Question What is your greatest moment in gaming? No doubt this will have spoilers!

[January's Ghost]

From time to time PCG drops an article called Great Moments in PC Gaming where the author talks about a truly memorable moment they feel is worthy of celebrating. So lets share ours.

What is the greatest moment in gaming that you experienced? A great twist in a story's climax? A epic comeback win in PvP? Getting it on with a bear? Not just what you think is a great moment, but that one moment that, so far, stands at the very top of the list above all others.

Please highlight the name of the game so it's clearly seen (allowing people to skip in case of spoilers) and use spoiler tags if you deem them necessary.


Star Wars The Old Republic - Sith Warrior storyline (Definitely plot spoilers)

Early in the sith warrior's story you get your second companion, Malavai Quinn, an Imperial office of unquestionable loyalty . A romanceable companion for female warriors, he is your most serious and dedicated companion. That is until he betrays you late in the warriors storyline. . Despite his betrayal you you keep him on as a companion, as a punishment I guess.

When the Eternal Empire storyline begins (well after all class stories have ended) you get separated from your companions, and are gradually reintroduced to them one by one (as well as other classes companions) as the Eternal Empire and Eternal Throne stories progress (and even beyond). Somewhere in this soryline you come upon a planet Iokath where you are reunited with Quinn. He he was broken and humiliated, but still seemed loyal. You can choose to forgive him or end him. Ending him after all that time was the most satisfying feeling I've ever had in a game. Mind you it was literal years in real life between his first betrayal and taking your revengs at that moment.

Here's a romanced version of the reunion I found on YouTube. Please excuse the sith warriors lack of pants.

View: https://www.youtube.com/embed/C0xBx_0y1oA?si=N6UwP3vQnoX10FbG


I've shown you mine (and she showed you hers), now show me yours.

 

[Pifanjr]

Beating Portal.

Portal was one of the first games I beat without using cheats or a walkthrough or any help from other people. The "Still Alive" song playing during the credits was amazing and I'm pretty sure I still know the lyrics by heart.

 

[Johnway]

Nothing beats been MVP of a multiplayer match racking up a massive K/D and being so good at the game that you're untouchable and its against majority of players (although thrashing beginners is not so thrilling or really anything to cheer about).

Outside of Multiplayer? The most memorable probably beating Mass Effect 1. The final fight might have been somewhat easy but it was rewarding to see the final boss get its just desserts and dies a horrible death that it so richly deserved. Plus humanity gets recognition for their heroics.

 

[January's Ghost]

Beating Portal.

Portal was one of the first games I beat without using cheats or a walkthrough or any help from other people. The "Still Alive" song playing during the credits was amazing and I'm pretty sure I still know the lyrics by heart.

I know shooting a portal on the moon from Portal 2 was memorable moment that stands above many.

 

[Alm]

My favourite gaming memory was winning a counter strike match in Assault quite stylishly as the last man on my team.

 

[Zloth]

From time to time PCG drops an article called Great Moments in PC Gaming where the author talks about a truly memorable moment they feel is worthy of celebrating. So lets share ours.

I could post something here every day for weeks!

Star Wars: The Old Republic (MMO)

The event I remember most from this game was getting killed by a character I had played in Knights of the Old Republic. I nerded out for a good half hour after that!

Portal 1

The boss fight was a great one! What the frak am I supposed to DO!? I died a few times, figured it out, died a few more times, and won the game. And yes, the end credits song made it one of the best ever.

Portal 2

The end fight was good, but the rant about life handing you lemons - I'm still laughing at that!

Air Warrior (no spoilers possible)

For PvP in MMOs, I have to go back before the phrase was invented to the GEnie days in 1990. Air Warrior was a game where three teams (countries) would fight in the skies and bomb each other's air strips. We also did some events based on real WW2 battles where we would use similar airplanes to try and achieve similar goals to the real battles.

In one of those, I was flying a B17 against Japanese Zeros. The Zero is an amazing fighter that can dance in the air. However, that's not much help against a B17 with multiple gun turrets (manned by other players), and the Zero had very little armor. Its guns weren't made to bring down heavy bombers, either. But the other side did have a lot of them.

Our tactic was to circle up about as high as we could take our B17s. I remember we were pitched up maybe 30 degrees just to stay level! Then we started a slow dive toward our targets, to give us extra speed. The enemy found us, of course - I think radar was turned off for the event, but they had plenty of scouts.

I can't remember if they grouped up before attacking or not, but once they started attacking, I turned our slow dive into an "as fast as you can without ripping the wings off" dive. Zeros still shot at me, but my gunners shot them down - except my tail gunner, who was killed in the very first shot that hit us! The other bombers weren't so lucky. I don't know if they dove like I did or what, but I think all of them were destroyed. Or maybe one survived? Lots of Zeros were destroyed, too.

