Storming The Castle / Video Games

---

• 24: The Game has two missions made up of this: one where Jack infiltrates Peter Madsen's hideout in order to rescue his daughter, and again during the very last mission where he assaults Max's boat to save Kate Warner.
• To beat the game in The Adventures of Robin Hood you need to get inside castle and kill the sheriff and his henchmen.
• Ape Escape and its sequels tend to use this trope whenever Specter's hideout is revealed . In fact, the first game and its remake has you do this no less than THREE times; you storm Specter's castle in the "Crumbling Castle" level, storm an office building hijacked by Specter in the "TV Tower" level AND you intrude his amusement park, Specter Land, in the "Monkey Madness" level.
• Arfenhouse 3 culminates with the heroes going into Billy's castle. Fortunately for them, the guards are on crack.
• The Assassin's Creed franchise has several examples:
  • In Assassin's Creed, Altaïr ibn La-Ahad and several other Assassins storm Masyaf after learning that Al Mualim is a member of the Templars.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Revelations, after learning that Sofia is in danger, Ezio travels back to her bookshop to find that Yusuf died trying to protect Sofia from the Templars. Enraged by the betrayal of Ahmet, Ezio gathers the Turkish Assassins and storms the Arsenal. Ezio can choose to kill every Templar in the harbor by himself or summon an infinite assassin army to fight along side him.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Initiates, Assassin Harlan Cunningham leads a small team in attacking the Abstergo campus in Rome to kill several Templar hackers tracking Desmond Miles. They manage to get the job done and escape, but one of them is followed back to their base by Otso Berg, which leads to the Templars storming the Assassins' base.
  • In Assassin's Creed III', Desmond storms the same Abstergo campus to rescue his father and kill Warren Vidic.
  • Assassin's Creed: Valhalla: Several times over the storyline, often involving actual castles. And the "Siege of Paris" DLC, which involves a band of Vikings trying to... well, lay siege to Paris (specifically, the heavily fortified inner island part).
• While the first Bangai-O game is entirely spent around wrecking the Cosmo Gang's space stations and whatnot, the storming of their HQ (at the last level, naturally) fits this the most.
• Bayonetta's Chapter 15, A Tower To Truth, is a Recap Level that takes you through every kind of Mook (and several bosses) on a rampage through the Ithavoll Building that you've been trying to get to all game.
• Bully, in the mission named... Storming the Castle. You launch a one-man assault on the heavily-fortified Observatory that serves as the base of the Nerd faction, breaking through several lines of defense, including a tripod-mounted, double-barreled, electrically-powered Spud Cannon, and finally blast in the heavily-armored gates to bust into the core and take out their leader, Earnest. Considering that the system was, apparently, designed to withstand an assault from the entire football team (the Jocks faction is the natural enemies of the Nerds), this is quite impressive. Its ability to stand up to such an assault is later proven when you assist in its defense from the Jocks after putting indecent pictures of the head cheerleader all over town.
• Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, ends with you not only storming the Siegfried Line, but also clearing a bunker, a network of trenches, a bridge, and finally destroying a pair of V2 rockets, all while Flak 88s fire at you, first from far away, then from the other side of the bridge.
• Call of Duty: World at War: Both campagins end up storming a heavily fortified stronghold. The final American mission is to storm the Shuri Castle, while the final Russian mission is to storm the Reichstag.
• Castlevania: Technically all of them. It's kind of the point of the series. But this trope really only applies to when Dracula's castle is the last level, like in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Castlevania: Bloodlines, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.
• The core of Conqueror's Blade is the siege battle, where two teams of up to 15 players each are tasked with either defending or assaulting a medieval castle.
• Every mission in the Crusader games, though the exact reasons vary.
• In Crusader Kings, you have the option of turning any siege into a Storming the Castle scenario. Storming a castle will cause defenders' morale to degrade every 12 hours instead of 12 days, but unless you're outnumbering the defenders at least 10-to-1 (certain troop types are better at sieges than others so the actual number may vary) you will take disproportionate casualties in doing so. Generally, storming is only something you do if you're certain of winning anyway.
• Dark Forces: Three levels — 5 (the Gromas Mines, where the phrik metal is being dug up), 8 (the robotics facility on Anteevy, where phrik metal was refined for use in constructing Dark Troopers) and 14 (the Arc Hammer, where the Dark Troopers themselves are built) — see Kyle invading an Imperial base for the express purpose of blowing it up, stalling and ultimately putting an end to the Dark Trooper Project; his invasion of the Arc Hammer also sees him facing and killing General Mohc, mastermind of the Dark Trooper Project.
