I am reminded Waypoint still has the worst MGS2 article
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Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has a snowball fight as the intro/tutorial. It does a great job of teaching the intricacies of the genre in a low stakes fun setting. Great intro to a good game.
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Good lord, it turns out opinions are actually bad.
WOW, he even manages to trash the best Matrix movie(Reloaded) in the process. This take is boiling!
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genuinely could have gone the rest of my life not having read this, lol
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At the same it’s enlightening to see that someone can publish a piece out of the sheer idea that he considers everyone but himself to be a deluded shill blinded by hype. It’s astounding, really.
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No doubt. It’s my least favorite gameplay-wise, but I loved the story and the fourth-wall breaking aspects. And the meme theme basically predicted 4Chan’s influence on the 2016 US election.
I am suddenly remembering Silent Hill 2. The intro of SH1 was already incredible but the path that SH2 wasn’t a path of progressive discovery of horror but the implementation of melancholy and dread in a horror setting.
James looking at the mirror, the tilted camera shot, the gentle music as the letter is read to us…All is coming down together to create an unsettling familiarity in the process of invading his personal space. The James FMV had its facial animation made by hand. The best thing about it is that Takayoshi Sato used to all this stuff by himself, stating that motion capture could not show the movement of specific muscles in the face so he just casually resorted to do it all, by watching himself in front of a mirror. Look back at the James mirror sequence and how the muscles are indeed visible. Those details already makes a world of difference before you even have control of the character.
That’s the kind of people Konami used to have, they didn’t care about anything else but the betterment of their games. We didn’t deserve them.
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The Last of Us.
Just played this for the first time last month and holy shit did that intro give me all of the feels. From a sense of warmness of the characters’ relationship to the sudden dread once the outbreak starts. I think this was one of the first games that made me tear up within the first 10-15 minutes of gameplay.
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Chrono Cross is the one that comes to mind, but maybe I’m just thinking of the cinematic that plays at the title screen.
The blue neon that exudes from the background as you step over the bodies of dead scientists in the room that also serves as the title screen. You enter the room with the baby Metroid, only for Ridley to appear from nowhere. And as soon as you can come to grips with a strategy for fighting this horrifying beast, he zooms in from the background and flies offscreen with the metroid. Self-destruct sequence activated. Now all the blue neon has become bright red and the ceiling is collapsing on top of you. You make it to the room with the elevator but first you have to jump up these narrow platforms as gas sprays you from both sides. And then the screen itself begins tilting back and forth, with the potential for Samus to go entirely offscreen, making the platforming that much more tense and uncertain. You get to the elevator with only moments to spare and Samus flys away in her spaceship as the facility blows up behind her. Perfection.
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I remember the God of War games having really strong openings. Particularly the first one with all the hydras, but I guess God of War III took the biscuit with all the titans climbing Mount Olympus.
I always liked the opening of the original Prey too. You get abducted from your dive-bar onto this massive alien space ship. Nothing made sense. Everything was terrifying, including the alien doors.
Also Resident Evil 1 and 2 for the PSone have basically imprinted on me. Resident Evil 1 for this awesome 90s cinematic. Back when the game was released, the events of Resident Evil were set in 1998… The future! So cool!
Also the official playstation magazine had a 20 minute demo of Resident Evil 2. I played it so much before the actual game released. Compared to the first game, which was basically set in a haunted house, Resi 2 was set in urban environments, it was just really nasty navigating through Racoon City’s streets and alleyways to get to the Police Station.
RIP the KENDO Gunshop owner.
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Completely agree with a lot of the ones mentioned here. Bioshock, The Last of Us, Mass Effect 2, Doom, and so on. While maybe not quite in the same league, I really enjoyed the first hour or so of Resident Evil 7 this year. Without mentioning spoilers, I will just say that the turns the opening took were surprising, frightening, and immediately put my expectations off balance, which is great for effective horror.
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I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Dark Souls!
The contrast between the gigantic, opening cinematic and the first scene as the PC are really something. Then, you tentatively make your way through this horrible, hollow-filled asylum only to get your ass kicked by a giant guardian demon. You finally fight and claw your way out, stumbling along a beautiful stone-paved path to nowhere … and are flown by a giant raven to Firelink Shrine, which may as well be a world away.
No lie, the first time I played that sequence and Firelink came into view I audibly gasped. The Undead Asylum is such an awful place, but Firelink is so warm and inviting, and the music and - it’s just a great sequence.
And if you want to get really expansive about your definition of “beginning” and include everything leading up to the Taurus demon fight, it’s even better.
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Dead Space 1 is another one that came to mind recently. Everything that happens before you get a weapon was real good, a shame that it turns into an action game after.
The opening cut scene to the original Saints Row always got me hyped. Hector says beunos noches
I don’t think it really stands tall as an entire opening with the rest of these games, but Breath of the Wild’s step out onto the plateau, overlooking the entirety of Hyrule, with the logo in the corner and the theme music swelling up was a FANTASTIC moment.
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I can’t not mention what is probably my favorite game, Planescape: Torment, which has a very strong opening, dropping you into a scenario that introduces the conceit of the game to you and is immediately compelling, storywise.
I also really enjoyed the openings of both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. The first just does an icredibly good job of setting up the world and central conflict and some history of the races and the state of things in a very natural way without being overwhelming. 2, while not as good of a game, just has a really fucking cool opening, up to and including the title card. It’s so cool.
This year’s Prey has a very good opening, both the initial trick and the early parts of that game, which feel like an incredible survival horror game and is imo the best part of the game.
I also agree with a few of the ones others have mentioned here, especially Super Metroid, Nier A, and Saints Row 3
I totally agree with this article. I was so hyped for MGS2 in the years leading up to its release. Once it arrived, I spent the weekend completing it and was thoroughly disappointed in the end. Cutscenes were lengthy in the previous game but not on this level. It’s one of those games that people either love or hate. I guess I never properly understood it. People have heralded it a post-modern masterpiece! Or Kojima providing a commentary on video games through a video game! To me, it’s a series of boring set pieces, in a boring setting, with boring bosses. But it’s supposed to be a retelling of the first MGS within this new setting! Well it’s not as good as the original MGS story is it? The only good thing about MGS2 is that we got Revengeance some 10 years later and that game was dope.
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One that’s always stuck with me is Dead Space Extraction, the Wii rail shooter. As the game starts you’re a typical Alien style lowly nobody doing your blue collar in space job when the alien artifact that’s been dug up starts making bad things happen, and as it all kicks off you bravely fight your way through the hostile hordes armed with nothing more than your rivet gun. It feels like a classic hero setup and it looks like you’ve overcome the worst of it and things are settling down when the perspective shifts, it turns out you’ve hallucinated the whole thing, and from everyone else’s point of view you’ve gone on a murderous rampage and slaughtered all your colleagues. Then the game’s real central characters turn up and promptly shoot you dead.
It’s one of the strongest uses of the guided first-person narrative (the sort of thing ‘walking simulators’ do) to make you empathise with your character, to make you feel their feelings, to make sure that you’re feeling one particular way, and then completely pull the rug out from under you.
The rest of the game is fairly ho hum, but the opening is brilliant. I’ve just checked and the game apparently came out in 2009, and I’ve never quite got around to going back to it, so it made an impression that’s lasted (so far) about eight years.
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