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.
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