moments of level design excellence

[Syphonz]

Silent Hill games ALL have amazing level design.

 

[laikenf]

Metroid Prime 3: the Sky city; actually all Metroid Prime games have amizing level design.

 

[Kaotixthought]

Pretty much anything in Oblivion.
When i first walked out into the wilderness, i was in awe!

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

The Ark, mission in Halo 3. That is just amazing.

Same with The Silent Cartographer in Halo: CE

 

[Devil's Due]

BioShock, the entire game was so wonderful and made me go "Wow".

Too Human, Ice Forest level.

The very first Flood level in Halo: CE. (Can't remember the name of the level) I loved how scared I was when the cut scene was playing with the dead marines helm cam playing on screen. Showing the last moments, and you happened to be in that same room he died in...

That's all I can think of off the bat.

 

[Flour]

The Opera House [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OapHNR_u-NI](starts at 3:20) in Painkiller has to be one of the most awesome levels ever made for a game.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

The very first Flood level in Halo: CE. (Can't remember the name of the level) I loved how scared I was when the cut scene was playing with the dead marines helm cam playing on screen. Showing the last moments, and you happened to be in that same room he died in...

343 Guilty Spark

The area where you assassinate the guy doing the executions in Assassin's Creed is very well designed. It actually gives you multiple viable options.

 

[irrelevantnugget]

When Medal of Honor: Allied Assault came out I was blown away by the D-Day sequence. It was a rush to jump into a game like that and I ended up playing that level many times and playing the game online for quite a long time.

I'm going to go with Snipertown, from the same game.

It was genuinely hard, and satisfying to get through. Let anyone who started playing FPS'es after Halo, play this level, and they'll definitely whine for their regenerative health. Wussies.

The Metroid Zero Mission map. On my very first playthrough(on Easy, even. Heh.), I had already broken the story by unknowingly skipping a boss. I saw a hole in the ceiling and bombjumped up there (my nephew taught me how to do it in Metroid Fusion), skipping some kind of big bug-boss. Imagine my surprise when I only discovered it during my third run-through.