Condemned is a classic, if a flawed one, and while I like the second, it’s just not got the same class as the first, it’s been quite overcomplicated.

On topic: Creatures 2 held some highly emotional moments for me. Mostly when I neglected my creature a bit and he started trying to commit suicide. =(

I have emotional moments all the time in games, but I can’t remember any at this moment in time. May return with more … “material”.

Re: L4D. I only noticed last night that the delivery of certain lines changes depending on how well (or badly) you’re doing. You can make your character say a ‘hooray’ type of line, but if you just got pounded on by a Tank and lost two of your friends then they’ll say “We’re going to make it, aren’t we?” in a cracked and slightly lunatic kinda way.

I have had emotional responses to plenty of games (it feels absurd that that seems like such a candid confession!). I used to play Feud on Atari 800 (please raise your hand if you had one of these, I have never met anyone else who did!) and it scared the living shit out of me. Somehow having the position of your nemesis indicated by a compass arrow at all times made the fact that he was always closing in on you all the more foreboding.

I’m also regularly scared of any FPS with underwater sequences. I have many HL1 saves where I’m just staring at the water and have thought, “Not tonight!”.

The end of Alisa Dragoon on the megadrive was also pretty effective as the dragons you have been nurturing all the way through the game and who have saved your ass many times sacrifice themselves to save you from certain death.

The sprouting sequence in Grim Fandango was pretty horrifying too, and not in the usual “gory” way.

I found the end of Freespace II to be quite affecting as well. Its altogether more downbeat than I was expecting (partly given that I died, and that that was factored into the ending sequence).

Also, Close Combat 5 (if that was the one where you could keep your units from mission to mission) was fairly harrowing for me as I watched squads that had been with me since the start of the game get ripped to shreds in the face of overwhelming odds.

Also in COD4 when the sniper that is training you gets his legs borked by a crashing chopper and you have to carry him to the extraction point, that pretty involving, and of course the bit where you are crawling along on your radioactive broken legs in the nuclear wasteland, that was pretty desolate.

Also the bits in HL1 where you have to leave Barney behind because he can’t cross the load points or some BS, imo that was a sad moment.

Although I found the ending-proper of ME to be substantially broken, I was moved by the bit before that where you are thought to be dead and you companions look stunned and defeated and then you run sort of limping up over some rubble and smile just a little in a sort of satisfied way.

Also, pretty much any multiplayer game (Tribes 2, TF & TF2 etc) where you have moments of camaraderie are often quite moving I think.

Of course that includes L4D, which not only has camaraderie in spades but also some really powerful writing and voice acting. I love the way that on expert everyone starts of cocky and upbeat and by the end of the level everyone is hunched and limping and downtrodden looking and shakily saying “Guys, I’m pretty torn up.”. And lets not forget about the delivery & the dialogue when people are on the ground getting pounded to death by the tank – I always get a little distraught when I hear that, particularly because the way the game is designed you can almost never help them.

And lets not forget the heady combination of breaking up with your girlfriend, taking drugs putting on your favourite albums and playing wistful Japanese dating sims.

Magical.

I never really got to grips with it.

Great Escape on the otherhand – whist certainly not easy (I don’t think I ever actually escaped, but I got close a few times), was at least a bit more predictable (not in a bad way). You could usually anticipate when/if you were in danger. Also helped that getting caught didn’t mean certain death – just back to your room with a little lost morale.

In fact that was one of the cool things about it. Every time you got caught, and every day that passed without you escaping, your morale dropped. When it got too low, it was game-over, except you didn’t die. Instead, you just control of your character and he’d just follow the other inmates around on the daily routine – he’d given up trying to escape).

*SPOILERS*

where you are plummeting to your death, and get caught by one of the aliens. There’s a brief pause for you to think you’ll be ok, then he smacks you against the wall and you spend the remainder of the game pushing yourself along on your belly, presumably with a broken back. Then into the lovely closing scene where your alien buddy loads you onto the back of the flying beastie (either unconscious or dead, depending on whether you consider the sequel to be canon) and you go winging off into the sunset, mournful music swelling all the while.

All the other wierd stuff like mutated soldiers with gas masks melded on their faces you can rationalise as an slightly warped art department.

@Jonas – The real ending to Max Payne 2 will probably make you feel alot less not happy.

In fact, most games still demand you have that emotional distance as they would, if you felt you were genuinely ‘there’, be deeply depressing existential horror stories. The world is collapsed, I am trapped in this corridor, everything wants to kill me and all I can do is run forwards and murder – that’s just horrible. It’s a nightmare. It’s no wonder fear is the emotion games are best at.

So real emotional moments happen, for me, with the accidental stuff, the fringe stuff, the stuff that is not locked into the mechanics. In Fallout 3 watching a trader bodybguard smoke a cigarette joylessly as she followed the shambolic cow into the sunset gave me a strong reaction as it tied in to the isolation and sense of sadness the world was giving me (and the sense of trudging work some of the mechanics were giving me). I was getting feedback from the game that matched how I was humanly reacting to the world. Hey presto emotion.