Some of the Best Game Levels of All Time 175
Ant writes "Destructoid has its own list (with screen shots) of some of the best levels of all time in computer and video games. Ranging from FPS titles to racing games, the list attempts to run down some of the best levels from a number of game genres." From the article: "Bark At The Moon - This is the Guitar Hero song you bust out when you want to impress your friends. Speaking as someone who has beaten the game on Expert, I don't really know why it was the last song in the game: apart from the second solo, which you can survive through strategic use of Star Power, the song is relatively easy. I personally have a much harder time getting through Cowboys From Hell. Nonetheless, the near-constant barrage of notes and chords and hammer-ons and hammer-offs make you look like a total badass, assuming you can pass it. And if you can't, well, there's always Ace of Spades."
Silent Cartographer (Score:2)
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I especially like how the cutscene of unlocking the door about half way through, when you see the sword wielding Elite step out, it actually interactive. If you left a Warthog with an NPC operating the gun in the hallway in front of that door, when the cut scene activated and the Elite stepped out, the Warthog gunner would open fire and you could watch the bullet
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I also liked the swamp one, and the underground one with all the Flood Headcrab/ripoffs.
It's been a while since I've played through it, though.
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some personal favourites of mine (Score:3, Informative)
Quake 3's Q3DM16 and Q3DM17 are 2 of the best maps in the game for 1 on 1 deathmatch.
Bark at the moon is the only track in guitar hero that I enjoy.
Myth had some great levels, too. although I don't recall the names of them. I miss that game.
The original Counterstrike levels are all amazing. Especially the Dust and Aztec ones.
the original Prince of persia had a vast majority of its levels very well designed as well.
as to poor design... FEAR (for 360, at least) and Condemned (360) had some of the most poorly designed and unrealistic levels I've ever played. They feel like they were designed for a game and couldn't possibly exist in real life.
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Its also similar to some of the maps and settings on Tony Hawks pro skater 2.
Going back even further, I liked the 2nd track on Stunt Car Racer.
I guess Windows XP was advertised specifically for me.
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I go back and play the Venice Beach and Philly levels all the time for no reason at all.
One of my favorite levels in any game was in Medal of Honor, when you dressed up like a Nazi and infiltrated the train station. It wasn't hard or anything, but I thought it was fun as hell.
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I'm going digging out my pad and finding the disk.
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It's been a long time since I played it, but Lode Runner on the C64 must have had plenty of good levels. I believe there were more than 150 of them, so they must have got some of them right.
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The number of hours we spent playing that level was incrediable
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2. Quake 2 - q2dm1 - The Edge
3. Tribes 2 - Katabatic
4. BF2 - Karkand
5. Counterstrike (any version) - de_dust2
6. Counterstike Source - cs_office
Then there's practially every track on Guitar Hero...
SMB3. 5-3. (Score:2)
Giant. Green. Clockwork. Shoe.
Feel the Base (Score:2)
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I mean... c'mon... they've got a gun that can make your skin disappear and cloaking suits and goddamn crazy clones... yet the flashlight only lasts what? 30 seconds at a time before running out of juice?
why not put some LEDs in the thing? it'll get powered by the warmth of the player's hand!
or maybe it's one of those flashlights that needs to get shaken to get used? hmmmm....
Well....ok (Score:2)
'Tis not journalism to say that "world 1-1" in the original SMB was among the best levels ever built.
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Contra's vertical scrolling level (Score:2)
List is missing the living room fron SiN (Score:2)
-B
What about 2Fort4 (Score:3, Insightful)
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And spazball was so much better.
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Now Canal Zone, the first (and pretty much only) QWTF Capture and Hold style map, was where it was at. Canal Zone was amazing, I miss it so much.
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The ownage was so bad that some regular snipers changed jobs immediately when I got into the server
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Hopefully Q4F works well... What's the current most popular TF incarnation, preferably one that has a version of CZ?
I never thought of Canal Zone as a good sniper map... It was LOTS of fun as a demoman though, lots of strategic intersections to pipebomb. 9 times out of 10, someone going into the boathouse to try and cap that command point wouldn't see the pipes in time, resulting in
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Yup - and was in TFC on release as an official map.
And a version looks like it's going to be in Team Fortress 2 - it's in the background for all the screenshots released so far.
