widespread use of digital streaming music. Sure the sound quality is potentially beyond that of even professional MIDI hardware, but the flexibility of real-time playback is gone. Since there is no control information present, about the best you can do with digistream music is to crossfade between songs.

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There are a few exceptions that might be worth exploring, such as SSN-21 Seawolf (a submarine sim by EA from 1994), which cued Redbook audio tracks. Total Annihilation is another example, although its interactive music system was a little buggy.

[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: Menchise ]

[Hunted]

wai how does fall out end, i neevr had time to finish it?

[Menchise]

quote:

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wai how does fall out end, i neevr had time to finish it?

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*SPOILER ALERT*

Fallout ending:

After the mutant base and the Master's cult are destroyed, you hear the narrator informing you of how each of the communities turned out as a result of your actions (eg what happens to Junktown depending on which side you took etc).

After you hear all of that, you meet the Overseer outside of Vault 13. After briefly expressing his gratitude, he orders you to leave the vault and never come back, because he's afraid that others might choose to leave if they heard about the outside world. The final scene shows you walking towards the horizon with the theme song ("Maybe") on the soundtrack.

*END SPOILER ALERT*

A sad but exceptional ending.

[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: Menchise ]