Best Action Adventure Game

2008 has been a tough year for gamers. Mostly over how to spend our hard-earned cash. Action adventure games were especially well represented and while there are always going to be misfires this year pushed the bar just that little bit higher. To begin with, here are the nominees that missed out.

First up is our old friend Lara Croft with Tomb Raider: Underworld. She has gone through some tough times trying to shake the spectre of Angel of Darkness. Underworld sees Lara return to her arse-kicking (yes, I said arse – she is English after all), ledge-swinging finest as she searches for the lost Hammer of Thor. The journey takes her from the Mediterranean, through the Thai jungle to deepest darkest Mexico in her most sumptuous-looking effort yet. Not quite enough to completely erase the stain of the Angel of Darkness and the Angelina Jolie movies but two thumbs up to Crystal Dynamics for making a good start.

Moving on swiftly, horror in space sounds just a little bit cliche does it not? The truth is that Dead Space draws on almost every sci-fi horror cliche on the face of the planet. The real beauty of the game is that in doing so Redwood Shores have put together a game that epitomises what a good horror game should be. Yes it does reek of Event Horizon and System Shock but when it is done this well who really cares? Joining Isaac Clarke (sequel starring Arthur C Asimov) as he explores the Ishimura, a mining vessel lost after picking up a strange artifact, to find out what went wrong is a truly terrifying experience. Redwood Shores have gone all out to create an immersive and darkly claustrophobic experience. Dropping the HUD and disabling the usual pause while accessing your inventory may seem like simple changes but they help draw you into the game far more than next-gen graphics and sound can do on their own. It almost makes you scared of the dark again.

Far Cry 2 was one of the year’s most worrying releases. With the departure of Crytek many held their breath to see what Ubisoft would do with the franchise. With the new development team came mercenaries, a dangerous arms dealer with a contract on his head and central African nation ravaged by civil war. Thankfully, Ubisoft Montreal did an excellent job from the Half-Life style jeep tour introduction through every malaria-hazed gunshot until the eventual death of the Jackal. The plot was a slow-burner but it used the pull-the-string method of storytelling almost as effectively as Half-Life 2. The new buddy system meant that you always had someone to help you out if a combat situation turns nasty which was a nice relief and introduced an interesting moral element into the mix. Will you choose to never leave a man behind or is every man for himself more your style? At the very least Far Cry 2 will help you learn that about yourself.

Mirror’s Edge is beautiful. There’s no other way to describe it. DICE’s first effort outside of the Battlefield series demonstrates that not all dystopian futures have to be grey and drab. Not only that but they brought the pristine rooftops and white corridors to life with judicious use of colour. It wasn’t the visuals that were the true soul of Mirror’s Edge. DICE gave Faith, the game’s hero, more acrobatic abilities than Lara Croft could ever hope for. Combined with the first ever momentum-based physics engine and a seamless first-person melee combat system Mirror’s Edge was endowed with unparalleled flowing gameplay. This is a true vision of the future.

There were a stack of excellent releases but this year’s winner stood just that little bit taller than everything else…

Metal Gear Solid 4

Everything has been building to this point. Metal Gear Solid 4 is the game that Hideo Kojima has been trying to make since Solid Snake snuck his way on to the Playstation in the mid-nineties. Each installment moved the series closer to Kojima’s vision being fully realised.  MGS 4 flipped its stealth heritage on its head and put an aged Snake in the heart of a war in the Middle East searching for Liquid Ocelot, his super-soldier DNA causing his aging to accelerate rapidly.  Snake, now ravaged by age has to take on the might of Liquid’s PMCs in a bid to save the world from becoming slave to his brother’s twisted will.

This game not only exceeded the expectations of MGS fans but it even converted a good few who had never been able to get into the series until now. The pixel-perfect cut-scenes, whilst long, are much more compelling than the previous installments and the PS3 controls allowed Snake to be guided much better than ever before. It was a joy to watch and play through and combined the best elements of a blockbuster movie and a stealth action game much more efficiently than even Tom Clancy could muster with the exploits of Sam Fisher. A perfect ending to the story and a fitting tribute to Hideo Kojima’s vision. Not only the Action Adventure Game of 2008 but quite possibly the game of a lifetime.

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