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[Houndninja]

Post here what games level design stood out for you the most? I'm gonna go straight ahead and say Half Life 2 because every chapter showed you how you could use different weapons or vehicles to your advantage like Ravenholm and the gravity gun!

[zacaj]

HL1 and Crysis 1 for me

[C.A. Sinner]

 Super Mario 64, Deus Ex, Demon's/Dark Souls, Thief, System Shock, Vampire Bloodlines: 3D, open, nonlinear to a certain degree but not "open world," exploration, secrets, multiple paths.

[moi]

UT99

[C]

Super Mario 64, Deus Ex, Demon's/Dark Souls, Thief, System Shock, Vampire Bloodlines: 3D, open, nonlinear to a certain degree but not "open world," exploration, secrets, multiple paths.

All of these.  Especially Thief: The Dark Project and Thief: The Metal Age.  Consistently great level design.  Non-linear exploration.

[iffi]

VVVVVV, Quake 1

[Graham.]

Yeah, VVVVVV blew my mind and I only played the demo - I'll buy it later.

Super Mario World. Holy shit. Every Mario game ever.

FF7, just for the unique cinematic angles. Right? The camera had to be in a specially chosen fixed position for each segment of any area because the backgrounds were hand drawn. It blew me away how natural it felt to navigate the first time I played through; I felt like a director.

The open-world of the Jak (and Daxter) games got me too. GTA is kinda cool once you start to get a feel for the streets and the radio - but the familiarity comes slowly. Assassin's Creed was terrible. Prince of Persia: good (Sands of Time, and the 3rd one).

[Danmark]

Doom. Easily the most varied and memorable levels ever, despite (or is it because of?) the engine's limitations. Perhaps sector-based 2.5D is a sweet spot between elegance and expressivity. In any case, the architecture is stunning.

Half-Life. They managed to make an old missile base compelling. One of few games, let alone FPSes, to feel like a coherent journey, thanks to the level design. However unbelievable that a nerd would shoot his way through the facility, a good sense of vulnerability is imposed by the grand mechanisms, hazards, lighting, and ambient audio.

Halo. The environments are more nuanced than they appear at first. For tactical purposes, the shapes that comprise are more complex than in a typical FPS. This complexity, and the openness, gives enemies the opportunity to put lots of pressure on you, forcing you to make assaults just to stay alive. You can't just skirmish or hunker down behind cover and pick everyone off like in most FPSes. Enemy placement is also solid.

Crysis 1

Can you explain why? It's one of my favorite FPSes, but the level design doesn't stand out for me (save for a few moments).

[Houndninja]

Doom. Easily the most varied and memorable levels ever, despite (or is it because of?) the engine's limitations. Perhaps sector-based 2.5D is a sweet spot between elegance and expressivity. In any case, the architecture is stunning.

Half-Life. They managed to make an old missile base compelling. One of few games, let alone FPSes, to feel like a coherent journey, thanks to the level design. However unbelievable that a nerd would shoot his way through the facility, a good sense of vulnerability is imposed by the grand mechanisms, hazards, lighting, and ambient audio.

Halo. The environments are more nuanced than they appear at first. For tactical purposes, the shapes that comprise are more complex than in a typical FPS. This complexity, and the openness, gives enemies the opportunity to put lots of pressure on you, forcing you to make assaults just to stay alive. You can't just skirmish or hunker down behind cover and pick everyone off like in most FPSes. Enemy placement is also solid.

Crysis 1

Can you explain why? It's one of my favorite FPSes, but the level design doesn't stand out for me (save for a few moments).

Yeah I loved Half-Life one as well every chapter there was some sort of new challenge like
a giant tentacle monster or enemy soldiers. In fact every Half-Life games level design has
been good to me because each new game puts you into a different environment every time!

[s_l_m]

Definitely Super Mario 64 would be one of them. Also the original The Longest Journey if anyone remembers that game, the level design was amazing at advancing the story, things were just perfectly laid out.

[zacaj]

Crysis 1

Can you explain why? It's one of my favorite FPSes, but the level design doesn't stand out for me (save for a few moments).

Not so much the level design itself as the general idea of just dropping you in a big area and giving you an objective, no limitations as to how you go about it.  I think more FPS's need to work like that.  Half-Life works like this on a small scale.  It's not just a coridor you walk down, encountering a single challenge (enemy group) and overcoming it then moving on.  You walk down a corridor for a while, then come to an area that has a puzzle/challenge and there are enemies sprinkled throughout it.  You need to go to various places to find the stuff you need to unlock the door or whatever. 

