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Metal Gear Awesome: A Retrospective
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Wildstar   |  

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the PatriotsYeah, yeah”¦I know I “borrowed” the title of this article from the hilarious viral video that was all over the Internets a couple years ago, so sue me.

With the imminent release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots tomorrow, I thought it would be interesting to provide a retrospective (and reminiscence) for those of you geeks out there who are unfamiliar with this long-standing video game franchise. Once I get to spend some quality time with the new game itself, my review will follow but for now, you’ll have to settle for this!

For the uninitiated, the Metal Gear series was conceived by Hideo Kojima for the Japanese video game company Konami waaaay back in 1987, a time when hair metal and the Nintendo Entertainment System ruled the roost here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. The series has always been a bit different than most video games because of its emphasis on stealth and intelligence, rather than pure twitch, “run-and-gun” action. For this reason, the Metal Gear games are usually referred to as “tactical espionage action,” a term coined by Kojima-san himself. The gameplay typically puts you (the player) in the boots of world weary super-spy/soldier Solid Snake, fighting the good fight against the eponymous Metal Gears, which are, for lack of a better description, bipedal (i.e. walking) tanks with nuclear capabilities and the corrupt forces that wish to control this awesome weapon of mass destruction.

The overall plotline of the Metal Gear series is more convoluted than that of a royal bloodline and is almost impossible to relate in its entirety without going a little bit crazy yourself, and it is mainly for this reason that the series has many detractors. So, for simplicity’s sake, let’s just say that Snake and his cohorts lead some pretty fucked up (virtual) lives and leave it at that, shall we?

What I’d like to do now is provide a brief chronology and breakdown of the “canonical” Metal Gear games, and also provide my take — my remembrances — on the games as well. So, without further ado …

Metal GearMetal GearOriginally released in 1987 for the MSX2 computer and the NES, ported to several other systems/computers, as well.

PLOT SYNOPSIS: In the year 1995, a rookie operative of the FOX HOUND unit, Solid Snake, is tasked with infiltrating the South African nation of Outer Heaven, which is being held by an unknown mercenary/terrorist. Another FOX HOUND operative, Gray Fox, attempted an assault on Outer Heaven (Is it just me or does anyone else wonder where Inner Heaven is? Just a thought”¦) a few days previous but now, all contact with him has been lost. His final transmission cryptically reads, “Metal Gear”¦”

As it turns out, the mercenary and ruler of Outer Heaven, pulling all the strings is none other than Big Boss, the leader of FOX HOUND. Snake defeats Big Boss and the Metal Gear he was building, as the Outer Heaven base is blown to smithereens by a self-destruct sequence.

MY TAKE: Honestly, I never played this game back in the day. I did play it, however, when it was released as a bonus/add-on with the Twin Snakes remake of Metal Gear Solid that came out on the Gamecube a few years back. And, as almost all NES games of that generation were, it is cheap as hell and annoyingly frustrating in parts. But, I could quite clearly see that the all the elements that make this series great were expertly laid out in this early, 8-bit title.

Metal Gear 2: Solid SnakeMetal Gear 2: Solid SnakeOriginally released in 1990 on the MSX2 computer in Japan, not released in the U.S. until 2006 as part of the Metal Gear 3: Subsistence package.

PLOT SYNOPSIS: It is 1999 now (and no, Snake does not want to party with Prince or anyone else for that matter”¦) and a Slovakian scientist, Dr. Kio Marv, has developed a type of algae that can produce petroleum-grade hydrocarbons. Of course, the good doctor is kidnapped by ominous forces and taken to a remote locale known as “Zanzibar Land.”

Once again, our man Snake is sent to Zanzibar Land to save the day. During the course of his mission he discovers that the nation’s leaders plan to hold the world hostage through both the oil supply (because of Dr. Marv’s groundbreaking algae research) and nuclear weapons (with a brand spanking new Metal Gear). The man running the whole show in Zanzibar Land is none other than Big Boss, and his newest lieutenant is Snake’s old comrade Gray Fox. Again, Snake succeeds in destroying Metal Gear and taking down Big Boss. After completing this mission, Snake tells the military to fuck off and disappears into the Alaskan wilderness.

MY TAKE: Again, this is a game that I didn’t get to play until fairly recently (2006) when it came out with MGS 3: Subsistence, and I have to say that this one holds up a lot better than its predecessor. The graphics (for 1990) are very well done and the gameplay introduces staples (crawling in tight spots and hiding from enemy soldiers) that are still frequently used in the MGS games of today.

Metal Gear SolidMetal Gear SolidOriginally released in 1998 for the Sony PlayStation, ported to the PC in 2000.

