When this was being made by Kojima’s team I thought it was more interesting. Now I worry that, unlike most other MGS games, I won’t be able to progress without killing anyone…

It all started with Metal Gear Solid.

Hideo Kojima is a pacifist. How do I know this having never spoken to him? It’s the only logical explanation behind Metal Gear Solid. Big whoop, I mean, the games themselves are about as overtly in support of pacifism and nuclear non-proliferation, but I’m not talking about the overt, obvious messages. Anyone can put hours and hours of cutscenes in a video game (although few can get away with it like he can), but Kojima is special because he emphasizes the holiest of modes of expression for a game designer: mechanics.

I came to the Metal Gear Solid series way late in the game, around the spring of 2008. Metal Gear itself was 20 years old at that point and I was looking forward to playing these games that my buddy Lee so adored. Thanks to my cripplingly completionist attitude toward games, I found myself looking up MGS on Gamefaqs to ensure that I didn’t miss any limited items via careless play. It was there that I learned that the game scored you higher based on how few enemies you killed. It was a sneaking mission, after all.

Deciding to challenge myself and impose arbitrary limitations on myself like “kill only the enemies that are required” changed my life forever. Real life is decidedly unlike video games, which is just fine by me. God help us if psychopath mass murderers were as common in life as they are in games, and that’s not even counting the villains. How weird is it that Metal Gear Solid, a game featuring a trained special-ops soldier armed to the teeth with pistols, automatic rifles, and explosives, turned me into a pacifist by forcing me to value digital life.

All it took was a slight shift in philosophy. Long before (and long after) Metal Gear Solid, gamers have been penalized for shooting innocent victims or bystanders. All MGS did was flip this on its head a bit. The game rewards you for not killing hostiles. This changes everything.

It sounds stupid when you think about it, but the mechanics are slight and subversive enough that the shiftcomes on gradually. Little things, like giving Snake a tranquilizer gun from the get-go, just reinforce the idea that there’s another way to do things. Most of the time it makes the game significantly harder. Snake (or Raiden in MGS2) has a pathetically small non-lethal arsenal when compared to the rest of his repertoire. The tranq darts are significantly weaker AND enemies eventually wake from being knocked out, which heightens the alert level on a given stage.

Reinforced by mechanics, the message is crystal clear. Doing the right thing (because playing this way usually yields nice rewards) is not easy. There’s only one instance throughout the Metal Gear Series, to date, where pacifism makes things easier. During one of Kojima’s more overt narrative moments, Snake faces a spiritual adversary, The Sorrow. Wading through a long river, Snake must avoid every enemy he’s killed prior to that point. Players like me have relatively little problem, since there are no enemies, but the trigger happy player has quite the obstacle course ahead of them. While I’m partial to a more subtle narrative, This was also unlike anything I’d ever played before.

I think Kojima’s crowning moment, throughout his entire catalog of work, is the final battle against The Boss in MGS3 where he attempts to get the player to the closest approximation he’ll probably have of killing another person. I’m being a little overdramatic since it depends on how much you care about the narrative, but it goes something like this.

If you’re me, you’ve gone through this whole game without killing a soul and suffered for it. Our in-game avatar, Snake, has suffered the betrayal by the figure he most respects and he’s spent all mission grappling with his orders to kill The Boss, who was an absolute loyalist to the United States, but who had been turned on when she got in trouble.

The battle begins and ends. Snake stands above his mentor, holding her gun to her head. She tells Snake to end it.

Nothing happens.

It dawns on me that the game is waiting for my input. I had spent the entire game not killing a single soul. Saved and reloaded after every accident. Taken hours to get through things that could have been cleared much faster. I pushed the button and the gun fired. The only way not to bloody your digital hands is to not play. The Boss’ message transcends the fictional.

Two years later it was 2010 and I went to see Kick-Ass. I think Roger Ebert put it best when he said, referring to the high degree of violence that an 11-year-old in the movie inflicts and is subjected to,

Shall I have feelings, or should I pretend to be cool? Will I seem hopelessly square if I find “Kick-Ass” morally reprehensible and will I appear to have missed the point? Let’s say you’re a big fan of the original comic book, and you think the movie does it justice. You know what? You inhabit a world I am so very not interested in. A movie camera makes a record of whatever is placed in front of it, and in this case, it shows deadly carnage dished out by an 11-year-old girl, after which an adult man brutally hammers her to within an inch of her life. Blood everywhere. Now tell me all about the context.

When I left the theater that day I felt sick. It took me a while to realize why, but when I did, it blew my mind. Video games had sensitized me to violence.

You may notice some games that are missing from this list and are on every other list. Well, I didn’t play everything because I didn’t have the time or the money, so that accounts for some of the big misses like Pyschonauts or Resident Evil 4. Other games are deliberately omitted :cough: HALO :cough:

This list is also way long, but I didn’t want to limit myself to an arbitrary number like 10 or 20, so here it is:

Half-Life 2 (2004, 2006 – Episode 1, 2007 – Episode 2)

There are two divergent paths for shooters in the aughts. Halo and Half-Life. In the first corner you’ve got everything on the consoles since then: Regenerating health, aim assist, silly physics, and general jackassery. In the better corner you’ve got everything that’s come out of Half-Life and the Source engine: more realistic weaponry, realistic physics, and a much better legacy. Say what you will about the future of shooters and the PC market being antiquated, but this is a damn good shooter. I’d call it the best I’ve ever played. Valve has completely mastered the art of environmental storytelling and player manipulation. They can make you look where they want you to look and feel what they want you to feel all without ever wresting control from the player or relying on cutscenes. This game has brilliant pacing and amazing characters that you actually care about. Who’s ever heard of an NPC sidekick that you don’t hate? H-L 2 and its episodes are among the greatest gaming experiences I’ve ever had.

Rock Band 2 (2008)

Ok, so rhythm games are kind of saturated now, but Rock Band 2 is the pinnacle (only because The Beatles: Rock Band doesn’t let players bring their dlc in) of music gaming. It hits at just the right sweet spot, four players, and its filled with music from all kinds of genres. Better yet, the interface and note tracking isn’t sloppy like that other franchise and it’s a fantastic way to get people together for a fun time and even grow as a person. It’s probably the game I’ve played the most since 2008 and a ridiculously fun time.

Left 4 Dead (2008) and Left 4 Dead 2 (2009)

There are a lot of Valve games on this list. The Left 4 Dead series is on it because it has done cooperative, first-person multiplayer right in a way I’ve yet to see done better elsewhere. Everything about these games is top notch, tons of fun, and worth returning to time and time again. Beyond the mechanics, the games also feature great environmental storytelling and fantastic voice acting putting it at the top of my list for the best games of the past two years. Zombies may be getting old, but this series will always feel fresh.

