Memorable Beginnings

[Ronin Storm]

In times where I've not had any new games for a few weeks and nothing in the near future is really inspiring me I look back at games I've played and try to think of what I liked about them. Now, I don't complete many games... in fact, I think I've completed less than ten ever. But I do get to see a lot of game beginnings.

Doesn't matter how old or how particular to you (in fact, something that only you liked is well cool by me)... back through all the games you've seen and played, what were the very best beginnings?

I'd include any intro movies and probably anything that sits within the first 10 minutes of any game. I know there are all sorts of cool things that happen during a game, but keep yourself to the beginnings please. Oh, and careful with spoilers just in case people haven't played it, but say both what game it was, what happened and why you liked it.

I'll start...

Max Payne

More than any other game I've ever played, Max Payne inspired me. In fact, from Max Payne I gained a fascination with the film noire style of presenting something at the very end right at the beginning. I just remember Max standing on top of the skyscraper, rifle in hand, wind and rain whistling around, looking like he'd just fought the whole damn world and perhaps, just perhaps, he'd pulled it off. The film noire style, especially as presented through the beginning of Max Payne, gives me a heroic feeling. A sort of understanding that I'll get here if I play hard enough, but here is not necessarily quite the end, and you don't know why or how... but you know it's important and you've got to fight to find out. Oh, and how I could I miss this... Max's voice over! I don't know who it was but the voice acting for Max was spot on, a guy pushed almost beyond caring but just, only just, hanging in there.

So... any more?

 

[Ubiquitous]

Firstly, I totally agree with you on the Max Paynefront. I love the prologue in Max's house with his wife screaming, it's so chilling. I also like the intro movie to Quake 2, with all of the frenzied ratio chatter as your pod goes down, for me it gave you a real sense of being part of something much bigger that was going horribly wrong and it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 have nice playable intro sections that work well to immerse you in the game before the story proper starts. Metal Gear Solid 2 had a memorably cinematic intro sequence and I love the start of Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge: when Guybrush goes from bragging about his pirate antics to the sailors to having the short and puny Largo dumping you over the bridge. Now, if only they still made SCUMM games.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Ah! The Largo Embargo! I can still hum the tune that plays in the pirate bay to the south of that island.

Half Life's intro was great as it may have been the first game I'd played where I was in control right from the start, so I could run around and peer out of the windows of the train. By Half Life 2 I felt I'd seen that gimick.

And yes... Quake 2. From the very beginning I was wanting the Strogg to die horribly and rooting for the marines. In think that, in that way, the messages from the Sergeant in Doom 3 really harken back to the between-level situation updates in Q2... and both worked to keep me immersed in the game.

 

[elDiablo]

Best intro ever: Freespace (1). It's beautiful. I actually sat there, watching the whole thing, with a dropped jaw for it. It gives a great look into what the game becomes, and is BEAUTIFUL. The game itself is bloody brilliant too. The Freespace series is the best space sim experience I've had!

Also, I agree with all that you say about Max Payne, it is a very enjoyable game. Love the series.

Got to say, Uplink is one of my favourite games. From the shear terror of the trace tracker beeping away, getting ever faster, as an indication as to how limited your time is, right through the perverse pleasure of destroying a companies computer, all the way to amazement of the final plot missions. It's brilliant. The sound track fits perfectly, and the game doesn't try to be anything to grand - it's a hacking sim, and it keeps it pretty simple. It works. It fits. It conquers the player. One of the few games I've ever played and thought, "Wow, that was an amazing game... I was total drawn in, and I didn't even realise...". The only thing letting it down is the larger gateways are a bit over-powered, and the replayability is somewhat lacking.

Edit - Also, Uplink's intro is great!

 

[Ubiquitous]

The freespace games are prety jaw dropping. On a similar note; Homeworld has a beautiful intro too, and the choral version of Samuel Barber's 'Adagio for Strings' fits the scene perfectly.

Hehe, I love the way that in Uplink you can connect to Protovision and play 'Global Thermonuclear War'. I nearly exploded with glee when I saw that.

 

[Haven]

Half Life 1 the monorail was an eye opener - at the time it was years ahead of anything we had seen and would see for a while.

Quake2 and the Quake logo as a giant asteroid was very nice with the planet in the background.

 

[Nanor]

The prey demo was amazing! I loved when you got abducted by aliens and you got to see all the doings on of the space ship!

 

[KillCrazy]

Ah yes, Max Payne. Fantastic game. I too loved the film noir style story telling, and it really put you in to the story. I felt Max's need for revenge and justice for what had happened to his family.

Doom, Quake and Half-life are the three games that stick out most in my mind. They are the few games I played through and through trying out every difficulty, trying out mods and new maps and playing multiplayer online and even with my family.
Doom was the first ever PC game I started to play when I was young. Without it I probably would have gotten addicted to computers at a much later date

I've completed most games I've ever bought for the PC. Speaking on game beginnings I would have to say Half-Life and Quake 2 were the most memorable beginnings for a game for me. The Quake 2 intro movie took my breath away the first time I saw it as the prospect of a mass assualt on an alien race in order to save your own civilisation was a major adrenaline rush. That's a reason why I also loved the storyline to Halo which even drove me to buying a book which dealt with a prologue to the Halo story itself.

The beginning to Half-Life was awesome as at the time it was the next generation in game graphics, so the little tour around a great underground science facility was awe inspiring.
A funny story....the first time I played Half-Life I found it too difficult and frustrating (this was back when it first came out). I stopped playing but a while after decided to give it another go and eventually got the hang of it. I laugh at that now but I'm glad I went back and tried it again as it's been the most played game of my life aswell as being the first game I had a shot at level editing for.

