Some runners up worth mentioning.
6th Gen: Resident Evil 4. Being able to shut yourself in a house, push a cupboard in front of the door, blow a hole in the door, and shoot the baddies through it. But then you hear the window upstairs shatter. The amount of little things like this, kicking down ladders, shooting a weapon out of an enemy's hand or making them react differently and realistically based on where you shot them, etc that you could do was incredible, it felt like a next gen game come early.
7th Gen: Gears of War, Crysis, and Uncharted 2, all "WTF how are these graphics even possible in real time!?" moments for me, I was floored that video games could look so amazing.