Will that map ever die?
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It could use some editing, but, as a whole, the two forts thing works. You get the team combat and the strategic (kinda?) defense, and I like that you can easily shoot the other side's base from your base. The underwater intrance was also cool. The base's inner-chambers could have used some clearing up, though.
The Red vs. Blue episode where they discuss building their bases right across from each other in the middle of a valley reminded me of 2Fort. I was w
Facing Worlds... (Score:1)
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Shoot the teleporter beacon up onto a ledge on the outside of the enemy base.
Run in, grab flag.
Take the portal to the top of the tower.
Jump off the tower on the same side as your beacon.
Teleport to your beacon.
Go pick up flag while enemy tries to figure out how you didn't die from jumping off the top of their tower.
Of course, get sniped in the back on your return trip with the flag.
I don't remember the name (Score:2)
The scripting was great, and you tie that into the final confirmation that, yep, the marines are Not Your Friends...it was fantastic.
Unfortunately, of course, it really doesn't hold up as
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Another two levels that pop in for me are from Doom2... Level 7 or 8, "Dead Simple" was insane, and Playing Level 16 the Suburbs on Nightmare in Co Op with a friend... thats some crazy action.
Top 10 Games Non-Stories on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
2. The 20 Worst Games Ever
3. Games That Advanced The Art Of Storytelling
4. Today's Best Dreamcast Games
5. What Are Your Top Five 'Comfort' Games?
6. Next-Gen's Top 20 From Tokyo
7. The Top 5 Games of All Time
8. The Top 100 Best-Selling PC Games of the Century
9. ?????
10. Profit!
Seriously, it is getting ridiculous. I didn't even have to look back further than September this year. And none of those lists was any less arbitrary than this one.
Quick Fix (Score:1)
1.Click the "Preferences" link at the top.
2.Goto the "Homepage" link.
3.Scroll down to "Customize Stories on the Homepage".
4.Select any sections and choose how to display each of them.
5.Profit.
Really, this time there is no bother - the system does what it needs to and you get to miss these fluff discussions.
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I'm still waiting for the Top 10 Gaming Eras list (Score:2)
1. The NES Era - That was a great era.
2. The "Vision" Era (Colecovision, Intellivison) - Ooh, that was a good era, too.
3. The PS2 Era - Fantastic era!
4. The Atari 2600 Era - A fundamental era.
5. The 16-bit Era (SNES, Genesis) - Who could forget that era!
6. The 32-bit Era (PS1, N64) - At least twice as good as the 16-bit era.
And let's not forget those awkward transition eras:
6. The Turbografx 16 Era - Not really 16-bit, but still incrementally better than the NES.
7.
Re:I'm still waiting for the Top 10 Gaming Eras li (Score:2)
Now what you need to do to get a slash dot article about it, expand each one til it's a page each. Or instead just put the line on each page, and make a random quote/joke about it. You're almost there.
Re:I'm still waiting for the Top 10 Gaming Eras li (Score:2)
6. The 32-bit Era (PS1, N64) - At least twice as good as the 16-bit era.
I have to disagree here. PS1 and N64 marked the transfer from 2D into 3D graphics. While this works for some game types - RPGs and others which don't require accurate controls or good situation awareness - it killed platformers. You just can't get the same level of control and situation awareness in 3D than you can get in 2D.
3D games also take much more resources to develop than 2D ones, since there still aren't any good 3D modelle
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The Top 100 Best-Selling PC Games of the Century (Score:2)
-Rick
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4 rows of 99 screaming berserkers (Score:2)
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West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
Resi 4 (Score:2)
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Is the article an unreadable mess for anyone else? (Score:1, Offtopic)
The Edge - Quake 2 (Score:1)
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Other excellent Quake 2 maps included Fury (by ztn) and q2dm8 (for team DM).
Other games that I felt had good maps were Heretic 2 and... Daikatana (the 2nd 'world'
Secret Cow Level? (Score:1)
It's great for being a joke brought to life, the sounds as you kill the hell bovines, being rather tough, and funky means of creating the level: Wirt's leg + Tome of Town Portal.
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Fireballing cows was great. It amused the heck out of me.
Break out the sorceress. We're gonna have a barbeque!
