"Best Game Ever" is totally subjective and will vary depending on personal opinion.

Russia is so cool. Admit it. Put your patriotic views on the Cold War to one side for the moment; if you wanted awesome, the Soviet Union was the place to be.

Nothing quite raises the hairs on the back of your neck like an epic piece of Russian Propaganda. No one can rock a coat like Vladimir Lenin. Never can the effortless creepiness of the Cult Of Stalin posters be matched. The ideology and politics are great (who doesn't like equality and comradery?!), but it was that atmosphere, that art style, that incredibe uniqueness that makes it truly stunning. And that's exactly what makes Metro 2033 the best game ever.

Metro 2033 is made in Ukraine. It was a part of the USSR way back, if you didn't know. The 'satellite states', to this day adorned with proud red and cold steel statues, still haven't shrugged off the damning effect Communism had on their countries; and poverty, unhappiness and vodka is rife. If America were in that situation, there would be revolts. If the UK were in that situation, there would be uproar. What do Eastern Europeans do? Stick their chest out, stoically survey their landscape and create some of the best literature, films and games the world has ever seen. And wear super awesome coats.

Metro 2033 is the very embodiment of the Soviet Spirit. Vast kudos has to go Dmitry Glukhovsky for his excellent book (immediately get your respectively translated version online right now), but words are just words, whereas games suck you in and put you directly in the experience. Set in the nuclear-proof Moscow Metro, the tunnels are the very embodiment of Stalin's reign of terror; claustrophobic, terrifying, dangerous and unavoidable. The endless darkness, unknown power and evil secrets represent the Russia of that period. You can go into as much detail of what represents what as you want, but at the end of the day, it's about the atmosphere. And Metro 2033 has the best atmosphere ever.

Yep. Even better than S.T.A.L.K.E.R, but only due to the massive graphical improvement. Crysis can go stick it: Metro has the best lighting in any game. Torches pierce the thick silence, kerosene lamps illuminate with a sickly orange flare, while the Moscow sunlight is as white and crisp as it is deadly. Dust hangs in the air, survivors' faces are wrinkled and harrowed, weapons are held together by string and tape; never has such in-depth and precise attention to detail been shown. Everything looks scared, in retreat, battered and broken - even the mutants look unhappy. The subtle points threaten to get lost in the total immersion it provides; gas masks freezing up due to lack of air and breathing slowly becoming heavier seems as natural and as the distant echoes of gunfire and shrieks. When you're not even noticing deft elements like those, it goes to show how totally involving the atmosphere created is. Nowhere in gaming will you feel as you do when there's 2 minutes of air left, screen covered in cracks and splits, cowering in a darkened Moscow apartment as footsteps of unknown beasts tread softly around you. It's brilliant.

From a gameplay perspective, Metro 2033 once again nails it. Weapons feel powerful, and loud enough to split Vin Diesel's ears. Monsters were hauntingly acrobatic, and looked pure evil without resorting to cliché. 4A Games did an incredible job of parrying boredom: one minute you'd be shooting creatures in the sewers, then trying to decipher an abrupt hallucination, only to sneak round a Nazi camp silently picking off guards, before finally crawling into the sunlight and surviving in the frozen wastes of Russia. The game changed objective, tempo, and setting often enough to keep you hooked for hours on end.

Of course, it isn't perfect. Two criticisms I had when I first played was that it was too short, and that enemies soaked up too much damage (anyone remember the Amoeba Spores in D6? I still have nightmares). Both of those were rectified on my second playthrough. Please, reader, if you have the game, put in back in your system and start a new game on 'Realistic' difficulty. Metro 2033 is one of those dying breeds that, on the highest level of difficulty, not only means you take less damage, but enemies do too. It's incredible. Nazis and beasts only take a handful of shots to kill, making the fighting so much more deadly and so much less frustrating. And, of course, you've got to be more careful than ever. I'm very happy to admit that Metro 2033 on realistic was one of the best few days of gaming I've ever had. You'll agree, I'm sure.

This is why the announcement of Metro 2034 (in 3D, no less) is even sweeter. Not only do we get to revisit this wonderful and chilling universe again, but we'll get to iron out the minor flaws (stealth was slightly botched, as enemies would somehow instinctively know where you were at random points). Also, the Librarian section, while amazing in theory (having to stand down a hulking beast and not running away/shooting it? Awesome), sometimes they'd just come at you and strike you down for no reason. Just a quick fix and Metro 2034 has the ability to become the GOTY.

For now, play Metro 2033 while swilling pure ethanol and wearing a kick-ass coat. Because it's just so damn good.

Labels: Best Game Ever, Chris Hawke, Feature, Metro 2033

"Best Game Ever" is totally subjective and will vary depending on personal opinion.

Once, I belonged to a clan called Outer Heaven. A group of misfits: perfect underdog material. There were only eight-or-so of us, mostly French, but the rest from all over Europe. And we ruled the land of Metal Gear Online.

