Game of My Life
Last week the teacher of my DDJ class (Desenho e Desenvolvimento de Jogos/Design and Development of Games) asked us a simple question: what is the game of your life and why? We were then sent home to think about it and prepare a quick, 4 minute presentation on it.
At first, I wasn’t sure what game I was going to choose, seeing as I don’t play that much. But of all the games I’ve played, which one did I really like? Which one was my favorite of all? Which one did I have the most fun playing?
After a few minutes, a name just drifted into my head…
Solid Snake.
What follows is the text that I wrote to sort out my ideas and to help prepare the basis for my presentation. I had to present it in portuguese, so it’s not exactly what I said, but very close. The images you see to the right are the slides I made to go along with the presentation.
So, without further ado…
I don’t only have one game of my life, per say. I have four games of my life, and they’re all part of the Metal Gear Solid series. I like MGS so much that I saved money for a year and a half just to buy a Playstation 3 because I knew MGS4 would come out exclusively for it.
Why do I like this game so much? Three reasons:
1. Stealth
MGS popularized the Stealth Action video game genre. You sneak around, trying to evade all the enemies. You can take them out, or you can just try go around them and avoid confrontation. You do all this in a Ninja like fashion; the only thing missing is a sword. In the more recent games, you now have camouflage to help while moving around undetected.
I just think that the game not forcing you to kill everyone is really awesome. I mean sure, killing the enemy is pretty fun, but not making it obligatory is just as fun and is actually harder to do.
2. Story line
The story behind Metal Gear Solid, in my opinion, is just great! It talks about so many different things: it has secret military conspiracy theories, nuclear weapons, war, cloning, artificial intelligence, censorship, and much more. I admit that it gets bit complex at times, but that’s exactly what I like about it.
3. Cinematic
Playing MGS is just like watching a movie, except that you get to control the actions of the main character. It has huge and entertaining cut scenes which tell the story. You just get so involved in the game and in the cut scenes that time just flies by without you noticing it.
For me, the worst part of the cut scenes is that it’s always during that time when people interrupt me – either the phone will ring, or someone will want to talk to me – and I wouldn’t be able to pause it. Thankfully, MGS4 has introduced Pause during the “mini movies” which is really helpful. Before that, I had to not save the game and then replay the last bit just to watch the cut scene without being interrupted.
What about you? What’s the game of your life and why? Drop me a line in the comments or a link to your own blog post.