DT9k

I remember that mailbag video. The only reason I mention this is to reiterate for the public record that Giant Bomb was not (and in my opinion never would be) playing around with actual fucking firearms in their office. The fact that BBC3 reported otherwise is dangerously bad reporting. I know some people outside of the U.S. think all Americans carry guns everywhere, but c'mon. Consider the optics, do some damn research and maybe don't smear the good reputation of the people you toss into your tawdry murder-docu-tainment.

Hollow Knight kicks ass and is unquestionably in my top 3 for this year

This trailer more clearly indicated gameplay than any before it. If that shoulder mounted sonar(-esque) dish isn't a gameplay component akin to soliton radar, I will eat a damn hat.

Wow, seems like a lot of garbage takes on this trailer.

If you're decrying the lack of gameplay you either don't understand how recently production actually began or you have no concept of time and how much of it games take. He was fired from a company at which he was employed for over 30 years, started a new studio and made three trailers for said studio's first game in just under, what, 3 years? That's a lot.

Kojima is a super divisive figure. We need more of those. I will take the cringiest aspects of his worst games over almost anything else. Kojima swings for the fucking fences and sometimes he whiffs it big time. Better than an industry of bunters.

2, 3, 5, 1, 4

Sons of Liberty delivered a staggeringly prescient message (so much so that it almost defied understanding at the time) alongside gameplay that still holds up.

Snake Eater is the only entry in the series with a coherent self-contained narrative and it's mechanics built upon the first two titles enough to wobble the entire structure without quite breaking it.

Phantom Pain (with which I mentally lump-in Ground Zeroes) has the most rock-solid gameplay in the series by a wide margin and gets extra points for brevity in storytelling as it trades Kojima's trademark long-windedness for the tacit admission that broad thematic strokes were always the point.

Solid remains a high-water mark for early 3D gaming and has a story not yet off-rails, but has aged equally poorly as it's contemporaries.

Guns of the Patriots is fucking hogwash fan-service, erroneously emphasizing a plot that had reached Time Cube levels of incomprehensibly and doubling down on the copy and paste approach to boss design. Not only did it miss the mark in prognosticating a la Sons of Liberty, it managed to do it without a single memorable event outside of a cinematic. It remains the only game to which I have fallen asleep during a cutscene only to wake up later during the same cutscene.

Peace Walker is a videogame-ass-videogame that feels unremarkable compared to the rest of the series with a plot that starts at Sonichu-level fanfictioning and ends somewhere between the sexual tendencies of a criminal and a big stack of "who gives a fuck?".

6 hours in, I like it a lot

I too would put this in my top 5. It's quite nearly flawless, but I think Dan bounced off it right away and Alex played enough to do a quick look and not much more. If two editors don't click with a game it's just not going to get a ton of coverage on the site. A shame to be certain, especially after so many on the site went gaga for Axiom Verge, but I understand it. There are too many 2D platformers and I'm sure they all have their fans.

As soon as the movie was announced I began making peace with the fact it would be no-good. How could it be when the source material is SO flawed? I will always stand by the quality of the first three-ish books, and the rest are interesting. I made it as far as King describing the size of a demon baby penis (in utero), shut the book and never looked back. They go so far off the deep end that I can only admire it from a distance.

I came SO close to picking it up on the Steam sale. Glad I waited, I guess.

@constantk: andythemeZ was quicker on the draw. Maybe next time!

@hero_swe: Your check is in the mail