• In Darklands, set in the 15th century Germany, your team of four or five routinely sieges, storms or infiltrates robber baron fortresses. Though most robber barons have armies of less than 10 strong.
• In Defender of the Crown sieges are an important part of the game.
  • Until the first siege Saxons hold a truce between themselves. After any castle is stormed by anybody, it's a no-holds barred war.
  • There's a time limit for a siege. At the end of the month all fortifications are instantly restored.
• The very first mission in Deus Ex involves breaking into The Statue of Liberty. More typically, the last was an assault on the Big Bad's underground bunker at Area 51.
• Inverted in Dragon Age: Origins, where Shale the golem bids you farewell just before the final mission with "Have fun storming the castle" despite the mission being a prime example of All Your Base Are Belong to Us. Your objective is to storm a castle, after all — well, more accurately, Fort Drakon.
  • Also shown in the backstory of the Warden's Keep DLC. The forces of the tyrannical King Arland attempted repeatedly to storm Soldier's Peak and destroy the Grey Wardens, and only succeeded after months had passed and the Wardens were finally out of supplies.
  • Act 2 of Dragon Age II has Hawke, his/her friends, Knight-Commander Meredith, and First Enchanter Orsino doing this to the Viscount's Keep in order to rescue the nobles who have been dragged there by the Arishok.
  • Seen again in Dragon Age: Inquisition. There are a number of missions which involve the Inquisitor and their friends storming and conquering keeps and other small castles.
• Dwarf Fortress has invasions by hostile neighbors or creatures which may or may not happen at the climax, depending on how well your fort's defense and fighters are.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the climax of the Alduin and Civil War main quests involves storming the fane of Skuldafn to get to the portal to Sovngarde, and the siege of Solitude or Windhelm, respectively. Skuldafn is just you (and maybe any of your summons) versus a horde of draugr and a few dragons, while the sieges are you with the army of your choice.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout: New Vegas ends with an all-out assault on either Hoover Dam or the Legate's Camp.
  • Fallout 3: Broken Steel ends with you staging a one-man assault on Adams Air Force Base.
  • Fallout 4 has the "The Nuclear Option" quests, where you invade the Institute with troops from either the Brotherhood of Steel, the Railroad, the Minutemen, or all three, blast your way through armies of synths, and eventually blow the whole place up by sabotaging their nuclear reactor. Conversely, the climactic Institute quest, "Airship Down", has you storm the Brotherhood of Steel's base with the aid of Synth troops, and hack Liberty Prime to blow up the Prydwen. Much earlier, there's "Taking Independence", where you help the Minutemen take back their headquarters, which is actually named The Castle. Inverted in "Defend the Castle", where you have to fight off an Institute siege.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy II: You storm the Emperor's castle... which is hidden within a Cyclone and can only be reached via flying dragon.
  • Final Fantasy VI: In order to stop the insane megalomaniac from dying of boredom, your party splits into three groups and storm his Evil Tower of Ominousness in a three-pronged attack from your airship.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Assaulting the Shinra Building, the most awesome stretch of the game. Later in the game, you storm the city itself, and can revisit the Shinra Building, but this bit's only necessary if you want one character's ultimate weapon.
  • Final Fantasy VIII: You storm a flying battle-academy, and later on you storm a sky-scraper sized landing beacon for moon monsters.
  • Final Fantasy IX: You fly your airship into Memoria, going head to head with an army of dragons, when The Cavalry arrives in the form of an airship fleet that shows up and blasts most of the dragons to pieces.
  • Final Fantasy X: To rescue a kidnapped member of the group, the rest of the characters use an airship to storm the fortress-city Bevelle, guarded with robotic guards, warrior monks with flamethrowers, and a dragon.
  • Final Fantasy XII: While the Rebel Fleet diverts attention, you storm the Sky Fortress Bahamut and break your way through (literally) endless hordes of enemies on your way to the Big Bad.
  • Commonly comes up near the end of the MSQ in Final Fantasy XIV. A Realm Reborn, in particular, has two back-to-back dungeons, Castrum Meridianum (which entails fighting through the Big Bad's base defenses) and the Praetorium (the infiltration of the base proper). Stormblood, meanwhile, has Ala Mhigo, the capital of the eponymous Imperial-occupied city-state, with the subsequent Final Boss fight starting from the capital's Royal Menagerie.
