I prefer the 5th case…the 4th goes on way, way, way too long.
And besides, you get to play with fingerprinting and luminol! (Although luminol doesn’t work that way. >_>)
The fifth case of Trials and Tribulations is good, too. Very sad, and complex.
The last case of Justice For All is even worse that 1-4, though. At least against Manny, you’re only making slow progress…in JFA4, you make quick progress and then spend the rest of the game buying time as you find, then lose, Maya at least twice… It should have ended soon after the mystery was solved.
I loved the town of Needles (including the Temple of Blood) in the game Wasteland. It was probably the location in the game with the most to do (Vegas was surprisingly short overall, and the sewers were just annoying).
The train level in Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door
Restoring full power in Metroid Fusion
Finding the nine keys in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Getting to Thaardus from Flaahagra in Metroid Prime
The moving spike monsters (both) in I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game
The Zero Suit Stelth mission in Metroid: Zero Mission
Forgot to mention before - the snowspeeder battle in Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on N64 was pretty sweet, too. Who didn’t want to take down AT-ATs with tow cables?
Bioshock’s Fort Frolic was great, but I liked the Medical Pavillion better, because it was scarier. Blood everywhere, loads of shadows and dead bodies and flickering lights and huge shocks and general creepiness. Kinda bummed me out that the scariest level of the game was the very first.
All the levels in Psychonauts are awesome. The Milkman Conspiracy was really cool looking and funny, but it frustrated me a bit, because the figments are sometimes hard to see. I really liked Black Velvetopia as well, and the dialogue in the Lungfish city was the funniest in the whole game.
I nominate Level 19 in Portal. The rest of the game is just training. “Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence. Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity. Goodbye.”
The sunken cruise liner in Tomb Raider 2. Swimming, scary sharks, great puzzles and scenery.
The first post-accident minutes of Half Life. Wonderful scripted events, like the falling elevator, the headcrabs jumping on people, so much wonderful scary chaos to watch.
Bioshock’s weird theater level, with the creepy plaster statues that would gradually sneak up on you when your back was turned. That level had me on hyper-fright-jumpiness.
The first level of Doom. Sets the mood for the rest of the game perfectly, and lets you know from the first gunshot that this will be the greatest game you’re ever going to play.
The C130 gunship in Call of Duty 4. Somehow, while sitting perfectly safe and immortal from enemies, they created sombre sobering tension as you “play god” with the amazing destructive power.
Going way back…Pools of Radiance on the C64, where the sidequest has your party help defend the kobold village against attacking neighbor tribes, through mass hordes and carnage against your party in a frantic fight that seemed impossible in a turn-based environment.
I’ve always been very fond of the “Sky World” levels in SMB3. It starts with the chomp-on-a-chain stage, followed by a vertical falling stage, and then the unique Kuribo’s Shoe stage, a fortress which is TOTALLY skippable, the fun tower stage to get into the clouds, and then every possible version of a sky stage.
I often booted up SMB3 just so I could warp to the sky world, play through and then turn it off.
In Total Annihilation, when you (as the Arm) finally reach the Core homeworld, there are several stages where you fight on their metal-covered (or completely made out of metal) planet. One of the levels involves a few choke points where your Commander starts off at and it’s a hurried rush to build decent defenses to hold off the Core forces from overrunning you before taking the fight to them. The battles are intensified by the orchestral music.
The giant world in SMB3 is indeed fantastic. Smashing the big blocks is tons of fun.
Some people hate it, but I love the boat level in Half-Life 2. Mainly because the final showdown with the helicopter at the end is great.
I suppose New Reno in Fallout 2 could count. A superbly designed area where you can’t help but indulge your baser instincts. I particularly love the quest where you have to recover a debt from “Pretty Boy” Loyd. He leads you out to the desert where you can force him to dig it up at gunpoint. Otherwise you’ll trigger the landmine he set there. As an added bonus, after forcing him to dig it out, you can then drop the mine on him. “Hey Loyd, catch!”
I also loved the entire first world of Mario 64. Certainly not very hard, but it’s like a playground. I used to love getting the wing hat and just flying around the area or hopping on the shell and seeing how long I could keep it going.
I also have a personal fondness for the first ghost house level in the SNES Mario Kart. It was the only level my dad would play in pretty much the only game I could get him to play. I was also very proud when I mastered using a mushroom and a well placed jump for a major shortcut.
In spite of the atrocious voice acting, I think the Honk Kong area in Deus Ex was pretty great. Tons and tons of exploration options and it went on long enough that you started to feel at home there.
I’m gonna have to disagree here. I personally thought Guardian Citadel to be the most awesome. It is mid/late game, right after the most hellish time in the sewers (seriously, three stack of 8 cyborgs?? NOooooooOOoo!). You just got some fresh gear in sleeper base and most likely dealt with Finster’s bullshit mind maze. Your group is a mix of pseudo-chiten armor, power weapons, and automatics. You arrive at the Citadel and are in for balls to the wall action down through the inner sanctum. You pick up the most bad-ass gear all the way through, and at the end you liberate a helicopter. Hells yes.
For me the game really came together here. The mysterious guy in sweet armor sent me on a wild goose chase and I arrive at an enormous radiated crater. I drop my rope and find myself in a pre-war research laboratory blown to shit. Finding the scattered holo-disks with reports of the experiments and what the hell is really going on in the wasteland put a certain sense of urgency into my exploration.
I also loved how the typical gaming convention is used against the player there. You explore your way down six levels of completely trashed laboratory and spend your time fixing everything. When you get to the basement and power everything back up all the defense robots turn on you. It is a great trap, and can be a pretty rough struggle climbing your way back to the surface. Awesome level!
I love that at his point in the game you’re loaded to the gills with 7.62 ammo (and can easily get more if you need it since the Citadel doesn’t have any random encounters, so you just backtrack when you need a breather) and can just full auto the crap out of the Guardians. Or LAW rocket them. Or even laser weapon them if your so inclined. Also, Brother Goliath is a great way to raise your melee and Assault Rifle skills with by standing two squares away from him and single-shotting or attacking with spears.
Of course, you can always use the super loot bag cheat and kill everything in the game in one shot with the Red Ryder Air Rifle.
Combined with the Supreme Jerk rank (which you can achieve by giving everyone a climb skill, going to the basment of Spade’s casino and climbing the rubble over and over and over by taping down your up arrow), you are unstoppable everywhere.
As I recall at the Citadel I was pretty much switched over to energy weapons. The assault rifles and LAW’s were king in Vegas (especially against the Scorpia tank).
You went from slowly crawling forward inch by inch, to holding perfectly still as the skirmish line passed, to running for your *%&ing life after you take out the heli with the .50 Cal.
Do NOT get me started about the scorpitron. It keeps the north half of Vegas off limits for nearly the entire time Vegas is even playable. Faran Brygo’s is unreachable until you are more powerful, and by than it isn’t interesting.
Oh it’s an ugly fight but there are two options. The first is the walk around; you can survive its damage and just not attack.
The other is to have a massive pile of LAWs stored up; essentially not using any in the game up to that point. Every time I played Wasteland I took it down on my first proper trip to town (not counting running up there before I did anything else to pick up Dr. Mike Scot).