When that music kicks in when you start a game of We Love Katamari or Katamari Damacy
It will always bring me joy
It brings me back to a simpler time of being a kid during summer and picking the game up for the first time with a former friend.
Though that former friend is no longer here, those memories of that summer will be with me hopefully forever.
I had lost those memories (and many many others) a few years back when I had a traumatic brain injury, and last summer when my AC was broken and I caught myself humming a some I didn’t remember. And after a bit of working on the song it clicked what it was from. I listened too a few songs from it and booted it up on my old PS2. And that intro music while sitting in front of my TV on the floor, brought me to happy tears as those memories of that summer started to flood back.
ugh, I used to have the soundtracks for those games on my iPod. might have to go requisition those again…
The end of Portal 2, when the enrichment center barfs out your old companion cube. Such a charming way to end the story, and I couldn’t help but smile. Especially in contrast to the intense turret opera immediately preceding it, it just feels oddly wholesome.
Playing Portal 2 with a guy I found on Steam.
Same - I was done with the SP story and wanted to play coop.
I got matched with someone and we communicated by head bobbing / jumping and very little text chat.Played through the whole thing together and never saw each other again, it was a special moment for sure.
Maybe it is nostalgia, but Prince of Persia: Sands of Time ending. That whole soundtrack was a banger too.
Any Dark Brotherhood quests in the Elder Scrolls.
Yes! Sands of Time ending was great.
In Control, the Hotel Ashtray maze:
spoiler
You put on headphones and some epic hard rock kicks in. (Old Gods of Asgard: “Take Control”.) The hotel hallways open up and transform into a surreal maze of twisting, sliding paths as you run through and hit a series of intense fights.
I’d never done the maze before, so I totally wasn’t expecting this: At the very end of it, basically unison with the in-game character Jesse, she & I both said “That was awesome”
Right at the beginning of Nier Automata when it shifts into a bullet hell game for a bit and the already amazing soundtrack changes styles to match I just knew I was in for an amazing experience.
Not so much a smile, more of a ‘WTF?! 🤣😂🤣😂’.
THAT quest in Kingdom Come Deliverance with the Priest.
Think its gotta be THAT moment towards the end of Disco Elysium (if you know, you know, I don’t wanna spoil it for folk who haven’t experienced it for themselves yet), it made me cry but it was a happy cry so I think it counts
Which part?
Spoilers
The shootout? Or the old man on the island? Or the cryptid?
spoiler
The third one
Yeah, that moment was awesome.
Frog detective - basically all the time.
Finally beating the asylum demon on my very first playthrough of dark souls.
Then i immediately realized i only just beat the tutorial.
Playing Dark Souls 1 for the first time has so many amazing moments like that - finally defeating the Bell Gargoyles, or surmounting Sens Fortress and pushing the Iron Golem off… But I don’t think anything will ever compare to the exhilaration I felt in beating Ornstein and Smough for the first time.
Many absurd deaths in Spelunky 2. As a game, it has a tendency to kill you in ways that are very over the top, and unfair. It used to frustrate me, but I’ve evolved past that, and now I just smile.
As a cat family, Stray had me and my wife smiling from start to finish. So many “yep, that’s a cat thing” moments.
Mass Effect 2, Grunt’s loyalty mission on Tuchanka. Always, always take the renegade interrupt to headbutt Uvenk and cut off his rant.
A bunch of moments in Mario Odyssey come to mind, especially the ending sequence
I’m sure there are plenty but the ones that stick with me are :
The ending of Disco Elysium, and the friends you made along the way of a murder investigation. The writing is so good that it set a very high bar for future games.
Potential spoilers for Forgotten City
Finding out how and why the loop in Forgotten City is happening (the whole objective of the game is finding out why you’re stuck in a loop).
Similar to Groundhog Day, you start to get familiar with everyone’s routines and get to know them better each time the loop resets.
And then realising
spoiler
Galerius is your true bro all along.