Did you play Max Payne 2 Ronin? Equally as good in story telling and twice as good in graphics with the ragdoll physics and the new version of bullet time.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Did you play Max Payne 2 Ronin?

Oh yes.

With the first I felt they had to make Max live on borrowed lines, likenesses to other characters or film stars. By the second, we knew Max already and so he had to take on his own voice. I think that took away just a little of the wow-factor that comes from freshness but, all in all, I think they carried Max excellently as his own person.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

KC, remember we used to chat in maths (chat. Thats about all we ever DID in maths) about this kind of stuff? I was always saying best video game intro ever? Alien Trilogy! And then you claimed that Quake II always brought forth the goods! Well here I am to say that: Yes indeed, Alien Trilogy had the best intro in a videogame for me ever. Not only because it was a render of the 'Colony Landing' part of Aliens, but because the graphical quality of the render far surpassed anything else on the PS1, maybe only equalled by Final Fantasy IX (which also has an AMAZING intro).

Ok, here we go. Some very VERY generous man has posted my fave intro on YouTube: Alien Trilogy Intro (bit dark though, but you get the jist of it).

Ill also mention Final Fantasy IX again, because this was far and away my favourite PS1 game (and also my favourite ever RPG to this day. I would happily play this over anything that has ever come out in the past 6 years)

FFIX intro part 1
FF IX intro part 2

Other intros which deserve an honourable mention are Duke Nukem: Time to Kill (great music, The Thing I Hate by Stabbing Westward) and Gran Turismos 1, 2, 3 and 4, (all amazingly directed montages of car videos with supremely good music. Here is the Japanese intro for GT3 which has great rock music. You can also see from this intro that those jammy Jap bastards managed to overcome the legal loophole and get the NOMAD Lamborghini Diablo GT into their game).

There are hundreds more I cant remember right now, discover them all!

 

[elDiablo]

Homeworld has a beautiful intro too, and the choral version of Samuel Barber's 'Adagio for Strings' fits the scene perfectly.

Oh yes, love that too!

 

[Ronin Storm]

If we're pulling this stuff into video, here's a speed-run of Max Payne... but as you can't speed-run the intro piece you can just watch that and stop.

Max Payne (courtesy of YouTube)

 

[Gopha]

The Getaway

Brilliant game which I loved, an Ex-Bethnal green gangster gone good, drawn back into the harsh life of th London backstreets. Brilliant storyline,gameplay and the places were real.

 

[elDiablo]

Freespace Intro! >_< BEST INTRO EVER!

Gotta say, I got it a bit wrong. It's still great! "YOU WEREN'T THERE! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! >_<"

And oh, yeah. Freespace series, with the HUGE ships, when you are in your tiny fighters and bombers - awesome...

 

[Ronin Storm]

Yep, now that was a cool intro. I might even have to dig around for a copy of Freespace just to see what comes next!

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Yeah, that Freespace one was rather good! All the Descent games have good intros, 2 and 3 in particular (though I cant find them on YouTube :/). Descent 2's 'ending' movie was great as well, proably one of the best 'To Be Continued' endings I've ever seen.

 

[elDiablo]

Ok, my list of favourite intros ever:

• Freespace 1 and 2 - Awesome series...
• C&C:Generals - I find it quite clever, and love the game.
• System Shock 2 - Scariest. Game. Ever. Awesome too!
• Darwinia - A very, VERY pretty intro indeed. Love it...

 

[Ubiquitous]

Ah, yes, the quake 2 intro too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SVVKQlwTUk&search=quake%202%20intro

I was expecting a lukewarm response to that one, but it seems quite a few people liked it.

And here's a throwback to the past: Powermonger on my old Amiga 500 had an awesome intro. It was one of the first games I played on my Amiga and represented a marked improvement of the annoying tape loading sounds and psychedelic colours of my loading spectrum. It had animation and everything.

Couldn't find a movie of the Powermonger intro, but check out this screenshot. Talk about graphics!!

http://bonusweb.idnes.cz/obrazek/powermonger_3.jpg

 

[Piacular]

The problem with these questions about games is that there are sooo many to sift through!

Halo 2: My housemate and I didn't even start the game, we just sat and watched the Halo 2 title screen in all it's shady blue glory with that music, for 5 minutes.

G.R.A.W: Just gawped at the graphics and was consistently wowed during the entire training level. Wobbly over the shoulder running camera, excellent sounds and the best ever explosions, there's more but I wouldn't want to ruin it for you! .

Battlefield 2: Do any of you remember how you felt one year ago when you first tried this game? Because almost all of you played it, and I bet you all initially loved it . No other introduction movie has made me want to play the game so much. It got the adrenaline flowing and straight into the demo I went! Within 20 seconds I was jogging along next to a tank and BOOM, it fired, cue screen blur and high pitched noise. I loved it!

For just cut scenes though, the openers for Dawn of War and Rise Of Legends are excellent (both can be found here, under animation). Pity the games weren't so good .

 

[Gizmo-5]

Has everyone forgottern Command and Conqeur Red Alert???

First real intro i ever saw minted stuff, And remember to march =D

Then there is The Curse of Monkey Island Slightly different to the (IMO) better PC version, which wont run on my puter anymore

Then there is my first next gen experience in Armoured Core 2 to watch this vid you will have to be a user, use the username THNLOL and password THNLOL to access.

Cant find videos for Medievil or Future Cop LAPD they had pretty neat starts, maybe more if i can think of any.

In response to Piacular *slap* for slating DOW, one of, if not THE best RTS ever and secondly i agree with the statement about the bf2 opening vid, i shown it to friends when i bought it and they actually said "Thats just Videoclip graphics, it wont really be that good."

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