everyday gamer

Just wanted to give fair warning that some of what you might be reading could very easily be considered spoiler territory.  While I’m pretty sure that noone really cares that much, consider this your obligatory spoiler warning.

While there were a good number of exceptional games this year, there was one that stood head and shoulders above the rest.  My game of the year had a compelling enough story to keep me glued to my console for days at a time, prompting an additional playthrough of the game – something that I have not done (interestingly enough) since the previous game in the series.  More importantly, my game of the year progressed the interactive entertainment medium more than any other game this year with its ambitious, envelope pushing design choices and production values.  My game of the year for 2008 was Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots.

The Metal Gear saga first began in 1987 with the story of a rookie soldier codenamed Solid Snake and his solo infiltration mission into the fortress of Outer Heaven.  Throughout the next 21 years, players lived and died with Snake through multiple releases on multiple gaming systems along with the series’ memorable cast of supporting characters such as Revolver Ocelot and The Boss in exceptionally intricate and often headache-inducing storyline.  The story became so unwieldy as to become a hindrance to itself, prompting series creator Hideo Kojima to make the claim every year that the latest Metal Gear would be his last.  While the statement never actually came to fruition with past games in the series, Mr. Kojima made the claim again with MGS4, as well as turning the main protagonist an elderly man as a consequence of the cloning process that spawned not only him, but his brothers Liquid and Solidus Snake as well.  All throughout, the player is reminded that Old Snake has seen a lot of fighting and his body is tired – his body reminds him of that fact when he quips about his continual back pain or coughs up a lung whilst smoking a cigarette.  The rapid aging of Solid Snake was a symbolic gesture – an allegory of how the player has aged alongside Snake and the confirmation that Metal Gear Solid IV would be the ultimate conclusion of Solid Snake’s story.  Every dangling plot thread, every last bizarre detail over the past 21 years would finally be revealed in this game.  And MGS4 accomplished this in spades.

Every last plotline from the nature of FoxDIE to the Revolver Ocelot’s arm to the etymology of the shibboleth ‘LaLiLuLeLo’ was explained, presented in arguably the most daring gaming narrative ever constructed – a narrative that kept me engaged from start to finish as I hung onto every word of the storyline.  While I freely admit that some of the explanations weren’t as satisfying as they could have been, to finally realize that the story was heading toward its swan song most definitely was.  And while the exposition during some of the cut scenes did run a little bit on the long side, they were by far the best, most engaging cut scenes I have ever seen in any game and they handily kept my full attention.

What’s particularly interesting about the cutscenes in the Metal Gear Solid series is that traditionally they are always done in-engine. This time around, the boundary between pre-rendered cut scene and in-game graphics have been blurred so much that it is actually rather difficult to really tell the difference. Rounding out the technical package is the sound engineering, which is equally impressive as the graphics – MGS4 is the first game that I want to hear in full 5.1 surround sound. The level of technical polish is of the highest calibur – the amount of time spent refining the visuals and the game play really shines through and the game is just an incredible experience because of it.

However, it wasn’t just the fan service or the technical qualifications that made MGS4 rise up above the other games this year – it was also the presentation of the material.  Metal Gear Solid IV represents the convergence of two media that are often at odds with one another in vying for the consumers mind share – film and gaming.  No other game before this does anything quite as daring or ambitious as MGS4 in trying to mesh cinema and gameplay.   Whether it be setpiece moments such as the return to Shadow Moses (which mind you, had me in near tears), and the shocking in-game emulation of the original Metal Gear Solid to the simultaneous split-screen battle with Old Snake fighting off an army Gecko robots and Raiden locked in battle with Vamp atop Metal Gear Rex, to the final crawl to the final room where connect with Old Snake and literally experience all of his pain and suffering, it just goes to show that Guns of the Patriots has truly set a new standard in presentation and that the future is bright for interactive entertainment.

Hideo Kojima, thank you for making my most beloved game in 2008.  I salute you on yet another masterpiece.

