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#i could have gone with a video game like ffvi
zippdementia · 5 years
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Ten favorite Snow Levels in Video Games
You have explored mountains, forests, rivers, a desert, maybe even gone to space. What is there left to see? Then it happens: the music becomes minimal and light (or you start hearing reindeer bells and peppy Christmas tunes), a snowflake falls, your character’s breath becomes visible. Yep, you’ve entered the snow level.
Getting its start in video game history as an easy palette swap to add variety to copy-and-paste levels (white isn’t a difficult color to work with), snow levels have evolved throughout the years to contain their own themes, mechanics, and atmosphere. Gamers today almost expect more out of their ice and snow than out of other levels. Does the character leave footprints? Do the snowflakes land on the screen? Does snow crust over on the characters’ clothes? And snow offers a wealth of natural wonders for graphics programmers to play with, from shattering ice to massive avalanches.
For me, though, what sets a really good snow level aside from others is its mood. Have you ever walked on a mountain in winter in real life? If so, you’ll know there is a soft quiet to everything. Snow and ice are fragile, but also incredibly treacherous. Nothing can kill a person as softly as snow. And nothing is quite so lonely as a trek through the mountains. Nothing seems alive except for yourself. A really good snow level will capture, through sound and graphics and situation, this feeling of being alone at the end of the world. Or it will capture the opposite! That festival feel of Christmas and the holidays, of children building snowmen and throwing snowballs, of family reunions and days off of work and school. Of holding your lover’s hand to keep each other warm while your breath frosts and mingles in the cold air.
This list focuses on levels within games that captured one of those feelings for me and still can evoke it, just by me thinking back on them. 
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#10 Metal Gear Solid: Ice Field
Metal Gear Solid was a series about many things, but one of its central themes is isolation. Later games in the series would hit players over the head with this (re: Phantom Pain) but in Metal Gear Solid it was captured simply by the environment, the cold, unfeeling, and yet beautiful Alaskan landscape. And the huge ice field where you fight Sniper Wolf across a vast distance would set the tone for every sniper battle to come in the series. It was very personal, yet very... empty. Like the only thing that could bridge such a distance between two people was a fast moving bullet. Beyond anything else, there was an odd symbolism and beauty in the fight that happened here, and the cold snow only added to the metaphor.
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#9 Final Fantasy 6: Narshe 
When I think of any Final Fantasy, I think of that opening cutscene in FFVI, where three mech warriors tromp across the frozen wasteland set to the game’s main theme and credits. Few RPGs have such an iconic opening. The three are headed to the town of Narshe, nestled in the snowy peaks in the north of Final Fantasy 6 is the mining town of Narshe. The town immediately sets the mood of Final Fantasy 6 and its aesthetic: steam billows out of ungainly contraptions, wind blows across its icy peaks, and the people of the town are suspicious and, in an unusual twist, you seem to be the enemy breaking into their town, labeled the Magitech “Witch”! Narshe sets a certain mood from the very opening, and then continues to play host to some of the most memorable moments from the game, including Terra’s game twisting transformation which ushers in the second act. You can’t think of Narshe without remembering all of these times and instantly get transported back into the feel of FFVI’s sprawling epic story.
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#8 Banjo Kazooie: Freezezy Peak
And then there’s that festival feeling I talked about. Playing through Freezezy Peak is like playing through a holiday. The music, the bright colors, the giant snowman... all come together to represent everything warm and fuzzy about Winter. Like many levels in Rare’s “explore every corner to find it all” game Freezezy Peak feels like an entire world in a small package. It captures everything you might want to do in a bombastic wintery wonderland, including going up against a polar bear in a toboggon race.
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#7 Breath of the Wild: any of the icy terrain
Some people consider the mansion on Snowpeak to be the best dungeon in all of Zelda history. I would agree that it is an unusual and interesting dungeon (especially when set against the rest of the Twlight Princess’ offerings) but while the trek up Snowpeak is a memorable one, it didn’t capture the feeling of being alone on a mountain as well as Breath of the Wild did. Comparing the two may seem unfair, as they are years apart in release, but really it wasn’t so much an issue of graphics as it was one of design. Snowpeak forces the player through a series of challenges, like following a scent in the darkness, fighting creatures in a snowstorm, and snowboarding down the mountain to the Snowpeak Manor. Breath of the Wild has all these things available, but it lets them happen naturally. Meanwhile, Link shivers in the cold, the music becomes soft and almost non-existent, and the amount of enemies drops off massively. With just a few little cues like this, the game demonstrates that you have entered the cold.
