Hello readers and welcome to the Ninth Day of Blogmas as we join in with this fabulous Christmas sing-a-long, all brought to you by the fantastic mind of Athena from AmbiGaming.
So! What are we singing about today? Well…
On the 9th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Share four dramatic/memorable game moments
Lets sing!
On the 1st day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: What are 12 favorite gaming memories?
On the 2nd day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Tell us 11 games you love!
On the 3rd day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: What are 10 reasons you’d play a game
On the 4th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Give us 9 games on your to-play list
On the 5th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: 8 characters you love!
On the 6th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Share seven of your favorite posts
On the 7th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Tell us your six gaming/blogging resolutions
On the 8th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: What are five games you’ve played more than once?
On the 9th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Share four dramatic/memorable game moments
Before I proceed with this one I just want to say there be SPOILERS AHEAD for Resident Evil 4, Tales of Vesperia, Xenoblade Chronicles and Resident Evil: Revelations. Please do not proceed past this point if you don’t want one of these games spoiled!
Alrighty then! Did I say there are SPOILERS? I did, ok, let’s get going!
Resident Evil 4 – Emergent Gameplay
I like this first one because it is something which happened in my play-through of the game but theoretically may not have happened to anyone else.
The moment in question took place in the Castle, which is my favourite location in the game due to its shiny shiny marble floors. In this particular play-through Leon had run around the outside of the castle and cleared out the weird and terrifying spanish monks (“Muere, muere, muere…. “). He’d also been inside and cleared out the rooms up until a certain point but decided to double back, probably to visit the merchant. For the most part there are no respawns in Resident Evil 4, including this part of the castle, so after the initial terror of battling through the monks, Leon could be pretty carefree heading back the way.
Unless maybe he missed one.
He stepped out the castle door and into a courtyard. I can’t remember at what point I noticed it, but soon after he went outside a solitary monk began to chant. One monk isn’t necessarily too much of a threat, but I had gone into casual mode. I’d switched off because this area had already been cleared out. Suddenly there was a stray enemy coming out of nowhere and the word RUNNNNNNNN was all I could think. It is one of the scariest and most dramatic moments in any game I’ve played and it was all because of missing one measly monk.
Be thorough folks. That’s all I’m saying!
Tales of Vesperia – But you’re supposed to be the good guy?
I like JRPGs. You know this already. What I like about this moment from Tales of Vesperia is that I’d never experienced anything like it in a JRPG before.
Let me set the scene: The main protagonist in Tales of Vesperia is Yuri Lowell. Yuri used to be an Imperial Knight but left because it took too long to get things done (or something like that…). We travel around with Yuri and he meets various interesting people who join the party for various interesting reasons. We learn as we are travelling that the world they live in isn’t an entirely nice place, and that like in real life, some of the people in positions of power aren’t doing their utmost to protect and look after their citizens. Ok, this is fair enough, doesn’t sound too different from most JRPGs. But it is what happens after our party encounter one of these less-than-stellar individuals – Magistrate Ragou – which stunned me.
Ragou, who is both a magistrate and a member of the Imperial Council is involved in some pretty shady stuff – he taxes his citizens to the point of starvation and sometimes kidnaps them and feeds them to the monsters living in his house. Usually here I would expect our heroic party to engage him in a massive boss battle, defeat him, and then maybe have him arrested? Instead, Yuri sneaks out in the middle of the night, murders him, and then returns without a word, playing dumb when people start to question Ragou’s whereabouts. He never repents for his actions, he doesn’t tell anyone and it is barely mentioned for the rest of the game (at least until he kills someone else…). Yuri is a murderer. He may also be a hero, but he is definitely a murderer.
Whether or not you believe that Yuri did the right thing, this is a pretty dark form of ‘justice’ for the main protagonist in a JRPG to be dishing out.
Xenoblade Chronicles – Alvis
When you are first introduced to the character Alvis in Xenoblade Chronicles, you definitely know there is something mysterious about him. I’m not sure what it is. His cool voice maybe? Or that he seems to know things about you? You spend a bit of time with him and although he remains an aloof figure, you just kinda come to accept him. He is after all well-known by the High Entia, a species with whom you co-operate.
Later on, the question of Alvis’s identity crops up again and the truth is finally revealed…
Alvis is a computer.
WHAT???? I don’t mean a robot either. Like, he’s a physical manifestation of a computer (mmhmm, I don’t know what that means either) which was onboard a space-station. Hang on. A space-station? Why is there a space-station? What in god’s name is going on, how can that lovely Alvis be a computer? WHAT? Whose idea was this?
I like a good mystery, but the beauty of the revelation is that it is a total ‘WTF?!?’ moment. I seriously don’t know how they came up with that.
Resident Evil: Revelations – The Queen Zenobia (?)
Ok, this is my favourite. I gasped out loud when I realised what they had done with this and there is literally no way of me recounting this in a way which will do it justice (but I’m going to try anyway).
Most of the opening hours of Resident Evil: Revelations are spent with Jill Valentine and some zombie things aboard the luxury cruise liner ‘The Queen Zenobia’. After certain events in the game the engine room begins to flood, and Jill (along with her sidekick Parker) are trapped. Thankfully, fellow BSAA member Chris Redfield knows where Jill is and is on his way. You see her on the ship, the waters still flooding in! But it’s ok, here comes Chris in a Helicopter. He’s arrived at the boat and managed to get inside. Now he just needs to get to where Jill is, the water is nearly over her head! Ok, he’s running, he’s running, he’s going to get there. He’s fighting the spiky zombie things and the blowey-up head zombie things and he’s making his way through the decks. He opens the engine room door… and there’s nothing there. No flood water. No Jill. Chris is stunned. Where is she? The camera slowly pans up to a display on the wall which shows a picture of the ship and the ship’s name – ‘The Queen Semiramis’.
Yep folks, Chris went to the wrong boat. Well played Capcom, you absolutely stunned me!
So! What do you think of those? Pretty dramatic right! Let me know your thoughts below and make sure you head on over to AmbiGaming to check out all of the other participants in the Twelve Days of Blogmas.
Thanks for reading,
Pix1001 x
Shoot the Rookie 
I learned something! Always double check the clearing of areas, haha. Resident Evil 4 is so awesome. I haven’t played Revelations yet… and should probably make time for that some year.
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I really like both of the Revelations games. I think I like the second one better overall but they are both good fun.
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