The 25 Most Shocking Moments in Gaming

I've seen countless lists such of these for movies and the like, so I thought it was time someone created one for gaming. So allow me to present my list of the 25 Most Shocking Moments in Gaming:

25. Super Mario Bros.
"Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle."
Noooooooooooooo!

24. Grand Theft Auto
Three words: Hot Coffee Mod

23. Brothers In Arms
The opening battle, comparable to the beginning of Saving Private Ryan in it's brutality. I still remember the look on the face of the solider who wore glasses. One minute, standing right in front of me. The next, dead and bloody at my feet.

22. Red Faction
Wait, I can shoot through walls? SWEET!

21. Hellgate: London
Destroying a rift and fighting the demon that appears in it's place, only to be blind-sided by 20 more just like it and dying a glorious death. Utter brilliance.

20. Counter-Strike
This one is completely personal. I'm playing "The Black Level" with CM -- no light, walls are black, only white lines on the floor. We start a new round, and he's like "Pause! BRB." I make my way over to his side, find him, and wait. "Ok, unpause." BOOM!
Well, it was shocking for HIM. =)

19. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Stepping into Oblivion for the very first time. For me, it was quite similar to stepping into a dungeon for the first time in Super Mario Bros. Everything that you had seen up to that point was all bright and shiny. All pretty and aesthetically pleasing. Then all of a sudden you're in a dark, foreboding environment. A great moment in gaming

18. Aliens vs Predator 2
The moment when you walk out into the open and you hear that sound...the sound that you recognize from the movies. It's the sound of a Predator. You see the blurry form of a cloaked monster on the rooftops. You see his laser sights looking for you. The moment when you have to face off against a Predator for the first time is absolutely chilling.

17. Crysis
Loading it up for the first time will be sufficient in shattering your current standards for graphics in a computer game. This isn't a game. It's a fucking motion picture presentation.

16. The Suffering
You just broke out of your jail cell. The power is out. You walk into the prison cafeteria. You hear something...something that sounds like metal on metal. It's getting louder, like footsteps. Then, something drops down from the ceiling -- a disgusting creature with metal blades for arms and legs. You blast it with your shotgun out of instinct, realizing that you also screamed out loud and your knuckles are white with fear. Thus begins the game.

15. Half-Life 2
There are so many great gaming moments in this game, it's hard to pick the best one. But I'm going to have to go with the boat chase sequence here. Seeing hundreds of mines dropping from that helicopter has to be one of the greatest "You've got to be fucking kidding me" moments, ever.

14. Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
I was utterly bored with this game at it's start. "I have to use a BLASTER? Where's my fucking lighsaber?" Kyle has abandoned the Force and has no special powers whatsoever. And then him and his girlfriend are attacked by Force users, and you are powerless to do anything as you listen to them kill her. It's like the game is telling you, "Are you ready to be able to do THAT? The game will now start." And yes, we were ready.

13. Serious Sam
Sure, you fought a lot of monsters. Hundreds. Even thousands of them. Big ones too, probably some of the biggest baddies ever to be rendered in a computer game. But when the final boss rears it's ugly head, revealing itself to be twice as tall as the Great Pyrimids of Egypt that it's standing behind, you can't help but drop your jaw and mutter "Whoa."

12. Soldier of Fortune 2
You love shooters, and you love how realistic they've become. Ah yes, the blood, the explosions, it's all good stuff. What's this? A new SOF game? Sweet! You load it up. You find a shotgun. You shoot a terrorist in the stomach with it. What's that? Oh...my...God....HIS INTESTINES FELL OUT! Then you do it again and again.

11. Prey
Nothing ruins your day more than an alien invasion. Those damn aliens, always trying to enslave humanity. You see a lot of death on your journey to stop them in this game, a whole lot of it. Even your grandfather, killed by an alien right before your eyes. But after killing countless aliens and seeing so many people killed by them, nothing could prepare you for the task of having to kill your own girlfriend, whose alien controlled body is now trying to blow you up while the still human part is begging you to kill her. This boss fight leaves you feeling that no matter what, you're going to finish this game just to put a bullet in the head of the fucker who did this.

10. Dungeon Siege II
As with the end of any self-respecting RPG, you have to fight the final uber-powerful boss! And you defeat him gloriously...only to find out that in doing so, you just destroyed the world. Nice work, hero.

9. Max Payne
You heard all this hype about "bullet time". What the hell is bullet time? So you buy Max Payne, you load it up, you're in the game. You come across your first bad guy, and you press the "shootdodge" button. The world slows down around you. Max dives to the right in slow motion. You realize you just dodged bullets. You shoot at the bad guy. Time speeds back up. The bullets rush at the baddie and blow him away. And you, similarly, are left blown away by what you just saw for the first time. It's since been copied countless times, but nothing compares to seeing it new.

8. System Shock 2
Finding out that the kindly voice of the other lone survivor on your spaceship -- the only reason you've had to fight your way through hordes of monsters to find her -- is nothing more than an insane computer playing with your mind will live on as one of the greatest gaming moments in history.

7. Doom
Just playing it, period. It was the first of it's kind, and it lives on as the game that changed everything. If you want a specific moment, however, think about the first time you saw a Pinky demon running towards you in a dark corridor.

6. Postal 2
Just, like, the entire game, dude. Ok, I have to pick a moment? Pissing on the corpse of the cop you just gunned down. Happy now?

5. Quake 4
So you're a big, bad Marine fighting slovering aliens from Stroggos, and you just lost a battle with the Makron. You're pride is a little hurt, but it's okay. You awake to find yourself on a conveyor belt, and you witness the prisoner in front of you being mutilated before your very eyes. But you're the main character. That can't happen to you. There's no way that'll happen to you. Then a gigantic saw blade lurches down from the ceiling and messily amputates your legs as your character screams in agony, and you watch in horror as the hero you're playing is gruesomely transformed into that which you've been fighting throughout the entire game. Utterly shocking.

4. Bioshock
The idea of the person helping you out through the entire game suddenly turning out to be the bad guy is such a common staple in games that it's no longer shocking. However, the additional added twist two-thirds through Bioshock adds new life to this dead device with three simple words: "Would you kindly..." And you realize, horrifically, that all the choices you thought you were making were never your own to begin with. A classic mindfuck.

3. Half-Life
Inserting the sample into the beam, thus causing the resonance cascade scenario. It leaves you confused, panic-striken, and saying to yourself, "What the fuck did I just do?!"

2. F.E.A.R.
When you first encounter the horror moppet in all her bloody glory, you're not filled with just fear. You PANIC. This is one of the first and only times in a computer game where my first instinct was to turn and run the fuck away.

1. Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Gordon Freeman has never been someone who can't get out of an impossible situation with little more than a crowbar. He's been in countless, and he always finds a way out. So it was nothing less than numbing to watch the final sequence of Episode 2, watching as Gordon is helplessly pinned to a wall while an Advisor impales Eli Vance through the back of the head. While Dog saves Alyx and Gordon from certain death, it's painfully clear that the damage has already been done. The credits roll with Alyx crying over her father's corpse. You are left staring down at her, helpless to do anything about it. I get shivers just thinking about that scene.