Portal 2 - The Part Where He Kills You

The player is put into this spike trap by the antagonist (Wheatley), and at this point the chapter text comes up saying "Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You", you get an achievement of the same name, and Wheatley then says "Hello! This is the part where I kill you!"

The timing and delivery of it was so perfect.

GTA Vice City - taxi and ambulance driving

I loved the part of VC (and I think other installments have this too) where you jump into either a taxi or ambulance and you can then become an actual driver for them, earning money. Loved that minigame for being such a different thing to all the other missions.

Driv3r - the Bascule Bridge

In one of the maps of Driv3r (kind of a GTA clone), there was a Bascule bridge you could actually toggle, and so I'd usually get a wanted rating, bait as much police and cars onto the bridge (even blocking the roadway with my own car) and then draw the bridge up with all of them on it, and watch how the physics bug out and some officers end up in water (should never happen in normal gameplay) and the cars just all explode in the water.

Would you kindly..

When you first walk out of the shrine of resurrection in Zelda Breath of the Wild and view over the landscape

Hey, you're finally awake.

Hmm, there are quite a few of those, I think. Let's see.

Bioshock reveal. A man chooses, a slave obeys.

First time talking to Sovereign in Mass Effect, oh and the ending sequences from going through the Conduit and Sovereign attacking the Citadel, the Alliance fleet coming through. The cinematics and music were just so well done.

D:OS2, fighting Alexander when Battle for Divinity starts playing. Or the end fight, with Sins and Gods. The soundtrack was a delight.

The Witcher 3, the first time you arrive in Skellige, the landscape and the music, it just made me feel these things, it was beautiful.

The Deep Roads in Dragon Age:Origins, when Hespith starts reciting her poem and the Broodmother afterwards. Oh dear lord, I still remember the first time I was there, it was so fucking creepy. "First day they come and catch everyone." Truly superb.

In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, when you're forced to flee Skalitz, but you're so incredibly noob that you can barely ride a horse, and you realize this game is different from many others, because you're really just a nobody without any skills - and you'll stay a nobody, pretty much. This entire game was a joy to me.

There are also some games that are entire masterpieces, where I can't really pick a single moment but the entire game would count, for example Disco Elysium, a true masterpiece. This game made me experience the entire rainbow of human emotions. Another example would be Deus Ex, which to me will never get old, however bad the graphics might be.

Let's stop here, before this turns into simply a list of my favorite games. :D

The giraffe in the last of us

“It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.”

I bet there are people out there who hate video games but recognize this line.

Bioshock’s big twist was so well done. I still think about that one a lot especially in games where there’s no explanation for why you’re doing a mission.

“A man chooses… a slave obeys…”

The first time a Reaper Leviathan attacks you in Subnautica.

The first time you launch a rocket in Factorio.

The first time you do a bunch of stuff in KSP.

When the shields on the Arsenal Bird go down in Ace Combat 7. Just the way the music swells and everything.

I was screaming and cheering. Just felt invincible in my beloved F-15E.

Runner up:

Learning about Revan in KOTOR 1.

Aeris/aerith ff7

Kotor the big reveal

Halo when chief and arbiter team up

That first goomba in world 1-1

The entire ending of portal 2.

Reaching the peak of celeste was an incredible moment for me and the summit chapter is such a good "final" gauntlet. I've gone on to beat everything but farewell and the entire game is so well made. ~~(My thumbs really hurt though)~~

The ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. It pisses me off to this day.

The first zombie in Resident Evil.

That uuh... thing that happens to Aerith in Final Fantasy 7.

Max Payne 3 in the airport level when Tears by Health starts playing.

Leaving the vault in Fallout 3.

The end of season 1 of Telltale's Walking Dead.

"Hey, Listen"

So many moments in TUNIC, but the huge one when you find the Holy Cross.

Tiny me playing Zelda OOT when it released - in the days before guides were really a thing, so my dumb ass just had to figure it all out on my own.