PLOT SYNOPSIS: The story jumps ahead six years now to 2005; Snake is forcibly pulled out of retirement by his old commanding officer Col. Roy Campbell and given a new, “sneaking” mission. He must infiltrate a nuclear weapons disposal facility located on Shadow Moses Island in Alaska’s Fox Archipelago, rescue two government bigwigs, and take down the members of his old special-forces unit, FOX HOUND, who have turned terrorist and are making all kinds of crazy, bullshit demands, as terrorist are wont to do.

During this mission, Snake uncovers the fact that both he and the commanding officer of FOXHOUND, Liquid Snake, are clones of Big Boss. He fights his cloned “brother,” Liquid Snake, who mysteriously dies of a heart attack in the heat of the battle. It is also revealed that Snake’s mission was a hoax and he was a carrier of an experimental virus, FOXDIE, which was intended to kill off specific targets in the facility. After the defeat of the new Metal Gear (Metal Gear REX), Snake, Meryl Silverburgh, and Hal “Otocon” Emmerich escape from the facility and are declared as dead. The only remaining survivor of the turncoat FOX HOUND unit, Revolver Ocelot, is revealed retrospectively as a double agent who is truly working in the shadows for the President of United States, George Sears.

MY TAKE: This game was my true access point to this great series, as I think it was for many people. I have many deep-seated and extraordinarily fond memories of this game. Here’s why:

When MGS came out back in late October of 1998, my life was at more than your everyday, run-of-the-mill crossroads; it was a few steps away from an unmitigated crash-wreck disaster. My father passed away earlier in that year and I had dug myself into several, deep holes spanning all aspects of my life: professionally, socially, and financially. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I “hit bottom,” but I certainly scraped along that fucker for a moment or two.

Knowing my situation all too well, a good friend of mine gave me an early Christmas present that year: a copy of Metal Gear Solid for the PS1. We both had been (and continue to be) big video game geeks and usually gave each other video games as Christmas gifts.

Now, I won’t sit here and say that this game saved my life because that would be silly, but it certainly made it 100 times more bearable. Its slick cinematics (for the time), haunting score, and immersive storyline had me hooked from the moment I hit the power button on my PlayStation. And, most importantly, it gave me something else to think about, gave me a purpose, during that bleak time in my life. My mission in life simply became the infiltration of that frozen Alaskan base and in turn, kicking the holy crap out of Liquid Snake and his terrorist cronies. You may ask what I did after I completed that demanding mission. Well, I went right back to the beginning and started it all over again, and I’ve only done that with two other games (Bioshock for the Xbox 360 and Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Atari 2600) in my life. To me, that is the penultimate sign of a truly excellent video game.

If I ever am lucky enough to meet Hideo Kojima, I would very much like to tell him my story, buy him a beer (just shaking his hand would suffice, I guess”¦), and thank him for creating a “simple” video game that had a profound impact on my life.

What it boils down to is this: I will never, ever forget Metal Gear Solid and what it did for me. And if you ask me today what my favorite video game of all time is, I won’t hesitate a second before saying, “Metal Gear Solid, DAMMIT!”

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of LibertyMetal Gear Solid 2: Sons of LibertyOriginally released in 2001 for the PlayStation 2; an expanded edition, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, was released in 2002 (Xbox) and 2003 (PC and PS2).

PLOT SYNOPSIS: Trying to effectively summarize this game’s plot is like trying to nail fucking Jell-O to the wall, because this, my friends, is where things really get screwy, but I’ll do my level best.

Basically, the story of MGS 2 revolves around an offshore clean-up facility (Big Shell) that has been overrun by a terrorist group called the “Sons of Liberty.” They require a massive ransom in exchange for the life of the President of the United States. They also threaten to blow up the facility, which would create a catastrophic environmental disaster if their demands are not met. As the game progresses the motives and identities of many of the villains and allies changes quickly, as the protagonist(s) uncover a global conspiracy composed by a mysterious, but immensely influential organization known as the Patriots, sometimes mentioned in the game as the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo. Yes, you read that right. La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo.

MY TAKE: Okay, this game has two parts: There’s the good part on the tanker, where you get to play as Snake himself and the majority of the story makes sense, excepting the bit where Liquid Snake’s arm (and personality, it seems”¦?) have somehow grafted themselves onto Revolver Ocelot’s body. And then there is the not so good part on Big Shell, where you are forced to play as super-douche Raiden and the narrative just completely unravels. Just try an sit through the mind-numbing codec conversations between Raiden and his girlfriend, Rose, or Otocon’s creepy-as-fuck-all confession of banging his step-mother, without wanting to rip the disc out of the PS2 and flinging it across the room. Just try it. I dare you.

For most people, the bait-and-switch tactic of being forced to play a good portion of the game as Raiden, and not Snake, was enough to turn them off to the game. And, yes, it was kind of shitty of Kojima to do that (it’s clear that he was over-ambitious with this game and just bit off more than could chew), but the core gameplay in MGS 2 is still rock solid and there is a good deal of fun to be had here if you just don’t pay attention to the wacky storyline.