  • Final Fantasy XV: You storm the razed ruins of your Doomed Hometown, a once grand metropolis that is now a den of powerful daemons, where the Big Bad awaits.
• Seeing as most Fire Emblem games start with your main character being driven from their castle and kingdom, one can expect lots of literal Storming the Castle missions to take back the throne in each game. However, these examples are rarely The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• For Honor:
  • Many of the story missions involve attacking or defending castles and fortresses, and often show just how hard it is to properly assault a well-defended castle. The final mission of each campaign, in particular, tends to involve particularly difficult sieges and assaults. The final Knights mission involves defending a massive ram needed to breach the walls of a Viking fortress quickly, because of enemy reinforcements that are coming in via the nearby rivers. In the final mission of the Viking campaign, you're storming the capital city of the Dawn Empire, only to get trapped on the bridge into the city by enemy reinforcements and forced to fight your way back out. In the final Samurai campaign, you're storming Big Bad Apollyon's massive fortress known as the Shard, with both the Knights and the Samurai armies putting aside their differences to take her down.
  • Many matches in the Dominion game mode take place while the attacker side is storming the defender's fortifications. Some, such as the Beachhead map, include amphibious assaults, while others, like Gauntlet or Citadel Gate, involve attacking the outer defenses of a much larger castle.
  • The Breach game mode involves an entire extended castle siege in which the attackers must escort and ram and capture ramparts from the defenders' archers while the defenders try to destroy the ram with infantry and boiling oil. If the attackers can destroy both the inner and the outer gates with the ram, they can then kill the defending Commander to win the match, while if the defenders destroy the ram or deplete the attackers' number of respawns in the final stage, they win.
• Freedom Fighters (2003) plays this twice: first you infiltrate the Soviet base at Governor's Island and assassinate General Tatarin, then you and your entire rebellion storm the base, kick major butt, and raise the Stars-and-Stripes on the fortress.
• Quite a few missions from Irrational Games' Freedom Force and Freedom Force Versus the Third Reich.
• Freelancer:
  • The second half of the game is essentially one string of Castle Storms after another. First, you attack Governor Tekagi's fortress to retrieve the Proteus Tome. Then you attack a secret Rheinland shipyard with battleships under construction, guarded by seven capital ships. Then you attack a secret jail in the Alaska system guarded by the entire LSF. Then you attack a Nomad installation to retrieve a power cell. The game ends with an attack on the Nomad home system, complete with Dyson sphere.
  • Starlancer has several missions that could fit the trope, even if you only count the ones where your task is to run interference for a boarding party and/or a cargo lifter trying to gain entry to the target, as opposed to simply blowing it up.
• Gears of War 2 has this happen, but it's not The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. The achievement you get for the act lampshades this trope.
• In Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, after bailing out of a helicopter and being separated from his teammates, Cpt. Mitchell has to storm Chapultepec Castle solo.
• In later incarnations of the Go Cross Campus game, which is basically massively multiplayer Risk, the developers introduced "fortified" territories. There's usually a standardized 42-58 probability disadvantage for attackers, but for fortified territories, it was 30-70, meaning that for every ten units of "armies" (or later, "energy"). Sometimes, losing teams would hole up in fortified territories, and it would take overwhelming force to dislodge them. Sometimes they unexpectedly survived an additional turn because of this.
• In The Godfather: The Game, you will have to attack and take over the warehouses, hubs and compounds of the other four families. As the trope suggests, you will have a harder time with these than with normal shops and rackets.
• The Grand Theft Auto series plays this one quite a lot, usually twice:
  • Grand Theft Auto III: The Cartel's Panlantic construction site, then Catalina's base.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Ricardo Diaz's mansion, then Sonny tries to pull the same on your house in a Shout-Out to Scarface.
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: The cops do this to your motel, then you do this on Smoke's crack house.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV and its expansions do this a lot. In the main game, you get to storm Mikhail Faustin's club, and then at the end the abandoned casino where Jimmy Pegorino (and Dimitri in the Deal ending) is hiding. The Lost And Damned has the Lost storming the clubhouse of their rivals, the Angels of Death and ends with an assault on Alderney State Penitentiary. The Ballad Of Gay Tony has the tables turned on you, as Bulgarin's assassins storm Tony's nightclub in the penultimate mission.
