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Discussion What are some experiences that you would consider to be a "once-in-a-generation 'wow'-moment"?

Irene

Irene

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This is a phrase that I sometimes use, (taken from Eurogamer) and it's one that describes moments that are so awe-inspiring, so incredible and powerful that they reach a certain threshold that very few other games has managed to reach over the years.
What are some moments that comes to your mind when you hear this phrase?

A "Once-in-a-generation 'wow'-moment" doesn't always have to be literal (As in, "this is the most epic moment of the 7th gen") but personally, I think that if anything during the PS2/Xbox/GameCube-era comes to mind, it is the sheer scope, scale and 'wow-factor' of the Malus fight in Shadow of the Colossus. When that stuff came around in 2006, seeing that enormous being shoot lasers at you while the music swells as you desperately take cover... it was on a scale unlike anything I've ever experienced back then. (framerate be damned)

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On Switch, jumping off the plateau in BOTW, reaching New Donk City in Odyssey, and Xenoblade 2 in general.

On PS5, Demons Souls remake and playing Elden Ring.

On Xbox, Flight Simulator real time streaming and playing on my console.
 
For the Switch, whichever gen that falls into, the final boss in TotK was too epic for words.

And this shot here. Goosebumps...

zelda_tears_of_the_kingdom_ganon_5_dd_marvel.jpg
 
One that hits me hard is when I first booted up Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, and got to the main menu. Still to this day, the greatest introduction to a video game ever. I didn't even touch the controller until the theme song looped a few times. Just did not want that moment to end, but once I started the game, I knew I was in for one hell of a ride, and it did not disappoint.

(My #2 GOAT)
 
Metroid Prime on the GameCube. The first time you take an elevator and see Samus' eyes through her visor.

Gears of War (and Halo 3) on the 360. Just... the next gen jump that sold me on the Xbox360

On switch... not really a game, but the first time I undocked the switch and played handheld really felt like this "WOW" moment more than any single game on the console (I did it with Mario Odyssey, but I'd have felt the same with any other game probably).

EDIT: Of course CRYSIS on PC. Even if I played it on what was very much not a gaming PC. It still blew me away. And F.E.A.R (to a lesser extent)
 
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Eurogamer has it right - this generation, my first flight in Microsoft Flight Sim was definitely it. My jaw was on the floor for hours the first time I tried that game. Streaming in terrain and weather data like it does... it feels like magic, like the whole world is in your game console for you to experience.

Booting up Mario 64 is another obvious one.

From the PS2 generation, probably the first time I saw Grand Theft Auto 3, but Shadow of the Colossus is right up there. From the PS4 gen, I'd say RDR 2, the first time you see the weather rolling over the plains. That's a mindblowing-looking game.

Astro Bot Rescue Mission is it for me for VR.
 
This is 100% going to be more of a subjective “wow” than an objective “wow” but

After a few years of falling out of love with video games because they all started going in a direction I wasn’t a big fan of, only to then play Yakuza 0 and realize that I still loved video games, in fact I loved them more then than I ever had, and that I just had to find the right game. Playing that game and realizing, slowly, that I wasn’t just playing “the Japanese GTA that the funny video where he hires a chicken to manage real estate came from,” but that I was playing a game that would crush my emotions into dust and completely rebuild how I saw the world for the better??? That’s a wow moment that will never be topped.

Video games at that time were becoming big expensive showpieces that graphically wowed people. Yakuza 0 was a game that emotionally wowed me.
 
GPKs3 said:
For the Switch, whichever gen that falls into, the final boss in TotK was too epic for words.

And this shot here. Goosebumps...

zelda_tears_of_the_kingdom_ganon_5_dd_marvel.jpg
Click to expand...

SirArthur said:
Going to the highest peak in TOTK and jumping all the way down to the Deeps with no loading screen.
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As incredible as these two moments are, my pick for TotK is actually the Wind Temple approach. Not only is the approach itself awesome, as you and Tulin make your way to the top by bouncing on boats and diving through ice, the very moment you bounce on the highest boat and reaches the highest peak of the snowstorm... the air suddenly clears, and you find yourself staring out on a vista that is almost impossibly beautiful.

