Be Excellent To Each Other

I've been reading GamesTM '50 Best Set Pieces of All Time' and the list is so hum-drum that I want to spoon out my own eyes and feed them to carnivorous tadpoles.

I can't find a link to it online but trust me it's utter garbage. I'll see if I can copy the list sometime.

So, it's over to you BeeX, the best set pieces of all time in video games - what the hell are they? And why?

I'll get you started with the only one on the GamesTM list that should be there:

Shadow of the Collosus: The fight with the flying sand lizard dragon thing.

So you're riding through the desert looking for the next colossus. Your gleaming sword starts buzzing at the floor. Nowt about. But then ... FUCK ME ITS A FLYING SAND LIZARD DRAGON THING! The game then turns into a battle to somehow bring it to the ground and climb onto the bloody thing and skewer it to death. The word epic is overused but it sums up this fight to a tea.

The "stop the missile" bit at the end of the prologue level of Saints Row 4.

Take away the music and I don't think it would have such a big impact. It was fun though.

/thread.

Well no. So don't do that, eh?

The first village 'fight' in Resi 4

Your 10 minutes into the game , stalking around through small cabins and stuff scavenging items and then you enter a village and start wandering around then a crowd of angry villagers find you and start rushing you , you can barricade yourself inside a building and they tear through the barriers and keep rushing you , in the background somewhere you can hear a motor start up .... a few minutes later you'll turn a corner or go through a doorway and a huge guy with a cloth sack over his head wielding a chainsaw attacks you - if your in the wrong place he'll chainsaw off your head which drops and rolls off along the floor while the rest of your body slumps to the ground.

The Cabin in Resi 4

After so many encounters your used to the way the enemies swarm in small groups at you , you've faced them and are trying to escape with Ashey in tow when you get to this abandoned cabin where you meet up with Louis , then you realise you have been trapped and there is an almost never ending onslaught of enemies who rush the cabin on different level (upstairs / downstairs) and at multiple locations (windows / doors) , your barricading bits back up as other defences break and your doing everything to lay down controlled bursts to down the baddies while not popping their heads off turning them into the more dangerous Plagos monsters , the fight probably only lasts 10 minutes but it feels like an eternity and the exhilaration you feel as your pivoting around the small gaps and spaces you can make it to is amazing all the time knowing that you need to keep an ear out for the cupboard upstairs where Ashley is hiding in case someone finds her and tries to carry her off.

Well, quite. Take away the video and it wouldn't have been that good either, I doubt.

What exactly constitutes a 'set piece' here?

The only thing that comes to my mind that probably qualifies is the part of the cruise ship level in Uncharted 3 where the gun-battle takes place as the ship actually turns over and the roof becomes the wall then the floor.

Crawling through Pripyat in a Ghillie Suit in Modern Warfare. Taking control of the AC-130 in the same game.

Most of Fallout 3.

When you got to the world map of FF7 after leaving Midgar for the first time and realised how big the world is was a pretty "holy crap" moment.

Absolutely. Unfortunately that was then immediately followed by one of the worst set pieces in a game ever - Kalm, where you had to go through a full recap of everything that had happened in the game so far. And couldn't even go make a cuppa because you had to click past every speech box.

Oh man, Silent Hill was full of them. The bits that stick in my mind was the cat in the locker (and, of course, the evil version of the same), the TV screens in the shopping mall and the phone call.

Brr.

These two are so obvious but were both awesome. Were they on GamesTM list? Nope.



That entire level was fabulous and, yes, the rotating ship sinking was a brilliant setpiece too.

Uncharted is pretty much made of set pieces although Modern Warfare was the game that sprang to mind for me most of all on reading this thread title.

I got one Condemned on Xbox 360.

This particular level setpiece is perhaps the earliest predecessor to all those games that are basically you walking around and it being a bit spooky.

The mannequin level. It went like this (I dunno if anyone missed playing it): You enter an abandonned shopping centre. There are mannequins. You walk past. You turn around. The mannequins are behind you. You cannot move them. They stare through you. You keep going. You turn around. The mannequins have closed in. They do not move. They do not speak. You run away. You turn around. MANNEQUIN.

Or something like that. It's probably been done to death by now, but it was utterly fabulous at the time and one of the first to do it. Whatever it was.

This made me laugh and seems like a geniune reaction to a bit of the mannequinn section.



You can turn it off after the scare cause they get stuck fumbling around for about 2 minutes. And say Dude a lot.

Surely, SURELY, LIMBO's fight with the Spider has got to be one of the greatest set pieces. It's storybook fantasy come to life in your living room.

Was it in Uncharted 2 with a helicopter shooting up the building you're hiding it? That one, anyway.

The opening of the first one, where you made your way down a maze of alleys only for everything to go dark, and you had to try and desperately find your way back while being killed by whatever those horrible little things were. I genuinely thought I was dead the first time I did it and threw the pad down as I had no intention of trying again.