Anyway, first 3D game I'd played - before that it was just some SNES and the original GameBoy cinder-block... and I was pretty much at the lowest end of that game's target audience, so tiny me was struggling to progress. Finally finish the Deku Tree after, idk a few weeks or so, which is about how long it normally took me to finish a game, so I thought that was it.

Cool! Well that was fun! All that's left is to escape the forest and that's a wrap! ...what's this chick on about with the ocarina?? Oh yeah, that's the name of the game, I got the thing! Woo! Okay, through that next log, and surely the credits will start to roll....... oh, I'm still in control of my character. Weird. OMG STFU YOU GODDAMNED OWL YOU'VE BEEN TALKING FOR LIKE AN HOUR!

And then the moment: taking my first steps into Hyrule field and seeing all the paths shooting off from it. Realized the was in fact not over, but had barely started.

Mind. Blown.

RDR2, the horse scene.

RIP Coffee. Had I known, I’d have walked.

I’m sure I could come up with so many, but these sprung to mind:

• The opera scene from FFVI
• Aerith and Sephiroth from FFVII
• The intro and ending of Transistor “Hey— Red— We’re not going to get away with this, are we?”
• Final showdown with Armstrong from Metal Gear Rising Revengence
• Gustave and Lune argue about whether to continue the mission in Expedition 33. “When one falls, we continue. Not if, when!”

Zelda: Link to the Past, going through the lost woods. I can still hear the music.

That moment in Final Fantasy 7 when Sephiroth, um, drops in.

Gotta be up there.

Or in Deus Ex when, if you haven’t been paying attention (or just running through killing) the twist hits. I saw it coming but still. “That’s right JC. I’m [redacted].”

The cake is a lie

Tha bit in Mario Kart when you finish a circuit and your guy rides up to the podium and suddenly there's a huge motherfuckin' fish and you're like, "what's this puffy guy gonna do?" and then ba-boom it fuckin' explodes and there's your trophy

I'm gonna go with a moment from Final Fantasy XIV.

When I was a kid the live-action opening of Resident Evil 1 scared the shit out of me. Especially when that guy picks up the pistol from the ground and it still has a hand attached to it.

More recently I think "Spec Ops: The Line" twist(?) really stuck with me, I was an ideal player for the game because I just blindly carried on, questioning very little and shrugging it off as "accidental" or "needs must" until being faced with everything at the end.

Being upside down for the first time in an arcade game, in 1989!

Thrilling for the time and very memorable.

It was Afterburner installed into a bespoke cabinet at Fremantle Timezone.

The servos were directly connected to the flight-control stick, without any inputs of what was occuring in the gameplay. This meant you could be upside down, even when flying level in-game, and you would have to bank and dive to level-out the game during quiet parts or at the end of stages. No chance of redout, but the harness was torso only and uncomfortable for longer times upside down.

This was created as a 'hack', probably by LAI engineers, and unauthorised by SEGA. I've met a couple of these Perth game-engineers since, and they are true pioneers. So much so, that SEGA took interest and flew out it's own engineer, Masaki Matsuno, to take a look, which inspired the creation of the R360.

Novel, but the lack of interconnect with gameplay made the experience clunky. Only played it twice.

Half Life when you reach the surface for the first time.

Watching the credits for Super Metroid for the first time.

That end card probably stayed on my tv for for like an hour while I just sat there.

How to be me. Someone else might have got it wrong.

That scene still hurts .

pwning and getting pwned by friends playing counterstrike dust 2 in the local cafe

Rise and shine Mr Freeman. Rise and shine

Where's everyone going? Bingo?

The part where you launch white phosphorus in Spec Ops the Line

When Joel has to choose to save Ellie from having the brain surgery or not in The Last of Us. When Monika in Doki Doki Literature club removes other characters in the game from the player's file + when she breaks the 4th wall. "It's just a prank, Han!" from Until Dawn.

When Majora’s mask grew legs. Freaked me the hell out as a kid lol.

ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS FOLLOW THE DAMN TRAIN, CJ!