20 Best Video Game Opening Levels Of The Last 10 Years
Does anything beat throwing a Metal Gear across the city?
There's opening with a bang, and then there's opening in a way that goes down in history. Part down to the amount of money the average game costs, part needing to wow upfront, part ensuring the player sticks around and always wanting to leave a lasting impression, more than any other medium, video games have the power to completely take over the person on the other side of the screen.
Across the last decade especially, we've seen increased graphical capabilities lead to more cinematic presentation; better-rendered faces, better voice acting, better characters overall. Fundamentally, many opening sequences of video games are like playable movies; combinations of Hollywood-grade scenarios where the game hands control over to you.
Obviously there's still room for games that are straight-up games, forgoing fancy presentation in favour of throwing you into a scenario and whispering, "Go on then, figure it out!", but they're few and far between. Most of the time you're led by the hand, slowly introduced to all the game's mechanics, eventually being allowed to play when the developers trust you're good and ready.
Not for this lot though, they managed to get everything right in ways we'll be talking about for decades to come...