"Metal Gear Solid 4 this, Metal Gear Solid 4 that! It's all you guys (and gals) ever talk about!"

I imagine, at this point, that you're probably thinking something along those lines, so I've decided to mix things up a bit. Yep, I'm going to dedicate this space to an MGS3-related discussion. It's ok, you can lavish me with gifts and craft giant golden statues in my image after I'm done.

See, I'm still slogging my way through MGS3 after putting-off playing the entire MGS series for the past, you know, 10 years or so. Needless to say, I'm loving it, but I'll lavish Kojima with gifts and craft giant golden statues in his image some other time. Instead, I'm going to zero-in on a certain boss fight in MGS3 – a fight that's now most certainly my favorite boss fight of all time. Allow me to explain why.

Those of you who have played MGS3 know that the game was chock-full of excellent boss fights – visibly bloated from the delicious combination of quality and quantity it contained. However, Snake's tense shoot-out with the ancient – and ridiculously wrinkled – The End is by far the best. Generally, when the MGS series switches from crawling and tip-toeing to bullets and fisticuffs, the control scheme falls flat on its face. Not so with The End; his fighting style, his arena, his idiosyncrasies – everything about him is tailor-made to suit MGS' occasionally awkward controls.

But while the fight was tense, it certainly wasn't terse. In most cases, an hour-spanning boss fight sounds like a formula for hair-pulling, controller-flinging, and – God-forbid – cat-throttling. Kojima and co. solved this problem by instilling a powerful sense of urgency in the player through aural cues and things of the like, yet, in reality, designing the fight to be unusually low-risk. Since The End can't actually knock a block or two off of your health meter – he only uses a tranquilizing sniper rifle and stun grenades – odds are, you won't be hearing "SNAKE! SNAKE! SNAAAAAKE!" while throwing-down with him.

This deliberately odd pace creates an amazing atmosphere. Even though you're never really in any danger, the relaxed, easy-going nature of the fight heightens its intensity to astronomical levels. "Wait, what?" the single person reading this who hasn't played MGS3 (Hi, mom!) is likely wondering. "Relaxation creating tension? Madness!" Well, it's akin to watching a horror flick. If it's a good movie, much of its run-time will be spent in non-frightening situations, but you'll still be pressed up against the back of your sofa, peering through a peep-hole in your hands while they "cover" your eyes. Similarly, much of your time spent in The End's domain is spent in relative silence. You hear birds chirping, snakes slithering through tall grass, and then BOOM, The End nails Snake with a tranq dart, and you leap eight feet in the air – stopping only because a low-hanging chandelier gets in your way.

The palpable tension never really dissipates, but once you regain your composure – and don't worry, you will – the fight reaches its peak. It becomes a high-stakes chess match where you have all the pieces, yet somehow your opponent keeps outwitting you. When I fought The End, I sniped him, tracked him with my sound-detector, followed his footprints both with and without thermal goggles, chased after him (How does an old guy move so fast?), and snuck-up right behind him. At one point, I had blown my cover, so I just sprinted right up to him. Of course, he sent a tranq dart right into Snake's face and readied a stun grenade. So, in a fit of wild desperation, I readied a grenade of my own – a grenade of a more damaging nature – and tossed it. His stun and my explosion went off at the same time, but he took the brunt of the blow. The whole moment lasted about as long as it took you to read about it, but my heart was pounding so hard I thought for sure it had finally discovered a route out of my chest.

Eventually, I cornered The End with my shotgun, and just as he began to mockingly utter, "And you call yourself the Boss' apprentice," I pulled the trigger. One cut-scene later, and I was off to finish my mission. That's when I turned around to check the clock. The fight had taken an hour and 15 minutes. There's only one word with which you can describe that: Epic. Kind of invalidates this whole write-up, though, doesn't it?

So, what's your favorite boss fight of all time? Is it a colossal, multi-stage JRPG monstrosity, or something simple yet timeless, like Bowser in Super Mario 64? The comment section is hungry! Provide it with sustenance!