Braid (2008)

Jonathan Blow didn’t revolutionize video gaming when he released Braid last summer. What he did do was bring indie games (and XBL games, in general) firmly into the spotlight for consideration. A self-funded and self-made game, Braid proved that one man (and one hired artist) could still create a top-notch, professional caliber game. Braid is deep and complex and tons of fun to play, especially when you’ve figured out a tricky puzzle.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2005)

OBJECTION! This game should be higher on the list. Overruled, this list has no numerical ordering.

The Japanese sensation that brought visual novels and a resurgence in adventure games to America may have a niche audience and play real loose with the legal system of the real world, but it’s tons of fun. Just think quirky anime and you’ll get the idea of what playing this game is like. It just feels right to present a damning piece of evidence while Phoenix screams OBJECTION!

Shadow of the Colossus (2005)

I have yet to beat Shadow of the Colossus, but I absolutely love what I’ve played so far. Ueda is among the genius game designers in how well he understands presentation. The game world feels absolutely empty, as it should. All you come across, as the player, are the giant Colossi and man, they are wild. Each one is a dungeon/level to itself and the player is tasked with taking them down to save his love. But what have these giants done to you? Each one I take down makes me feel sad inside and a little empty. I usually find myself thinking What have I done? What did he ever do to me? The best art makes you think.

Final Fantasy XII (2006)

I had my choice of any Final Fantasy game between 9 and 12 for this spot, but I really couldn’t go with anything but the best. X was definitely a close second, but there are just so many things that XII did right in its evolution of the series that I couldn’t pick anything else. Maybe it’s because I’m in love with the world of Ivalice, but everything about this game just grabs me in a way I hadn’t been grabbed since VI. Maybe it was because I wasn’t being assaulted by too many belt buckles and leather by Nomura. It was probably because the story was mature, the characters way less annoying than before, and the battle system was finally revamped and moved into the 21st century. In any case, the best FF game of the decade.

Portal (2007)

Portal really does everything right. The game gets you acquainted with its mechanics quickly, gets you doing neat things with them right away, and then finishes up with a climactic and cool boss fight all comfortably within the span of 5-8 hours, if you’re slow. With mechanics and dialogue that are beyond brilliant, the only thing that could make this great game better would be to give it a hilarious end credit song penned by Jonathan Coulton. Oh wait, you’ve gone and done that already, haven’t you Valve? Bravo.

Burnout Paradise (2008)

Realistic racing games are kind of boring to me. Until Burnout Paradise, I would have said that I only enjoyed Mario Kart games, and those were starting to wear on me too. Then Criterion put out the first open-world racing game (that I can think of). Burnout Paradise would be tons of fun if all we had to do was run into walls and other cars. The fact that the game is so easy to get online and play (and purchasable as a digital download on the PSN) is brilliant and makes for tons of fun.

Mass Effect (2007)

Shepard. Wrex. It’s brilliant. It really is. Hard science fiction is always tons of fun to me, but when you go and flesh out this world to the nth degree, you’ve got me drooling already. Add in characters I genuinely cared about and enjoyed having in my party and a morality system that was finally free of cheap moral choices and I’d say that Bioware had a genuine hit on their hands. I anxiously await the sequel in January.

Eternal Darkness (2002)

I’m really not a big scary games guy. It’s simple: I’m too jumpy and I’ve got an overactive imagination. Those things don’t combine to make a pleasant gaming experience. Now you want me to play a game that’s actively trying to mess with my head to freak me the hell out? I’d normally say “No thanks,” but I was eventually convinced to try this Lovecraftian horror game and I found myself loving it. The plot is interesting and the characters are neat, but the insanity effects are what stick with me to this day. I can still see that image of Alex lying dead in a bathtub filled with her own blood when I think about it and it still gives me the chills.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009)

You know what? I really loved the old-school Mario games. Those 3D ones are way too easy. This game does it right. What makes it even more awesome is that you can play it with four dudes, making it both infinitely harder and easier while also making it more fun and frustrating. Use the multiplayer mode at your own risk, it may start fights.

Rhythm Heaven (2009)

Scratch-O, HA! The Rhythm Heaven (Paradise in Europe) series is loosely based on the bizarre Wario world, which is totally obvious after three minutes of play, which is great, because that series is brilliant (if stale by now) too. This game features simple rhythm mini-games, but man are they fun AND catchy. As I write this I’ve got the Moai statue song stuck in my head. Go play this.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004, Subsistence – 2006)

I love this game. MGS 2 may be the biggest practical joke (and most significant of the four), but this is undoubtedly the best. The epic cycle of the Metal Gear universe is made clear in this game that does its best to subvert war in every way possible. I do truly find it significant that in a Cold War game focused on stealth action, you can make it through from start to finish without killing one person. Well, almost. Metal Gear Solid 3 is almost heartbreaking when you play it non-violently and the ending still has a strong effect on me to this day. Definitely Kojima’s finest work.

World of Warcraft (2004)

I would give anything to get the time I spent playing this game back, but I definitely can’t deny how truly great it is. We’re talking about a bona fide phenomenon here. The absolute refinement of social engineering to such a degree that escape is nearly futile. Blizzard has truly outdone itself with this one.

Team Fortress 2 (2007)

What a surprise, more Valve. The Orange Box was a groundbreaking offering in value and Team Fortress 2 continues to be a huge part of that. I bought this game at launch back in 2007. Since then they have added achievements for nearly every class, new weapons for nearly every class, new game types and maps, hats, and an item crafting system. I’ve never seen so much free support for a game in my life. It’s no reason that Valve is my favorite developer of all time. They really know how to treat their customers and put out a great game.

The Sims 2 (2004)

Yes, I did create Sims of my friends and family. You’d better believe I killed some of them, turned one into a vampire, another into a werewolf, one into a zombie, and bargained with death to revive another. The Sims certainly don’t feel as relevant as they did at the start of this decade, but man were they a success and tons of fun. Sure, I should feel a little guilty that I spent so much time in what amounts to a digital dollhouse, but I really don’t. It was fun.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008)

If you don’t think that this is the best in the series, you’re wrong and you’re clinging to the past. Tons of characters, great level design, fantastic music, and all the right refinements to the battle system are what makes this great. The fact that I can listen to Snake Eater or the Love Theme from Mother 3 is just icing on the cake.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003)

Apotheosis –
1. The fact or action of becoming a god; deification
2. Glorification, exaltation; crediting someone with extraordinary power or status.

Do you know who Tim Schafer is?

