Top Five Best Snow Levels

For the holidays and Bret, what are your favorite Snow-y levels. As a bonus question, is there any memorable Christmas gaming content you enjoyed?

"Oh shit!" was the first thing I said in my head when I read the topic. Best topic ever!!!!!!!!!!

Let me think, but just know that Shadow Moses Island will be on there somewhere.

Also very fitting that I just typed a novel about my local snow storm before even reading this.

Shadow Moses

Planet Hoven in the first Ratchet and Clank

Anywhere in the Harry Potter games with snow. The whole series nails Christmas time

Canada in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

All of Skyrim?

I love snow levels but it's gonna be tough to put this list together. All I have so far is Shadow Moses. Particularly the MGS4 version. It really looks like a frozen wasteland. I love it when we have heavy fog in the morning and the city looks like that

1. Winter in The Last of Us- Best part of the game bar none.

2. Noveria in Mass Effect- It helps a lot that I love the Mako portion too. But Noveria offered some nice variety with exposing corporate corruption, traveling through the snow, and discovering a science experiment gone horribly wrong. Also if you bring Wrex along he threatens to eat someone. Awesome.

3. Cat and Mouse in Uncharted 2- Like winter in The Last of Us, this is my favorite part of the game.

4. Yeti Mansion in Zelda: Twilight Princess- I still remember the moment I figured out that this wasn't a diversion, this was an entire dungeon. The Yeti taking all the random crap you found and putting it in soup was hilarious and the dungeon was pretty great too. Shame you never use the ball and chain you found later.

5. Jedi Academy on Telos in Kotor 2- While more of a small part of it, I loved this part. The HK-50 ambush, the "What the fuck is happening?" stuff behind Atris, and the return all made it pretty damn great.

I know this probably doesn't count as a snow level, but my favorite snow-related video games thing was getting as many snowballs as possible in WoW and then throwing them at people at random.

Only actual level I can think of is Hoth in Rogue Leader allowing me to live out a fantasy.

1. Shadow Moses Island - I won't cheat and do this twice (MGS and MGS4), but I will include them both. A lot of what makes a game brilliant for me is the level structure or the world a game takes place in, and Shadow Moses Island felt so right. It seemed like I was infiltrating this base. Some rich nerd should build there own Shadow Moses Island and make a tour out of it.

2. Uncharted 2 - All snow segments are great. Snow looks beautiful, and I especially love walking around that village. Getting attacked by that snow monster was creepy though. Those bitches just won't die.

3. The Last of Us - only played the game once, but that snow part will just get better and better with each new play.

4. Killzone 3 - There's a lot of snow in the middle portion of that game, and it is all beautiful to look at.

I'm gonna think on 5 a bit more. I feel like I should be adding a Ratchet game or a Final Fantasy game and I'm drawing a blank on their snow worlds except for VII and IX.

My top 5 snow levels:

1. The cheesy snowboarding area in Final Fantasy VII. Shockingly, it was the best snowboarding game ever released at that point, until Nintendo brought out 1080 Snowboarding on N64 six months later.

2. The Yeti Mansion in Twilight Princess. It had a Final Fantasy VII-esque snowboarding sequence leading up to it and there was never anything about it that screamed "THIS IS A DUNGEON!" as is usual for Zelda games.

3. The first Lost Planet game was pretty neat, for its time.

4. The Arcadia region in Dragon Quest VIII.

5. Cold, Cold Mountain in Super Mario 64.

Arcadia region is nice, but it was too small and not enough snow for me personally.  Same reason why I didn't pick Final Fantasy VII.  I used to just run around in VII watching my feet in the snow.

I think I'm about to the snow section in Tearaway, I hope it's good!

BretBaber wrote:Arcadia region is nice, but it was too small and not enough snow for me personally.  Same reason why I didn't pick Final Fantasy VII.  I used to just run around in VII watching my feet in the snow.

I think I'm about to the snow section in Tearaway, I hope it's good!

One of the most humorous things in Dragon Quest VIII was that in the last armor shop before you head into the Arcadia region, the best armor available for Jessica is a Magic Bikini, and it's an appearance-changing armor. So Jessica gets to run around in the snow wearing a skimpy bikini.

5. Ni No Kuni - Could have been bigger, but what was there was awesome. I loved how your characters go in in their normal clothes and have to get winter clothes. While they're in normal clothes, they're shivering like mad. Good stuff. Awesome game.

Yeah, I guess I could add the snow areas from Ni no Kuni. They sure were gorgeous and they looked like a cold, bleak place you could get lost in. Plus, it's cool that Level-5 thought to dress your characters appropriately, especially in contrast to what I said about Dragon Quest VIII earlier.

Nevermind, I was foolish Journey to #4 and Ni No Kuni to #5. Journey is stunning on that mountain.

I still hate that Journey snow bit. Really any bit where you can barely walk but have to press forward is torture to me. It sucked in Journey, MGS4, and even Mass Effect 3.

I'd agree with that Greenman. That is never fun. Snow levels are also tough because many include slippy slide-y ice which is usually bad.

No slippery slides here, just plenty of beautiful snow! Which is reminiscent of my actual life right now. Getting to work tomorrow will be a Journey, that's for sure.

I don't mind slippery-slidy ice/snow levels as long as there aren't a lot of really cheap deaths involved and the game has the physics to handle it well. Slogging through snow at a thumb-cramping slow pace is pretty off-putting.

Uncharted 2 did the slogging well. You had just a little bit of that, then shot things, then Nate collapsed. Didn't outstay its welcome.