First impressions are important. Too often these days your initial experience of a new game world is an achingly dull tutorial mission, or a lengthy cut-scene ripped off from some old John Woo movie. Sometimes you just want to hit start and find yourself in the middle of a battlefield with a live grenade landing to your right and a rabid bear coming at you from behind. True, this has never actually happened in the history of gaming, but you know what I mean.

So regardless what the rest of it was like, what have been your favourite game openings? Which titles have dropped you right in it, in the best sense of the phrase?