When I still lived at home, my dad used to ask me, “When are you gonna grow up and stop playing video games?” He tells my mother that he’s sure I’m addicted to the medium. It’s true that I spend the vast majority of my free time playing games. I can name developers, producers, writers, designers, and even composers for games from my favorite series of games. This vast information age enables me to know everything about a game, down to its minutia, just by checking an online database. If there’s not enough information there, I can almost guarantee there are five or six fansites devoted to uncovering every last detail. It must be daunting for developers nowadays to produce in this environment.

My dad says these things, but I’m not sure he understands that this is just the nature of hobbies nowadays. Not too long ago we could almost justifiably claim an unhealthy obsession with the works of Deepak Chopra and transcendental meditation. Eric’s life revolves around photography nowadays almost as much as mine involves interactive entertainment. This is what hobbies are like now. Think of an obscure hobby, like stamp collecting, and I’ll guarantee you that someone out there spends a couple of hours a week producing a podcast for tons of people to listen to.

The point is, there’s a growing number of people who actually know just who is behind the games they play, a huge contrast to the early Famicom days.

It’s not exactly the fault of the developers that we had no idea who was behind our games back in the day. Standard process for Famicom-era games was to credit oneself via a pseudonym to prevent talent poaching. How would you be able to tell that seeing Gondamin credited as a composer meant you were listening to Junko Tamiya’s music? Famed Mega Man creator, Keiji Inafune still goes by INAFKING in some games.

Now that games are actually credited properly, it’s not uncommon for people to know that Bioshock was the brainchild of Ken Levine or that the wackiness of Metal Gear comes from Hideo Kojima. Nintendo actually keeps Shigeru Miyamoto’s hobbies on the down low because they don’t want people to speculate on what ideas his brilliant mind will come up with next. We’re talking a complete 180° shift here.

Eddie Riggs: “Ever feel like you were born in the wrong time – like you should have been born earlier, when the music was… real?”
Roadie: “Like the seventies?”
Eddie: “No. Earlier… like the early seventies.”

Embedded within all enthusiast cultures is the cachet that comes with either “being there first” or experiencing a unique experience that the ignorant masses overlooked. Go to Brooklyn, grab the first guy with crazy hair and skinny jeans you can find (protip: you won’t have a hard time finding one), and ask him what his favorite bands are. Chances are, unless you’re from the Brooklyn scene too, you won’t have heard of any of the groups he’s mentions. He will consider you a barbarian for liking commercial music and you will consider punching him in the face.

I think it’s clear where I’m going here, so I won’t belabor the point.

Have you ever played Grim Fandango?

We arrive at the natural conclusion: these developers, thanks to the power of the Internet and rabid fans like myself, are now legends in their own right. When Miyamoto talks, everyone listens and when Tim Schafer makes a game, I buy it (we’ll ignore the fact that I don’t own Psychonauts or Full Throttle). All this devotion and dedication to one man is based on the strength of four games: The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango, the last of which is the only one solely under Schafer’s artistic control (the true Monkey Island games were made by the holy trinity of Gilbert, Grossman, and Schafer while DotT was a Grossman/Schafer collaboration). When I played Grim Fandango for the first time in 2002, it was on the strength of Schafer’s Monkey Island reputation, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell you his name until 2007 when I started listening to video game podcasts.

The press gushed and gushed about how good Schafer’s games were and how Psychonauts was criminally under appreciated and created the image of a brilliant game designer whose games featured great comedy writing and stories, but mediocre gameplay. Think about this for a second: Tim Schafer is famous for being a commercial underdog whose games are only hampered by mediocre controls. Before Psychonauts, Schafer’s only games were adventure games. Controls are irrelevant in that context, so Schafer has a reputation based on one game.

What’s worse is that I totally bought into the hype. I found myself thinking, I hope poor Tim Schafer isn’t underappreciated yet again. Really? After one game? This is the industry. This is modern, enthusiast society. This is madness.

Did you buy Psychonauts?

I can’t say that it started there, but the first time I ever saw an editorial campaign intended to raise a game’s sales was back around 2003 at IGN. Matt Casamassina, a fellow fan of Eternal Darkness, was bummed about the lackluster sales of what was actually a really great game, but its downsides were twofold: it was a new IP and it was a dark, mature game launching on the Gamecube, clearly the wrong platform for the game. The point of the campaign was that mature games would not continue to launch on the Gamecube if no one bought it, so everyone should take one for the good of the team and play this game. As you might expect, the plan failed and, for all I know, Casamassina still does his best to drum up sales of mature games on Nintendo platforms (he was back in 2008 when I still listened to IGN podcasts) with the same results. The Internet’s a tricky place. Everyone will agree that these games are criminally underrated by their sales numbers, but no one is willing to actually open up their pocketbooks.

Well, there is at least one. At some point I got it into my mind that if I wanted to keep seeing good games, I should support the ones that are trying to innovate in the field, regardless of whether I want them or not. It’s why I own Zack and Wiki and Little King’s Story, despite having no real interest in either. I just wanted to support good, non-minigame collections on the Wii. Lucky for me, nine times out of ten the stance that I want to support means that I’m supporting a game or series that I do truly love. Paying for the Day 1 DLC in Dragon Age: Origins is a hot issue for many who are morally opposed to content appearing on Day 1, despite the fact that this stuff probably wasn’t ready for a Day 1 launch. Regardless, I own both packs because I love Bioware as a developer and I want to see them continue to make good games. Likewise, it might have been a few parts my completist nature, but I used to buy every bit of DLC offered by Harmonix for the Rock Band series because I wanted to support their philosophy on music gaming over Activision’s (I also don’t buy used games for a similar reason).

It’s an attitude not limited to games either, I no longer pirate anything and actually buy CDs, .mp3s, and DVDs to support the artists that I treasure. It’s kind of foolish and I get burned sometimes with mediocre stuff, but I think it’s still worth it.

The take home message here is that my purchase of Brütal Legend comes from a complicated place. Tim Schafer, a man elevated to game-god status, a rock star, if you will, being the primary catalyst while the rest of my logic amounted to a combination of wanting Double Fine to find success in their game releases for once and rewarding EA for picking up this title after Activision so unceremoniously dropped it.

Was that a good idea?

It may not be the truth, but it’s the better story.

Brütal Legend is the worst kind of lie. It’s singing love songs with the girl of your dreams on a road trip, but you’re the only one who means it, while your best friend is sleeping in the backseat, blissfully unaware of the metaphor. That’s not to say it’s an evil, insidious lie, it’s just pretending to be one thing while slowly guiding you toward another. Boot up the game, watch Jack Black, go to the Land of Metal, and you’re expecting a 3rd person action brawler. Not too long into it it’s become an open-world brawler, complete with vehicle sections. An hour or two after that and you’re partaking in a hybrid RTS/3rd person action brawler/open-world driving game. It’s bait-and-switch executed marvelously. You might hate the RTS portions, but you’re already hooked on the story and you’ve got to begrudgingly see the rest of it through.

