What do you get when you have the best audio, the best story, the best graphics, and the best boss fight of the year all in one game? You get Hideo Kojima's latest masterpiece and my pick for game of the year.
This year was an easy choice for me. Last year I really struggled deciding between "Halo 3" and "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" due to both games advancing the genre and giving gaming a milestone shooter year. And to re-affirm my choice, not a sh'ump (that's "shoot 'em up"), this year came close to being as good as either of those.
Not that there weren't other outstanding titles this year. "Grand Theft Auto IV," "Dead Space," "Little Big Planet," "Gears of War 2" and "Fallout 3" all have reason to try and claim this title, but none of them have the complete package from top to bottom like "Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots."
First, there's the story of Snake's final journey. Hideo's ability to wrap up scores of loose ends from the previous three games would be merit enough to hand over the award. Place on top of that an interesting examination of the state of private military corporations in the modern and not so distant future, and you have a potential political masterpiece.
The audio was immersive. Even the way dirt sounded was just perfect. That's right, I'm talking about the way dirt sounded in a game. Why? Because that's how precisely, down to every minute, the detail was thought about.
The cinematography was akin to the likes of Scorcese or Coppella. Remember the scene where you are battling the Geckos? Do you remember what happened there? The screen splits and on one side is Raiden and Vamp battling it out while the other side is you as Snake fighting off the Geckos. That has never been done before in game. Never. What an awesome use of gameplay and art. That, to me, was the defining visual moment of videogames this year. I was in awe sitting there screaming "Man, I have to kill all these? Wait, what? Did he just stick a sword through him? Wow! Oh wait, there are Geckos everywhere. Hold on, did Raiden just River Dance on his chest?"
And then comes the end, the fight with Liquid Snake, a fight that has been building for more than 10 years. Fighting Liquid in RAY was an awesome experience. Since the first game, everyone has wanted to get into a Metal Gear. When I finally finished that part off and the subsequent, old-school fight, I really felt I had accomplished something. That's a rarity in boss fights anymore. Most of the time, the true final "boss" is the second to last fight in the game. It's like they don't want to punish you for getting that far, or they don't want to beat you down and make that the last thing you remember about their game. For whatever reason, very few are willing to make the final boss fights truly a struggle. This one was, and it was fun the entire time.
Congrats to Kojima and Co. They have raised the bar for everyone else. I can't wait to see who or what raises it futher in 2009.
Source:TMnews
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