Favourite Levels from Favourite Games
Nothing here!
26 Games
E1M1: Hang- ahahahahahah sorry just kidding man, for me it's gotta be E4M2: Perfect Hatred. I know I know I KNOW it's the infamous John Romero one that everyone rags on, but damn E4M2 sticks in your head just by virtue of its sheer deviousness. A Doom level that requires proper forward-planning that you can't just savescum your way to victory. Embodies the "Doom problem solving" approach to level design that has come to dominate the modern Doom wadding scene.
MAP04: The Focus - tight as fuck design where everything leads directly to the next step, has secrets that let you play the level faster, a goofy but catchy beat on the OST
MAP20: Breakdown - really embodies everything that makes this game special. Dark, brooding, and psychologically taxing. Between Aubrey Hodges's sickeningly psycho-tinged music, the devious level design and the general ambience of pure hellish despair, this is one of the best horror levels in FPS history. Prepare to get fucked with!!!!
Level 1: Downtown would be the obvious pick but I have played that shit to death and it now feels kinda like an obstacle to getting to the other levels. So - Level 2: Bridge Construction is my pick! Despite beating SOR4 on Mania difficulty I still find SOR2 and 3 hard as fuck, lol. This second level hits a difficulty sweet spot where I don't wanna chew my pad and it has a few really cool beat em up gimmicks, like having to use sound cues to work out where the off-screen bikers are or managing enemy waves by positing yourself between construction pits. Hitting bikers off their rides with a special and then seeing their bikes explode into a million pieces and wreck a Galsia's life feels fuckin awesome.
Level 2: Police Precinct - Takes Streets of Rage 2's infamous "ONLY TRUST YOUR FISTS" message and builds a whole level around it. On higher difficulties is straight-up feels like a musou game about knocking out platoons of cops. The back half in the offices simply isn't afraid to say what it has to say about police brutality. Fun as fuck and manages to do more thematics in 5 minutes than a lot of "proper", "serious" and "thoughtful" games do in 30 hours.
Jungle Outpost 2 - Best wallbreaks and stage transitions, the crashed plane looks sick and the music is truly next-level. It's basically like taking drugs.
New York Subway has it all - the best tune in the game, the coolest environment reactions, the abscence of any foreground sprites that make it harder to play, and the weight of the greatest moment in fighting game history on its shoulders
Solar Eclipse - Watching the animals play in the water never gets old, and it's fun to see them react to bounds and EX moves. The music is a rare bright spot in an otherwise kinda forgettable Street Fighter OST that played it way too safe. Feels really good to hit your stride in a match right about the time that the chorus comes in.
It would be London, but I'm not allowed to say I like anything related to England. So I'll go with Aomori - this level alone got me interested in CVS2 back in the day. So many fantastic 3D models that animate in strange and unusual ways (see also in this game: the huge animatronic cowboy chugging beer). The intensity of the colours and movement in the background really make you feel like a brawl's broken out at a late-night festival of lights. Not sure if it's intentional, but the traditional Japanese "yeeeeOOOOOWW!" on the OST often lines up with the giant floating kabuki man turning around and it's so so so so so sick dude
Shadow Temple - used to be my most hated level in the game, but as I've gotten older and less afraid of the dark I've come to appreciate how bitter and twisted and genuinely unnerving this is. It's like a fucking Doom 64 level inside a Nintendo property. The lead-in with Shiek getting fucked up by a ghost is so cool and the past-future switching with the well is well good. Bongo bongo is dumb as shit but he's Classic Zelda through and through. Also, there's a ghost pirate ship.
Grand Canyon - the potential for things to go horribly wrong is so so so so high and it injects lots of tension into VS play. Watching your bud bounce off a cliff into oblivion.... mwah!
World 4-2 - The whale and ice one. I like the whales and how they blow you up into the air. So tricky, so slippy, so full of really fun secrets you can dig up to give yourself an advantage. In the pre-internet era, this level was legendary. Everyone had a cool trick for dealing with some iota of bullshit that 4-2 served up. Try to find the world skip!
Champion Road is the closest video games have come to truly realising the Sisyphean archetypes upon which they are all built
New Donk City - the name is funny as shit, the gimmick of the level's OST changing as you gather musicians is novel and helps make the city feel alive. it's one of the few levels in the game that really lets you show off how much you understand the moveset. Look man, I've been a Super Mario fan for 30 years now so OF COURSE that stupid superstar tribute at the climax was gonna get me right in the gut. Damn. Memories of Mario...
waluigi pinball is the best mario kart course ever made
ohhhh fuck where do i even begin........ i guess i gotta say Electrodrome. feels so smooth to drive, the shots of koopa troopas dancing to EDM kick ass, the music dynamically reacting to how you drive feels fantastic, the bumpers rewarding the skill of your drift is Nice Design - just some all-round good shit! one of the best F-Zero tracks in the game!
Fountain of Dreams orchestral arrangement hit so much harder in 2001 when orchestral arrangements of video game tunes weren't dime a dozen bargain basement YouTube fodder. The small size forces constant confrontation and the cool water effects are nice to look at.
Mishima Dojo has like 20 of the best songs in the game on it and a really cool stage gimmick that basically lets you compromise between Final Destination realness and the ludicrous KOs of King of Fighters Stadium. Also, Heihachi is there
Cinnabar Island Gym - the quiz gimmick was fresh as hell and Blaine is such a cool dude. The CoolTrainers are cool too. Feels so good to play after that fucking annoying secret lab dungeon with the crap music.
Area 6. The intro really hypes you the fuck up to go to Venom, the music sets the tone perfectly (are you noticing a trend here with my favourite levels all having top-tier music?) and it tests your ability to react to enemies coming in and out of defensive postures really well. Those little spinning satellite dishes are among my favourite shmup enemies ever.
Dolphin Surf - dude the sheer euphoria of the part where the dolphins come up from underneath the water..... it honestly feels like the one time in my life i actually saw some wild dolphins. fuck yeah bro
you know what one
the church!
Tsavo Highway - fully realises Halo's potential as a toybox FPS and delivers on the promise of Halo 2 and latterly, its ending. Hopping between tanks and hogs and spaceships and rocket launchers and lasers with your bros on Legendary Co-Op is surely a special moment where video games realised their fullest potential.
5 Comments
dolphin shoals was my #2 choice :D
God bless
the titanfall 2 one made me :')
also YEEEES that odyssey part is just ahfhshgfshdh
also YEEEES that odyssey part is just ahfhshgfshdh
Good words on SoR4!! I don't know how to describe the moment in Stage 11 when it reveals the art students and the cops working together but it hit me hard too.
Hylianhero777
2 years ago
Really good idea for a list!