[Zest]

Rayman Origins and Donkey Kong Country Returns are two side-scrolling platformers that have really wowed me with their level designs. Both give players a limited set of verbs to use with their characters, but find a thousand ways to keep things feeling fresh. Each world and each level has some sort of special gimmick, not just visual but mechanical, and the difficulty for both is higher than expected but expertly paced.

[Noah!]

General:

Gimmick!

I think the thing that really stands out about its level design is that it just feels "natural." Like, it's tough to make challenging levels that don't just feel like a themed obstacle course. Especially back in the NES days, since you're working under such stringent space/power limitations. So, as a result, a lot of NES games featured very static, stiff level design. Yet Gimmick! manages to create a world that feels like a real place. Everything's just so alive and moving, and the level design gels with that idea too.

DoDonPachi

I've recently been sinking some time into this one, and its level design is quite remarkable. If you're not good at it, the levels are a mess; a pounding, unceasing barrage of enemies and bullets. But once you sink some time into it and learn where to put yourself to effectively dispatch enemies, everything starts to align itself into a sort of weird flow. You start appreciating the natural waves of the level design, and the various ebbs and flows in intensity. That is, until you screw up and everything resorts to chaos again.

Specific:

Strider — Stage 2 (Siberia)

Mmm...that bit where you've taken down Solo, and are running down the mountain...the music picks up, explosions behind you, you JUMP and when you hit the ground...everything drops out into this ambient scene, lightning flashing, few enemies, a few background notes and swells. It's rather cinematic in a way.

Rockman 2 Gray Zone — Heat Man

It seems like, in order to add diversity to a game, designers revert to adding more things. More gimmicks, more ideas, etc. In contrast, it takes a considerable amount of effort to hack new gimmicks into a game, so good ROM hacks are usually all about finding clever ways to use the preexisting gimmicks and take 'em further than the original dared to.

Anyway, voosh blocks + underwater physics is a genius combination.

HELLSINKER — Segment 6: INTO CARDINAL / Cardinalshaft Frame

The thing that really sucks about Hellsinker is that, while the beginning levels are good and all, it isn't until the latter half of the game that it becomes the mind-blowing experience I love so much. And this level is probably the best "level" level in the game. Gotta love those giant lasers, and the insane enemy rush right after you finish the boss.

Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman Zero — Stage 6-?

I guess I just have a thing for giant lasers...

[Nillo]

The lack of Milkman Conspiracy in this thread disappoints me.

So anyway, Psychonauts. I don't think any other game I've played has had so consistently excellent and varied levels as this one. It gets even better when you start to consider how each person's brain created the levels you're exploring, and how you can tell what that person fears/likes because of it.

[baconman]

Sonic Generations.

Sometimes it's a matter of route selection, consequence of a failed jump/reaction, or applying a technique in a place where you wouldn't usually expect to (like a fortunately-positioned spindash, for instance), but there's always a number of choices at the player's disposal which makes it a lot of fun to replay and explore. There's a lot of unobvious options in the levels, too.

For a simple example, go to Planet Wisp (Act 1) on the platform with the ring box on it (don't defeat the badnik yet!), and just fire up a good spindash. That's not dumb luck, that's precision design at work there.

Duke Nukem 3D

The first game I played that actually felt 3D. And never a simple start-to-finish keycard grind either, there were tons of hidden areas to loot. And unlike with most modern FPS games, each weapon was distinctively useful in different scenarios. The game allowed you to be creative with it's exploration potential, from busting straight through hallways to crawling in ventilation ducts. And don't even get me started on Spin Cycle! That's just crazy brilliant.

Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden

Enemy placement. Subweapons. Ammo flow for subweapons. No apologies, no excuses.

The Legend of Zelda

Even on this last playthrough I did in Game Club, I STILL found two new secrets I wasn't aware of. I've been playing this on intervals for 25 years, and there's still surprises to discover. What other game can say that?

Spelunky

Terrific combination of level design and randomization, and topped off with a protagonist that can accumulate plenty of abilities, and yet remain precious and frail. It's not hard to win, it's just really easy to lose!

Dark Souls (and to some extent, Demon's Souls)

It's that whole "full circle" thing in Dark Souls, where getting through an area will net you a back door to somewhere you can reaccess the areas from; combined with careful (and not abundant) placement of factors like bonfires and boss areas. You aren't saving just before the boss, and you know why? Because you're gonna MASTER an area before you beat that boss. And it is a game you *can* master with time. See also: Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden.

La Mulana

See that whole bunch of stuff above? Well, ignore the Duke Nukem 3D and part, and the part about Spelunky's randomizing, and that's where this is.

There's more, but that's where my head's at.