I’ll guarantee that most players didn’t even know that their game had RTS elements before purchasing it. How would they have when all the advertising campaigns featured only the 3rd person combat? Was this an evil move on EA’s part?

As a supporter of Tim Schafer, I say no. It’s a lie, no doubt, but it serves a greater purpose. This game cannot be distilled into its distinct parts in a 30 second action reel. Why not bring in the sales on the game on this promise? It’s not like it’s a total lie, it’s more like a half-truth. You will be fighting in the 3rd person for majority of the game, you’ve just also got to manage your troops well or you will lose. Then again, I have a hard time defending deception to the consumer on such a grand scale. Did Brütal Legend lie to all of us? No one went out and outright said it was one thing, but gave you another. There was even a demo out there. Is it really “Buyer Beware” to give the impression of one thing in your advertisements and deliver a slightly different thing? This isn’t like giving top billing to an actor who only appears for three minutes of a movie, is it?

“We say, over and over again, that the default player actions in a single-player game should be compelling enough to make you believe with all your soul that a two-player deathmatch situation using two player character clones and said default player actions would be at least as compelling as the actual game.”

– tim rogers in his Bionic Commando: Rearmed Review

tim rogers makes a point in countless reviews that a game’s core mechanic should be good enough that you can play it in multiplayer ad infinitum and have just as much fun with it. Brütal Legend takes that just a touch too literally. Double Fine so desperately wants you to love their multiplayer that the entire singe-player campaign is a training mission to prepare you for multiplayer. The final units and mechanics are all finally nailed down for the player in the penultimate battle. I’m not kidding, you can’t do everything until right before you fight the final boss. It goes against everything that “we,” the player, knows about games. When you play the campaign in StarCraft, haven’t you gained access to the entire tech tree after maybe four of the ten missions in the campaign? Maybe I’m wrong and this isn’t true, but it’s certainly not right before the final boss.

I see what the intention is. Strong multiplayer drives down the resale of games. Pre-owned game purchases are money lost to the developer. We’ve seen this trick already, EA, it’s why Dragon Quest made you grind for ages and why DLC and special pack-in unlocks are so prevalent in the games of today.

Back on message, the problem with this structure is that I didn’t want to play multiplayer once I finished. I’ve yet to boot it up once. That’s not to say that the game is terrible, it’s just not mechanically sound (and, lo, we now have a pattern that we can apply to Schafer).

“The road is fuckin’ hard,
The road is fuckin’ tough-ah”

-Tenacious D – “The Road”

Before I dive even further into the mechanics, perhaps a look into the raison d’être for Brütal Legend, its story, is in order. I should start by saying that the most surprising thing about this game is that the player is controlling Eddie Riggs, not Jack Black. Despite his tendency to be Jack Black in almost every role he plays, credit has to be given to Tim Schafer and Double Fine for writing him as someone completely different. There’s not one “skedoosh” uttered by Riggs in the whole game and even the part where Jack Black is Jack Black is decidedly restrained and non-Jack Black-like.

So the player controls this guy, Eddie Riggs, who is a roadie for a fictional metal band, Kabbage Boy, that’s all kinds of terrible in the modern, faux-metal, emo kind of way. The intro has this great part where the band starts off with an appropriately epic power cord, only to have a DJ break in with some scratches while the song devolves into a pop-nonsense song about the lead singer’s girlfriend. After saving one of the band member’s lives due to some reckless climbing (all while staying out of the spotlight), Eddie is crushed by some of the stage and his blood lands on his belt buckle, summoning the Metal god Ormagöden, who kills the members of Kabbage Boy and transports Eddie to a mystical world of METAL (if I could make flames burst out of this review, I would). For a guy like Riggs, this is a dream come true since the entire landscape looks something like the album cover to the metal records of old. Demons rule this world and enslave humans, but there is a small resistance group led by a man named Lars that Eddie joins to get closer to Ophelia, a woman he meets when he first teleports in.

The beauty of Schafer’s tale comes from the heavily enforced role of the roadie. Eddie Riggs is not out for glory and, despite the fact that he is the resistance and the main character throughout the entire game, he is not the hero. Maybe it’s Eddie’s personality, but he is firmly devoted to being a roadie and unused to the spotlight. It’s so ingrained in his character, that the narrative only addresses the discrepancy between what Eddie does and what he gets credit for maybe twice and both times he quickly brushes off. The story isn’t about Riggs becoming a hero in a world in which he belongs, which is strange, because it clearly features him uniting humanity and freeing mankind. Instead it’s a (METAL!) love story between Eddie and Ophelia and a damn good one at that.

Both the characters of Eddie and Ophelia are believable and both the dialog and voice acting between Eddie and everyone else is among the best I’ve seen in any game (top marks also go to the Uncharted series, the second of which I played right before Brütal Legend). The metal legends chosen to make cameos (Ozzy Osbourne, Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister among others) do fantastic jobs of being both themselves and (especially in Ozzy’s case) fucking metal. Even the professionals like Jack Black and Tim Curry do some of their best work while industry veterans Jennifer Hale continues to prove that she’s one of the best in the business (don’t believe me? Check out her gameography).

At the end of it all, it’s clear what Schafer’s true strength is: world-building. Grim Fandango takes place in a wholly unique, single-serving world inspired completely by the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico with a dash of hell, demons, and the 1920s mafia. Psychonauts takes place within the brains of its cast of characters, with each mindscape inspired by psychology featuring wildly different neuroses, themes, and ideas. Brütal Legend, as you know, is inspired by heavy metal and creates a world where bass notes can heal, guitar strings are crafted by metal spiders, and guitar solos have the power to literally melt faces off. In each case his brilliance and creativity shines through and the player never wants to leave. He is unparalleled in this respect.

Brutal Legend draws itself up proudly. “I am a bastard child of the schizophrenic postmodern age. Know only that I am metal, and that I was forged from the raw materials of innumerable genres. No single acronym can contain my all. I am pure hybrid.”
-Chris Clemens. “At the Gates of Genre“

Should Tim Schafer give up on games? I refuse to go on the record as saying that Brütal Legend is a bad game. Trust me, it’s not. On the other hand, it’s also not very good. It’s wild hybridization of multiple game styles and mechanics don’t combine for the better and the game winds up a jack of all trades, but, well, you know the rest. No one aspect of the actual game mechanics make me want to boot the game up again. Melee fighting is shallow because only two buttons can be allotted (you need to be able to control your troops and play guitar with the others). Driving is just a faster way of getting from point A to B and feels unsatisfying.

