20 Great Moments in PC Gaming
FEATURE
ThefirsttimeI sawthegloriousFMV
ending of Command & Conquer, it was at a
friend’s house. His older brother, eager for
us to see this mondo cool moment, used
cheatcodes to nuke his way through the final mission
of the Nod campaign, dropping bomb after bomb
blindly until every GDI soldier was ash. Then, finally,
an incredible power was put in our hands: the choice
to destroy one of four famous international
monuments, but not before Nod’s leader Kane made a
speech about cyberspace and a video played of Nod
hacking its way into the GDI’s Orbital Defense Matrix.
We’re hacked in, control is ours, and Kane has
bestowed upon us the honour of destroying whichever
famous landmark we desire. Naturally, for a kid in
America, the White House was the obvious choice.
Watching it now, the destruction of the CG White
House is too fast, too perfunctory, not dramatic
enough. But this was a year before Independence Day,
and Command & Conquer’s at-the-time cutting edge
graphics made this a monumental ending.
Now, seeing the end of Command & Conquer’s Nod
campaign doesn’t carry much weight. But it belongs to
a time when a single cutscene could capture a young
imagination so thoroughly, you’d play a game over and
over again just to relive those few seconds of payoff.
Going on the offensive in
X-Com: Enemy Unknown
By Richard Cobbett
One of the great things about the original
X-COM, or UFO: Enemy Unknown as it was
called in the UK, was that it wasn’t afraid to
be about losing. Not for nothing did it have
‘terrormissions’, which lived up to their name as the
initial weak Sectoids got politely pushed out of the way
for Chryssalids, hideous Giger style monsters who didn’t
just kill your jumpsuit-wearing soldiers, but implanted
them with hideous alien wing-wang to turn them first
into a zombie, and then into another bloody Chryssalid.
So many deaths. So many worlds lost.
Ah, but then comes The Moment, where the tables
turn, and the X-COM organization switches from a
plucky group of do-gooders into a tooled-up force of
vengeance. When you stop going into battle with simple
pistols and prayers and start tooling up with advanced
technology ripped from the aliens themselves. Psychic
boosters, plasma guns, the Blaster Bomb. When you stop
playing defensively and start shooting down UFOs like
they were clay pigeons. Launching your own ship, the
Avenger, to fly to Mars and kick all kinds of arse.
That’s the moment that defines X- Com, and arguably
one of the biggest reasons why the series is always such a
pleasure to return to.Zapping the White House in
Command & Conquer
By Wes Fenlon
Going to year two in
Grim Fandango ByRichardCobbett
Grim Fandango is a
beautiful adventure, and
never moreso than during
year two. That’s the part
setinRubacava, an art-deco
Casablanca where we leave hero
Manny Calavera sweeping floors and
return a year later to see him at the
head of his own casino, a local hero.
That transition alone is a beautiful bit
of game design, but it’s what follows
that really cements it.
Where most games ultimately
make you some kind of outsider, with
little or no real place in the world,
Grim Fandango opened up Rubacava
with the idea that you know
everybody, and more importantly,
everybody knows you. Whether it’sthe realisation that Manny has made
contacts with the police, or the
unrequited love between him and
Carla the security guard, it’s an
immersive and even heart-rending
place to explore. After all, you’re not
there during the good times, but
picking up the story as Manny
prepares to burn every bridge in the
probably futile pursuit of the woman
he let down. You arrive as a king. You
leave back at square one.
And oh, that music. That
wonderful music. Rubacava is one of
the greatest towns in gaming, give or
take a couple of particularly painful
puzzles. It’s not a place you’d likely
want to live, but it’s a great place to
have lived. If only secondhand.1
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