Top 10 Lists: The Top 10 Video Game Door Textures
Doors have been a staple of living since their induction in the early Egyptian times, so it would be only natural to include them in the perfect model of the real world: video games. This Top 10 list is a list of the best doors in video games, from their functionability to their looks. In fact, Wikipedia says most doors are designed to look inviting, and as such, these doors are mainly chosen for their looks. I hope you enjoy our trip through the magnificent world of doors; try not to trip on the frame! Hah hah, just kidding!
Grand Theft Auto 4 is a game praised for its realism, from the way the character feels, to the way cars handle, to the way a bullet fired from a cop's revolver feels as it tears through your lower calf while running from a beaten pedestrian. So, it would be only natural for the doors to look and feel realistic as well! There is one door, however, that stands out from the frame: Niko's Apartment Door in downtown Bohan. When approaching this door, it doesn't even look as if you can even open it because of the way it blends in seamlessly with the apartment's texture. But, take a little gait up the front steps and WHAMMO! The door flies open as if the hinges were freshly oiled. No, seriously, this door wildly flails about at the slightest touch, making it the perfect door to start this list off with.
Ah, Mass Effect! A futuristic game set in a futuristic future with some pretty futuristic doors! A shining example of the craftsmanship put into the doors is reflected with the Chamber Door. This is the door that is seen through most of the bases ventured through in this game, with only some minor variations throughout. The perfect ribbed exterior is built solely for your characters pleasure as he rubs his hand across it to open it, sometimes even mixing it up by having to Decrypt it! The pleasant look, as well as the comfort of touch, are what earn this door its number 9 spot on this list!
Mega Man X is one of the best Megaman games around, and as such, has some of the best Megaman doors around! These doors, often found before each boss fight, consist of a vertical bar attached to a little ball attached to another vertical bar! This simplistic, yet futuristic, design made many childrens' minds run wild with fanciful thoughts of how such a thing could work. Why, all one had to do was run into it with a smile on their face and the ball would rotate, the vertical bars would fall away, and you could jog on through to the awaiting foe! Heck, you could even JUMP into the door and it would open! It really made one wonder why only evil people used these doors to lock themselves in minimalist rooms.
While this may be a slight cheat to the system, I do believe that in the future (past Mass Effect and Megaman), doors will be replaced by teleporters. In Perfect Dark, you play as a sexy and sassy secret agent who goes through a variety of crazy tasks that somehow get no press coverage whatsoever. One of these include taking a massive submarine named Pelagic II (which also had doors that were a contender for this spot) to the bottom of the sea floor to get onboard an alien Cetan ship. Inside, with the help of your big-headed alien buddy and a floating laptop, these teleporters get activated. They resemble round circles made of shimmering, wavy, green goo. All you do is simply walk into one and it takes you where you need to go! Simple, no? If not for the disorienting trip, these "doors" would be higher than the number 7 spot.
Alliteration aside, the SSSSDs from the PS2 classic Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter reflect the general feel of all doors in the bleak future: ominous barricades that shut one in from the outside. Every door in this game looks about the same, with the only change being a red or green light to indicate its open or locked status. Seeing the same door over and over has the effect of wearing down on one's spirit and, as such, has the effect of letting us stand in Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter's boots. Nothing is stronger than letting someone actually feel the exact emotion of a video game character, and it brings a tear to my eye knowing that something as simple as an everyday door that we take for granted is what does the job.
Fable fell short of many gamers' expectations, but there was one area where gamers could not be disappointed (and an area Molyneux should have promoted more): doors. Particularly, the Demon Doors. These doors were giant rock monoliths with a bust of a Zeus-like head jutting out from the frame, locking it tight. These Zeus clones had multiple personalities across the land, and all of them needed certain tasks to be fulfilled before they could be opened. Some required easy tasks like shedding the blood of the innocent, while some required the inhumane task of kicking a chicken at them. Whatever the task, these doors sure knew how to handle business!
"I'm here to chew taffy and open doors... And I'm all outta doors!" This signature line from one of gaming's biggest hide n' seek players reflects how Mr. Nukem feels about doors, for in Duke Nukem 3D, he doesn't actually use them so much as he just blows up walls next to them and walk through them. Whether this stems from an uncontrollable biological illness like OCD or from some traumatic childhood events, it's never explained, but what we do know is that DN gives us an outside-the-box look at how we view and treat doors and the world outside of doors.
Metroid Prime was a revolutionary spin on the classic Metroid games, and boy did it pay off! Perhaps one of the best, if not the best, parts of this game were the many doors scattered about. Lots of doors had different requirements to open; some needed to be shot with missiles, some needed to be shot with waves, but the best door of all just needed to be shot. The basic door, which the game is littered with, is a circle that opens in an screw pattern and is covered by a blue holographic forcefield. All you had to do was shoot the forcefield and voila! The door would open and allow you to pass. Nothing fancy needed, just an arm-mounted energy cannon. Now if only doors today were as easy as that!
Hoo boy, does this game bring back door-related memories! Every child remembers going up to a door in this classic game, approaching it, and having Bowser laugh maniacally as his magical star lock forbids you to enter. So, the only approach is to go out to the different worlds and hunt down stars so that you could rig 11 of them together in a MacGuyver-esque fashion to unlock Bowser's mystical star doors and show him what's up!
And here we come to the motherload of all game doors. This beautifully-crafted, hand-made door from the early 1850s is perhaps the single best game door ever created. In fact, I chose the Dual Shock Edition simply because the rumble reflects how it lightly brushes the floor as you push or pull this door open in the game. Aside from the beauty and precision that went into making it, you never knew what you'd find behind this door! The screen all around would go black, the sound would die down, and all you'd hear were your characters footsteps as you walked up to the omnipresent door. Most of the time it was just a tense build-up to nothing, but every now and then something horrific would be waiting for you as the door shut, leaving your terrified body behind. Even more rarer, sometimes you would open the door and HOLY MACKAROLI something would leap out at you! That is why this door reigns supreme above all other doors.
Well, there you have it! I hope you've enjoyed our trip through the wonderful world of video game doors. It really was not easy to narrow down this list, and one could easily make a Top 1000 list of the best video game doors and still miss some, but I hope this list has helped you get an overall glimpse of the little everyday object we take for granted: a door.
List by Squall954 (11/16/2009)
