Register Now!

Media

  • scanner scanner
  • scanner screengrab
  • modern materialist the modern
    materialist
  • video 61 frames
    per second
  • video the remote
    island
  • date machine date
    machine

Photo

  • slice slice with
    giovanni
    cervantes
  • paper airplane crush paper
    airplane crush
  • autumn blog autumn
  • chase chase
  • rose &amp olive rose & olive
Scanner
Your daily cup of WTF?
ScreenGrab
The Hooksexup Film Blog
Slice
Each month a new artist; each image a new angle. This month: Giovanni Cervantes.
ScreenGrab
The Hooksexup Film Blog
Autumn
A fashionable L.A. photo editor exploring all manner of hyper-sexual girls down south.
The Modern Materialist
Almost everything you want.
Paper Airplane Crush
A San Francisco photographer on the eternal search for the girls of summer.
Rose & Olive
Houston neighbors pull back the curtains and expose each other's lives.
chase
The creator of Supercult.com poses his pretty posse.
The Remote Island
Hooksexup's TV blog.
61 Frames Per Second
Smarter gaming.
Date Machine
Putting your baggage to good use.

61 Frames Per Second

The 61FPS Review: Metal Gear Solid 4 Part 1

Posted by John Constantine



I’ve spent the last ten years of my life resisting Metal Gear Solid. I didn’t play the series’ opening chapter until April of 1999 and, even then, I only played because it was gifted to me by an exceptionally generous friend. At sixteen, I considered myself a staunch traditionalist. I wanted my games two-dimensional and my gameplay familiar so Metal Gear Solid didn’t appeal to me (I'd be lying, though, if I said its monumental popularity wasn't at the heart of my dismissing it.) It took playing MGS to realize Hideo Kojima, more an eccentric than a trendsetter at that point, had captured the gaming zeitgeist in two discs of content. Basic play in MGS was little more than a polished version of the original Metal Gear’s, but its presentation and narrative ambitions were a new face for gaming, every bit as redefining as Mario’s first hop-around Princess Toadstool’s 3D castle. MGS’ in-engine acted-cutscene, dramatic-instance formula remains the template for storytelling in videogames to this day. I loved MGS but I didn’t fully take to the play; the control was too imprecise, its stealth too punishing. So, in 2001, I was curious about  its sequel, Sons of Liberty, but not itching to actually play it. Convenient for me, considering how MGS2 turned out to not be about playing at all. I watched it played through, start to finish, on the day it came out and was aghast at the breadth of its expository passages (often little more than monochromatic talking-heads) and its author’s incompetence. It was the worst sort of sequel, a bloated mirror-image of its predecessor. Most insulting, however, was Kojima’s winking acknowledgement that this was what it was. The fun, inclusive meta-textual elements of MGS became mean-spirited barriers between player and game in Sons of Liberty. Its story wasn’t complicated, just horribly told, and it turned me off the series for years. MGS became a go-to gag amongst my friends (“Want to play some Metal Gear?” “Sure, I love shitty movies.”) I only played Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the first time this past March, largely in anticipation of Metal Gear Solid 4’s release, and was surprised to find it such an enjoyable experience. MGS3 is considered by some to be an apology for Sons of Liberty’s pretensions and verbosity, its prequel narrative a retreat on Kojima’s part. But that point of view ignores how different Snake Eater is as a game and, particularly in its revision Subsistence, how much more successful it is in enacting story through play. Opening up the game’s environments as well as making protagonist Snake’s health a core mechanic made for a better game and, subsequently, a better story.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is the game Hideo Kojima has been trying to make his whole career. It took me seventeen hours to finish the game and only seven of those were spent in complete control of what was happening on screen but, as opposed to Sons of Liberty’s repulsive disconnect between player and game, I never felt detached. Its lack of restraint is shocking; story sequences go on for well over an hour, leaving literally no facet, however incidental, of the series’ over-arching narrative unexplained. But play and story have finally been fused, every sequence of direct control inseparably integrated into the narrative and what would have previously been passive portions of the game even allow limited control. The story is the game in Guns of the Patriots which, I’m realizing, has been the point all along. Metal Gear Solid has transformed into its own genre, a blending of visual novel and action, movie and hide-and-seek. After a decade, I now find Metal Gear irresistible because it’s finally the game it was supposed to be.

There’s a lot more to be said about the game. In part 2, I’ll discuss Guns of the Patriots's play and control, and in part 3, I’ll take a look at its audio and visual presentation.

Related Links:

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima's Inability to Show Instead of Tell
Bringing Sexy Back: Yoji Shinkawa


+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT

Comments

Rob said:

Snake?  Snake! SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!

June 16, 2008 4:50 PM

xxsodaboy said:

I remember the first game whose story sequences actually pissed me off was Xenosaga: Episode I. I wanted to scream at the fact that I started playing at 10 PM hoping to get a few hours of gameplay in, and instead wasn't even finished with an opening cinematic until close to 11.

I never finished the game because I was just so damned tired of watching it by the time I got three-fourths of the way through.

June 16, 2008 10:00 PM

Brocken said:

Please, no spoilers. Ive been rushing my ass for the past month to buy a PS3, and I want to know nothing. Thank you for your consideration, if any.

June 17, 2008 2:36 AM

in

Archives

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


Send tips to


Tags

VIDEO GAMES


partners