It's not the highest peak in the game (It's third only to Valor Island and the one above Lookout Landing) but it was the first one of those I reached, and it was like it was only there and then that I realized and grasped how vast and stunning this expanded Hyrule really is, in a way that very few other game worlds are. Truly a moment that lives up to this term.
 
On switch it was dropping off the plateau on BotW, realizing I could tame a horse and literally go in any direction.

I had kind of lost interest in games, and hadn’t been playing meaningfully since mid-Wii cycle. Figured I had aged out of it, nothing really made me want to play for more than a few minutes. So I hadn’t even been following BotW. Picked it and a switch up in 2021, just because. I was blown away. It was something I hadn’t felt in a game in over a decade. And the first time in that long that I could sit for hours and play without losing interest. Still haven’t recreated that feeling since. I spent more time glancing at the Direct speculation thread during bathroom breaks than I have any game in the last 3-4 years.

My earlier younger wow moments are probably seeing Samus eyes reflected in her visor after a beam blast. And probably finding out the scientist I was trying to save in dataDyne was a floating sentient laptop in the original Perfect Dark.
 
Irene said:
As incredible as these two moments are, my pick for TotK is actually the Wind Temple approach. Not only is the approach itself awesome, as you and Tulin make your way to the top by bouncing on boats and diving through ice, the very moment you bounce on the highest boat and reaches the highest peak of the snowstorm... the air suddenly clears, and you find yourself staring out on a vista that is almost impossibly beautiful.

It's not the highest peak in the game (It's third only to Valor Island and the one above Lookout Landing) but it was the first one of those I reached, and it was like it was only there and then that I realized and grasped how vast and stunning this expanded Hyrule really is, in a way that very few other game worlds are. Truly a moment that lives up to this term.
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That climb to the Wind Temple is pretty extraordinary. I was actually very anxious and cautious as I ascended and truly felt that fear of falling. It was very effective.
 
Derachi said:
This is 100% going to be more of a subjective “wow” than an objective “wow” but

After a few years of falling out of love with video games because they all started going in a direction I wasn’t a big fan of, only to then play Yakuza 0 and realize that I still loved video games, in fact I loved them more then than I ever had, and that I just had to find the right game. Playing that game and realizing, slowly, that I wasn’t just playing “the Japanese GTA that the funny video where he hires a chicken to manage real estate came from,” but that I was playing a game that would crush my emotions into dust and completely rebuild how I saw the world for the better??? That’s a wow moment that will never be topped.

Video games at that time were becoming big expensive showpieces that graphically wowed people. Yakuza 0 was a game that emotionally wowed me.
Click to expand...

I had a feeling like this with Yakuza 0 too, to be honest. Such a great game.
 
Oh yes, I can remember some of these wow - moments during my life.

My first gaming related wow - moment was the existence of the NES itself. Seeing Super Mario Bros running on a big screen which I only knew from Game & Watch handhelds to this time as a kid.

I also got in touch with PC gaming as a teen, I won a 386DX40 at a local Super Mario Bros competition and the day I booted up Wing Commander... the narration, the cockpit, the dogfights in space, I got goosebumps, this was as cinematic as I could imagine at that time, how can this get any better?! Lol...

The next one was the prerendered graphics of Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. I thought, that's the future and this is how console games will be looking from now on, a glorious clean prerendered plastic look. I could not believe my eyes and imagined the next Final Fantasy to look like this.

Then there was Pilotwings 64 on the N64. There was a feeling of freedom, of scale, the mountains and the cloudy skies, I sat there in awe. There were many better games over the generation but nothing could reproduce the initial feeling I had with Pilotwings 64.

Metroid Prime on the Gamecube wowed me off my legs when the Chozo Ruins towered above me in a misty snowy world. Never before did I experience such a moody, creepy feeling, the visuals, the scenery, the feeling of loneliness, only Silent Hill 2 could somehow differently match this - I was overwhelmed by the symbolism and the tragedy, realising this is a personal hell! This was a wow of the generation that sticks to me to this very day.

