Posts Tagged ‘levels’

28 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Gaming Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

I sure hope you like JRPGs and visual novels – or at least appreciate their existence – because this list is positively teeming with them. Come to think of it, there’s an overall theme of Japanese theatricality running through a good 70% of this thing, so strap in if that’s your speed. Japanese or not, these specific moments from 2024 videogames stuck out to me for all manner of reasons; a couple for their challenge, a few for their spectacle, a couple for their immediately evident significance within a wider franchise, a sprinkle for their shocking turns, and a handful for sheer novelty.

Just be warned that, naturally, there are some real gnarly spoilers ahead – and some of them come from several dozen hours into pretty long-ass games.

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VR BEST OF 2024 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW!

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10. The Frozen Ocean – Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

The stunning art direction of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown ensures its world impresses whenever you enter a new area: from cascades of jewel-encrusted sand waterfalls to grimy pitch-dark caverns and towering citadels, the imagination of the team behind the great Rayman Legends clearly had a lot of ideas stewing during their decade-plus away from the relative spotlight. But there is one locale in the game so striking that I actually gasped once I realised what it was attempting to depict.

As our hero Sargon approaches the easternmost edge of the map and looks out to sea, a towering wave comes into focus, and the wide-lens scrolling effect soon reveals that it isn’t moving. Cue a morbidly beautiful sequence made up of traversing airborne ship debris and weaving through static airborne enemies that ends in a thunderous crash as Sargon reanimates everything all at once, bringing a hail of enemy attention down upon him. Art direction meets game design at its finest.

9. Chocobo Gold Cup Finale – Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

If you haven’t played the truly gargantuan Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it might seem outright odd to see a moment from a sidequest as my singular favourite. Alas, Rebirth’s weaknesses are tied up in its unavoidable middle-chapter identity lacking both the twisty novelty of its predecessor and (hopefully) the emotional release of its successor, while its strengths lie in the kind of properly-integrated open world wonder Square Enix has been trying to recapture since the PS1 days. That extends very much to the sidequests, many of which only unlock in a particular region if you have met and helped the relevant characters in a prior locale.

So long story short, I was rather fond of the underdog-slash-family-trauma Chocobo racing story that spans essentially the length of the entire game if you keep up with it. The unexpectedly heartfelt reappearance of VII Remake’s Chocobo Sam only added to the bittersweet satisfaction of its finale.

But that isn’t what pushes the sidequest over the top for me; no, that’d be the real-time realisation I had on the final lap of the final race that my chosen Chocobo’s unique hovering ability wasn’t just for gliding across rough terrain Mario Kart shortcut-style. With the smarmy shonen-style villain just ahead of me, I decided in the desperation of the moment to try and find out if she could also glide across wide-open pits like the one just before the final turn. To my immediate shock and fist-pumping glee, she absolutely could, and Cloud pulled out in front right at the very end of the race to initiate a shower of confetti and one of the most satisfying renditions of the FF victory fanfare I have ever experienced.

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28 Dec

Best of 2023: Top 10 Gaming Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2023, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

A stacked videogame year like 2023 means good news for the quality of this list, and awful news if you like scrolling through casually without major spoiler risks. This isn’t all plot-focused moments, of course, but if you have not completed all the big 2023 games you wanted to this year, firstly I get it, I’m right there with you; and secondly, you almost certainly will be spoiled on something if you continue to read. Do with that warning what you will.

Alright, let’s go – here’s the stuff that took my breath away in 2023.

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VR BEST OF 2023 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you agree with me 100%, go buy a lottery ticket. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

SIGNIFICANT VIDEOGAME SPOILERS FOLLOW!

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10. Any Excuse for Portals – Spider-Man 2

It’s no secret that Insomniac Games has had a thing for instant teleportation in recent times: just look at the wonderfully flashy solid-state-loading showcase Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. But few would have predicted their follow-up game might find another equally brazen use for such tech – let alone with straight-up portals. But thanks to some cheeky contractual limbo, a Dr Strange-adjacent artifact finds its way into the climactic battle at the end of a Miles/Black Cat mission chain, and fireworks ensue.

As expected of a Sony first-party game, Spider-Man 2 can claim a host of highlights worth a mention on a page like this – the opening Sandman boss fight, the flashbacks to Pete and Harry’s teenage years, the Hailey graffiti mission that puts the player inside the world of a deaf person, the emotional clash with a reimagined Scream, the brief moments spent in control of Venom – but that team-up fight with Black Cat is just exhilarating. The already-excellent locomotion the game has to offer is brought to another level when you’re hurtling through the air and suddenly you’re somewhere else entirely – and Erika Lindbeck’s sassy cameo as the Cat warping in for combo finishers is a real bonus.