Worst list evahr (Score:2)
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Popular != best. If anything, treating cs_dust as the best level in CS is just like treating cs_dust as the only level - as most players would whine if something gets fixed or updated on that map.
Thief:Deadly Shadows! (Score:1)
The Shalebridge Cradle [PDF] [slashdot.org] level of Thief:Deadly Shadows was an awesome level. Scary as hell and full of stifling atmosphere. I have a save-game at the very beginning of the level for those times I feel like reliving something truly creepy.
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Greatest Levels (Score:1)
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Nothing like watching a group of Barons and a Cyber beat the living crap out of each other.
No One Lives Forever (Score:2)
I tried for a week to figure out the timing of that last segment of the poison safe before seeing the trapdoor... and goats!
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RTCW (Score:1)
So damn perfect, most decent servers keep it on all the time.
Turbo Tunnel - Battletoads (Score:2)
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Just kidding;)
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Unfortunately, I never got past level 9... maybe I will fire up an emulator and use the magic of savestates to get past that damn
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Zorro (Atari 8bit) (Score:2)
Also, I liked the level in Necromancer when the trees are rooting their way through the ground to fall on the spider eggs.
Of course, my favorite was BallBlaster/BallBlazer, but it didn't really have levels.
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I think I also had Dallas on there, which was strange, mainly because of how young I was. It was still fun to learn.
/.ed? Fine, I'll list some of my favorites (Score:2)
Unreal Tournament - CTF Facing Worlds
This is a classic CTF level that scales to large populations quite well. With enough people, you end up having "sniper wars" trying to take out the other team's snipers at the two sniper levels on the towers... so that they don't take out your players.
There was a "Special Edition" of this map that moves all the spawn points behind the towers, as well as a sequel that wasn't quite as good as the original.
Duke Nu
Battleship levels? (Score:2)
If the character can already keep up with the camera (e.g. as in the Tool Assisted Demos [tasvideos.org]), those levels are more tedious than anything since there's almost nothing to.
Some auto-scroll levels are badly designed as well, since you have to do a series of jumps within the first 1.5 seconds of the level.
Personal favorites (Score:2)
HL: We've Got Hostiles (Fantastic intro music, the best name of a game level ever... besdies, killing "the good gu
Mute City, Mario Circuit 1, etc (Score:2)
Mario Circuit 1 from Mario Kart for SNES
Thief fan-made mission (Score:2)
Thief 2 level 2 (Score:2)
It's a thing of beauty -- perfect atmosphere, layout, puzzles, enemies, and environmental detail. As a game designer, this level has always humbled me.
Jedi Knight... (Score:2)
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Nethack =) (Score:2)
Encoding? (Score:2)
Space Invaders for teh win! (Score:2)
TIE Fighter: (Score:2)
You get to try and live long enough until the Emperor's cavalry arrives. Then, they ask you to race across the battlefield and inspect a shuttle approaching a Rebel cruiser and confirm that the Admiral is on board trying to defect. And blast it.
That was a pretty cool level in 1994.
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And then the Windows ME installer overwrote the extended partition with the pilot file... I hate ME.
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OSQ: "I like me. I like me. I'm as good as I can be."
Yeah, you are talking about [cough]millenium edition[cough] but the sentence sounded better my way.
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well, why not? (Score:2)
* Zelda dungeons. any of them.
* Sonic the Hedgehog levels. any of them.
there are probably more from my 20+ years worth of gaming memory, but none as striking as those...
Can't believe they forgot (Score:2)
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Psychonauts anyone??? (Score:2)
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Lungfishopolis had a great ending! Nothing weak about it at all. The Milkman ended somewhat weakly, but the rest of the level was so twisted and creative, that it didn't really matter.
Psychonauts is now in my collection of games I'm keep
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Right because Zonk would have to really dodge and swerve to avoid finding positive Sony related stories.
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if it was rare, how was it the most played map? Or was it your most played map?
I really liked Doom multiplayer back in the day. What was the map like?
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Area 6 is the first thing I'd think of to put on this list, if I was making it. They honestly should have put Andross at the end of that level and ended it there, because Area 6 was the pinnacle of that game. It's sad that they didn't manage to make any levels even close to that awesome in Assault.
Here's the video. (Score:2)
And you are right, that level is amazing all the way until the very end, it gives me chills.