Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Metal Gear Solid didn’t just help pioneer the stealth genre, it messed with me in ways I never expected. There’s the infamous Psycho Mantis fight, but also a host of other wild deaths, reveals, and showdowns. Metal Gear Solid taught me it was okay for a game to be weird, but also that it could still be a tightly wound action-adventure experience with incredible gameplay while doing so. —Ethan Gach