• Half-Life 2: A mute theoretical physicist storms the Torture Cellar prison Nova Prospekt with a multi-ethnic Wrench Wench Action Girl and an army of infinite cannon fodder alien insects. And it's still one of the toughest two levels in the game. There's also the Big Bad's stronghold itself, which comprises of the last level or so.
• Done repeatedly throughout the Halo series:
  • In Halo: Combat Evolved, the Castle was the Covenant battlecruiser Truth and Reconciliation to rescue Captain Keyes. Another example occurs with Halo's Control Room.
  • In Halo 2, it happens multiple times; assaulting Regret's temple, assaulting the Library, a very special case of assaulting the government towers of High Charity (starting from the inside), storming Delta Halo's Control Room, etc.
  • It goes even crazier in Halo 3, which involves assaulting a Covenant-controlled city, followed by storming a Flood-controlled cruiser, then storming the communications relay held by Truth's remaining forces, and then storming the Flood-controlled High Charity. You also storm yet another Halo Control Room.
  • The end of Halo 4 has you storming the Didact's personal ship by yourself. Additionally, a lot of bases get stormed in Spartan Ops, with Fireteam Majestic and Palmer managing to storm Jul 'Mdama's main base near the end.
  • In Halo 5: Guardians, you help the Arbiter's forces storm Sunaion, the Covenant's last city on Sanghelios.
  • In Halo Wars 2, the forces under the command of the UNSC Spirit of Fire take control of a particle cannon on the Ark to disable the shields of the Banished flagship Enduring Conviction while a second strike force lead by Jerome-092 with the UNSC logistics AI Isabel board the carrier and take control of its energy projector and fire on the Banished settlement below it, penetrating the Ark's surface and causing its sentinels to attack and destroy the carrier.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic, the only way to win (at least in most scenarios) is to capture all the other players' castles through direct assault.
• Done in Homeworld, with the player's faction experiencing it from both sides at various points. The Great Nebula missions is an inversion.
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance has you perform three, though it's rather justified in-game: The local lords of your little slice of Bohemia have only about a hundred men all together to bring to the field, but the invasion of Sigismund's forces is of an undetermined number beyond that count, removing the standard tactic of starving the enemy out as an option because that would leave their territories undefended and their forces open for attack from the behind should they attempt a standard siege. Not to mention the division between the various Bohemian lords means that there is no help coming your way while bandits and mercenaries flock to Sigismund. Fortunately, the first two places attacked (Pribyslavitz and Vranik) are somewhat fortified ruins of abandoned towns rather than proper fortresses. Unfortunately, the last one is Talmberg, stolen via Wounded Gazelle Gambit while its lord and most of its soldiers were at Vranik. To their credit, your side does have a better quality of troops, while engaging in scouting and proper application of tactics (and the use of a siege engine in the last one) to carry the day, resulting in their victory in all three fights.
• Kingdom Hearts generally has one of these scenarios occurring per installment. If not the lead villain's castle (if there is one), it can apply to a lesser villain's castle or rough equivalent instead.
• Kirby games generally have at least one level (or several) that involves storming King Dedede's castle single-handedly, even when he's not the main antagonist. In particular, Kirby Super Star's "Revenge of Meta Knight" features Kirby storming an airship (Halberd), which is large and complex enough to be considered a flying castle in and of itself.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has Link doing this right after starting the game with nothing but a sword and shield. Then he has to do it a second time.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, when Link storms the Forsaken Fortress at the start of the game, again at the middle, and later on breaks the barrier around Hyrule Castle to storm Ganondorf's tower, at the bottom of the sea..
  • Reaching the conclusion of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess requires Link to break into Hyrule Castle, which has been sealed in a mystic golden diamond. Once the diamond is removed, he has to fight King Bulblin to get a Small Key, then almost bites it via ambush but is saved by the arrival of some unexpected allies. Then he has to make his way up the castle to the throne room for two of the three final battles. And before all of that, he has first to storm the Palace of Twilight in order to search for Zant.
  • Hyrule Castle must be stormed by Link toward the finale of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which now serves as the prison for Calamity Ganon. If the player isn't feeling up to a one-man frontal assault against a gauntlet of mini-bosses and Demonic Spiders, the game also offers multiple routes for gaining entrance stealthily. All that really matters is reaching the throne room, where Calamity Ganon now resides. What makes this unique is that, thanks to the game's extreme open-world design, you can try to pull this off at literally any point you desire after the tutorial section on the Great Plateau. Even if you don't plan to try and beat the game that quickly, there are several quests that encourage you to briefly sneak into the place a bit early just to collect the valuable treasures there.
