It's been a long time since I faced such moments perhaps due to games taking longer to make and becoming a more mature medium. Also games as a whole are more consistent at just being good instead of being built around moments. But here's my list 1. Raphael's Boss music in Baldurs Gate 3 2. GoW 2018, Kratos uncovering the floorboards and recovering those things 3. Dropping the monkey paw at the end of Obra Dinn 4. The plane moment in Indiana Jones Honourable mentions 1. The open world reveal in ff7 rebirth didn't hit as hard as we knew it would come, but still brought a smile to my face. The other big twist at the end of the game was more confusing than epic 2. Unchartered 4 surprisingly still fits in the list from 2016. The boat chase and truck trying to kill you was awesome

Neva recently triggered this post, for those who don't know Neva is by the same studios that made Gris, a sort of 2d walking simulator/puzzle platformer through gorgeous art. While the balance between gameplay and aesthetics is a subjective choice, it just shows the range where interactive media and games can appeal to different people and how it doesn't appeal to me particularly. Neva - I'm just at the early stages of the game and they are slow in introducing gameplay mechanics, even though there's an airdash involved, early enemies have throw or dash patterns but by the first hour of Hollow Knight you've already experienced much more. I don't fault them, the studio is known for beautiful environmental art and non verbal story telling, you do have to hug a dog a lot. Dynasty Warriors - If it ain't broke don't fix it, DW series did evolve beyond the early days of button mashing from 1-4, adding dating sims, stamina bar and just a lot of content, but the combat did not really update itself to modern times until DW:Origins, the new base line of skills tied to shoulder button, parry/dodge and controllable armies really amp up the fun factor thematically, it would be a great "Kingdom" game if that happens, but I wished there was a dating sim. It is certain that their next 4 games will follow this formula until it gets stale again. Last of Us 2 released in 2020, a year after Death Stranding, I think it added Prone as a gameplay mechanic. Kojima pretty much created the most mechanically full sandbox in MGSV and took some of the ideas to Death Stranding, if the marketing had called it a hiking-sim rather than walking-sim it would have sold better, the async online coop similar to Dark Souls also added a layer of thematic layering to the game. LoU 2 on the other hand focused heavily on the story but mechanically it was still stuck with the same tools it had in 1, which was strange because Uncharted forced itself to iterate each sequel, with the free swinging grappling hook being a big draw in the final game. Modern Assassin's Creed - I never played the modern AC, starting from Origins, but from what I can tell, there is loot grind and levels aimed at microtransactions rather than improving the experience. Mirage launched with less features than Black Flag. Right now early comparisons between Shadows and Ghost of Tsushima shows how much baggage Ubisoft has, they cannot extricate themselves from map based chores, no way of reimagining each Era according to the themes when you have to constantly pay and maintain hundreds of employees to prepare for the next launch. The last time people praised Ubisoft for innovation was AC1, ability to climb anywhere! social stealth instead of crouching! multiple ways to achieve your goals!

So this problem started back in 2023 as in still occurring. Dead Space Remake, Jedi Survivor and Silent Hill 2 are some of the offenders. All these games were highly rated on gameplay and graphics Basically, even if you have a 4090, the stutters and poor fps still exist due to the way the game is designed. Its exceptionally frustrating because open world devs do optimise for performance while corridor type REMAKES like Dead Space and Silent Hill forget the work their predecessors did on worse hardware years ago