The Wii generational wow was Monster Hunter related, it was my first MH. The epic battle vs. Jhen Mohran, this titanic overwhelming creature emerging in this vast desert only every now and then, trying to keep it at bay with well timed defensive and offensive measures and then watch it slowly approach towards the ship from afar, its screams like a thunder, drawing closer and closer while the music climaxes to smash the hunter's boat under it's immeasurable weight. Still gives me the chills and is my most favourite fight ever.

Demon's Souls was my PS3 wow in the following way: I could not believe what this game demanded of me! So obscure, so punishing, so hopeless in any regard, so hard to overcome - is this even fun? Wow - actually more than I could have imagined. Neither Bloodborne nor Elden Ring could reproduce this.

Since the first time where the Hyrule of Breath of the Wild revealed itself before my very eyes after I left the cave there were no equal wow moments in a game in the past years. I hope there will be another one in a not so distant future :)
 
BotW is definitely the thing that comes to mind first. Jumping off the Great Plateau and just having the whole world opened up to you was something special, but the first real "holy shit this game is amazing" moment for me was during the initial Great Plateau segment where every time I wondered "hey, will this work" and it just did. Most specifically, I think it was being able to break ropes using an arrow to drop a bridge up to a Moblin tree fort, because I just did not expect that to actually work (I had assumed there was a scripted "beat the moblins on the ground first and then the bridge will drop down automatically" sequence). And then being able to just pick my Switch up out of its dock and keep playing this huge game in bed? That's still somehow kinda mind-blowing all these years later. It's also really seared into my mind because the Switch launch perfectly coincided with my spring break that year, and so I just would just spend days getting lost in Hyrule pretty much from the time I got up to the time I went to bed

Going back further, Melee (and the Gamcube as a whole) really impressed me when it first came out. I couldn't get a Gamecube right away and as a kid I didn't really follow video game news/marketing that closely; N64 was really the only console I'd ever had up to that point, and so going over to a friend's house where he showed me what the "new Smash" looked like was sorta unbelievable

Mario 64 on the DS was also pretty wild. Like, up to that point handheld games were almost exclusively 2D, and here was a new handheld playing the 3D game, and it had a touch screen, and wireless multiplayer? Felt very "the future is now"
 
Some that spring to mind:

Playing around with Mario's Face in SM64 and then being completely awed by the opening castle grounds area.

Sonic Adventure and Soul Calibur on Dreamcast felt like a generational leap from the N64/PS1.

Seeing the water droplets on Samus visor in Metroid Prime on GC.

Driving around in GTA3 feeling like I could go anywhere and do anything with the radio pumping out some classic pop tunes.
 
I can really only think of one. Super Mario 64 - a technological marvel for video games in the same way Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars were for movies.
 
The Last Guardian

A game so ahead of its time that it started development as a PS3 game, couldn't run on the platform so it switched to PS4, couldn't run on that platform either but still launched. Needed to be a PS5 game in the end, but the PS4 version is sufficient.

But yeah it's still the most impressive video game I've ever experienced. The animation and A.I. is at a level that has still yet to be outdone.

I think it's the most expensive art game we'll ever see. There are few companies that can even afford to finance a game like that, and PlayStation certainly won't ever go down that road again.

I love you, Trico.
 
Off the top of my head was BotW and the Great Plateau...esp. hang gliding off it and really feeling the "well it's in your hands now" type of feeling and freedom.

Also to go along with that, the entire process of going from handheld to TV and back and forth with BotW and seeing it work exactly like they said it would was mind blowing.
 
Playing BOTW in handheld mode in 2016 impressed me. Jumping from the 3DS to having 7th/8th gen graphics and scopes on a small portable was very impressive.
 
For SNES The opening of a Link to the Past was very moody, which I will always fondly remember, the music thoughout the game was amazing as well.

With the N64 Entering Hyrule field for the first time in OoT was a very special moment, because it felt like I was in kokiri forest for an eternity so the openness of the field truly amazed me "let the adventure begin". Forest temple was the second time I was amazed and then the Spirit temple made me wow a third time.

I still remember Banjo Tooie amazed me with the T-Rex transformation, and the Mingy Jongo fake-out caught me off guard and nearly gave me a heart attack.

