Nice moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of a few of our favourite gaming reminiscences.
Vampire Survivors
Developer: Poncle
Yr: 2022
For many of a run in Vampire Survivors, you are scrambling. Grabbing XP gems wherever you possibly can, praying for the weapons you want, ducking and weaving round just-slightly-too-big-to-handle hordes. Quite a lot of runs by no means escape this section, particularly early on in your time with Vampire Survivors—you battle to maintain your head above water, solely to drown in a tide of monsters earlier than your construct ever actually clicks.
However once you do attain escape velocity, it’s wonderful.
That second, when your construct ideas over the sting into synergised concord and out of the blue you are an unstoppable whirlwind of destruction? It is chic. 100 particle results firing off without delay, absurd waves of projectiles flying out of you, overpowered mixtures firing off to maintain you perpetually healed, freeze your enemies in place, or just eradicate every thing in sight. One minute, you are fleeing the newest onslaught of foes; the subsequent, you are realising you possibly can merely stand nonetheless and allow them to come to you with none concern in any respect.
In a traditional RPG, you possibly can spend tens and even lots of of hours chasing your excellent construct—and there is typically a lot much less gentle on the finish of that tunnel than you anticipate, supplying you with nothing to essentially throw your theory-crafted assaults without delay your character lastly comes collectively two hours earlier than the top. Vampire Survivors not solely distils that have all the way down to half-hour or much less, it makes positive that there is a thrilling reward for reaching that DPS singularity: you change into the baddest mom within the room.
Wiping out something that even seems to be at you humorous is rarely going to remain thrilling for lengthy—in the end it is the purpose the place you cease actually needing to provide the sport any enter. However Vampire Survivors provides you simply sufficient time to luxuriate in your feeling of superiority, ensuring to wildly escalate the assaults in opposition to you within the final 5–10 minutes of a run to provide you loads of targets to your overwhelming new energy. It is a excessive that is each scrumptious sufficient and quick sufficient to get you jonesing to really feel it once more as quickly as attainable.
After which, like a fighter pilot breaking the sound barrier, you ultimately uncover that is not even the true climax. Study the methods and put within the work and you may make a personality so god-like you possibly can even break the sport’s inherent 30-minute time restrict and wage conflict in opposition to the as soon as seemingly invincible Grim Reaper that arrives to slay you on the finish of each run. It is an endgame for the endgame, and an exquisite celebration of the pleasure of being ridiculously, stupidly, joyously overpowered.
