Gaming Memories

[Piacular]

It occurs to me that over the decades (eek) that I’ve been playing games I have accumulated a veritable myriad plethora of enjoyable memories!

I’d like to know other peoples happy gaming memories and see if they’re fun to read too!

As a quick snap-shot strata of mine:

My most formative memory from the tender days of HL1. Deathmatch over a 2 computer LAN. The joy of my first tactical deviances and creativeness beginning with the placement of trip mines at the bottom of stairs - I still remember the smug grinning feeling when hearing them explode in the distance.

Fast-forward to Conflict: Vietnam. The terror and precise organisation involved with getting a co-op four man team through Charlie infested tunnels on the highest difficulty where a single death spelt doom for all! The sense of accomplishment and camaraderie after completion still makes me smile.

Then of course, Battlefield 2. No other games gave so many happy moments! From seeing our first clan match slip away only to be rescued at the last moment by Gringotsgoblin surpassing himself, to watching flaming wreckage and bodies rain around SgtFury in a sterling Dragon Valley defence. So many to recall, from insane jeep runs to my precious AT’s, who make me so happy I want to cry and then so mad I want them to die! From last second medic saves, to those hero moments where the kill list is all yours... ack! There are too many, I have to will back the onslaught of them all!!

Finally memories from more sedate games, like Civ 4. The soothing feeling of revenge as I laid waste to DocBot’s vast empire after he had orchestrated a pre-emtive attack and burned my frontier cities to the ground! Or smashing 3 opponents including Bambi & Wraith after they rudely attempted to steal my technology. The triumphant feeling of having outwitted/outmanoeuvred/outlucked another player over the course of several hours is always a pleasure .

Even beating my good friend Dr. Price at drunken chess after losing my queen on the second turn fills me with pride!

Go on, tell me yours!



.......and then there was the time Commander Bambi and I were shouting at each other buring a clan match, and he was like "Dude, behind you!", and I spun around snaping of a shot at my stalker, thinking how cool that must have looked from his view. Or the numerous times Nanor's phat ass has got in the way, or the times when you sprint through heavy fire to revive a team mate shouting "Get ready to bloody get up you lazy bastard!". Or the times when armour comes around the corner just in time to save the squad, or the times when a chopper strafes around the corner and you know your dead, but your brilliant hits the pilot and she crashes, or the times when........

 

[Nanor]

Sharqi Peninsula. Hands down the best BF2 map ever. My particular memories are assaulting the Construction Site and Piacular screaming "Fucking G36Es! Nanor, where the fuck are you?! REVIVE ME!" to which I valiantly save the day and we take the site only to get hit by artillery. Bah.

Or Company of Heroes, when we all played it. The teamwork in that game is brilliant which made the game such a hit. I loved the map with the fuel dump in the middle and the two people had to work together to take it. It was just immense.

I've had so many great memories, all thanks to THN.

 

[thatbloke]

My best gaming memory is actually before I met you guys...

It was in planetside. I don't know how many of you played that game but I loved it to bits and thought it was absolutely brilliant. And I got quite good at it too...

I had been playing all afternoon and we were attempting to defend a continent from attacks from both the Terrans and the New Conglomerate scum. (I played as the Vanu Sovereignty). Eventually, due to the fact we were under attack on two fronts, we collapsed and were forced back to just the one last base on this continent, (out of about 15). But the fact that we were defending it and being attacked from two sides also meant that the other two sides were at times occupied with each other as well as us, so it was just one massively huge fight.

The fighting was so intense and there was so many attackers/defenders that although we could keep the attackers out, we couldn't get out of our own base ourselves and were pinned down in that base. For those of you who don't know much about this game, there are a number of vehicles involved and this particular fight happened not long after the introduction of "BattleFrame Robotics" (BFRs), which were giant mech-like robots about 10 times the size of a standard player and could do as much damage too. So we were getting pounded and pounded and for about two hours we were defending this base, sometimes in a last ditch effort. Then suddenly I led a charge out of the back door and we succeeded in poking our heads out of the back door without them instantly being blown off - we were beginning to win!!!

I then turn off to my right and there, sat on a hill firing lancing laser shots at anything that moves was a squad of about 5 friendly BFRs laying waste to anything that wasnt purple (the colour of my team). This was a truly beautiful sight, as the terrain was (for the time) beautiful and the sun was just setting behind them. Them, set against the sun and the snow-covered landscape they were on actually did make me shout out loud in relief that we had survived the fight. We then went on to push away both sides that were after our territory and eventually locked out the whole continent, using the two opposing sides against each other and then mopping up the pieces.



As for BF2, it was somewhat spoiled for me by the Jets, as there was nothing you could do against a really good jet pilot, now matter how many AA guns you had. That was, unfortunately, an unavoidable consequence of people getting bloody good at it though

 

[DeZmond]

I have many gaming memories... such as, at the age of 5, playing the newly-released Doom E1M2 over a lan with my dad - I always spawned in the area of the level that had no lights, and I was playing it on a monochrome laptop (oooh the technology! ) - I was terrified out my wits and literally jumped at every shadow! Still, got some kills though!