9. The Mewtwo Raid – Pokemon Scarlet

Aside from Halo Infinite, there’s no question what non-2023 game ate up the most free time for me this past year. The starter Pokemon raid bosses that Pokemon Scarlet unleashed at an impressively regular clip throughout the year were often challenging enough that an entire metagame formed around them: one that required investment in Pokemon development entirely separate from, even contradictory to, the competitive-leaning builds players have been used to for decades. Communities formed and thrived around that raid meta, but in September, things reached an entirely new level when Mewtwo reared its legendary head.

Each player could claim a special free Mew with its own random Tera type, and this Mew would receive an automatic stat boost upon entry into the ridiculously powerful self-healing 7-star Mewtwo battle. This meant any other Pokemon would be a waste to bring in, so the optimisation theorycrafting began – and in no time at all the internet came up with the now-famous Bug Tera/Electric Terrain set that would stop the boss’ big heal turn in its tracks and keep it weakened for as long as possible otherwise. When you loaded up a Mewtwo raid, saw three other Bug Mews in the party, and one of them was running a support set? You knew you were in for a lengthy scrap, but you believed you could win, and the feeling of victory at long last? Haven’t felt anything like it since the first Destiny, mate.

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28 Dec

Best of 2019: Top 10 Gaming Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2019, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

Videogames are made up of tiny moments, each one hopefully engineered to keep you engaged in the overall experience of playing. But some unique slices of game design or scenario writing stand out from the smaller ones around them, sticking in our minds because they differ so wildly from our expectations, or because they encapsulate everything that’s great about a game in one neat package, or because they’re just fun to go through. Some moments are carefully set up by the developers; others completely unplanned, based on happenstance and/or the involvement of additional human players.

These are my ten favourite moments in 2019 video games.

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VR BEST OF 2019 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is rarer than an EA game without microtransactions. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

THERE ARE SPOILERS ON THIS PAGE!

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10. Out of the Blue – Apex Legends

It wasn’t as if we didn’t have any games to play at the start of February this year. But with barely a week gone since the year kicked off with Resident Evil 2, Kingdom Hearts 3 and Wargroove – each a big deal in its own way – EA decided the time was right to drop a new, free-to-play shooter with next to zero pre-release marketing or hype. Apex Legends represented a new step for developer-of-the-year Respawn Entertainment, previously of Titanfall fame; but diving into the game with a few friends on day one revealed a tasty basket of unexplored ideas in the battle royale genre that made it clear why EA had such confidence in the risky strategy. Using respawning pods, taking ziplines and especially the near-endless slope sliding were all a heap of fun, and they even let Apex take enough of the Fortnite and PUBG audience to rule the roost for a few months.

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27 Dec

Best of 2016: Top 10 Gaming Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2016, Console, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

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Not every game worth playing brings a single standout moment worth talking about separately – Oftentimes it’s the consistent elegance of the mechanics, presentation and/or story flow that makes a game worthwhile. But many will have standalone gameplay sequences, story twists or bits of content that stand out from everything around them, either because the rest of the game is not quite as memorable, because everything just seems to come together in that moment, or even because when you played them you were in exactly the right mood to be affected by them. As a result, everyone’s lists will likely be pretty different, but these are my picks for the most memorable videogame moments of 2016. Spoilers are everywhere here.

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VR BEST OF 2016 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s strange. Fun, but strange. Respectful disagreement is very welcome.

Big videogame spoilers follow!
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10. Getting Schooled – Pokemon Sun

Opinion seems to vary wildly on the difficulty of Pokemon Sun & Moon relative to the last few games in the series – and in truth a lot of that always depends on team composition – but at least for me and the five people I played alongside on launch day, it presented a challenge for which we weren’t quite ready. You can pretty much nail down the start of that difficulty spike to the first trial of the second island, where the player comes face-to-face with a School Form Wishiwashi – a gargantuan fish with boosted stats roughly equivalent to the most powerful legendaries in the game. Its raining when you fight it and it will summon allies to use Helping Hand – all of which combines to ensure that even its Water Gun is strong enough to one-hit-KO every Pokemon in your party that doesn’t resist water moves. I was lucky enough to have it summon an Alomomola, too – a Pokemon capable of healing the son of a bitch for half its health whenever it felt like it. The whole thing was a tense struggle that felt tremendously refreshing.

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