  • Hyrule Castle must be stormed again by Link in the finale of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, only this time Link is backed up by several powerful companions and the allied forces of all of Hyrule.
  • Yet again, Hyrule Castle must be stormed by Link at a certain point in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, with the castle now suspended in the air. While the player can reach and explore it at any time after the tutorial, the game will beckon the player to fully explore the castle only after the completion of mandatory story quests.
• Used in Marathon when you have to assault the citadel.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect: The assault on Chora's Den, to interrogate Fist. Notable in that it works, rare in an example from early on in the story, and that Fist isn't the Big Bad. Later, the mission on Virmire involves staging a two-pronged assault on Saren's research base to deliver a nuclear warhead. Finally, the climax involves storming your castle after the Big Bad storms it, as said castle is key to his plans.
  • Many missions in Mass Effect 2, such as Grunt's recruitment mission, Tali's recruitment mission and loyalty mission, Samara's recruitment mission, Garrus' loyalty mission. and so on. And a lot of the ones that aren't are you holding a position against a bunch of enemies trying this. Also Legion's loyalty mission, except the goal is to sneak in using the Normandy's stealth systems. All of them however, are topped by the now famous final Suicide Mission to attack the Collector Base.
  • Near the end of Mass Effect 3, you do this to the Cerberus base. Also, due to the prevalance of the Reapers who repeatedly invoke All Your Base Are Belong to Us, several safe havens go on to become enemy strongholds that you need to reclaim. The trilogy culminates in Shepard storming a Reaper-occupied Earth, in order to gain access to the Reaper-hijacked Citadel. One of the later DLC missions in Mass Effect 3 involves helping Aria T'loak do this to Omega after it gets taken over by Cerberus.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: Pathfinder Ryder does this a lot. There's the kett base on Eos, an exaltation facility on Voeld when they rescue the Moshae (blowing that one up optional), the kett base on Voeld, a scavenger flophouse on Elaaden, a different scavenger fortress elsewhere on the moon, and infiltrating the Archon's command ship. The last one is the least successful, regardless of what the player chooses, they have to leave several prisoners behind, and potentially another Pathfinder.
• All three acts of Max Payne end with the title character Storming the Castle.
  • Act One has Max storming Ragna Rock, Jack Lupino's hideout, in order to take down the owner.
  • Act Two has him storming the Punchinello manor in order to take down the crimelord he deems responsible for Alex's murder.
  • The final act has Max taking the battle directly to Nicole Horne's doorstep, the Aesir building, in order to make her answer for what happened to his family. Also, at one point, he storms a boat.
• Mega Man:
  • The games in the classic series always end with Mega Man singlehandedly making his way through Dr. Wily's latest Wily Castle (or rough equivalent, depending on the game). In some games, he pulls this off in two castles!
  • The third mission from the end of the game in Mega Man Star Force 3 has Geo, Sonia, A.C. Eos, their wizards and 6 random Satella Police Officers decide to take the fight to the dealers. This attack begins by Goodal sending Geo on a recon mission to locate their base of operations and ends with Joker exploding taking A.C. Eos with him, and Heartless and Mr. King escaping to another base.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: After saving planets Bryyo and Elysia from the threat of Phazon, Samus travels to the Space Pirates' home planet to give them some hell and eventually disable the planetary shield to allow the Galactic Federation to do the storming themselves as well (which later helps Samus destroy the local Leviathan Seed as well). Later, at the end, Samus and the entire Galactic Federation does the same thing to Phaaze, in order to get rid of the Phazon menace once and for all.
• Modern Warfare:
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: In the second to last level, the joint SAS and USMC forces storm a hijacked Russian nuclear missile silo.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:
    • In the penultimate level, Price and Soap attack Hotel Bravo, the cliffside base of corrupt US General Shepherd.
    • In Whiskey Hotel, you have to storm the occupied White House, and light signal flares on the roof before the Air Force bombs the area to Hell.
    • Played completely straight when Task Force 141 storms an actual Russian castle used as a gulag.
  • The finale in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 involves Price and Yuri assaulting Makarov's forces in a heavily defended Arabian hotel while wearing Juggernaut armor. Previously, however, a literal Storming the Castle mission occurs in the fifteenth mission Stronghold to learn the location of Makarov.