Over the next couple of years I continued to play Doom / Doom 2, Wolf3D, Major Stryker, Bio Menace, and other shareware games of the day, and of course eventually switched to Windows 95 not long after its release (oh so revolutionary! ).

Anyway I digress because I should be talking about gaming moments - another fine gaming moment I had was during one of my favourite games of all time, Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight - the game was definitely ahead of it's time with massive levels, fully 3D environment and cool force powers. I only had the demo originally so I was infiltrating a fuel filling station, and the moment where I managed to single-handedly take out a squad of stormtroopers using nothing but the bryar pistol and some cunning was a truly great moment!

 

[waterproofbob]

My surpassing memory in gaming has to be in 2142 unforetunately not with you fine folk as i joined too late for BF2. We had had the number one spot in ED for a few months and S(a)S were getting more and more confident and getting quite rude a lippy saying how we all sucked. I'd not played them as I was a relative youngster to uKm at that point. As S(a)S refused to play us for 2 months so they could 'train'. They finally agreed to play us and I was given my usual role of get in the walker and point in the right direction. They had the best Gunship I've ever seen and their gunner was sublime. He came over the hill I side step the TV missile hopped into the turret emped the ship it then dipped and crashed into the travelling transport killing 7 of their 10 man team in the first 30 seconds. Was awesome and my best ever clan round getting somet like 42-2. Ahh my beautiful reisig how I miss thee.

I'm really hoping a game appears that will rejuvanate the THN glory so I can be a part of it and share some of the 'do you remember when elD was a noob' moments that I've only heard stories of.

 

[Ronin Storm]

See there I was playing Jedi Outcast, working my way through the single player campaign. I'd made it to Cloud City and was going room to room killing off the bad guys. The game had settled into a pattern and while it was still quite good fun I felt it was starting to lose its edge...

I stepped out into an L shaped room, coming down the long spine of the L between a pair of pillars when a pair of dark jedi leap from behind each pillar and lay into me. It's one of those moments where there's no time to think, only time to act. My sabre is out before I can swear (and boy can I swear at those times!) and I'm furiously back pedalling but they bracket me ahead and behind, leaping into the air to finish me off. I switch to strong stance, my sabre arcs backwards cutting the one behind me before he can strike. My sabre sweeps forward, slams into the one in front of me. Both dark jedi fall to the floor, their sabres going out and clattering down almost simultaneously. I shut my sabre off on instinct. Total fight time, less than five seconds. I'm left staring, whispering "now that was really f**king cool!" Sabre fights, awesome.

 

[Haven]

Mmmm Lord of Chaos (owning everyone with my undead armies) and Bomber Man trapping everyone with my bombs in five player mode *muhahahahah*.

Single player probably Eye of the Beholder late at night creeping around corners and having to repeatedly reload from saved games and finally the awesomeness that was Shadow of the Beast the graphics and the sounds were so advanced for its time that it really did open new imaginative worlds for me.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

KillCrazy introducing me to Half-Life (and FPS games in general) the hard way, with a bit of LAN deathmatch I was gazing in wonderment and disbelief at the screen as I carved things up with an MP5, great moment.

In Command and Conquer Generals once I was playing a 2v2 game with a soon-to-be clanmember (FaL clan at the time) in a no rush, no superweapons game. We played by the rules and built our bases slowly, taking the oil derricks in the middle and it was looking like a good game, when all of a sudden the opponents built about 5 particle cannons each. It was all looking extremely grim, as we only had one nuke (which my teammate had built for the tank upgrades only and was going to sell, until this happened) and our moderately sized armies as defense. After the enemy had fired about 7 of their ten particle cannons, tearing a very large hole in our bases, we decided 'ah to hell with it' and threw everything at the enemy on one side of the map. About 30 or so of my GLA scorpion tanks and quad cannons coupled with a bunch of my teammates Chinese overlords and migs, we dashed straight for the nearest opening. The enemies were desperately throwing everything they had at us, including particle cannons, but our tanks were ripping a gigantic slice right through their bases. The second enemy had a large force in waiting for us outside his base which may well have ended our game, but my teammate launched his nuke at the perfect moment and cut a huge hole for us to move into. Nothing better than seeing loads of overlords and scorpions coming out the other side of a mushroom cloud We won eventually, showing up the bastard cheats for the shite players they were!

Final Fantasy IX itself (and indeed pretty much all the PS FF games) was one of my most memorable and enjoyable gaming experiences. Top notch stuff all the way through, but at the end there is one scene where the protagonist does some soul searching and comes up blank, generally feeling really sorry for himself and how he let down his compadres, so he just throws himself at these bad guys in a 'dont care if I die' manner. Your health gets really low and you're thinking it might be game over, but one by one the team come to fight by his side and eventually triumph, all the while there is an awesome tune playing in the background called 'You Are Not Alone' and it is simply one of the best moments of gaming ever.