Once the heat was off, I went back to the slow dive, got to my target, and bombed it. Then it was time to go home. There's no way I'm going right back the way I came - I took a scenic route, still diving until I got right down on the deck. Being 1990, most of the landscape was PERFECTLY flat, so flying at an altitude of 5ft worked just fine.

We did eventually get discovered. We were getting close to home, but were somewhat shot up already, too. The ball gunner moved to the tail (it's not like anything could get under us at 5ft altitude). The enemy called out our position and started heading for us as fast as they could, which meant they came in one at a time so the gunners could concentrate on them. They didn't last long, and some of them splashed into the ocean, too - but most still got a few shots in. Gunners were dying. Engines were failing (which would make the plane turn). But the landing strip was in sight!

And, like I said, the ground was PERFECTLY flat. Forget lining up on the airstrip! I landed on the grass, taxied to the airstrip, and got the completed mission! We win!

 

[isleepinabed]

It's hard to say... When I read the topic the first that came to mind were memorable experiences in arcade games, but where it was mostly about context than the games themselves.
I have a German uncle by marriage and, when I was a child, we used to go to southern Germany, a lot, by car and usually drive around other countries. One time we went to the Alps and on a café on top of an alp I played the real deal, sit down, full red motorbike Hang-On machine. A short experience but so memorable for the unexpected location and here I am talking about it 30 years later.
The other was a few years later, also abroad, in a huge arcade salon in Paris (can't remember the name of it but it was equivalent in size if not larger than the one at the basement of Hamleys in London - so the biggest I had ever experienced) where I managed to write my name on the top scores (4th) for Capcom vs SNK 2000 Millenium Fight. On a machine in a foreign capital in a place with so many people, that felt special.

In terms of actual gameplay experiences I'd say some of the most memorable experiences were not great narrative arcs or flourishing finales but, rather, smaller details or mechanical gameplay, especially when experienced for the first time. So, a sort of paradigm shift, that changed the way I thought about games.

For instance, climbing a colossus for the first time in Shadow of the Colossus (please Sony! Bring it to PC one day), like actually, hanging on to its "hairs" etc... No longer were enemies just things to be struck at distance (because in most other games when you merely touch enemies you lose life or die) but now they're actually part of the mechanical aspects of gameplay.

Or in Shenmue where after a very dramatic intro, you're just put into the world with vague hints on how to proceed but here you could talk to anyone, knock on every door, call every number, inspect every item in the world, or even play games within the game... it was an unprecendent amount of interaction that put you in the world in a way that had not been done before (and arguably, since). In Shenmue as well, I was gobsmacked at the amount of content that is hidden through secrets like being in a certain place at a certain time and that add nothing to the story, and are not necessary to finish the game. Other games of course, also have stuff like this. It just opens a whole new metagame where, the point is not actually finishing the story, but discovering its hidden secrets - and not throug invisible walls or bug-type "secrets" or messages from the designers, but actually full cutscenes, sidestories, and gameplay arcs that, unless you're going through that path, you'd probably not find.

Especially now when most action-adventure games actually give you minimaps and everything is mapped out, that feeling of coming across something perhaps you were not supposed to find is exhilarating. A fine way for the developers to clue you in and welcome you into their world.

 

[Frindis]

The greatest moment for me was beating BG3 honor mode. It took about 120 hours and was definitely the hardest challenge I've ever faced. If your party wipes in any of the three chapters, the honor mode is over, and you lose. You can only save when you leave the game, so no quick saving or reloading while in the game.

Some Act bosses in honor mode were tough. At one point, I had to fight two different bosses simultaneously due to an unexpected outcome. Honor mode throws surprises that kick your butt and leave you grasping at straws for survival.

For example, I ventured into a cave I'd never been to in BG3, feeling confident. I set up traps and ice on the floor, thinking the crawlies would slip and slide into my traps. Then I noticed they could jump very far. Some slipped, but others jumped straight into my party. They could frighten and paralyze me, which they did. I only survived because I had resistance and used a character to misty step (portal away) and lay down some fire.


Right now, I'm doing a solo jack-of-all-trades run (going slow because of Path of Exile 2). This means playing one character and leveling up once for each class—level 1 in Bard, level 1 in Warlock, level 1 in Ranger, and so on. You get the last class as level 12 by the final act.

It's very hard because you have to use your character as a party of four, making even the easiest mobs challenging. There's no achievement for this, but it's the ultimate challenge due to its insane difficulty.

 

[mjs warlord]

I have 2 contenders for this.

1. I beat hobbit on the the spectrum and unless your old enough to remember it you wont know why.
The text input and its response was awful , i typed " jump into barrel ! for example and the response was something like " the butler throws himself down the trapdoor and floats down the river". At that particular point you had to quit because he was supposed to throw the barrel down the river with you inside it so you could continue the quest. Lots of things like that happened in the hobbit.

