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Metal Gear Solid (PS1) | Meryl Rendezvous
NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (Wii) | Sky Concert
In this very hit-and-miss game, the low-points are very low and the high points are stratospheric. None more so than this majestic level where you must fly as NiGHTS, nudging musical notes in time to the backing music to perform the melody from the Dreams Dreams theme song.
Doing it perfectly (not just acceptably) makes it sound better, as a chorus of Nightopians appears alongside you, adding their voices to the song. We know it sounds crap, yet the reality is that it works beautifully. As one of the NGamer staff said: "That bit is as good as anything in Super Mario Galaxy". We agree. If only the rest of the game had got it so right. We can dream.
Odin Sphere (PS2) | Valkyrie, Chapter 1, Act 5: %26ldquo;Raging Dragon Belial%26rdquo;
Our breath was taken away by every screen in this lavishly hand-animated action game, but if we had to choose just one level to recommend, it would be the first real boss battle. You’ve been used to lush forests and crazy-proportioned characters like King Odin, but nothing can prepare you for the moment when Belial, a massive, multicolored dragon so big he doesn’t all fit onscreen, lumbers into view. The first time we saw this beauteous leviathan, we didn’t know whether to fight him or just stare at him. Then he started trying to bite us in half and we stopped our gawping.
Psychonauts (PS2, PC, Xbox) | The Milkman Conspiracy
Literally every level in this darkly brilliant platform actioner is a must-play. We're not kidding. But if we have to choose just one, it's the level that takes place inside the paranoia-addled brain of security guard Boyd, a freaked-out conspiracy theorist.
The level takes place in a typical suburb as laid out by MC Escher and viewed through the eyes of Tim Burton. The roads float in space, twisting and turning back upon themselves like asphalt pretzels. Every house is filled with rakish angles, but is otherwise '60s-era pastel and perfect... perhaps too perfect. Lawn flamingos hide cameras, monotone-speaking Men in Black are everywhere, the sweet-but-threatening girl scouts are a secret society, and nobody will speak openly about the milkman.
As if this crazed atmosphere isn't enough to melt your marbles, the gameplay pulls some nifty tricks, too. You can rail-grind the telephone wires, and the Men in Black will let you pass if you hold a particular item (say, a stop sign) and pretend to have the same job they're miming. Add in a pitch-black area you navigate by psychically remote-viewing yourself through a night vision security camera, a clever "sniper rifle in the book depository" reference, some crazy "nightmare" sequences, and a truly memorable boss battle, and you have the best level of one of the best games ever.
But seriously: you suck if you don't play this entire game. It's downloadable on Xbox 360 right now. Go.
Resident Evil (GameCube) | The Aqua Ring
In the original Resident Evil, your run-in with the Umbrella Mansion's zombie sharks was brief, mildly frightening and took place in a room that was flooded to about waist height because the sharks had managed to break out of their tank. The Resident Evil GameCube remake features a similar scenario, except that now the "room" is the Aqua Ring, a massive, circular tank built in the middle of a huge observation chamber. And this time, the waist-deep flooding goes up to the chamber's flimsy catwalks, as a school of zombie sharks circle menacingly just underneath. But the king bastard in the room is the massive Neptune, whose shadow you can see far below all the other sharks, and if you don't move your ass, he'll bite it right the hell off.
The key to not ending up fish food here is to move as fast as possible and find a switch to drain the water from the room - but even then, you're not out of the woods. Neptune, seemingly dead, stands between you and a key you need - and once you grab it, he wakes up and starts trying to eat you.
Resident Evil 4 (PS2, Wii, GameCube) | Chapter 2-2
The greatest section in Capcom's superb Resi reinvention, joining the game's heart-pounding pace and violence with a claustrophobic no-way-out scenario, has to be the moment you're trapped in a wood cabin at the end of Chapter 2-2.
Waves of infected villagers claw their way inside the cabin, as you sprint around desperately hauling wooden barricades against the breached windows. Eventually, the flimsy barriers explode into splinters, and the wailing nasties are all around you. Even with the surprisingly effective Luis watching your back, the sheer numbers of zombie-like enemies that swarm into the building are daunting - especially when what you thought was a lucky headshot turns sour, as the parasite infecting your victim bursts from their neck, all sharp and swingy.
You're forced back, up the stairs to the next floor - where the fanatical enemies start using ladders to crash through the windows. Gamers who lack soul might already know (or have worked out in their android-like approach to gaming) that you only need to kill a certain number of villagers to finish the siege. For the rest of us, though, the seemingly endless, nigh on unstoppable tide of slavering, fleshy blade-headed monstrosities makes for a breathless and unmissable Resi romp.
Rez (Dreamcast, PS2) | Area 4 Boss (Uranus)
It's the future. You're inside a computer navigating a super network and battling the viral minions of a suicidal artificial intelligence. It's techno organic transcendental gameplay at its most pure. It's a 5am retro-futuristic rehab for drug casualties. It's vibrating wankware for the ladies. It's pulsating geometrical shapes and laser beams. It's a giant digital man running through corridors. It's Joujouka's 'Rock is Sponge' banging electro tribal rhythms in your earholes. It's 100% Analyzation. It's what videogames should be.
