10 video game openings that hook you within minutes

A great opening tells you everything about the game you are about to play: its tone, its world and the kind of promise it is making.

These are the openings people still talk about, and they are a great reason to finally start a classic you have been putting off. Spoilers are kept to the first few minutes.

1. Half-Life

A tram ride through the Black Mesa research facility, on an ordinary workday for scientist Gordon Freeman. Nothing explodes. You simply watch the place go about its business.

It sets up everything that follows without a single cutscene, and it showed a generation of developers how to tell a story through the world itself.

Play it if: you want to see where modern shooters came from.

2. BioShock

A plane crash in the middle of the ocean, a lighthouse rising out of the water, and a bathysphere sinking into the underwater city of Rapture while its founder explains his vision.

It is one of the great reveals in games, and the city only gets stranger from there.

Play it if: you love unforgettable settings.

3. Portal 2

You wake up in a room that turns out to be anything but ordinary, guided by a nervous robot called Wheatley who insists everything is under control.

Within minutes the opening has shown off the game’s humor, its scale and the ruined state of the Aperture facility. It is a masterclass in comic timing.

Play it if: you want laughs from the very first scene.

4. The Last of Us

The prologue puts you in the shoes of Joel’s young daughter on the night the outbreak begins, as an ordinary evening falls apart around her.

It establishes the world, the stakes and the emotional weight of the whole story before the title card ever appears.

Play it if: you want a story that hits hard from the start.

5. Final Fantasy VII

The camera sweeps down from the stars through the city of Midgar, a train pulls in, and a mercenary named Cloud leaps off to join a raid on a Mako reactor.

It is cinematic, mysterious and packed with energy, and it set the template for countless RPGs that followed.

Play it if: you want to understand why this game is a legend.

6. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Nathan Drake wakes up wounded in a train carriage dangling off a snowy cliff, and has to climb his way out as it groans and slips.

It drops you straight into a spectacle and then rewinds to explain how he got there. It is still one of the best action openings ever.

Play it if: you love blockbuster action.

7. Resident Evil 4

Leon Kennedy arrives in a quiet rural village looking for the president’s missing daughter. The villagers are not friendly, and within minutes the whole place turns on him.

The village fight that follows is a perfect lesson in tension and panic, and it is just as tense in the remake.

Play it if: you want action horror at its best.

8. Doom

The reboot opens with the Doom Slayer waking up chained to a slab. He breaks free, kills everything nearby, and when someone starts explaining the plot over a monitor, he simply shoves the screen out of the way.

In a few seconds, the game tells you exactly what kind of game it is.

Play it if: you want pure, loud adrenaline.

9. Outer Wilds

You wake up next to a campfire on the morning of your first space flight, with a marshmallow stick close at hand. Then you head to the observatory to get your launch codes.

It all feels small and cozy at first. Soon you realize something strange is going on, and the game opens up into one of the best mysteries ever made.

Play it if: you love discovering secrets on your own.

10. God of War

The Norse reboot opens quietly, with Kratos cutting down a tree for his late wife’s funeral pyre while his young son watches. Then a stranger knocks at the door.

The fight that follows is huge and brutal, but it is the quiet moments before it that tell you this God of War is different.

Play it if: you want spectacle and a strong father-son story.