Quick Aside Time

I understand that this is hard and that resources are better spent elsewhere (not to mention that invisible walls serve to keep the player within them), but we, as gamers, need to take a stand against the goddamn trees in video games. How many fucking metal :throws up horns: nitro boosts did I waste because a thin, pathetic looking tree turned out to be The Epic Tree of Arrested Momentum. Seriously, if you’ve got small logs that I can drive through at low speeds, then why can’t I drive through a thin bit of underbrush? Then again, my car can fall thousands of feet and take no damage, so maybe my car and the trees are made of the same mystical, physics-distorting material.

Back to the review…

I can go on ad infinitum about every system in the game: the guitar solos are shallow, the RTS-style mechanics are frustratingly imprecise, the quest structure is repetitive, and the collectibles are annoyingly difficult to track and collect. Tell me Schafer, if I’ve got a map that automatically draws itself as I discover new parts of the world, why can’t it have a toggle switch to show me which collectibles I’ve already found? Ask my friend Ian how many hours I spent searching for the last (of 120) Bound Serpent in the game. It’s MADDENING.

At the end of the game, when evil has been vanquished and all the credit and accompanying hero worship has fallen on Lars and his sister, Lita, we see Eddie drive away, content to be a mere footnote in history, despite being the only reason that the history of that world continues. I return to the question, should Schafer stop making games himself? Wouldn’t he be a much better world designer for other projects? Isn’t Tim Schafer a better Eddie Riggs than a Lars? On one hand, I want him to continue to have the freedom to make his own full, artistic visions come true, but with two consecutive commercial failures under his belt (Brütal Legend has reportedly sold only 200,000 or so copies in Rocktober, but we’ll see what Christmas brings), will the industry keep giving him a chance?

Lars: “What do you do with a bunch of kids that just wanna bang their heads all the time?”
Eddie Riggs: *tears in eyes* “You start a revolution Lars…”

Tim Schafer is a rock star. There are few people in the industry who get what it means to craft a world, but the staff at Double Fine, Schafer-included, need to sit down and think about game design a little more. It’s got to be hard to reign in Schafer’s monstrous creative energy, but it would be a good idea to try to focus on getting fewer things perfect in their next game. The sad truth is that they haven’t got many more chances. Most of them could probably find jobs elsewhere, but the only member of their team with absolute job security is Tim Schafer. He will always be a Lars in the industry. Developers would be nuts not to give him top billing of some kind (note that the boxart for Brütal Legend explicitly states “A Tim Schafer game” above the title) and he deserves that kind of praise. So, to answer my previous question, Tim Schafer should absolutely make games, but perhaps he needs to narrow his sights a little bit and focus more on his core mechanics. Less can be more when you have to sacrifice quality.

Furthermore, have I learned anything about hero-worship in the industry? If anything, I think that writing this review has caused me to reevaluate the stances I take for granted on game companies and the artists I love, in general. I still think that the most effective way to lobby for anything in this industry is with consumer dollars, but I’m finding myself increasingly disenchanted with how little the sales from a small, dedicated fanbase amounts to. I mean, look at what my money did for the MLB Power Pros series in America? Given the decision again today, I would still go out and buy Brütal Legend. I like it that much, game mechanics aside, but with only 200,000 in sales, I’m pretty sure it will be a while before Double Fine is able to round up as much capital as I’m sure they did for this game (which may be to their benefit). On the other, Dan-has-learned-something hand, I’m pretty sure that I’m no longer giving everyone a carte blanche license to earn money from me. Metal Gear Solid 4 was such a disappointment to me that it will take some prodding for me to really trust Kojima again. Nintendo has flip-flopped around so much with Mario that I’m unsure where I stand. Mario Galaxy was not the breath of fresh air I thought it would be, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a masterpiece of sharp, 2-D game design combined with the brilliant addition of 4-player co-op. I no longer buy mature titles for the Wii. DVD box sets of shows that I casually want to remain on the air no longer get bought. Some things have been learned.

Take Home Review Message:
Brütal Legend is a definite rental, but I don’t feel comfortable recommending that you buy it until you’ve tried out the multiplayer.

I like being surprised by a narrative. Too often, especially when it comes to video games, it’s always the same predictable plot twists and points. This was a point where Dan, the player, and Dan, the character, were both stunned at a convention being broken. It seems that Dan is most definitely not the hero of legend. The Zenithian helmet doesn’t fit Dan and Cleohatra is not willing to just loan it to him with the hopes that he’ll eventually run into the hero of legend. She sends Dan off to his previously unknown hometown of Gotha with the intent to track down the leads that Pankraz was following.

While we’re on the topic of defied expectations, there’s was an event along the route to Gotha that I found particularly telling of Horii’s style. Along the path, there was a cave containing a very suspicious old woman. Every statement she makes ends with a suspicious cackle and she seems to want Dan to stay the night. Knowing danger when I see it, I declined her offer at first, fearing for the safety of my party. Then I thought about this feature and made Dan accept this old witch’s hospitatlity to see just what might happen. Cut to a scene where Dan and Debora are sleeping in the same room and Deb complains to Dan about hearing strange noises upstairs. Dan has the option of going to check it out. Knowing that something was clearly amiss, I ordered Dan to get up and check on just what that old woman was doing, but he was paralyzed in place! Things were looking bad, I mean, Dan takes a detour on his way to Gotha and is about to find himself killed. The old woman walked downstairs and crept up to the hero. It turned out that she was simply enhancing Dan’s equipment and he received a +1 permanent strength enhancement. She just paralyzed Dan and Debora so that they would sleep through the night and not have fitful sleep.

It’s totally obvious, in retrospect, that nothing bad would have happened to Dan as a result of simply trusting someone suspicious. Horii is not the kind of guy to just screw over a player for doing something nice, so it makes perfect sense that your actions reward you. The question of whether or not it’s okay to outright punish a player for making a choice so tangential to the main game mechanics or story is bigger than this tiny DQV feature, but I think it bears thinking about. The player does not want to feel like he/she has been unfairly penalized, but I think it would be a fine choice for a notorious trickster, like Kojima, to force upon his unsuspecting audience.

The characterization of Debora also became a point for me. At one point along the path, it seemed like she said something rather nice to me. Quite frankly, the last thing I’d want in this game would be for her to become some sort of weak-kneed woman who is head-over-heels in love with Dan. If I wanted that, I would have had Dan marry Bianca. I’m really hoping that consistency and quality are Horii’s priorities over pandering to male sexist ideas about what a woman should act like. Marrying a Briscoletti continues to be a financially sound decision, as I received another gift on the way to Gotha. In other Debora-related story developments, our arrival in Batenberg was immediately followed by Deb fainting.

