Originally Posted by
Warcry
Gonna disagree on two points.
The Halo series and Dead Space shouldn't be on this list.
Let's start with Dead Space.
This leads me to believe that you have never actually played the game, or have an extremely flawed memory. There are maybe five times I encountered a 'jump moment'.
One of those was the ending.
The rest is simply seething dread. After fighting through 5 decks of nasty, nasty shit that has no purpose other than killing you, you get to the Hydroponics deck where there is the Food Storage area. Pretty soon, you hear an unwelcome message over the comms.
"10 kiloton mass detected in Food Storage."
That is not a jump moment. That is a moment where you stop, sit back and think "Wait, WHAT?"
After fighting the Regenerator, realising you simply CANNOT kill it, it's like the fucking Terminator, oh jesus shit fuck just run, run for your life, escaping, and then encountering the motherfucker in an enclosed space at the dead end of a hallway, you know panic.
Hearing something on the other side of the wall wailing in a very unsettling way, that builds dread. Characters dropping comments about big things crawling around outside, that builds dread. Dying over and over at the hands of the motherfucking Regenerator, quitting and shitting your pants at the thought of facing it again, that is dread. It's what the whole game is about.
On to Halo.
There is a reason the Halo series is highly regarded.
It's fucking good.
No other FPS has seamless vehicular combat and foot combat. The weapons and vehicles are all incredibly balanced. There are no game breaking glitches, moves or cheats.
In Halo 3, you have an instant replay viewer, which can record movies and take screenshots. You have the Forge, which is a fully interactive map editor. In basic multiplayer, you can customise EVERY aspect of your gametype. Every weapon, every vehicle, every condition required for victory. It has superb stat tracking and matchmaking. It has a very easy to use control scheme. Combat consists of four aspects: melee, grenades, weaponry and vehicles. All blended seamlessly. And it's a console shooter.
It deserves its high regard.
Okay, so I'm going to have to throw my two cents in, and agree with War-- well, only on the Dead Space part. I've played Halo, and the only part of Halo that I find innovative whatsoever is the forge, and that's only because I popped a whole bunch of those explody things on the floor, and hit them with the gravity hammer. I'd go boom, and then fly out across the map. Fun. But that's all I can say about Halo. Honestly, it's not my cup of tea, and I remember hating it for the longest time. I hate everything with too much hype, and that's why I always leave things when they get too big.
I liked Dead Space, but I don't think it was the most amazing game ever. There were some things that really got on my nerves. There were also a few 'jump' moments; you know, when the carcasses that you thought were dead popped up right as you walked past them.
But I'll agree that most of the moments made me think to a degree. There was a scene in the game that I'll never forget, actually. And it's a perfect example.
You're walking down a bloodied hallway. It's dark, and the only source of light beside your mask's blue one is flickering at an eerie pace. From afar, you can hear the sickening sounds of bones crunching. But it's no monster, or alien. No, as you round the nearest corner, the mangled mass of flesh that could once be called a human is slamming his head against a wall in hopes of killing himself. Now, when I say 'mangled mass of flesh', I mean that this person's wounds were so grievous, that you could not expect them to be able to walk, let alone stand. I mean, they guy's stomach was torn open, and chunks of his flesh were missing, for god's sake. It begged me to ask the question; how did this poor fuck get here, and why here? I pondered that for a while, as I passed through the next few hallways. And it got to the point where the question I had previously asked was the only thing on my mind as I mindlessly wandered through the halls. Now... This may have been unintentional, but they had distracted me from the game so well, that I had forgotten that there could be 'something' lurking around ever corner. And before I knew it, I was under the sharp claws of a ripper... I'm not sure what you call them, but hey, that's alright. I made up names for them.
I'm not going to ruin the ending for anyone who doesn't know it, but I must say, I was thoroughly mindfucked at the end. I might have expected it, if only slightly, but the end was just the perfect icing to the cake.
