I have a few. 'A Crack In The Slab' level on Dishonored 2 where you could go back and forth between past and present. 'Highway 17' from Half Life 2 And finally, Seegson Synthetics from Alien Isolation.
Ashtray Maze from Control is a recent standout. All the zero-G levels from Dead Space (can't wait for the remake) Mass Effect 2s Suicide Mission. I think. Turns out I don't remember a lot of the game, so I hope it's as good as I remember.
The Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows It's heavily scripted, but the first time you play through it is ****ing exquisite.
Project Wingman - M11: Cold War so the good guys sent up interceptors to intercept some enemy transports but the interceptorss have been intercepted so now were sending more interceptors to intercept the interceptors and oh ****, they've sent more interceptors cue a 9 hour war of escalation leaving you to swagger in mid **** fest and up dogfighting a 110 plane furball over an arctic storm to possibly one of the best game soundtracks ever. **** it im gonna go fly it now.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Deathshead Lab (X-Labs) Sinister Nazi experiments, scary big doors, Das Ubersoldat as a boss, and Deathshead making a getaway in a Nazi rocket plane. Perfection.
Not sure if this counts as an individual level as it was from the MMORPG - Everquest... used to grind this dungeon once a month and had many a giggle in North Tower of Veeshan! 6-8 hour raids that you had to pre-clear the previous night. The best of it was, you couldn't just run/rez to the end of the dungeon as, if you attempted the last boss, all the dragons that you SHOULD have killed previously would all rush to the final boss area and wipe the floor with you. After the main boss was down, there was an optional "Ring" event - had some great loot but the fight would last around two hours (without a wipe(!)).
I think I might say 'Facility' on GoldenEye, 'Chemical Plant Zone Act 2' on Sonic 2, Boulder Canyon on Diddy Kong Racing, or Deep Forest Raceway on Gran Turismo.
Sniper mission in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (well any of the levels really but this stands out). This walkthrough removes a lot of the tension of the first (or many!) times you go through as you need to check every blood corner, window and roof. Died a lot!
Damn I can't remember a damned thing about that game other than climbing through windows. And enjoying it. The game. Not climbing through windows. Well, that was ok. Feck it, you know what I mean. Wonder what the graphics would seem like now, it is still in my steam library.
I always quite like the dark turn things took at Ravenholm, well devised with a good mix of enemies, and ammunition sparse enough that you had to be tactful without it being annoying. The sniper level of MOHAA was memorable, but I preferred Day of the Tiger, it was like a reward for making it through
The special player level on Super Mario World (SNES). It was really hard to get to... We Don't Go To Ravenholm. I like creepy places. The stealth doge levels in COD Ghosts. Karakin on PUBG. Sierra Madre Casino in FONV Dead Money. The NES style level on South Park Stick Of Truth.
That is a LOT of games I realise I haven't played... ...but I am currently doing this one! I'm on the moon - have I passed it? If it's the early one with the flames in the autopsy-ish bit where you need to make the decision, then that was indeed something else. Grim. I read that as "Mwahahaha!" but also need to have a pop at the reboot version I have sitting around somewhere.
While the version you're playing is a good game, I'm referring to the one released near the start of the millennium
In a similar vein, tho I was never hardcore enough to do it, I was a fan of the spectacle and details of the OS3D raid in WoW. I used to read the game guides and follow the raid tutorials for the worst raids in the game and OS3D (Obsidian Sanctum with 3 Drakes) was right up there. A deceptively simple layout - like Onyxia, the whole instance was just a big dirt basin. But there were 3 preliminary bosses which each had tricky movement and coordinated handling strategies and had to be eliminated first or they'd gang up when you started the final boss, which had its own hazards and strategies for players to memorize. Each drake left alive had its own achievements and loot table additions, so you'd get guilds running, variously, OS, OS1D, OS2D and OS3D depending on how insane they were and what gear they needed. Every drake left alive joined the final fight with all its accompanying mechanics and tactics, so you'd essentially be doing 4 bosses at once. The tactics were horrific. People would send each other videos full of diagrams and squiggly lines like they were training a sports team. You'd occasionally see people asking for members for OS3D in LFG chat and people would just laugh and go "....nah, if you're taking random recruits into OS3D from LFG you're already ****ed." The consensus was clear: to do OS3D, everyone needs to know each other well enough to, as Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13, "read the tone of each others' voices." There are tonnes of other instances in WoW that I vicariously admired for their artistry, technical challenge and team play requirements. I never envied the people with enough patience to do them, but they were and are the pinnacle of technical group gameplay design. I especially loved anything that paid homage to Lovecraft, like C'thun and Yogg'Saron. Massive technical long-winded boss fights with tentacles, stomach chambers that players would be squished into and have to individually battle back out of to rejoin the fight, insanity mechanics that made players attack or infect each other, ticking clocks, on top of all the hazards and movements of normal raid gameplay...it was just [chef kiss] perfect. To watch others suffer through. For me, though, I'm a filthy stinking casual, so my favourite levels are all things that I can go "blimey" at with the wife on an evening with no more effort or commitment than an episode of Friends. Like the kid levels in MW2019, and the London level in MW2019, and the Clear House level in MW2019. Just MW2019 really. I'm still upset that more people don't talk about that single player campaign. Some levels weren't just the best FPS storytelling I'd experienced, they were significantly better than a lot of films and TV shows I've seen. Also Psychonauts. The Milkman level. Burned into my memory (appropriately enough). Hello fellow road crew worker! Welcome to the road crew.