• Once per Episode in the Like a Dragon series, where the protagonist(s) tear through clan headquarters/some other tall building to reach the Big Bad before their plans come to fruition.
• Done in Mount & Blade. You can either besiege a castle for thirty days and wait for the defenders to starve out, or you can simply charge the walls and take it for yourself. Notable in that it is more or less the only way to take castles, unless you enjoy being a sadist. Yes, they provide you with the siege option, but by the time the 30 days are up, your army will be either starved or deserting (or starved AND deserting). Apparently, recruits in the world of Mount&Blade get exceptionally depressed at being told to sit down and peacefully wait out a siege from a safe distance. It's also worth noting that sieging simply does not work — even after 30 days of tedium the enemy will STILL continue to thumb their noses at your demand that they surrender. So get over those walls, lad!
• The final stage of New Legends, the Forbidden City, where you lead the La Résistance to infiltrate Xao Gon's underground lab to prevent him from launching his Kill Sat which can destroy China and the rest of the world.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2 towards the end of act two, the PC has to lead an attack on Black Garius' castle, Crossroad Keep. It's somewhat justified that the pc has to go to him, as he's performing a ritual to steal the powers of the King of Shadows. The penultimate sequence in the game consists of defending your castle against an assaulting army, and the final level is storming the Vale of Merdelain. It's called, appropriately enough, the gauntlet.
  • The first expansion pack, Mask of the Betrayer, has several instances of this, and culminates with an assault on the City of Judgement itself.
• Most of the levels in Oni are Storming the Castle scenarios, especially after the TCTF turns on Konoko.
• In each main incarnation of the Pokémon games, your character storms the headquarters of the region's villainous organization. This happens roughly halfway through the storyline.
• Happens in the finale of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity with the now heavily-defended Glacier Palace.
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is basically a one-man version of this, as the Prince infiltrates the Island of Time and proceeds to tear down the entire fortress one chamber at a time.
• Psychonauts has an instance of this in the level Waterloo World. In the level, you are tasked with helping Fred Bonaparte defeat Napoleon Bonaparte in a game of Waterloo-O. In the end, he locks up his castle, and you have to storm it using the Hearty Knight unit.
• In Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood, you have to assault several castles, belonging to nobles loyal to Prince John. Usually, with the help of allied armies.
• The final mission in Silent Storm is to storm the THO headquarters with a squad of six. Most levels also include storming some sort of fortress.
• Something Series:
  • Something: At the end of each world, Mario storms the Chateaus. They even get an Elemental Theme Naming. Mario also storms Ballser's Castle in order to retrieve the game's plot.
  • Something Else: DDDark Castle, a ''Kirbys Dreamland 2 reference. You even get to fight a Dark Matter-possessed King Dedede at the end. There's also the Last Castle, the base of the Evil Guy.
• Sonic Adventure 2 have a minor version of this, as both stories involve somebody invading Prison Island (in the Hero one, Tails to save Sonic; in the Dark one, Eggman/Robotnik to get Shadow, and later Rouge to steal Chaos Emeralds).
• The endgame for Sonic Unleashed has Sonic, Tails and Chip storming Eggmanland, a continent-sized city.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth Twice. The first time you help either the Humans or Elves (with the Goth kids siding with your chosen faction) attack the school where the other team is holed up. The second time is the final level where a combined army of Humans, Elves, the Goth kids, the Girls, Pirates and The Federation defeat Clyde by helping you fight your way through his evil fortress.
• In the finale to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, the Marked One disables the Monolith's Brain Scorcher, triggering a mad dash from all the factions in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to reach the now open Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, headquarters of the Brainwashed and Crazy Monolith stalkers and rumored site of the Wish Granter. Even the Ukrainian military and special forces join in, sending in attack helicopters and armored personnel carriers to retake the NPP, all while shooting at all the trespassing stalkers along the way.
• The finale missions of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm involve Sarah Kerrigan and the Zerg Swarm invading the Dominion's capital planet Korhal. The Grand Finale actually consists in forcing the door of Arcturus Mengsk's castle so Kerrigan can get in.

  Kerrigan: Keep the Swarm outside! I have a rendezvous with the Emperor...

  • The entire series plays with this trope, as befitting a strategy game. Wings of Liberty ended with an assault on Charr^note A whole damn planet, and devoted an entire story arc to breaching, forming a beachhead, and ultimately curing Kerrigan. Legacy of the Void ended with all three races breaching another universe to kill the real Big Bad of the entire saga.
