My Top Six Game List of 2005, Part Three

Well,everyone, here it is! My final installment in my series of my six favorite video games of 2005. What are the last two? Will I name a favorite? Read on.......

Sly 2: Band of Thieves for the PS2 is one of the best platformers, not to mention games, period that I've played for awhile. You play as Sly Cooper, the master thief, of the prestigious Cooper family, the latest in a long line of master thieves. Yes, I did say that Sly was a thief. A master thief, in fact, which means that he only steals from master criminals. Sort of a Robin Hood type character. Sly, as a young raccoon, was all set to inherit the Thievious Raccoonus, the Cooper family's journal of all their exploits and tecniques, but on the night, he was to inherit it, his family was attacked and brutally mudered by the Fiendish Five gang, who divided up the Thievius Raccoonus and went on their way to use the information in it to their own devious ends. Sly was the only survivor, as he hid in a closet and was not noticed. He grew up in an orphanage, and befriended two other critters who joined him in his exploits as they all grew up. There is Murray the hippo(?), who is the brawn of the gang, and does everything requiring strength over stealth, and Bentley the turtle, who is the scientific genius, and creates all sorts of gismos and gadgets to help Sly out.

In his first adventure, Sly battles the Fiendish Five and reclaims all of the parts of the Thievius Raccoonus. The final boss in that adventure is a giant owl named Clockwerk who was so consumed with his hatred for the Cooper family that he had all of his body parts replaced with mechanical ones so that he could live until he had defeated them. (perhaps borrowing a reversed page from Isaac Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man") However, Sly emerged victorious, and Clockwerk is defeated and his mechanical parts disassembled. In Sly 2, Sly discovers that someone, namely the Klaww Gang , has stolen Clockwerk's parts and are using them to their criminal ends- The production of illegal spice, printing counterfeit mony, etc. It is Sly's job to confront the five members and steal back the Clockwerk parts to save the world from the terrible possibility that Clockwerk would be reassembled.

This is a unique game that requires stealth and sneaking around instead of the usual action-packed running around and direct confrontation of enemies as in other platformers. It also has quite a few minigames thrown in that keep thing fresh and interesting. It is very well made, and kept me very enjoyably occupied for quite awhile. Thus it earns it's place on my list of favorite games of 2005.
Bentley, Sly, and Murray relax in their hideout.
Sly in action, sneaking around on a rooftop.

And, finally, the last, but certainly not the least, on my list, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes for the Gamecube. I think I would probably have to say that this was my favorite game that I played in 2005. I knew it would be a great game and would be well worth the money, so I saved up my video game allowance for something like three months to accumulate the $65 necessary to buy it and the Nintendo Power Strategy guide to go along with it as soon as it was released in November '04. It was well worth it, too. It is an epic first-person adventure game, with vast worlds to explore, beautiful graphics, unbelievable depth and detail, and epic boss battles. Your view is from inside the helmet of Samus Aran, an intergalactic bounty hunter, who is encased completely in a mechanical power suit, which enables her to survive in extremely inhospitable conditions and perform superhuman feats of strength and endurance. Yes, I said her. Samus Aran is a woman. That was one of the secrets of the original Metroid game for the NES. Only after you beat the game in an incredibly short time was the secret revealed. The Metroid games have always been focused on solving puzzles and exploration of HUGE worlds. In fact, the Super Metroid game for the SNES way back in 1994 was so huge that it took up 40 megs of storage space on the game cartridge! If my memory serves me correctly, that was a pretty respectable size for a computer hard drive back then.

This game certainly lives up to its heritage. It begins as Samus responds to a distress call from a Galactic Federation expedition to the planet Aether. She soon discovers that the planet has been inhabited by her old foes, the reptilian, violent, amoral space pirates. She also soon discovers that there are two dimensions of the planet, a dark and light dimension, and there are portals by which she can travel back and forth between the two dimensions. The dark side is inhabited by the Ing, a hostile race bent on taking over the planet. It is Samus' job to defeat the space pirates, restore order to the planet, and find out what happened to the GF expedition.

As I said, It is an epic game, both in graphics, bosses, and size. I recently went back and played the final boss battle in the game, which takes at LEAST 30 minutes, and was blown away again by the size and depth of this game. Which is why it has earned the coveted title of my favorite video game of 2005.
A view from inside Samus' helmet....
The much coveted (atleast by the space pirates) morph ball capability, which allows Samus to get into places she would otherwise be unable to fit.

Well, there you have it. My six favorite video games of 2005. What do you think?

Please pardon my two previous empty posts. They were errors in attempt to put a picture on my profile.