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.
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.
Red Dead Redemption - the first ride into Mexico, during the nighttime, when the music came on
I don’t particularly like the game, but the final mission in Mass Effect: Andromeda was wonderful and made me smile. It was gorgeous, great music, and gave me an adrenaline rush.
Borderlands still tends to make me crack up. dem bandits are funny when they die
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.
There were two in Control for me, both involving killer music: the ashtray maze and the altered movie camera. Absolutely grinning the entire time for both of those!
The first thing that comes to mind was my first play through of Yakuza 0. Majima spends so much time winning stuffed animals for a little girl that lost her dad. Part way through the quest line she starts calling him dad and it made him so happy. It warms the heart and I could not stop smiling.
Recently, Hi-Fi Rush made me smile (and laugh) more than once :)
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.
Walking out of The Embrace in Horizon Zero Dawn and seeing this enormous beautiful landscape in front of you.
The first sight of Botw/genshin’s open world, Gaur plains and gormott from Xenoblade 1 and 2.
The indescribable joy of feeling the wind on your face as the world opens before you
BOTW was such an awesome feeling
Outer wilds spoilers!
spoiler
One time falling into the black hole on brittle hallow, I just happened to have my signalscope out and fall in at the right time to get the harmonic convergence achievement. It was an amazing moment exploring that world, falling through a black hole and being greeted by the travelers theme.
God what I would give to experience that game for the first time again
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.
