Nice moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of a few of our favourite gaming recollections.
Vampire Survivors
Developer: PoncleYear: 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. Plenty of runs by no means escape this part, particularly early on in your time with Vampire Survivors—you wrestle 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 suggestions over the sting into synergised concord and instantly you are an unstoppable whirlwind of destruction? It is elegant. 100 particle results firing off without delay, absurd waves of projectiles flying out of you, overpowered combos firing off to maintain you perpetually healed, freeze your enemies in place, or just eradicate all the pieces 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 worry in any respect.
In a traditional RPG, you possibly can spend tens and even lots of of hours chasing your good construct—and there is typically a lot much less mild on the finish of that tunnel than you count on, supplying you with nothing to actually throw your theory-crafted assaults without delay your character lastly comes collectively two hours earlier than the tip. Vampire Survivors not solely distils that have right 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 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 offer 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 offer you loads of targets on 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. Be taught the tips and put within the work and you can also make a personality so god-like you possibly can even break the sport’s inherent 30-minute time restrict and wage struggle 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.
