The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
X-COM (from the 90’s, not the remake):
I totally sucked at playing X-COM and died a lot, until I learned about real world squad tactics.
In X-COM, the members of your team can get scared/lose it, and behave in random ways like throwing away their weapons/fleeing the fight or just going berserk and shooting around.
So, after I improved my game with my newly acquainted knowledge of real world squad tactics, I had a terror mission. Terror missions are missions, where the aliens attack and which are harder than the other missions.
I managed to survive the load out from the helicopter and kill nearly every alien on first contact, thanks to very careful and orchestrated movement of my squad.
There was one alien left, I tried to shoot it several times from a distance, and of course (this being X-COM after all), all of my shoots missed…
… THE ALIEN STRESSED OUT AND BERSERKED…
I didn’t even know that it was possible. After weeks of loosing and frustration, this one moment is the most satisfying moment of my entire gaming history (more than 30 years now).
Haven’t found any modern game, where this would be even possible!
Mandatory link to OpenXcom
I remember once playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I was assaulting a medium-sized UFO, and I’d reached the front door.
Hesitant to just run in through the front door, I sent half of my party round, so they could break the wall on the other side and flank the enemies inside.
It took a few turns to maneuver my forces round the side of the UFO, and as I did so, an alien squadron spotted my three guys on the door, and they started blasting. With my flanking team still well out of range, I had to sprint them forward to help - right into even more aliens.
My men got decimated. Six turned into four, then three, until only two men remained against well over a dozen dangerous aliens. And so remain they did. Thomas Bassoon and Eduardo Garcia were immortalized as legends that day, as they fought off multiple alien squads with just the two of them.
When XCOM 2 rolled around, with a notable time skip, these were the two soldiers I grandfathered in. Two veterans, here to fight the aliens once more.
Side note: In the tutorial for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, your squad of four is scripted to only have one survivor. Eduardo Garcia was that survivor.
Very nice! :-) Cheers to Eduardo!
OG X-COM was an exercise in frustration. Fuck Chrysalids and their ability to not only move large distances but also attack in the same turn, one-hit kill your troops, and turn their corpses into more Chrysalids.
Also their stats are monstrous compared to the Enemy Unknown variant.