Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES, Virtual Console) | Level 3
This intense shooter spends just as much time enveloping you in its thick atmosphere as you do blasting aliens. Seriously, it's one of the most cinematic, engrossing shooters of all time. Still, even with such stiff competition, our favorite moment of the whole world-saving bunch is level three. Foreboding music, an attack from the sky while you're forced to move hand-over-hand across huge pits, a robot assault while climbing a skyscraper, plus a final boss that rips the background away and blasts fire in your face. Whoa.
Contra: Shattered Soldier (PS2) | The first level
This side-scrolling, 2D shooter is famed for two things: being ungodly difficult, and reviving a classic code that gave you a zillion more lives but that still didn't help much because the game remained so damn... bloody... DIFFICULT.
However, the good news is that the first level is all you need to sweat through to experience the best this game has to offer. By rendering everything in 3D and making the explosions retina-searingly bright, the developers somehow created a game that was visually arresting despite the fact that 90% of it was brown or gray. Toasting mammoth mosquito-lizards with a flamethrower is still impressive today, blasting away at jet-pack-mounted chumps and burrowing mechasnakes while skiing down a mountain is just crazy enough to rock, and the boss entrance is the whole reason this level made our list.
Crackdown (360) | Agency Tower
This superhero sandbox game was never about missions, levels, bosses... or structure whatsoever, really. The best parts come when you're simply running, jumping and climbing around the city like Spider-Man on steroids. Reaching the top of the iconic tower at Crackdown's center is the ultimate test of your freakish powers... and the Achievement you receive for diving off afterwards is the ultimate reward.
Defender (Arcade) | Any level in which you lose your last human
Defender is an old time classic, with a crazy control panel and relentless difficulty that made it one of the most legendary arcade games of all time. The sky is literally choked with several threats to your life per second. There are landers stealing your humans and turning them into hyper-aggressive mutants. There are bombers which lay mines and pods that burst into swarms of smaller enemies. And if you try to dawdle and make sense of it all, crazy-fast baiters are spawned specifically to hurry you up.
Then, just when you think things can't get any more manic, your last remaining human is kidnapped by a lander and turned into a mutant. The result? The whole world explodes and the number of enemies eager to shove hot laser up your space ass roughly quintriples.
At that moment, your life expectantly can typically be measured in seconds and counted off on your fingers. Most arcade games at least let you think you had a shot at winning, but when the aliens actually brought in more help after they'd blown up the planet, Defender's message became desolately clear. It was, simply: "I am coming to kill you. RIGHT NOW."
Doom 3 (PC, Xbox) | Mars City/Mars City Underground
A leisurely saunter through the UAC base lets you casually get attached to the game world, before the thick sense of impending disaster explodes in the most horribly visceral way imaginable. You’re suddenly alone in a dark and noisy world of fear and confusion. The people you met earlier are dead, dying, and torn to pieces. Wrecked doors block your path, but reveal enough to show you glimpses of something utterly foul on the other side. Broken screams and prayers crackle over a failing comm system as the whole world is irretrievably torn apart and the building shakes to pieces around you. You’re drenched in the feeling of hopelessly drowning in evil usually reserved for nightmares, and things have only just begun. It’s the best ghost train ever made.
Dynasty Warriors 2 (PS2) | Level One%26hellip; or any other level in any Dynasty Warriors game since
It's difficult to imagine now, some eight years and something like 57 nearly identical sequels later, but when it launched in 2000, Dynasty Warriors 2 on PlayStation 2 was mind-blowing in its scope. You weren't fighting against a measly three or four or even ten enemies. You were gutting hundreds - literally hundreds - of soldiers on a wide-scale battlefield. And a level didn't take ten minutes; it took an hour or more. As you slowly hacked and slashed your way across the foggy, war torn landscape, you really did feel like you were one individual wrecking machine singlehandedly cutting the hearts out of an entire enemy army. All the while, your clueless lackeys watched slackjawed, alternately inspired or dumbstruck by the magnitude of your ass kickery. Empowering? Hell, yeah.
Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (Dreamcast, PS2) | Hanging Waters
If you were one of the many who turned up their noses at this slightly New Age-y (OK, really New Age-y) dolphin adventure, you missed out. You didn't guide a baby whale back to its mother, swim away in terror from a giant Great White shark or outwit a massive crocodile in a stalactite-filled underwater cavern. You also didn't get to see the Hanging Waters level, which - aside from Soul Calibur - was one of the Dreamcast era's most jaw-dropping technical achievements.
Part of Ecco's adventure takes place in an alternate future, in which the world has been conquered by evil dolphins (only when we actually write that do we realize how stupid it sounds). And what do dolphins do when they rule the world? Set their energies toward creating insane, dangerous aerial waterways for no good goddamn reason, or course! Forget about being surrounded by dependably omnipresent water - Hanging Waters pitches you through rollercoaster-like tubes of flowing water suspended only by anti-gravity, meaning it's entirely possible to leap out the top of a "tube" or fall out of its bottom, if you're not careful.
But navigating the aquatubes is worth the risk, as it's all very stunningly pretty, and it lets you take in a breathtaking view of the tropical mountain that all these suspended waterways snake around.
Elite Beat Agents (DS) | 'No More Music!? The Last Hope!!'
"They're... all rocked out..." It looks like the Elite Beat Agents are beaten. Turned to stone by the music-hating aliens. But little Lucy refuses to believe it. She starts to chant "E. B. A." Quietly at first, then louder, joined by hundreds. Stamp Stamp Clap! Stamp Stamp Clap! The beat from the massive crowd of people sounds just like the start of 'We Will Rock You'. Sure enough, the agents break free and then one of the best levels of gaming we've ever seen begins.
Firstly, if it looks easy in the video, it really isn't. It's harder than nails. It's only when you start to tap the screen like you're playing the song that it starts getting manageable. And when you get it right, and you see the red circles appearing on the top screen to show you passed each section, you feel like a rock god.
Naturally, having such a classic rock and roll song as the Rolling Stones' Jumping Jack Flash (yup, the same 'Spring-heeled Jack' of legend that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion speaks of) is a massive bonus, even if it is a cover version. And when you get it right, defeat the aliens and bring peace to the world, it's incredibly rewarding. Just keep bringing the singin', honey. Check out our abridged video below to get the jist of it, then go find a copy and play it. You'll have a ball.
"They're... all rocked out..." It looks like the Elite Beat Agents are beaten. Turned to stone by the music-hating aliens. But little Lucy refuses to believe it. She starts to chant "E. B. A." Quietly at first, then louder, joined by hundreds. Stamp Stamp Clap! Stamp Stamp Clap! The beat from the massive crowd of people sounds just like the start of 'We Will Rock You'. Sure enough, the agents break free and then one of the best levels of gaming we've ever seen begins.
Firstly, if it looks easy in the video, it really isn't. It's harder than nails. It's only when you start to tap the screen like you're playing the song that it starts getting manageable. And when you get it right, and you see the red circles appearing on the top screen to show you passed each section, you feel like a rock god.
Naturally, having such a classic rock and roll song as the Rolling Stones' Jumping Jack Flash (yup, the same 'Spring-heeled Jack' of legend that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion speaks of) is a massive bonus, even if it is a cover version. And when you get it right, defeat the aliens and bring peace to the world, it's incredibly rewarding. Just keep bringing the singin', honey. Check out our abridged video below to get the jist of it, then go find a copy and play it. You'll have a ball.
