Locked Door Puzzle

With the release of the final chapter of Solid Snake’s story in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, I figured it was time to talk about this long standing series. I’m not going to really spoil anything story wise from any of the games so don’t worry about that, it would take too long to spoil MGS4 for you anyway and I’d need to draw diagrams. To announce my personal bias I will openly admit I am a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid series, thankfully my interest just about stays on the healthier side of the fanboy dividing line. However the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 was something I’d been looking forward to greatly and is actually the main reason I bought a PS3 at all. (Though I will admit it also makes a good upscaling DVD player)

As a series Metal Gear began over 20 years ago with the two MSX games that I imagine not a whole lot of you will have played, even I have to admit I’ve only really sampled them as they’re quite unforgiving. However it was the release of Metal Gear Solid for the original Playstation that really put this series on the map. The general format is a combination of stealth infiltration blended with convoluted storylines full of shocking twists and philosophical pondering.

There’s much forum ‘tard arguing over the quality of the both gameplay and the story in all of the games in this series. Personally I’d like to stick my neck out and say I think the gameplay in all of the Metal Gear games is excellent and has only gotten better with each iteration in the series, and I am also a staunch defender of the story with the caveat of saying that the storytelling is a little more of a flawed masterpiece. I think the greatest problem with Hideo Kojima’s work is his inability to balance the two in a satisfying manner, but I’ll come back to that in a bit, let’s get into the specifics.

The play’s the thing

Ignore snide remarks about 90-minutes cutscenes, and just look at the gameplay for a moment. From even the earliest incarnations, Metal Gear contains large environments for the player to explore as the story unfold. Progress is usually much more freeform than the strict linear structure that is becoming increasingly the norm in action games (Just look at God of War). You’re generally still going from A to B but how you get there could be a sneak around the border of the map avoiding enemy line of sight or it could be a raging gun battle through the middle depending on your mood and your OCD tendencies. I have one friend who reloaded the game if a guard so much as breathed in his general direction.

With each new iteration Kojima’s team have widened the scope of exactly what choices you have. Every person I talk to about the latest Metal Gear games has their own preferred way of tackling the levels. One friend likes to sneak the whole thing without the guards realising anything is going on, one sneaks in then uses CQC (close quarter combat) to render them unconscious, one likes to sit in a corner with a sniper rifle thinning the enemy ranks until it’s safe to proceed and of course one picks up the most exciting weapons and runs through like Rambo. Personally I prefer a mix of the Tranquiliser gun and avoiding the guards. Okay this may not exactly be a free flowing world like Oblivion or World of Warcraft but the way the game moulds and balances itself around your preferred play style is true player empowerment. The reason I never get tired of the minute to minute gameplay is that if you are getting bored then there’s always at least 5 totally different ways to approach what you’re doing.

Still in a dream

Probably the more controversial aspect of Metal Gear Solid is the story. The games always start off in a similar manner, a basic military operation to sneak in with a simple objective. However in each game nothing is what is seems and twists and turns usually lead you to question the purpose of your mission and your own moral choices. As the plot develops this also comes with a lot of postulating on the nature of war and society at large. To give you a spoiler-lite overview of themes:

• Metal Gear Solid - Genetic cloning and nano-manipulation to create and control perfect warriors.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - Manipulating memories and the flow of information to control society.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - A bit more retro this went back to the 60’s to explore loyalty and patriotism.
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - This is a bit more all over the shop, throwing in a bit of all of the above and some new stuff.

I’m only touching the surface of the topics discussed in these games but you can already see this is a little more than heroes on epic quests. Sure the MGS climax is usually the old cliche of averting nuclear war but along the way Kojima has much to say than most of the games on the market. I’d even include story title like adventures and RPGs in that sweeping statement, which generally have a lot of story but very little to say.

Taking the story as a separate element, ignoring gameplay entirely, its main flaw is a lack of coherent consistency. A fan of plot reversing twists and massive retconning of previous games Kojima weaves a story that is convoluted to the point of being broken in places. The pinnacle is probably the finale of MGS4 where he not only rewrites the history of the previous games, but rewrites what you learned in the middle of that same game. Sadly not all of these revelations fit with what has happened before and many scenes are rendered either confusing or even ludicrous once you have foresight of the later discoveries.

That gripe aside it’s hard to fault the content and presentation of the story because some of the more spectacular cinematics not only match but exceed anything you’re likely to see in a Hollywood blockbuster.

Cracked diamond

So great gameplay and a great story, what’s the problem? It seems to be that Kojima doesn’t know how to give the player a healthy mix of each. I can’t really fault MGS1 which had the balance about the best they’ve ever managed. MGS2 however was renowned for its tediously long forced codec conversations, many of which were an awkward love story that left a lot of us gamers banging our heads against the pad. Maybe in response to those complaints MGS3 took a different route with minimal codec and cutscenes throughout the bulk of the game but with a massive massive opening briefing and a near feature length conclusion. Finally giving up on any sense of pacing in MGS4 there’s an endless quantity of cutscenes throughout, each dragging on and on as long Kojima feels fit. Astonishingly totaling around 8 hours, nearly half of the entire game length.

Really all this guy needs is an editor, someone to take what he’s trying to get across and distill it down to the most important elements. Sadly he’s the man at the top and can do as he damn well pleases. So the end result of this is that you’re often just sat itching to play, desperately hoping any minute it will let you get back to your mission. The middle and final acts of MGS4 in fact have very little gameplay at all, and while they were full of excitement they never really give you much chance to enjoy the well crafted gameplay mechanics.

All the small things

Now most of what I’ve said above you could probably distill from reviews of the various games. However what really fascinates me about the Metal Gear series isn’t exactly gameplay and isn’t exactly story, it’s all the little things in the game that blend the two and do something a little bit different. MGS4 is too new for all the secrets to be revealed so instead I’ll just give you some of my favourite examples from MGS3.

• At one point you face a sniper battle with a dying old man called The End. You are supposed to track him down through a variety of means using your skill and cunning. However as he’s very old, you can get yourself an instant win by saving the game, setting your console clock forward 2 weeks and reloading. You’ll return to find he’s already died of old age waiting for you. Also, earlier in the game you can see him in the distance in a cutscene, when the cutscene ends if you quickly pull out your sniper rifle you can pick him off and won’t have to face him later at all.
• When a guard sees you he will use his radio to call in an alert. You can actually take a guard hostage and force him to tell you the radio frequency which you can use to call off the alert.
• Throughout the game you come across many storehouses for food and ammo, and not only are these a good place to stock up on supplies you can also blow them up to sabotage the enemies. As you progress you’ll hear guards complaining about hunger giving away their position and even if they see you they’ll be short on ammo.
• While fighting one of the bosses you can wear a face mask making you appear like one of his friends. Initially this will open him up for an easy attack, but will also annoy him making him attack harder.

There’s a whole host more, and each of them is subtle and to some degree completely unnecessary. However this kind of polish makes the game world seem more interesting and believable.

Metal Gear?

Overall, I think Hideo Kojima should definitely be commended for the Metal Gear series as a whole. Each game has stepped up the quality, bringing something new and exciting that we’ve not seen before in other games. Like only a handful of video games ever he tries to tell a story that has real meaning and depth. He creates environments and a control system that puts the player in charge of how they progress instead of the game designer. He applies a level of polish that fills the games with little things that make the experience much more rich. I think bearing all this in mind I can forgive his self indulgent philosophising.