The art of video games has had its fair share of marvelous gems throughout the years with titles such as Super Mario Bros., Doom, The Legend of Zelda, Skyrim and others having entertained gamers for decades now, revolutionizing the world of gaming and technology in the process. Last year had a plethora of great games as well. One interesting aspect of the gaming community in 2015 was that nobody could settle on what game was the “Game of the Year.” The two finalists were some of the greatest video games of all time: Bethesda’s Fallout 4 and Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (MGSV for short). Not only did these two games carry on the spirit of two of the gaming community’s favorite franchises, but they provided some of the most emotional and morally evocative stories in gaming history. Both of these games are great, but which one is actually the best game of 2015?
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain:
Like with many other media of art, the video game industry has a few people who are considered ingenious visionaries unable to create anything short of fantastic. Hideo Kojima might just be the greatest visionary to this day. When he released the first installation in the Metal Gear franchise in 1987, it took the world by storm with its revolutionary design mechanics, such as a reliance on stealth to complete missions, and an excellently gripping story. Despite immense popularity with fans and critics, Kojima believed that the game was nowhere near the greatness he imagined because to the technical limitations of both the MSX2 computer and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), both of which had specialized ports for the game. After 28 years of continuing to create Metal Gear games impressed fans worldwide, Kojima fulfilled his dream of creating his masterpiece in 2015 with MGSV.
Set in the 1980s in Afghanistan and the Angola-Zaire Border region, MGSV sets players free to roam the vast world of Cold War brutality in any manner they choose. Like all Metal Gear games, The Phantom Pain delivers an extremely intense story filled with excruciating moral choices the player must make, with each choice affecting the end result. Kojima didn’t shy away from controversial themes such as rape, torture, child soldiers, slavery, genocide, PTSD, Cold War tensions, and the impact of war on civilians, themes that are usually avoided in popular culture for fear of offending viewers, but, in this case, only make the story more gritty and realistic.

 
The cinematography and voice acting in the game further strengthen the emotional experience. Kiefer Sutherland was cast as the voice and face of the main protagonist, Big Boss. Easily one of the most content-dense and limitless sandbox games of all time, MGSV provides players with seemingly unlimited possibilities to complete even the simplest of missions. For example, if one was tasked to steal a shipment of weapons from an enemy base, they could utilize stealth to sneak past hostile defenses with silence and precision, armor up and face the enemy head on in a fury of bullets and explosives, attack from the sky with a helicopter, pick off enemies from an overlooking mountain, knock out the entire opposition with a water gun (no joke) or accomplish their task in countless other ways. Another aspect of MGSV is it can be completed without killing a single person, which challenges players to restrain themselves by using nonlethal weapons and creating a heavy sense of guilt that makes players feel like a monster every time they kill an enemy. Hideo Kojima has created a game that manipulates its player’s emotions and morality all while fighting against the personal dilemmas the main character faces.
The reason why the latest installment of one of the gaming community’s favorite franchises is so great is that it allows for players to accomplish tasks with complete freedom in an interesting environment. Everything about The Phantom Pain is picture perfect; from the intensely dramatic story to the extreme level of customization, the latest (and most likely final) Metal Gear game hit home in every way that it possibly could have.
 
Fallout 4:
The other contender for the best game of 2015 is the highly anticipated entry in the beloved Fallout series. Like the Metal Gear series, Fallout was created by one of the most acclaimed game developers in history, Bethesda. Responsible for creating gaming icons such as the Elder Scrolls franchise and remaking classic hits such as Doom and Wolfenstein, Bethesda is no stranger to critical appeal. It is no surprise, then, that Fallout 4 is another stroke of  genius.
Set in a post-apocalyptic Boston, Fallout 4 puts players in control of a custom-made survivor of anatomic war. His name is, simply, Sole Survivor, and he is in a scramble to find and rescue his kidnapped son. Like Metal Gear, there are a vast number of things to explore and do in the game, leaving it up to the player to choose how and when to complete tasks. The environment in which Fallout 4 takes place is content-rich as well. From the irradiated emptiness of the Glowing Sea, to the cosmopolitical sanctuary of Diamond City, the landscape in Fallout 4 oozes story, character development and a strange sensation of post-apocalyptic beauty. There are some moments in the game where the player can’t help but lose themselves to the sheer elegance of the lawless landscape of future Boston.

In Fallout 4, players can tailor nearly everything to their own play style. From weapon construction and customization to settlement building, almost everything in the game can be augmented to the exact preferences of each and every player. On top of materialistic variety, interactions with Non-Playable-Characters (NPCs) in Fallout 4 can branch off into several directions. Saying certain things to certain people can change opinions toward the playable character and result in specific events and occurrences later on in the game. Depending on who the player aligns with throughout the story, the ending could be one of many possible outcomes. This means that no two players will have the same experience, making Fallout 4 a truly personal and immersive game.
What makes Fallout 4 stand out from other Role Playing Games of its scale is that the story and world continue to change based on what specific things the player does. It is truly spectacular to see how things turn out at the end of the story after the player spent hours making even the smallest of choices. One word to sum up why the game is so phenomenal is dynamic. The team at Bethesda has done an amazing job of making a game that is engaging, immersive, organic, customizable and a slice of perfection.
 
The Verdict:
At the end of the day, both Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Fallout 4 are utterly brilliant marvels of modern gaming. To pit them against each other can best be described as an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object. In short, what earns the title of the best game of 2015 depends on each player’s personal preferences on style, gameplay, setting, and even nostalgia. Where both games offer extreme amounts of freedom, the types of freedom between the two games are different. Where MGSV offers the freedom to accomplish every mission in any certain method, Fallout 4 offers freedom in creation, story progression, and play style. It seems that, after all, neither game can be unbiasedly named the single-most best game of 2015.