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#6 Donkey Kong Country: Snow Barrel Blast
You’ve spent an entire game wandering jungles and forests. Then you boot up the first level of Gorilla Glacier and the familiar green landscape is doused in white. At first, my ten year old self simply found the change pretty, a nice upgrade to old school palette swaps. But as I kept progressing through the level, I noticed snow in the background. Then the snow was thicker. Then it was all around me and I was in the middle of a blizzard I could barely see through, affecting my aim on jumps as I tried to dodge enemies and land in life-saving barrels. Very few of the games on this list offer this kind of dynamic environment and it has made this level stand out in my mind for years. The change is handled so subtly that it happens without you really noticing until you’re well in the midst of ice and snow. Maybe it’s this that makes things feel so much like a real snowstorm and triggered me to feel like I really was stranded on this mountain, with no option except to push forward. Donkey Kong Country is a dangerous place, but nowhere did the environment feel so much a part of the game.
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#5 Metroid Prime: Phendrana Drifts
Metroid games are known for their feeling of loneliness and isolation. For they most part, they are post-apocalyptic games. Samus always seems to be exploring worlds which reached and passed their zenith and are now fallen into disrepair. The Phendrana Drifts from Metroid Prime introduced a different kind of melancholy: that of the frozen wasteland, austere in its beauty. Here was a land that hadn’t gone through the apocalypse, it had never actually reached civilization. Nowhere did the Zebes pirates feel so invasive as they did on those serene snowy plains, their presence all the more notable for how it marred that perfect landscape. The music is incredible, such a huge part of this land’s ambiance, yet the visuals alone secure this level as one of the all time greats in snow design. I’ll never forget looking up for the first time in the stage and seeing the snowdrops strike and melt on Samus’ visor. To this day, whenever I get the desire to go back and play Metroid Prime I know that is this level I’m really desiring to see. Nothing later in the series was quite as impressive to me.
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#4 Last of Us: Winter
Graphically, this is probably the most impressive entry on the list, as watching Ellie track a deer through the snow filled Winter of wherever she and Joel have ended up is an awesome experience. Snow drifts around her, builds up on her clothes, piles up as she moves through it. Everything just feels right. But what lands it a place on this list is where this moment happens in the story. Without giving too much away, Winter comes to represent not only a dark season, but a dark time for Ellie. It is the death of all that came before, the final gasp of innocence on a journey where maybe innocence was the most important thing to try and preserve. Whomever Ellie becomes in Last of Us 2, that started here, in the Winter of her discontent.
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#3 Earthbound: Winters
Few games have as much personality as Earthbound, which pretty much ensures that any of the environments the game chooses to take you through are going to be memorable. Earthbound has such amazing ideas... I mean, it’s winter stage sees you summon the Loch Ness monster by chewing gum, tthen visiting Stonehenge... which is secretly an alien base. That’s nuts on an unparalleled level. The music seems like a long lost peppy Christmas song and every time I hear it I think of Jeff traveling across a snowy landscape, fighting off angry goats and flying saucers with only the help of a bubble gum chewing monkey. It’s always impressed me how much Earthbound did with so little and that earns it a high place on this list.
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#2 Final Fantasy 7: the North Peaks
Okay, so the snowboarding alone would place this high on the list for memorability. But I was also always impressed by the game’s ability to capture the sheer hugeness of a frozen landscape. The further you go, the more that landscape changes. From snowboarding to traversing a huge snowland (one of the largest areas in the game) with only a rustic map as your guide, then traveling across a blizzard filled landscape, to finally arrive at the base of a huge mountain you have to scale up to reach Sephiroth. Through good pacing the game really makes you feel that journey. Then, too, there is the game’s unusual use of FMV backgrounds, which creates some very memorable scenes of high end graphics, where snow might be blowing madly in high rendering while your little lego-looking figure trods towards it. The graphical disparity for me helps to really highlight just how impressive the area is. Like nature (the background) is always going to be more impressive than you, the player.
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#1 Journey: the Mountain
Journey establishes its mountain as a goal early on in the game and then proceeds to take players through a life-and-death cycle where the mountain represents both a harsh obstacle and also a symbol of salvation and renewal. There is no game on this list, maybe no game ever, that has as memorable a scene as Journey’s final moments. I don’t wish to spoil the game for those who have not played it, so believe me when I say that Journey achieves mood. To a fantastic degree. It highlights the harshness of a cold, unfeeling landscape--one that seems to actively wish for your demise. Everything I’ve talked about in previous entries on this list is here: strong graphics, little subtle touches like frost on your robes that grows thicker and thicker the higher you climb, a feeling of isolation yet connection... Journey does it all, and in a fraction of the time. If you haven’t played Journey, go do so. It’s an experience you’ll never forget and will always associate with a frozen landscape.
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