P.S. Please make more Metal Gear games!

Difficulty of games is a very interesting to me nowadays. More and more I find that I want to enjoy the gaming experience and not be frustrated in the process of doing so. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I am becoming a casual gamer, but as my life has gotten more busy I find that I would rather see something new in a game and not be languishing on stage for days on end. Even so, there are games that treat difficulty as a badge of honor such as Ninja Gaiden (which berates you mercilessly if you lower the difficulty level) and Halo (which says that the most difficulty level is the real way to play). Some folks find that brand of masochistic behavior fun – I still have mixed feelings in regards to that.

Mega Man 9 was an interesting game in 2008 as it was designed with old school 8-bit graphics as homage to the old days of the NES. Along with the old school graphics came old school gameplay: that is, Capcom made the game incredibly difficult to satisfy fans of the series, oftentimes evoking thoughts that the game was deliberately designed to frustrate you. In fact, I don’t remember the original Mega Man games on the NES ever being this difficult.   And yet, I still had a lot of fun with the game – a testament to solid game design.

Stuff that can kill you here: insta-kill spikes on the ground, a spinning pendulum, and a teleporting robot that shoots stuff.  Yep.

Needless to say, I have not finished Mega Man 9 – I stopped at around the 6th robot master defeated before my interest was diverted elsewhere to another game. This was only after dumping a good eight or so hours dying, breaking controllers, and calling myself an idiot for getting tricked by the game. Perhaps I will finish the game one day.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of in-game advertisement; often times sticks out like a sore thumb and just doesn’t seem appropriate for the environment.  But if there’s one game that did in-game advertisement right this year, it’s Burnout Paradise.  Aside from being the best racing game this year, Burnout also featured real-world billboard advertisements in the busy virtual world of Paradise city.  The best one of the bunch?

‘Nuff said.

Best Soundtrack of 2008 is actually a bit of a loaded category – there was a surprisingly large amount of software this year with memorable soundtracks. Most of the ones that stuck out in my head are pretty obvious – Bionic Commando Rearmed featured the original 8 bit music tracks remixed and reinterpreted for the current gaming generation. Super Street Fighter 2: HD Remix featured hip and imaginative reinterpretations of the classic tracks by the fans themselves, a feat that was unprecedented in quality and scope. While both of these games’ soundtracks were definitely impressive in their own right, it was actually the music choice of LittleBigPlanet that really shocked me with its quality this past year.

Jim Noir – My Patch

LittleBigPlanet is an important game because it represents the advent of user-generated content to the home console. With everyone all over the world creating their own unique levels, it’s only fitting that the music actually comes from all over the world. The end result is an eclectic, multicultural collection of songs that captures the essence of the LittleBigPlanet community so perfectly.

Cafe Tacuba – Volver a Comenzar

While the soundtrack of LittleBigPlanet is more notorious because of the subsequent recall of the game, the lack of the true version of the Tapha Niang doesn’t sour the fact that it is my most memorable soundtrack of the year: it remains the only game music that kept me smiling the entire time in 2008.

Toumani Diabate’s Symmetric Orchestra – Tapha Niang

This console generation and the continuing success of the Wii serves as a reminder of the fact that Nintendo’s slice of the videogaming pie is so big that unfortunately a lot of software gets completely ignored, even in spite of exceptional critical buzz. Valkyria Chronicles was certainly that title this past year.

While it was always true that Valkyria Chronicles was going to be a hard sale- niche genre, poor PR, and an expensive console… 33,000 copies sold over the month of November in North America is still abysmal.  Which is an unfortunate circumstance because between amalgation of traditional strategy RPG with western style action and the unique watercolor artstyle powered by the CANVAS engine, Valkyria Chronicles easily ranks among the best titles of the year.  As I mentioned in a previous post, if you own a PS3 and have not picked up Valkyria Chronicles, you’re part of the problem.