2. Metal Gear Solid
The one that started it all. There is so much to love about this game that it is impossible to cover everything. Metal Gear Solid actually rekindled my love for video games when I finally played it, for PC actually and not PS1. I remembered the original Metal Gear on NES, but I was never a big fan of it as a 9 year old. Sneaking around and trying to avoid combat never really piqued my interest, when I could pop Contra in and just start blasting aliens without abandon. MGS was different though, from the first time I laid eyes on it as my roommate in college had it for his PS1. When the PC version came out, I snatched it up, and immediately fell back in love with video games. Cinematic gaming didn't exist before Hideo Kojima brought us this masterpiece. Voice acting was normally barely passable in video games (see the original Resident Evil), and I can't think of any games that used the in-game graphics engine to portray cut-scenes in the way that Kojima did. There were so many little things that stood out and took the presentation to new heights. The snow falling when you stepped off the elevator was amazing at the time. Snake's breath was visible when he was outside, helping to portray the frigid Alaskan weather you were faced with. Not only would you leave footprints in the snow, as well as the sound of your footsteps changing in the snow, but if the guards spotted your footprints, they knew an unwelcome guest was in their midst. While I didn't know a great deal about the back story of Metal Gear, I was able to glean so much of it from the CODEC conversations with different characters. Then there were all the shocking reveals, along with the double and triple crosses; Liquid Snake and Solid were revealed to be brothers and clones of Big Boss, Master Miller was murdered by Liquid before the operation even took place, Liquid had been impersonating him the entire time, and instead of deactivating Metal Gear, Snake had actually activated it using the PAL cards. The best of them all, though, was the post-credits conversation between Ocelot and The President of the United States, who was actually a 3rd clone of Big Boss, and it set a precedent for the rest of the games in the series. Some think it is impossible to top what was done with the very first Metal Gear Solid, but to me there is one game that did it better.