As an interesting side note, an early demo of MGS 2 shipped out in 2000 with a Kojima-produced game, Zone of Enders, which most people, including myself, bought just so they could play the MGS 2 demo. In this demo, you only played a part of the tanker/Snake mission”¦ and it rocked hard. I know people, to this day, who will only play this MGS 2 demo, not the full game itself, because of how “betrayed” they felt by Kojima and the whole Raiden debacle. No shit.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake EaterMetal Gear Solid 3: Snake EaterOriginally released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2; an expanded edition Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence was released in 2006.

PLOT SYNOPSIS: Snake Eater is a prequel to the other Metal Gear games and it is set in 1964 in Cold War-era Russia. The story centers on FOX operative “Naked Snake” (later known as Big Boss, the progenitor of all this nonsense) as he attempts to liberate a weapons designer, Dr. Solokov, and sabotage an experimental super weapon, the very first iteration of Metal Gear, called “Shagohod” here. While the previous games were set in an urban environment, MGS 3 drops the player in a 1960’s Soviet jungle setting with the high-tech trimmings of previous MGS games being supplanted with the vast Russian wilderness.

MY TAKE: Okay, first things first”¦ I didn’t even know they had flippin’ jungles in Russia, did you? How could anyone know that? When I think of Russia, I think nutsack-shriveling COLD, like in Dr. Zhivago “¦ constantly snowing and all. Russian jungle. Bah, I don’t believe it!

Overall, this is a solid game with a cool, James Bond-like vibe, but there are a few things that bugged me. The CQC (close quarters combat) and camouflage systems applied in this game, while nifty at first, get tiresome after awhile. And the reliance on finding food (i.e., snakes, frogs, etc.) is a nice idea that just gets to be a pain in the ass as things progress.

The story told here is better but still a tad wonky in places. The best part(s) about this game are the awesome boss battles. MGS 3 has some of the best boss fights in any video game, period. The Fear. The Fury. The Pain. The Sorrow. The End. The Boss. Just mentioning them all like that sends shivers down my spine and makes me want to pop the game in right now to play those sequences over again.

Other Metal Gear GamesOther Metal Gear GamesWhile I just covered the major releases here, there are other Metal Gear games, the most notable being Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the Sony PSP, which is a “canonical” game and a direct sequel to MGS 3. I only mention it here because I fell uncomfortable discussing it at length, as I never played it and don’t own a PSP”¦ but I heard that it’s pretty damn good, regardless.

Other games of note are: Metal Gear Acid 1 & 2 for the PSP, Snake’s Revenge for the NES, and Metal Gear: Ghost Babel for the Game Boy Color. I’ve never played any of these, so I don’t want to comment on them, either.

Taking this series’ excellent history into account, I’m pretty stoked for the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots tomorrow, although I am sad that this is the (purported) end for my man, Solid Snake. While the reviews that I’ve seen so far have been overwhelmingly positive, I am a bit leery of the massive install (5-6 GB) and two, movie-length (90 minute) cut scenes, which are real, not just internet rumors. (I know some industry people who have completed the game and they gave me the lowdown.)

***sigh***

Will this game be a profound, genre-defining experience, as Metal Gear Solid was, or will it be more along the “beautiful disaster” lines of MGS 2: Sons of Liberty? I hope for the former, of course, but have a feeling that MGS 4 will fall somewhere squarely in the middle: a bad-ass game peppered with its fair share of WTF moments of weirdness.

Only time will tell, I guess…

3 Comments »

  1. Wildstar —

    Overall, a well-composed synopsis of a game series that has reached staggering proportions … at least in terms of plot and character. Moreover, as with you, I will forever remember MGS with overwhelming fondness. It remain my most cherished video game of all time.

    When people chance to ask me what METAL GEAR is all about, my usual response is “A dark vision of nanotechnology run amok.”

    But that rarely helps. Most people just stare.

    Again, a finely crafted retrospective.

    Thanks for taking the time to write and submit it.

    — Ray

    Comment by Ray — June 12, 2008 @ 8:59 pm

  2. Thanks, Ray! I’m glad you dug it. You wouldn’t, by any chance, be related to METAL GEAR RAY, would you? :^)

    Comment by Wildstar — June 13, 2008 @ 12:32 am

  3. I saw the title of your piece and thought, if you haven’t seen this yet then you should. A must see for all metal gear fans.

    WARNING!!!! MATURE CONTENT!!!! (naughty language not appropriate for teh kiddies)

    Metal Gear Awesome
    http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/297383

    Metal Gear Awesome 2
    http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/426712

    Comment by Clint Jones — June 18, 2008 @ 8:39 pm

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