• Star Wars:
  • The Dark Forces Saga series is all about storming bases. Be it Imperial battle cruisers, smuggler's hideouts, Sith temples or criminal kingpin outposts, you name it, you'll storm it.
  • Same goes for the Knights of the Old Republic games, with the most impressive stormings being the Star Forge and Malachor. The temple of Freedon Nadd on Dxun and the storming of the Onderon palace also come to mind. And they happen at the same time.
• Most of the early missions in Strife revolve around helping The Front regain momentum and open up a way to attack The Programmer's castle. The resulting level fits the trope best, as your allies show up in force to lend a hand, for all the good it'll do you. Most of the later levels involve storming the resident bases on your own.
• Stronghold. You are either storming a castle, or building a castle that can withstand a direct assault.
• A very common occurrence in the Super Mario Bros. series, especially in the 1985 original, where it occured in every fourth level. Shame it was the wrong one every time, except for the last one. In fact, all the RPG's use this as The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, except Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, where this happens in the one-to-last chapter. In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Bowser's Inside Story, this overlaps with All Your Base Are Belong to Us, since the villains are homeless at the beginning of the game. In Super Mario Galaxy, in the endgame, you (As Mario) storm a castle in the center of the universe which turns out to only be a portal to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• To confront the Piranha Wizard in Super Mario World: Piranha Island, Mario must storm Piranha Castle. Unfortunately, it's also a pipe maze that loops around if you don't know what you're doing.
• The middle part of the Ryusei route of Super Robot Wars Original Generation has the Hagane storming Divine Crusaders Headquarters to end the Divine War.
• In Super Smash Bros. Brawl's story mode The Subspace Emissary, in addition to Kirby making another (failed) attempt at storming the Halberd, its original owner finds himself storming the ship to take it back from Bowser and Ganondorf who had hijacked it.
• Tales of Symphonia has the assault upon the Tower of Salvation.
• Tales of Hearts. About halfway through, the heroes chase the Big Bad into the Mobile Crystal Castle Cendrillion, but get curb-stomped by him and his Guardian Knight and get coerced into activating it for him, which was his entire goal.
• Tales of Vesperia has the storming of The Herakles.
• The entirety of Time Crisis has VSSE agent Richard Miller storming Sherudo Garo's castle in order to save Rachel MacPherson.
• Most games based on the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon involve the Turtles assaulting the Technodrome by the end. It tends to be the setting for the final stage, but that's not always the case, as it's sometimes used as a fake-out and a similar type of base is used instead. Radical Rescue, for its part, takes a different approach by having Michelangelo infiltrate the Foot Clan's hideout to rescue his captured brothers as well as Splinter and April.
• In the Total War series, particularly Rome, defending a castle is often trivially easy, and a force of only a few squads can potentially hold off hundreds of organised attackers. Unfortunately, due to the enemy AI, assaulting a castle is often more a case of knowing which bugs to exploit than actual skill. Although if you do try a good old fashioned head on castle assault, it will certainly be heavy on casualties.
  • In Total War: Shogun 2, a castle can be defended from a full-sized army by an ashigaru (armed peasant) force half their number. This is often because a number of the attacking units will be cavalry, which are utterly useless when assaulting castles, at least the way the AI does it (wait until all infantry are dead or routing, then run to the castle and dismount). Archers on the battlements are heavily protected from incoming arrows, while the same cannot be said for the attacking archers. The standard way to storm a castle is for infantry to climb the walls, during which time they are extremely vulnerable to arrows and defending infantry. The AI never seems to try to destroy the gates and come in this way.
  • In Medieval II: Total War the victor of a siege was usually determined by a chaotic melee at the gates, or whichever part of the walls had been breached, making assaulting a castle a long and arduous, if not complicated, affair. The AI made defending settlements easier by positioning its entire army near the walls whilst they battered down your gates, allowing a lot of their army to be easily picked off by archers on the walls.
  • Empire: Total War had star-forts in the place of castles, and all infantry had grapple hooks, allowing them to scale the walls at any point without having to knock them down; theoretically, this made for more tactical siege warfare, although in practice the woeful AI, on the part of both the enemy and your own forces, made sieges best avoided, more so than in any other installment.
  • Automatically resolving the battle will usually lead to less casualties since the AI is more efficient at storming the castle.
