35. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PSP)
Movie tie-ins are rarely good, so I was naturally skeptical when I heard they were making a Metal Gear Solid video game. That it was going to be on the PSP rather than a home console didn't help matters, but Peace Walker's burning desire to achieve greatness was such that neither hardware limitations nor Hideo Kojima himself could stop it from becoming one of the best of the year and, indeed, ever. There is just so much content: Epic boss battles. Multiplayer, both cooperative and competitive. Base building. Recruiting soldiers. Capturing vehicles. Building your own fucking Metal Gear! Tons and tons of side missions, the best of which will have you holding up your enemies with a banana. And, of course, a totally impenetrable story in the classic Kojima fashion. To somehow bring order to all this chaos, Kojima Productions shamelessly cribbed Monster Hunter's game flow system, and it works really well. Capcom themselves were so impressed with the execution that they donated some monsters for Snake to fight, and thanks to a well designed control scheme that makes playing on the cramped PSP much less strenuous than usual, it's actually fun to do so. People often call Peace Walker a great handheld game, but it isn't. It's a great game. Period.