Get Dragon Quest V from my aStore!

When we last left off, young Dan had arrived on land in Littlehaven after dreaming that his father was a king. Exciting! Except Pankraz seems to just be a wanderer, but a well-respected guy. Almost everyone Dan can talk to seems to think that Pankraz is the finest specimen of a man they’ve ever met and that he’s bound to grow up to be as great as his old man. As Dan continued to wander around, he eventually found his way outside of the city and onto the world map. Here he got into his first random encounter with monsters! Before Dan even has a chance to get worried, Pankraz shows up to save the day and WRECK SOME MONSTERS. Holy cow, Pankraz is a tough guy. Nothing seems to faze him and he mows through monsters with ease. If Dan starts to dip in HP, Pankraz will heal him up. He takes control and walks Dan back over to his hometown, Whealbrook.

Anyone who has played an RPG before knows that he will eventually be as much of a bad ass as Pankraz currently is. They understand that all it takes is some serious grinding and eventually they will be plenty strong. It might not be so clear to them that Yuji Horii is taking this obvious gameplay mechanic and using it to convey a specific artistic point. You see, the difficulty with art in video gaming is that developers seem to forget what tools they have available in their repertoire. There’s not just storytelling or music or art; there’s also mehanics. Kojima is a developer who gets this. All you need to do is see how he toys with the gamer with his post-modern conventions to convey his point. Just think about the ending to Metal Gear Solid 3. The player, as Snake, had to physically choose to kill The Boss. It wasn’t a cutscene. You had to pull the trigger on your mentor so that, assuming you were fully invested in the game, you too would feel the anguish and weight of the decision to kill her to progress the plot. It’s stuff like this that truly brings games to artistic levels. What Yuji Horii is doing with these Pankraz-assisted battles is showing the player what his potential is based on the experience system. You fight alongside your father, whom everyone says you resemble and comments that you might grow up to be like, and see that, heck, with a little bit of experience I might grow up to be just like my dad. It’s really clever when you stop to think about it.

Also clever: Since you are a young lad, your world is colored by this fact. Walk Dan up to a sign and press the action button and he gets a message that reads something like “Dan tries to read the sign, but he can’t read.” Brilliant.

I’m not going to go over every event in DQV, just things that stand out to me or major plot points. In Whealbrook Dan meets a girl named Bianca and does some questing with her in two different cities and gets a Golden orb. Importance can be derived from this meeting, so I mention it. Bianca will probably reappear later as will the sabrecat I affectionately named Leo, just based on how the game treated those two things.

In our next part, Dan and Pankraz arrive in Coburg for some bodyguard duty.

Not as much Fat Princess news as I would have liked so far, but we’ve had a lot of Nintendo news hit the wire. First we’ve got the announcement that the SD card slot has finally been unlocked on the Wii, despite Nintendo’s initial, strong reluctance to do so. This will definitely help with storage woes on the system.

They also announced a new Zelda game: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. It revolves around trains and appears to be using the Phantom Hourglass engine. Also announced were some DSWare games and a balance board game which interests me so little, I won’t even drop its title.

Hideo Kojima came up to announce that he will be making an announcement at E3 ([sarcasm]thanks Kojima…[/sarcasm]) and dropped hints that he’d like to make a comedy game.

That’s about it, unless you care about God of War III’s frame rate (60 fps, unless they need it to be 30 fps…yawn), so enjoy this Fat Princess trailer and hope for a release date.

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

(SPOILER NOTE: Tim’s review, my review, and some of this post have MGS spoilers. Read at your own risk)

I’ve taken a few excerpts from Tim Rogers’ brilliant review of Metal Gear Solid 4 and I’m going to talk about them a bit. He totally threw us for a loop, revealing the game that is NOT ABDN’s best game of all-time, but revealing a game he firmly believes not to be. Let’s get started:

“If it’s a fact that Metal Gear Solid 4 sucks on purpose, we can hardly blame Kojima for that, either. Given his previously well-documented disinterest in the series, its having been promoted as his “opus” must have turned his stomach. It’s clear that Kojima’s priority was the game’s plot, and making sure it “satisfied” fans: like the world’s fattest kid circa 1989 winning a Toys R Us shopping spree, Kojima struts zombie-like into the warehouse of his past work and proceeds to remove absolutely everything from the shelf, dropping one item at a time into his bottomless shopping cart. He eventually gets up to the cash register, leaves the cart unattended, pulls his smokes out of his jacket, and steps outside.”

In this point I can’t help but hope that Kojima was in fact making a disappointing game on purpose. Sure, MGS4 wasn’t terrible, but after all the hype, after Metal Gear fucking Solid 3, I found myself thinking “Really? After that, this is what you bring to the table?” MGS3 was so good that I suppose surpassing it was either impossible for Kojima or, as Rogers says, not even the point of what he was doing. He made MGS4 because he had to. He made MGS4 basically a checklist for unanswered plot points because he ultimately wanted to be DONE. May Hideo Kojima never have to have as much control over or make another MGS game. The man, despite what Rogers thinks, is brilliant. I like to think it’s just a question of him finding a project that truly interests him again.

“By act three, the game has abandoned its neat little idea in favor of a far neater one: we are now following a guy through a European city. Snake is wearing a trenchcoat, looking like Gillian Seed from Snatcher (the fans swoon), and it’s quaintly foggy. Ironically, this proved to be our Absolute Favorite Part of the Game. Since age nine, we have wanted to wander a European metropolis after curfew, letting a shady man obliviously lead us to his shady headquarters. This is the reason we studied Russian and Chinese in elementary school while everyone else was busy pretending they knew something about sex. We carried this dream in the palm of our hand until college, when it dawned upon us that we could Actually Die from doing Stuff Like This, so we started writing about videogames in the first-person plural instead. Metal Gear Solid 4 manages to get the mood and the pace of Euro-man-stalking just right. Our target is “Side A”, and the enemy troops enforcing the curfew are “Side B”. We are “Side C”. The level design in this part of the game is ferociously cute: both we and Side A are in violation of Side B’s rules; while avoiding Side A’s detection, we have to ensure that Side A avoids Side C’s detection. This ends up pretty fascinating, whether you have watched the opening cut scene or not. Eventually, you get to the goal, and suddenly you’re riding shotgun on a motorcycle in yet another ropey on-rails shooting sequence. It’s like waking up from a dream about the Bahamas to find out you’re actually in Bermuda. Instead of intimately sharing military secrets with a woman you picked up at a poker table, you’ve got your mother asking you to shoot a helicopter down.”

