Chase sequences in games are really difficult to do well. How many can you think of? Generally they’re either of the timed sort such as in Prototype, where you’ve got to navigate obstacles and reach your target before the timer elapses, or else they’re of the untimed sort where you can wait around for as long as you like. When you reach a certain point, you’ve caught your target – not really much of a chase. But there are a very few games in which the chase has been made into a very well-done, very fun scenario. Here are the best five I can think of.

5 – Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

Fairly early on in the game, a ghoul steals an important artifact, and to catch him you’ve got to do a poor man’s parkour across rooftops, through windows, and across rickety scaffolding to catch it. While the ghoul is climbing walls and leaping twenty feet through the air, you need to resort to climbing ladders and leaping two foot gaps between wooden planks. Being forced to take a far more circuitous route and leap before you look makes the chase frantic, and I personally plunged to my death at least a half dozen times. But once you learn the route you need to take and are racing along, the chase is indeed exhilirating.

Watch the Ghoul Chase from Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

4 – Enter the Matrix

I don’t remember very much detail about the gameplay in Enter the Matrix. The game was most notable for its FMV sequences with footage that was filmed at the same time and with the same actors that were in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. But once part that I remember quite well is being chased by an agent early in the game. If you remember the opening scene in the first Matrix movie, Trinity was in a frenzied flight from an agent. The sequence from the game captured that feeling perfectly – you’ve got to run as fast as you can, and you have absolutely no chance to look back. If you look behind you, you die. It’s the most frantic chase scene in any game I’ve ever played.

3 – Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Overall, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was a frustrating game. A bug prevented me from even completing it. But the first real action in the game, before you have any weapons, is a scene where you’re running from townsfolk who want to kill you. You’re staying in an inn, and you’ve locked your door, but you’ve only got a few seconds before the townies break it down. You move to the adjacent room and push a bookcase in front of the door to block it, then start working on opening the window to get out. This is the beginning of an insane chase that constitutes the only really well crafted part of this game. Very memorable.

Watch the Call of Cthulhu chase

2 – Gravity Bone

It’s very possible that you’ve never heard of Gravity Bone. It’s not an actual commercially available full game. It’s a short, free, downloadable game that I’ve featured on Free Game Friday. But it’s one of the best Free Game Friday games I’ve ever covered. If it were a full game, I’d buy it in a minute. The first level is a 2-minute romp. The second is fun but not phenomenal… until the end. The twist is brilliant and unexpected, and leads to an amazing chase with an equally unexpected ending. I loved it. You can link to the video below, or better yet – download and play the game.

Watch the Gravity Bone chase (skip to 3:30)

1 – Beyond Good and Evil

I’m sure that the people of Lungfishopolis wish by now that I’d shut up about Beyond Good and Evil. I try to keep my raving to a minimum, but when I thought of chases in games, this is simply the best. The cinematic chase near the end of Beyond Good and Evil breaks the rules of the game by changing the camera angle multiple times and intercutting slow-motion mini-cut-scenes in a way that results in a beautiful foot chase. At one point, you’re actually running directly towards the camera, which seems odd until you realize that in that point of the chase, dodging projectiles thrown by your pursuers is more important than dodging upcoming obstacles.

Watch the chase from Beyond Good and Evil