Your top 5 mind blowing gaming experiences. (Warning! Contains spoilers)

[Jelly Soup]

Right off the top of my head. Some spoilers here or there. In no particular order:

 

1. Kerwan from R&C - Like @Toast_On_Cheese above, but for me it wasn't the first time, it was the second time, during the third game. Seeing the same busy city, but from a different area, was amazing. Had this feeling of "holy shit, I'm back". The idea of returning to areas from a previous game and being the same, but also different, was something not seen often till that point. The remixed theme was amazing as well, much heavier and harsher, opening up on the vastness of the city. Really well done.

 

2. The story is a damn story, Sly Cooper 2 - At that point in time, I was still accustomed to the idea that a games story was a series of "and then"s instead of "therefore"s. Just a series of not really connected levels to be finished and never talked about again. Sly 2 was one of the first ones to floor me with that. Each level loosely speaks of the last, but then I got to the end...I won't spoil the story, but I had a legit moment of "wait, all that crap actually mattered and in a way that makes sense?".

 

3. Aerith DIes, FF7 - This one likely requires no further explanation. It was a total "woah" moment when it happened. Cut scenes of that quality were still pretty new at the time as well.

 

4. The goddamn size of the game, Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen - I'm specifically talking about the SNES version here. The game is monstrously long, full of content and very little repetition. It's hard to explain to someone who haven't played it before, but the game is really fleshed out and has no problem providing the player stuff to do.

 

5. All of it, Joust - Going way back for this one, but Joust was the first arcade game I spent a lot of time with. I can't really put my finger on any one thing, but the entire package just blew up my young mind. We're flying around on colorful ostriches, jousting with other ostriches and sometimes a goddamn dragon, over eggs. Just, what.

 

Could make a pretty long list for this one, actually.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Jelly Soup