With the Gamecube the artstyle of Wind Waker gave me special feelings (start to notice a pattern?) I drooled for ages over that teaser webpage. I got the special limited edition Platinum Wind Waker for my birthday, a moment to remember.

Also: Phenac city from Pokemon Gale of Darkness. The whole game was one big comfy trip if you had the patience to sit it out. Finishing mount battle was my first moment of true euphoria. (although it was very easy but just a drag to finish)

Zelda... Again, for the Switch. The first Vista when going outside, we were all programmed to be amazed and it really paid off.

Now I feel like nothing can amaze me anymore.

Bonus biggest anti-wow ever: The Pokemon "Open-World" truly made me stop caring for Pokemon altogether.
 
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First time I ever saw a Wii in person at the tender age of 14, and my demo was ExciteTruck.

My stupid overeager ass honestly thought I was supposed to hold the Wiimote in one hand vertical and steer using the d-pad. EB Games employee saw me being an idiot and had to rotate the controller in my hand to hold it like a steering wheel, and I swear to god I lit up like a lightbulb inside when the experience clicked.

I'd also give a shout-out to Until Dawn on PS4. The gameplay might have been alright and more fun to play with other people shouting at the screen, but my god even now it sets a standard for mo-cap and facial emotion
 
The two most recent ones (as in, this current gen), are BotW’s jumping off the Great Plateau people already mentioned, and in Elden Ring, I want to say it was around the completion of Stomveil Castle and being on the cliff overlooking Liurnia, and seeing the different castles and towers all throughout the distance. It’s the only other game besides Zelda that brought that feel of pure wonder this gen. And I think it’s because both games have a focus on verticality with their open would design and having distant landmarks always visible to catch your eye and guide you to key areas. It’s hard to explain in words really but both the Zelda team and From Software seem to have nailed the subtleties of open world design that most other developers miss on. There’s a clear system in place in crafting their worlds but it’s blended so well into the fundamentals of the world design that it feels natural when playing through the games. And that’s the difference that makes exploration in those games so engrossing and natural-feeling rather than feeling like you’re completing a checklist of points of interest.
 
The first time I went on the big ass bird in Shadow of the Colossus. The fact that I was playing a PS2 game and it worked so well had my jaw on the floor, peak game right there
 
  1. Seeing the rain for the first time in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
  2. Booting up Super Mario 64 and hearing “It’s me, Mario!”
  3. Shooting a thrown ax out of the air in Resident Evil 4.
  4. Swinging the Wii Remote for the first time in Wii Sports Tennis.
 
Wii U - The shadows of Windwaker HD
Nintendo Switch - Playing Splatoon 2 in the middle of nowhere.
Xbox Series X - [Scene Missing]... Can I say Quick Resume?
 
I remember when the Switch came out. I was playing Breath of the Wild on the big screen all day. Later that night, I was laying in bed playing it. At some point I took the joycons off and laid the tablet down while I kept playing. It quickly blew my mind that a AAA game that I was playing for hours on my television could be played just on that little tablet. At that moment I realized the full potential of this hybrid system.
 
Most of mine have been mentioned already, but seeing Rogue Squadron II running on Gamecube back in 2001 when I was used to N64 graphics blew my mind.
Back then, on a CRT, it felt like playing movie-level CGI in realtime, at 60fps to boot.
 
Most impressed with Jump in PS1/64 to Ps2 visuals. And then GBA to DS. 2 screens guys!, and a touch screen in a great form factor, protected convenient clamshell design.

For game dev stuff, Xenoblade 1 on the Wii wowed me, I hadn't really enjoyed modern (at the time) open world games likes Skyrim. So I was surprised to enjoy one on the Wii of all things.

FF8 and later 10s cutscenes to gameplay transitions and visuals for worlds of that scope were pretty crazy at the time. (7 is good, but you could see the seems and constraints even at launch).

Actually the jump form gb/gbc to gba was pretty wild, we got a 24 bit handheld after an 8 bit one, with a much better form factor. Its hard to imagine a game with sprite art and animation detail like Mario and Luigi often on the SNES let alone the gameboy's often static screens.