I feel the need to interject that, despite Europe being compelling to Rogers and the ABDN crew, it’s rather dull compared to the actual MGS gameplay that I wanted. The gameplay of MGS3 was not about following a dude, although it’s also not too far. The dynamic of hiding from two forces is decently interesting, but its perhaps marred by the game itself. You CAN just take off the trench coat and continue running around in your octo-camo. You can just stun all the guards instead of sneaking around. Hell, you can just kill all the guards, so long as your mark doesn’t see it happen. The gameplay isn’t quite as compelling as the other sections, to me, even if the locale IS. Wandering throughout a European city in actual MGS fashion would be quite fun and worth exploring in the inevitable, but hopefully not Kojima-directed, MGS5.

“We will disclaim, right here, that we have, for the past decade of jacked-into-the-netness, chuckled and rolled our eyes whenever anyone complained about the length of the cut-scenes in a Metal Gear Solid game. Some people said they just wanted to enjoy the “gameplay” (like that’s a real word); some people said they just wanted to enjoy the “atmosphere”. It puzzled us, to the point of rubbing our bellies in amusement, that someone would dare to want to play Metal Gear Solid with absolutely no invested interest in the characters. It’s not that the story and the characters are necessarily great literature so much as they’re insperable from the game’s progression and atmosphere. If you only like the game mechanics, you’d be better off playing Pac-Man — it’s basically the same thing. Conversely, if you only like the story, you’d be better off reading a book. (Crucial: notice how we recommended Pac-Man for players who only like Metal Gear Solid as a game, whereas we recommended any book in existence for those who enjoy it as a story.) If nothing else, the original Metal Gear Solid had a dignified flow to it: the characters were all rough sketches, all vaguely likable. Conceptual Bullshit was kept to a minimum, and by minimum, we mean “Maximum, in Hindsight”. There was a fucking “boss” who you didn’t fight, who you instead met and talked to, and he died six hours before you even knew he was a boss. The game shows you this level of virtuosity for a while without once flexing its muscles in the mirror; at a certain point, it starts delivering soliloquies about love blooming on the battlefield; by this time, we are so into it that we can’t give up now. The game has worked its spell on us.”

Rogers brings up a vital point about the REASON people play a Metal Gear Solid game. It makes sense that a blockbuster like the MGS series is not only attract people who firmly agree with the gameplay environment, but I too marvel at the people who complain about cutscene length, but claim to be fans. The game IS about long cutscenes. The game certainly has a specific aesthetic created by its controls and actually interactive portions (ie: the parts where there aren’t cutscenes), but without the context, I would think it’s quite boring. Then again, I’d say I’m a person who is mostly motivated by story. I’ve played abysmal games just to see their endings in the past and I continue to play mediocre and great games, like MGS4, just to see what happens at the end. It’s absolutely true that divorcing MGS from its cinematics is divorcing the entire reason for playing from the game. It just makes no sense otherwise.

“Hindsight will tell us that, in concept and execution and everything in between, Metal Gear Solid is better than Metal Gear Solid 4, though this hardly matters. What matters is that we have grown up, and Metal Gear Solid has grown down.”

This is absolutely true. I would have to take a second to very firmly point out that MGS4 is, by no means, a bad game, it does suffer from something no other Metal Gear game does: sequelitis. It tries too hard to be what is iconic Metal Gear for its fans as a conclusion to such a degree that it is less Metal Gear for doing so. Think of the Solid games starting with MGS. Sure, that wasn’t much more than a rehash of the elements of MG2 (in fact, elements of the MG games continually repeat, but that’s actually a major theme of the game (how brilliant is Kojima to make “laziness” translate into “artistic purpose”?)), but getting serious, it’s plain that MGS2 is radically different from MGS. You have a totally new protagonist running around through an environment that is fundamentally different from Shadow Moses. The game felt different enough to warrant significant fan backlash causing low sales of the third, also fundamentally different Metal Gear Solid 3, where you, the player, are now in the past, the tech is old and different, changing the game from Pac-Man to something slightly different. Snake is not the same Snake (although he arguably/genetically) is, you now have a camouflage system, you have to eat to maintain stamina, and you have to treat your injuries.

Meanwhile, here comes MGS4. There are some slight gameplay tweaks here and there with octo-camo and the Drebin weapon system, but you’re not doing anything fundamentally different from the past games. You even have a stage where you revisit an old locale. MGS4 suffers because it is too much like the MGS games of the past. Kojima should have continued to grow as he did with MGS3 instead of regressing to the asinine and stupid with monkeys in diapers and god-awful stupid cutscenes. See Rogers’ treatment of the fried egg dilemma in the same review for more on that.

“…the (seemingly) hour-long sequence in which Ninja Raiden Riverdance-Duels a gay vampire in order to buy Snake, Otacon, and their pet robot enough time to escape from the hell of South America via helicopter is a chief offender: look at those moves! The moment we, as a “player”, behold a scene in a “videogame” and think “Man, someone should make a videogame out of that”, the ghost is essentially given up.”

Also (mostly) a first for MGS4 is the sequence where we cannot control Snake’s (or Raiden’s) bad-assery. The only notably awesome action sequences outside of MGS4 I can think of that we did not, in fact, get to control happen in Twin Snakes (this was widely hated) and in MGS3 in one scene. There is ONE scene in MGS3 where Snake beats up on the Ocelots with CQC. Every other time Snake tries to be fancy with CQC in a cutscene, The Boss, Volgin, whomever, seriously kicks his ass and makes him look like a moron. EVERY OTHER TIME. The player should not ever wish to control a cutscene in a game. Games are created to allow us to control the cutscenes. This is the failure of Quick Time Events too, in my opinion. Too much abstraction involved with making the protagonist look amazing.

“Eventually, the game turned us off to the concept of entertainment in general. Eventually, the game makes us start drinking.”

While MGS4 was, by and large, a disappointment to me as I became a victim to hype and high expectations resulting from playing MGS3, it is not this bad. It’s got its rough edges and, as Rogers loves to state in his review, the cutscenes are a train wreck of awkward acting and dialogue that would make almost anyone embarrassed to be seen playing the game (I’m looking at you Johnny…while I’m at it, you too stupid monkey in diapers), but I still stand by my review stating that you should play it. I’m pretty sure that my review was full of disappointment over finishing a great series off with less of a bang, but more than a whimper, it’s definitely worth a play.

(Just when you thought they were over, welcome to another MGS-full post)

It’s time for the moment many of you have been waiting for: my review of Hideo Kojima’s epic masterpiece: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

SPOILER ALERT: This review may contain story spoilers. Read at your own risk!