Dobkeratops, innit?



In more recent times, Halo's got a few for me - the Space level in Reach, drop at the start of ODST, 2 Scarabs in Halo 3, the first time the dropships unload on you in CE, the endgame Warthog chases, especially in ODST. But there's a game where you make your own, I suppose.

Yeah, but then that's topped by the third level which is BIG SHIP.

Bayonetta final boss followed by

The first thing that really made me go 'Wow' in the last gen was that huge spaceship coming into land in Halo 3, dropping off tanks for you trundle about in.

The beach assault from Silent Cartographer was awesome in Halo:CE too.

The Blast Pit tentacle from Half-Life.

Hover boat chase and Gravity Gun overcharge from Half-Life 2.

Bioshock first level was immensely good. 'A man chooses, a slave obeys' was good too.

That bit when you stepped outside in the capital city in Daggerfall and the ghost of the dead king screamed "VENGENCE!" whilst haunting the streets, drifting menacingly towards you, and you'd shit yourself and run back inside but you'd still hear it screaming outside and you'd try to click on the bed and go to sleep but it wouldn't let you because "Enemies near" and you'd have to wait for it to drift off and man...

ALWAYS TERRIFYING.

Daggerfall was awesome.

I don't know if these count as set pieces, but nearly all of the "freaked out" effects in Eternal Darkness were excellent. I totally agree with the first level of Bioshock - it was glorious.

not really a great set piece in itself, but the early mission in San Andreas where you chase the train on your bike sticks in my mind.

I recall it being quite fraught as I struggled to will my veering bike along the train track while shooting, while using the bloated OXO (Old Xbox One) control.

The rain was hammering down around me as I careened through the hills after the chap on the train. The rain always made being on the bike feel that much more believable ie if you're mad enough to ride in this, you're mad enough to pursue a locomotive with an AK.

Anyway, with sweaty palms I dropped the guy. The rain started to subside, sun started to peek through the clouds, it was 6am, and Movin' On Up by Primal Scream started playing on my custom playlist. I took a chilled ride back to my gaff in the 'hood', feeling pretty good about things.

Call of Duty 4: the nuclear blast and aftermath.

Modern Warfare 3: The last level, where you're suited up in Juggernaut armour, armed with LMGs and storming the Burj Khalifa-esque place.

The 'going crazy' bits of Spec Ops: The Line.

The bit where you chase the on a motocross bike in GTAV is pretty epic, too.

Oh Christ, and not forgetting

Has anyone mentioned the Scarecrow bits of Arkham City... Or was it Asylum?

Anyway, that was ace!

That bit in Space Invaders when your walls are finally breached and they swarm your ship.

Leaving the vault.

What constitutes a set-piece? Would say, the dogs jumping through the window in Resident Evil count?
And the original Tomb Raider when the T-Rex runs towards you in the valley.
What about all of HL2?

I'd say it's got to be something like a cinematic event, something out of the ordinary for that game; a "show piece" section, if you will. Something interactive; not a cut scene, obviously.

If I was going to pick a level from COD it would be close to the end of MW2 when you have to defend the house and then escape across the fields. Hearing the messages over the radio as your team get killed was surprisingly moving.

Yeah, that was awesome. Also, MW's intro and MW2's 'No Russian' are obvious stand outs.

The helicopter in HL2 is a damn good shout from Pundy as well. That section was immense at the time. As was the race from the police through the buildings and over the rooftops from City 17.

Aye, both were bloody wonderful.

As I may have accidentally mentioned in another thread, the introduction to Half-Life is great, as is the one to Portal 2, which is sort of reminiscent.

Like Bamba, I'm not entirely sure what constitutes a 'set piece', but in Harvest Moon (the first GC one, I think) there came a time that when, after a year, my goat stopped being profitable as she was no longer producing milk. Much to my misgivings, I knew that the only way to turn a profit on that valuable barm space she occupied, and stop losing money on feed, was to get rid of the goat. But you couldn't sell the goat. So I stopped feeding her...

I could see her getting weaker day by day until I entered the barn one morning and the old farm hand stood in my way, towering over me. He told me that my goat had been sick and unloved, and that she had passed away in the night. He told me that if only I'd cared for such a lovely creature more, I'd still have her. He then shook his head sadly at me as if to say 'how could you?'.

Then he bent down, picked up the lifeless little goat and threw open the barn doors at the far end as I watched him carry her body off into the beautiful sunrise.

I felt really, really sad. I restarted the game from scratch then and kept my goat, even though it cost me money.

Climbing the radio tower in 2013's Tomb Raider was pretty special.

I'm trying to think of the best set piece from Dark Souls, perhaps the Dragon on the castle bridge? It'll certainly be memorable to everyone who played it, probably for the wrong reasons though.

Spending an hour trying to shoot its tail off? Not so much.

Reaching the top of the tower in Crackdown

Y'know, I never did that. Trufax.