Usually, we hung around the seventh best in the world. Sometimes, we'd push forward to the top five, or fall below the ten mark. But we kept at it, because we loved it. Because then, we became more than specks on this vast, senseless planet. Because we were playing Metal Gear Online... and we were a team.

Online games have always struggled with the concept of teamwork. Throwing a group of mismatched gamers in the same arena for a few minutes and telling them not to shoot each other just doesn't create that team spirit; you can't tell who's behind the gamertag, and you've no reward for helping a buddy. Like luckless lovers, we were destined to go from fling to fling, match to match, being told we were together but never believing it. So, leave it to Kojima, in 2008, to create the best game ever.

The anchor, upon which the whole multiplayer component to MGS4 revolved around, was the clan system. Not clan tags - pointless four letter prefixes allowing just enough room for you to swear in - no, the clan system was hardcore. The game didn't simply encourage joining a clan, it almost forced it, thanks to Survival mode (more on that later). Unfortunately, this meant there were a lot of two-member clans who just used it as a glorified clan tag, but for the rest of us, it was a gateway into another universe. To begin with, I wandered the muddy plains of Blood Bath alone, cold, and frightened, until a friendly French player offered me some help via the superb and unique Training mode. And that was that. A while later, around about 6 of us were clan members. And in MGO, that meant we were brothers.

The speech addition was vital to the game's success. Not everyone owns a headset, and for other team-based games, only those with microphones can order others round or pass information. But a quick tap of Select means you can type a message to friend or foe. It was brilliant, and I'm still at a loss as to why more games don't add this feature. We could communicate, coordinate, organize and dominate. The SOP System helped no end, allowing real-time updates on players' positions and situations. It turned MGO from a mess of separate tactics to a melting pot of strategy: we could decide to hide in our spawn points, or send two men up to the rooftop, or have one man flank in a box while the other distracts the enemy. Such a simple element made all the difference.

It became a necessity in certain game modes. I was never one for straight up deathmatch - it missed the point. No, I was a beast at Team Sneak. The attacking team, equipped with stealth camo, tries to bring either KEROTAN or GA-KO toys to their goal area, while the other team defends the items. You could also kill, stun, and (only for the attacking team) hold up all enemy team members. Whenever a stealth soldier is discovered, all stealth camo is temporarily rendered non-operational. It was incredible. The rush you could get from cowering in a sewer drain as a friend was discovered and the stealth went down was unmatched, as was the day I managed to knock out and brutally stab the entire enemy team when I was the only one left. Sweet.

But I didn't do it for me. I didn't silently stalk the shadows that fateful day to boost my own stats. I did it for us. MGO remains the most powerful game available today, able to turn even the most stoic of lone wolves into team players. The feeling you got from a team victory, no matter how poorly one personally performed, was overpowering - proper punch-the-air stuff. Ever had to wipe a smile off your face because of a win on Call of Duty? Metal Gear Online took six people who were thousands of miles apart and, no matter how corny it sounds (despite the fact we had never met each other and mostly communicated via typing into a game) transformed us into the best of friends, through the nail-biting finalés of deathmatches; through the heavy losses and outright dominations; high and low, thick and thin, game to game, day to day - this shining Blu-ray disc formed bonds that could never be broken, for hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

Nowhere was this more evident than Survival mode. We played on Tuesdays. Each clan entered, and you played another clan in a random game mode, before the victor would advance to play again, in the aim to get 5 wins in a row. This was the big league. This was it. Titan clans of the game, such as the huge ITA network, would converge to parry off teams like 'Just4Lulz' in epic tournaments. We only managed to get the magic 5 a few times, but that was only a nice little goal to aim at; instead, we played for the matches. Survival produced some of the finest moments I've ever had in gaming. One day we'd be snatching a victory on the cliff lookout on Virtuous Vista, or getting destroyed in our fourth game in Ambush Alley. Epic Team Sneak marathons on Groznyj Grad, mad dashes to the catapults on Urban Ultimatum, defending the GA-KO down to the very last few bullets on Midtown Maelstrom. They were all priceless, and each Tuesday threw up a brand new challenge for us to overcome as Outer Heaven. Metal Gear Online is the best game ever because it's the only game to have nailed the aspect of true teamwork.

Of course, what goes up, must come down. I got stuck downloading the DLC pack due to a mixup with the awful Konami ID system. It took more than a month to fix. By the time I got back in, the clan was faltering. Slowly dropping down league tables, barely able to scrape together a team for most matches due to members drifting away. And so, on the 14th November 2008, Outer Heaven closed down.

We still keep in touch, via the PlayStation Network. Sometimes, we'll find each other playing the same game and team up online. A few times, we even went back onto MGO in the name of nostalgia. But it wasn't quite the same. One day, we said, we'd get back together. Maybe if they released an MGO2, Outer Heaven would rise once more, from the ashes, and again we'd become brothers in arms. Until that day, we're left, like luckless lovers, destined to go from fling to fling, match to match, being told we were together but never believing it. But always remembering those wonderful days.

Labels: Best Game Ever, Chris Hawke, Feature, Metal Gear Online, MGO