My Top 4 “Holy S#!7” Moments in PC Gaming
Written by: Adam "ManKorn" Korenman, CC2K Video Games Editor
4) F.E.A.R. (or why my girlfriend broke up with me)
The Matrix changed everything.
Not because it had a stellar script, powerful actors or even the best effects. It changed everything because of two simple words: bullet-time.
Before The Matrix, action sequences were made bigger and badder through the careful and liberal application of explosions. Ask Michael Bay; if you want more action, add some demolition. Video games were in a similar boat. If you wanted more action, you simply through more bad guys on screen, or you added a gun that shot smaller guns that shoot NUCLEAR BOMBS.
Or a knife? Against Dinosaurs? Fine, fucking YOLO
But then the bullet-time arrived and the whole industry when nuts. Now purests will note that John Woo had been making use of time-dilation in his movies for years, but the Watchowski brothers had one thing Woo did not: a captivated American audience. And money. So I guess they had two things.
One of the first games to throw in this technique was MDK, a third-person shooter for the PS1 that was crazy ahead of its time. Take the backpack-parachute from Just Cause 2, the insane weapons of Turok, and the violence of a Tarantino film, and you’ll have something akin to MDK. But it wasn’t until almost four years later that the industry saw it’s first real use of bullet-time.
There is literally too much WTF happening in this artwork
Enter Max Payne, the gritty noir tale about a square-jawed cop with NOTHING TO LOSE. During the intense and bloody firefights, the player could slow down the world and deliver pinpoint accurate packages of lead directly into the brainpan of any would-be assailants.
Now those are some sweet ass graphics–wait. Is he wearing a goddamn Hawaiian shirt?
This was a revolution to gamers, who hitherto had to rely on reflexes and luck to make any kind of headway in shooters. It wasn’t long before more games started to incorporate this time-dilation effect.
I am going to force-choke you until you LOVE IT
You know what would make this game even better? Playing with a relevant character!
And then came F.E.A.R. This first-person-shooter changed the gaming world again, adding the an element of Japanese Horror to the mix. In F.E.A.R., you played a specially trained operative of the First Encounter Assault Recon team. Aside from your ability to wield impressive and deadly weapons, you also possessed a unique gift: the ability to slow down time. As the newest member of this team of superpowered-soldiers, you went on the hunt for an escaped psychic general. Along the way, however, you were haunted by the spectral ghost of a young girl named Alma.
Why My Girlfriend Broke Up with Me
For me, the best moment came early in the game. Already I had dispatched dozens of guards, either by shooting them full of holes or by jump-kicking them right in their stupid faces. I was deep underground, climbing around the sewers in search of an entrance to a seiged building. I had just started climbing a ladder when this happened.
Hello, gorgeous
Yeah, it’s no Exorcist, but this scene genuinely scared me. It was a unique jump scare that wouldn’t have worked in any other game. Now, I had decided to play this game at night. In the dark. Wearing headphones. With my college girlfriend asleep nearby. It was a recipe for disaster.
I’d already spent hours combing through the depraved depths of my growing psychosis (game character’s, not mine) and then this infant wraith appeared to steal my soul. That and the six Mountain Dew: Code Reds in my body combined to form one hell of a yelp. My lady-friend awoke, appropriately startled and pissed, and chastised me for getting scared of a game.
Now, I’m not saying that’s the only reason we broke up (she may have also been a soul-sucking succubus from the netherworld, but I’ll leave that story for my Live Journal blog, where whiny bullshit belongs) but it did start the process.