Top 10 Gaming Moments to Experience Before You Die

Call of Duty 4 is a great first person shooter. It has everything a summer blockbuster film as well as gamer could ever possibly want in there. Fast, hard action that drives the point home and cinematic moments that leave you staring at the screen for a minute longer than you should because you’re still realizing that what you just saw was so awesome your brain may still be shaking off the momentary shock and awe you just experienced. So in my opinion, the level that takes the cake for COD4 has to be All Ghillied Up. That’s right, the level where you step into the youthful shoes of one certifiably awesome operator Lieutenant Price and sneak from shadow to shadow killing who you need to in order to move onward towards the objective. Two moments distinctly stick out in my mind consistently. The first is the moment in which an entire column of troops and tanks are advancing on you and you must hit the dirt while still crawling forward hoping to avoid detection. I can’t think of any other moment that gripped my heart so tightly in any video game in recent memory. The second and significantly more impressive moment is towards the end of the level prior towards making your escape. I won’t spoil that one; however, I will say it involves a target, shooting down a helicopter and a very high caliber sniper rifle. I can’t even fathom someone having not played COD 4, but on the off chance, check it out or even just this level and that’ll be enough to get you excited for Modern Warfare 2.

1. Gears of War 2 – Riding the Brumak:

We all know how to play Gears of War, its run to cover, shoot, and for the most part repeat with a few cinematic moments in between to break up the formula. The final act in which you get to hijack a Brumak and take the fight into the Hollow against the Locust Horde is not only fun to play but ingenious in its execution. A game has the ability to lay down a significant amount of rules for the player to follow, which will eventually become second nature. In GoW 2, when you’re in open ground, you know quickly to peel off and get into cover as soon as the rounds start coming in so that you can return fire down range as fast as possible. There are a few rare instances where combat becomes close, hectic and a chainsaw on the end of a rifle gets utilized. But for the most part, this is the standard fair and the gameplay you can expect. When you mount the Brumak and start leveling an entire horde of Locust with machine gun and missile fire, you go from feeling like badass COG soldier Marcus Fenix to, for lack of any better terms, a God of the battlefield. Nothing can stand in your way and cover becomes irrelevant as you either trample over it or just outright annihilate it on your quest to clear the way into the hollow. I’m sure there are certain games that may have more memorable moments, but this is the level I could happily go back and play again and again until the day my 360 red ringed on me.

Bonus Round: Portal - Meeting Glados:

Anyone who ever had the opportunity to pick up the Orange Box knows that if there is one thing Valve loves developing for besides the PC, it’s the Xbox 360. The Orange Box, which contains Half Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2, is a good deal. I’m not even going to spin it, because without a doubt it is one of the best games I believe I have in my collection. Originally picking it up just for Portal, I wasn’t disappointed despite how short the experience was because at the end of it, I was satisfied and pleased with the experience I had been given. To this day, Portal still stands out as an incredibly enjoyable title, but if there is one moment besides hearing about how the cake is not a lie that is fun, it had to be finally meeting Glados in the proverbial flesh. Not only is it unsettling in some ways, but ultimately, it turns out to be a great ending because for everything you’ve learned throughout the game, you still don’t know everything and killing that incarnation of Glados surely doesn’t get you any closer.