The "Top 10" is coming very soon, which means I better get my shit together and work on those notes.
Another recap:
-Day 1: Metroid: Other M
-Day 2: Batman: Arkham Asylum
-Day 3: inFAMOUS
-Day 4: Street Fighter 4
-Day 5: Rock Band
-Day 6: Portal
-Day 7: Bioshock
-Day 8: God of War
-Day 9: Lumines
-Day 10: Halo 2
-Day 11: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
-Day 12: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
-Day 13: Viewtiful Joe
Day 14:
Metal Gear Solid
-Playstation (October 21, 1998)
The first action game where you were encouraged to NOT KILL EVERYTHING IN SIGHT!
"Tactial Covert Espionage" were the words beneath the title and Hideo Kojima took that concept seriously.
I remember the first time I tried out this game, and getting my head handed to me over and over AND OVER. I did not quite gather the concept of NOT killing the guards and instead, sneak around them. I kept leaving footprints everywhere and trying to shoot every guard I saw. Getting into the very first vent to GET INTO THE BASE took several hours of trial and error. This was also before the internet was easily available and before gameFAQS existed (I think).
My first runthrough of the game was a comedy of errors and a series of ridiculous deaths, but I pushed through it with the help of my friends at the comic shop I worked at. The vast majority of my gaming at this point in time (1997-2000) was done in that very comic shop. We sat there and figured out how to defeat bosses or get past difficulties together. My buddy Ryan would look up information online from his house and bring printed out info to help with the more aggravating parts.
Over time as we worked our way through the game, I finally understood how to get around without setting off every alarm or alerting every guard. After beating the game, I kept replaying it to try and get a better rank at the end. Use less rations, set off fewer alarms, kill less guards. I was obsessed to the point where I finished the game in one 5.5 hours sitting without saving the game EVER.
The gameplay was complicated and the controls required a level of patience I no longer have in my later years. I could probably not play this game today, which has been proven by my struggle with attempting to play Metal Gear Solid 3 in the past few years. Regardless of these hang-ups, once the basics of the game are learned it is an amazing experience, a type of game that did not really exist back then and ushered in (for better or worse) a more cinematic style of game production that would show up all over the game industry for years to come. Back in 1998, this game was and in my memory still is a masterpiece.
Tomorrow is the last of the "Not Top 10" games and this one hails from 1994.
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