2. I discovered SATISFACTORY and all you regulars know why i said that.

 

[Colif]

Clocking Galaga was one, though it wasn't real hard since they weren't shooting at me

It was just a matter of avoiding everything when it appeared on screen

Another could be finishing Super Metroid but it took me over a year as I wasn't in a rush to finish game as then I would need to find something else to play. And I was right.

Nothing really stands out in the last 20 years.

 

[DXCHASE]

My best gaming memories were winning high-ranked latter matches in Ghost Recon/ Ghost Recon Island thunder back in the early 00s and getting invited to play at MLG and asked for by other groups because they knew how good i was, it felt good then.

I also won a local Goldeneye tournament at my local Hollywood Video (the game center was called Game Crazy then). I won like 100 bucks and there was only like 20 kids or so that entered.

I have many others, including that moment you know you accomplished your gaming life goal of having a gaming family when you are all sitting down having fun playing a game together.

 

[JCgames]

I ran the council task force in city of heroes on unyielding as the only tank and 7 blasters. That means no control or heal just me taking all agro as an ice tank with fire attack, so I had decent agro holding and good defense.

The team passed me resist sheilds and I handed out revives and damage. Outside of a wipe in the first room our first try and me having to convince them not to give up, They quickly learned to let me go first, and grab the agrio before they pounced. After that first room people rarely dropped and we beat the task force. By the end there were lots of high fives and talk of "I can't believe how we rolled that with out a single healer!" In fact just getting them to try it with out one took some convincing, but I knew we could pull it off if they just had a little AOE discipline.

I think every blaster on that team also took a big step in improving their game play and understood agro way better to. It was a completely chaotic and a high adrenaline run, but boy was that it a fun ride. Too bad it was before people recorded stuff as it was epic.

Any city of heroes vet can tell you 1 tank and 7 blasters is just crazy talk, but boy was it fun.

 

[Zloth]

Any city of heroes vet can tell you 1 tank and 7 blasters is just crazy talk, but boy was it fun.

No it ain't! I can't remember how high level the Council's task force was... Strigia maybe? The one with the volcano? I think that's high enough for the blasters to have their "nuke" powers and 3 slots in them.

For those that didn't play, the "nuke" was an area-of-effect power centered on the blaster. It does MASSIVE damage, typically killing everything that isn't a boss outright, especially when the blaster first boosts up with a 'build up' and an 'aim' power. Here's what one looks like from a Warshade with dark energy:

Big Booom! After the nuke, the blaster tends to be pretty helpless. The power takes quite a while to recharge, too.

1. Tank jumps in, gets everyone bunched up and argo'ing on them.
2. Blaster gets close (unless it's an electric blaster with ranged nuke) but not TOO close, to avoid any AoE attacks on the tank.
3. Blaster hits aim (2 seconds), hits build up (2 seconds), and nukes (3'ish seconds). BOOM!!! Almost everything dies.
4. A few enemies will be missed and some really big ones will still be standing, but there are plenty of other blasters to cut them down. Spawn point won.
5. The blaster that nuked might have been hurt. Even if the tank had all the agro, AoE's can hit them as can enemies that are missed by the nuke. Just let the blaster use the Rest power. Maybe pass the tank a few greens - with that big of a team, the spawns will be big enough that a few people are bound to get green heal inspirations.
6. Off to the next spawn. You've got SIX other blasters with nukes! It takes a long time for those powers to recharge, but not forever. You'll always have at least one ready to go. Maybe you could have an electric blaster be on stand-by for a follow-up nuke just in case one goes badly.

 

[JCgames]

The TF is 26-30 or is it 25-29? Either way the blasters nuke power is 32, so that would not work


But feel free to try. Maybe you can find 7 blasters willing. Let us know how it goes. I'll also just add at high levels that doesn't really work LT's and bosses are more deadly and live through it. It's more to take down minions.

Any way you slice no heal teams are not easy mode. Often it's hard to even get people to want to even attempt a TF with out an empath. Let aline no healing powers at all. There are a bunch of defenders and controllers that mitigate in other ways

It reminds me of the time I did synapses TF, I was a firestorm controller and my friend was a fill trick arrow defender. We had a tank a couple blasters and a regen scrapper.

There was no one healing just the scrappers regen would show green flashes. During the TF multiple times people said great heals as we rolled the mission and me and my friend kept laughing we kept saying that healing arrow rocks! (Those that don't know, there is no healing arrow) between my holds and both our debuffs we mitigated enough damage that a couple people didn't even realize there was no heal they were just not talking damage and regenerating. The green empath flashes were actually the regen scrapper taking care of himself. Our tank was I invincible I think so the had DP too. Still 5 people with zero heal and they were convinced we were healing great. It was rather humorous.

All this coh talk makes me want to find my disks and reinstall. I probably won't get major onto again but boy would I like to go remake my firestorm controller and go kick frostfires ass!