I was very late to the party on the first HD consoles, so was already kind of used to HD before hand and quickly got accustomed to shinier visuals on the PS4 and then PS5. Loading speed and options for performance and balance modes have been nice though. Loading in such big detailed maps without waiting minutes has been pretty great.
 
The ladder scene in MGS3. It’s this emotionally resonant setpiece that tells you as much about the player as the game. I’ve seen people cry climbing that fucking ladder. It’s so impossible to explain.
 
The first time I experienced super Mario 64 blew my mind. Our first console was a snes, and me and my sisters played super mario world to death. I was very young, and thought games could only be played from top down or left to right. Then one day, my cousin brought over his brand new n64, and he had this mario game that had 3d graphics and you could run around where ever you want. That game felt massive to me, the possibilities endless. I experienced something similar playing dk 64 for the first time after playing the hell out of dkc 1 and 2
 
Honestly, booting up the demo disc, the experience with CD based games, and turning on Crash Bandicoot 2, was an absolute cultural shock in terms of going from NES/SNES and Genesis to PlayStation. Was absolutely wild to 8 year old me on December 25/26, 1997. I don't think anything has wowed me since, besides maybe Final Fantasy 7 shortly after, being absolutely amazed by the concept of Japanese RPGs, but Crash Bandicoot 2 really did wow me in how it looked (and it's still a game that the original PS1 version still holds up amazingly well).
 
Pokemon Ruby did this for me, I got a GBA in 2004 with it, and after playing GB games for years, seeing my reflection in the water was fucking crazy!

Ozeiyo said:
I had a feeling like this with Yakuza 0 too, to be honest. Such a great game.
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Add me to this list too. Was almost done with gaming, then tried Yakuza 0 on $1 game pass and holy shit I’ve bought three consoles for it now.
 
Hearing God Shattering Star in FE Three Houses was nearly a religious experience. Fear the Deer.




Warframe's "The Second Dream" quest is so good that people still write articles about how amazing it is. You go from "this is a contextless shooter" to "you now have context for why you didn't have context". You stop being the immortal space ninja running jobs for the voices on the radio and become part of that world. It's also the point where the game reveals its additional systems, though you have to do the War Within story quest to get the whole of it. "Longest tutorial ever" indeed.



(Of course the real trick is that Warframe did this whole thing again with The New War)
 
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One game that hasn't been mentioned, but to me will always be the king of these moments, is Ocarina of Time. Realising jumping the cobweb in The Great Deku Tree from great height would actually break it. Stepping out into Hyrule Field for the first time. Hatching an egg overnight and using the chicken to wake Talon. Revealing the entrance to Zora's Domain with a song. Pulling the Master Sword from te pedestal and waking up moments later as adult Link. Returning to Jumping the fence with Epona. Using the hookshot to traverse the Water Temple. Shooting an arrow into the sun on a whim. Playing the Bolero of Fire alongside Sheik. Going back in time to play parts of the Desert Colossus. I could go on and on and on. That game made me realise gaming could be and would be so much more than it was before.
 
curl-6 said:
Most of mine have been mentioned already, but seeing Rogue Squadron II running on Gamecube back in 2001 when I was used to N64 graphics blew my mind.
Back then, on a CRT, it felt like playing movie-level CGI in realtime, at 60fps to boot.
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Absolutely agree on Rogue Squadron II. The fact that the stormtroopers had spaces between their fingers (as opposed to their hands being one big polygon with black lines on it) was incredible.
 
Another formative experience for me was mass effect 1 on the Xbox 360 back in 07. I bought it without having ever played a bioware game before. I was expecting just another third person shooter that the industry was inundated with at that point. Imagine my surprise when the game ended up being so much more than that. It had a cast of characters I came to love, dialogue choices that allowed me to truly role play, some of the best world building id ever experienced in a game before that point (I mean seriously, I would spend some times an hour just listening to the codex), and fun classes that inspired multiple play throughs, each with their own cool powers to mess around with. I bought that game expecting gears of war in space, and what I got ended up being maybe my favorite game of all time.
 
First time I've played a videogame and it wasn't even mine but at a friend house.
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The above but fully explorable 360°.
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You swing the controller and the in-game character swing the racket. Easy to understand, simple to play and it 'just' worked. Magical.
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