• Nearly every Touhou Project game, sometimes literally:
  • Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: Player character storms the Scarlet Devil Mansion.
  • Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom: Player character storms the afterlife.
  • Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night: The player team storms the elusive Eientei.
  • Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith: Player character storms the titular mountain where Kanako's shrine resides.
  • Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism: Player character storms an abandoned hell.
  • Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object: Player character storms the titular airship.
  • Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires: Player character storms... a mausoleum. It's more epic than it sounds.
  • Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character: Player character storms an actual castle, which also happens to float in the sky. Upside-down.
  • Touhou Kanjuden ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom: Player character storms the Lunar Capital, but then is made to look around the Moon for the Greater-Scope Villain.
  • Touhou Tenkuushou ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons: Player character storms Ushirodo-no-Kuni.
• Unreal series:
  • Unreal requires you to enter the Skaarj mothership and kill the Skaarj Queen.
  • Many of the Assault maps in both Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2004 requires the attacking team to invade a base and either a) take control of it, b) steal a MacGuffin or recover a stolen MacGuffin and escape with it, c) destroy a MacGuffin or a set of them or d) just blow the base to smitheereens.
  • The Onslaught mode from 2004 requires you to do this by connecting your base with the enemy base via a series of power nodes and then blowing the power core to pieces.
  • Unreal Tournament III ends with the Ronin team storming Omicron 6, the Big Bad's home planet, in order to finish her for good. The Warfare gametype (which is Onslaught + support nodes and an Orb) not only is also a straight example in the same vein as its predecessor, but also features many maps of the "attack vs. defense" variety such as Islander, Islander_Necris and Hostile.
  • Unreal Tournament 4's Blitz mode requires the attacking team to infiltrate the enemy base and place their flag on the flag base.
• In Vietcong 2, the last two missions in the US campaign deals with Boone and his team storming Hue's Imperial City, assisted by ARVN troops.
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and Soulstorm metamap campaigns are completed by attacking every enemy faction's stronghold territory and conquering it. Admittedly they have elements of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, as the opponent starts in an understandably far superior position than your force.
• Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate, has the player assaulting several chaos fortresses. The last one is located in the Eye of Terror.
• In Watch_Dogs, the final mission of Act III, titled "By Any Means Necessary", has Aiden Pierce lead a one-man assault on the Rossi-Fremont apartments, the base of operations for the Black Viceroys gang, in order to download its servers full of blackmail on the citizens of Chicago. Interestingly, Aiden's assault on the apartment complex is, like the historical examples of this trope, actually an act of last resort. The servers cannot be hacked from the outside, and every other plan attempted by Aiden had failed, leaving this trope as the only option. The video of the Merlaut Hotel that Damien wanted was never actually completely downloaded by the Viceroys, making the assault on the complex unnecessary.
• The Wild ARMs series typically has an assault on the enemy's HQ in the middle of the game, with The Very Definitely Final Dungeon being somewhere more impressive.
  • Wild ARMs has the attack on the Photosphere.
  • Wild ARMs 2 has you attacking the Heimdal Gazzo at the end of Disc 1.
  • Wild ARMs 3 has you taking down the Yggdrasil and Deus Ex Machina in the end of Chapters 2 and 3, respectively.
  • Wild ARMs 4 has you storming the Garra de Leon to rescue a comrade.
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings begins with a castle-storming segment, with Geralt serving as The Dragon for the attacking king. To the game's credit, it manages to justify the reason for the storm (the king needs to rescue some high-value noble hostages from the castle, who also happen to be his own children), and the king came prepared: Heavy siege weapons and war machines were employed prior to the storming, as well as a comprehensive battle plan and the attackers heavily outnumbering the defenders. Geralt also mentions that the siege towers and all the running about on the castle walls was mostly just the nobles showing off: The decisive battle was fought by the levy infantry and mercenaries on ground level, and was apparently a bloodbath for both sides.
• World of Warcraft consists largely of storming castles with other players in the form of instance dungeons and raids. Not all of these are actual castles or fortresses, but most are home base to some kind of bad guy.
  • Some solo quest chains include a castle storming phase.
  • A variant on this is to attack the opposite faction's capitol and kill their leader. Killing all of the enemy's leaders awards a unique mount.
• In the late game of Ys II, Adol runs amok in the Solomon Shrine, freeing a number of prisoners and trying his best to disrupt the villains' evil plans. He does have to be magically disguised as the enemy to gain entrance, but once inside...

---