8 Gaming Moments Where You KNEW You Were Going To Cry

Gaming is a perfect way to enjoy some harmless escapism. Even going back to the early days of the medium, players have battled it out trying to set high scores in classic arcade titles, and enjoyed the linear progression of precise platforms. However, as various story elements became increasingly more prevalent in newer releases, gamers began becoming evermore attached to the characters they saw on screen.

Now, while this connection to the story only served to heighten the feeling of accomplishment when you completed the protagonist's quest or saved a damsel in distress, it also consequently meant that the everpresent mortality of your character and those around them could hit you like a ton of bricks at just about any moment.

As a result, in more recent years gaming has started to receive more of the respect it deserves as a medium capable of provoking emotional responses in the same way film and TV have done for decades.

Worse still, unlike other forms of media, when a game foreshadows an unavoidable upcoming tearjerking moment, it often becomes clear that the emotional event is an inevitability if the player decides to continue forward.

Though Call of Duty 4 is perhaps best remembered for its action-packed gameplay and representing the first time that the series had made the move into depicting modern-day conflicts, the game also included one of the most compelling storylines in the franchise up to that point.

During the Shock and Awe mission, the player takes control of US Marine Sgt Paul Jackson and is tasked with rescuing a pilot who has been downed despite the imminent threat of a nuclear explosion. As the Marines attempt to evacuate to safety, the bomb is detonated leading to a wave of destruction indiscriminately destroying everything in sight.

What makes this scene so dark is that the player actually survives the ordeal long enough to see the corpses of their colleagues before Jackson finally succumbs to his own injuries. The mission stands out by being much darker in tone than the rest of the game, and is surprisingly emotional.

In a franchise where protagonists had generally been near-indestructible bullet sponges, the helplessness of Sgt Jackson's demise is particularly sombre.