Operating mostly on the basis of a promised beautiful, cinematic, amazing future of games, the PS3 launched back in November of 2006 with many of its purchasers anxiously awaiting the arrival of one specific game: Metal Gear Solid 4. Arriving quite some time later, is this the game to finally make the PS3 a worthwhile purchase? Let’s have a look.

The Story

One of the main questions on everyone’s mind when MGS4’s launch neared was whether or not the game would be able to wrap up the multitude of sometimes downright ridiculous plot points laid out by the six or so canonical games that have come out over the last twenty years. I’ll tell you outright that they definitely did manage to get it all figured out in a mostly satisfying way and with a pretty great premise that relates rather well to the previous games in the series. Unfortunately we lack some of the major themes of the typical MGS game, which is quite unfortunate, since the game is now more about Snake getting revenge and, to borrow a marketing blurb from Halo, finishing the fight.

The premise behind this new game is as complex as any other Metal Gear game. “War has changed,” as Snake tells us right from the get-go. The world economy revolves around war instead of oil with major private military corporations handling military operations in lieu of the more typical government-handled warfare of the 20th and 21st centuries. Snake’s major antagonist, Liquid Ocelot, happens to control the five major PMCs and is about to stage a revolt. Colonel Campbell will have none of that, so he’s sending in Snake to put an end to Liquid once and for all.

If you’ve ever seen a clip or footage of old Metal Gear Solid games, you’re no doubt wondering why Snake looks so old in this game. Simple answer, Snake, being a clone of the great Big Boss, is actually suffering from rapid cellular degeneration as a direct result of his cloned nature. So begins the tale of the living legend as he pursues Liquid across the globe. I’ll leave the synopsis at that, since the rest is best experienced in person.

Gameplay

The Metal Gear Solid series has always suffered from rather obscure control decisions, resulting in a finger-twisting control scheme that was definitely frustrating. For the last game of Snake’s career, Kojima teamed up with Ryan Payton to try and “Westernize” the controls of MGS to streamline the obscure decisions that have been a hallmark of the past ten years of Metal Gear. By making these controls work better in the post-discovery, action-oriented parts of MGS4, Kojima also inadvertently made it much easier to NOT play MGS as “Tactical Stealth Espionage” game. Really, what is Metal Gear without the stealth? The game was punishing when you messed up because you weren’t supposed to get caught. Your gameplay should be much more deliberate, slow and controlled than a straight-up action game because this is NOT an action game. That disappointment aside, the reworked controls do make the experience that much smoother and help to bring modern game design to the classic series.

Extra Spoiler Alert

Also new to the mix is the way that the levels are laid out. The first zone, the Middle East, has you more or less in the middle of a battle between the PMCs and militia insurgents. While these two factions are battling it out, you can choose to sneak, stealthily, around the fighting, help the militia take out the PMCs, gaining their trust and making them allies on the battlefield, or kill/stun both PMC and militia alike, making enemies of both. This first section on the game also hapens to be one of the best done sections, with the interesting dynamic of warring factions, tension resulting from battlefield sneaking, and a overall cool locale.

Act two takes place in South America, in a throwback type situation to MGS3. It doesn’t quite take place in the jungle, but its got a similar aesthetic to it and is the second most fun zone in the game. There is one area of complaint, the part where you have to “track” Naomi’s footprints to get to where she’s being kept in S. America. it’s just not as fun as the game thinks it is to look for footprints. This section also features some of the militia/PMC fighting of the desert.

The third act is the weakest of the bunch, taking place in Europe, you mainly follow a member of the resistance in an attempt to locate the headquarters of said resistance and “Big Mama.” It’s just plain not as fn as other parts of the game, even if it forces a bit more the stealth aspect of MGS that I love so much.

Act IV has the third best section of the game, as you return to Shadow Moses Island hunting Liquid Ocelot. The act starts with a dream sequence that pops you back to the PSX Metal Gear Solid making you play the approach into the Shadow Moses Island base. after that bit of nostalgia, you bust into the base itself, hearing bits of nostalgic moments that took place int he island as you pass through familiar locations. The enemies in this section are far less interesting, as they are mostly robotic. and not as fun to sneak by. This act does also contain a very sweet section where you pilot the Metal Gear REX, the model you fought in Metal Gear Solid and a Metal Gear on Metal Gear battle as you spar with the Metal Gear RAY model from Metal Gear Solid 2.

The final act brings you face to face with the Outer Heaven, Liquid’s main battleship and the location he intends to launch his revolution from. The shortest section in the game, it does feature a great boss battle against a foe similar to Psycho Mantis as well as one of the best cinematic and nostalgic gameplay sections as the final boss battle.

No real review can get away without mentioning Metal Gear Solid Online. This game, I feel, suffers from the fact that stealth is not rewarded as it is in the main game. Why would you want to play MGO like any other third-person shooter? I mainly have my fun by refusing to kill any other players, but when I do manage to stun another player, one of my teammates inevitably comes around and shoots him in the head on the floor. Can’t win ’em all, I guess.

Graphics

Meet the best looking PS3 game currently on the market. Every ounce of processing power available to Konami and Kojima Productions was expertly utilized to create a beautiful experience that will wow most any naysayer of the PS3’s graphical capabilities. The desert makes you thirsty, jungle makes you sweaty from humidity, Europe feels cool, Shadow Moses Island is appropriately haunted-seeming, and Outer Heaven’s cinematic beauty makes for a great end to a fine game.

Sound

What can I say? The guns sound good, voice acting is as superb as ever (boo to losing the British and Chinese accents of Naomni and Mei Ling, respectively), and the score by Harry Gregson-Williams and company evokes the properly patriotic and legendary aesthetic of Metal Gear.

Final Verdict

Metal Gear Solid 4 is an amazing game, but I found myself just a wee bit disappointed with the epic. While the game does everything really well, I just found the story and, specifically, the acting of some of the characters (Naomi and Sunny) to be rather irritating. Compared to the sublime perfection of Metal Gear Solid 3, this game just needed a little more editing and a little less of the Japanese overacted melodrama. That being said, MGS4 is still one of the best PS3 games out there, gameplay-wise and should not be missed. A definite must-play.

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter.

After a week of mentioning Metal Gear Solid 4 at least once in every post, I’m sure you’re getting damn near sick of hearing about Kojima’s latest masterpiece (or so I hear, can’t play yet :sob:). Let’s close off the MGS4 references for the short term with the video reviews posted by both Gametrailers and IGN. Enjoy!

One other little treat, this is one of the funnier Flight of the Conchords songs that I’m saddened didn’t make it onto the CD: