Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

I finally gave in and bought Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain. I got them both in the winter Steam Sale and paid about 40 quid overall, which I think is the fair price. A lot was made out of Ground Zeroes price and length ratio when the game first came out and I personally feel like the game was too dear but it has enough content to keep you going for 10+ hours if you really want. Ground Zeroes is basically a tiny sandbox.

The story of Ground Zeroes had previously been spoiled for me but even knowing what was coming the scenes were powerful and enjoyable, the late game surgery in particular. In terms of presentation the game is utterly breathtaking and certain cinematics look eerily real. We're again treated to a rainy intro which looks even better in the night time desert military camp where the game takes place. The intro cinematic plays like a Hollywood A-lister, especially with headphones or a good sound system. The desert sounds alive and the soldiers make various noises including sneezing. The one gripe I do have with the presentation is that I hadn't realised Big Boss was speaking until I saw his lips move. David Hayter got replaced by Kiefer Sutherland, who is a really actor but lacks the iconic quality to his voice that Hayter had. Big Boss just doesn't sound right in this game and though I managed to get used to it eventually, I still wish Hayter had remained in the role.

The map is relatively small but is designed well enough to offer several routes through each scenario offered within it. The main story mission has you hunting for the two kids from MGS: Peace Walker, Chico and Paz. You can rescue them by sneaking around the place and quietly taking guards out, hiding bodies etc or you can shoot your way out, hide for two minutes where the story requires you to and then shoot your way out again like I did. Once you've rescued the terrible kids (heh, get it?) The story sets up for Phantom Pain and you get a trailer and a digital poster for the game. I think this serves as a fantastic sum up of Konami to be honest. About an hour into Ground Zeroes I knew I was gonna buy Phantom Pain, I had been convinced and even excited. The game looks great, it feels great, it sounds great, it plays great and it's MGS, a crazy rollercoaster auteur ride I've so grown to enjoy. I really didn't need to plastered with advertisement for the title and if anything it has served to dampen my spirits.

Once you're done with the measly story campaign, you get to play 'missions' on the one level made for this game. I've only done one of these special ops at this point and really can't say how much value there is to them but the one special mission I played was set at a different time of day, in different weather with very different enemy density and I even mustered the bravery to drive around in a truck this time. I managed to nick some C4 from a guard tower and blow up a tank before calling my helicopter in. I think there is plenty still on offer here and what the game lacks in variety of scenery it makes up for in variety of tools at your disposal.

Finally, I have to say that MGS V is really mechanically sound. The keyboard controls were awkward for the first ten minutes or so but they're fully rebindable. The shooting feels great although the enemies take a lot of bullets to drop. There is no healthbar and I'm guessing the health is regenerating since there are no items other than guns and grenades but I guess that's all the more reason to look forward to Phantom Pain.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is sniffing the cork of a fine wine/10  

Fallout 4: A Post-Apocalyptic Shooting Game

It's finally happened: I finished the main quest in Fallout 4 and can legitimately review it, or something. Two things to get out of the way first though: 1 – I just could not wait to finally be done with the bloody thing, and 2 – I will definitely be coming back to it. I've already written about my disillusion with the direction the Franchise is going in and now I get to rant about problems with Fallout 4 specifically. Bethesda built a really solid shooter for Fallout 4, they just forgot to build an RPG to go with it. 

The dialogue system is shit. It's disengaging and annoyingly vague, I have to guess at what my character is gonna blurt out for each option. Not knowing how a character is going to react to what my character will say to them is part of the fun but not knowing what the “sarcastic” dialogue option will bring up is part of the problem. The trouble with this vagueness is that it has you guessing what the designer means by a vague phrase like “third degree”, “good guys”, “unbelievable” to just name a few culprits. The dialogue wasn't by far the only thing that took me out of the game though. Immersion is a real problem in Fallout 4 and for every interesting character like Piper or Valentine, there is a moron wrenching a concrete wall. The single most memorable and pleasant thing to happen in my 40 hours with the game was my first visit to Goodneighbour. Upon entering the town, I got harassed by a local thug whom I scared off only for the mayor to turn up, tell him off and stab him to death apologising for my inconvenience. It's good to know that there was at least one person on the Fallout 4 team that knew what they were doing.

Mechanically the game is more schizophrenic and Charles Manson – some parts are state-of-the-art and others barely hang on by cello-tape. The shooting is better than ever before, the gun modding is solid enough and although there's only like sixty mods or so, most of them feel like they make an impact and it's fun to experiment with different combinations. Collision mapping works solidly, I've never gotten a bullshit headshot or one that should've landed but didn't, with all of the shooting my two gripes were the short range of most rifles and WHERE THE FUCK DO THESE RAIDERS KEEP GETTING MINI NUKES FROM?! I lost two companions (Danse and Piper) by sending them off to settlements (Boston Airport and Sanctuary Hills) never to be found again. Certain characters are literally immortal and I'm not entirely certain what it's dependent on. I decided to murder everyone in Vault 81 and had Preston turn on me. Whenever I killed Preston, he simply sat immobile for a minute or so and then got back up, and there were two other characters who wouldn't die, presumably ones that had quests for me. Also, children can't be killed, not sure whether that's just the European version ofthe game or not. I had to re-load previous saves about twenty times because my character got stuck trying to get into Power Armour. Whenever clicking to get into Power Armour while facing it, my character would simply continually walk into the armour without trying to circumnavigate it, pre

venting me from taking any action whatsoever – just an endless loop of her head bopping against the chest of the armour. This paired with the inconsistent nature of the auto-save and my general “cba 2 save” attitude made for a lot of frustration.

Speaking of frustration, that's probably the only thing the game has managed to make me feel. I found two of the characters vaguely interesting but even then, I didn't really feel two ways about them. I lost Piper in Sanctuary Hills and chose to have Nick Valentine follow me for the rest of the game, to no real consequence except getting a lecture about destroying a faction that kind of wanted him dead anyway. I thought it'd be funny to bring the Synth detective to the Institute and to the Brotherhood of Steel but he wouldn't teleport to the Institute and the Brotherhood didn't seem too bothered about him. No faction is better than another, they're all equally daft and vague. The Minutemen just wanna keep the peace, which is futile because every five minutes another settler complains about a ghoul or raider problem. The Brotherhood wants to collect tech and fight anything the deem unnatural unless the player has befriended it. The Railroad wants to free Synths, which is as delusional as the Institute makes it seem. The Institute is basically fascist on the inside, humanitarian on the outside. Out of the four I sided with Minutemen for the first three quarters of the game and then eventually went with the Institute because of loyalty, curiosity and boredom. And at least my boredom was challenged with a couple of fantastic shootouts against the Railroad and the Brotherhood but my curiosity wasn't sated nor my loyalty really paid off in any meaningful way. The Brotherhood shootout also wouldn't let me actually kill Danse or Maxim for a while before giving up on them and letting me loot them, oddly enough. The looking-for-my-baby plot REALLY falls apart about three quarters of the way in; it goes exactly the way I expected it to go and then doesn't know what to do with itself and just carries on meaninglessly like a blind football commentator.

The game can be fun in an emergent kind of way. There is some merit to wandering the wasteland, finding cool shit, killing everyone around and robbing or even eating their corpses. In retrospect I regret running with a 'serious' playthrough, I imagine if I role-played a “chaotic evil” character, I would've enjoyed my time with this game a lot more. I LOVE the Glowing Sea, I love the fact it stretches 700 yards beyond the boundaries of the 'box', I love the fact it's so heavily irradiated but still inhabited.

The settlement building and management offers a good break in pace for the rest of the game but I just found it too time-consuming and troublesome, something that could've been solved by quick menus instead of having to walk around placing everything in person in every single settlement when I had bloody twelve of them. I eventually had to choose finishing the story over saving every single settlement every single time; Fallout 4 simply isn't a game where you can do everything.

Fallout 4 is playing cowboys and Indians with children suffering developmental issues/10  

Undertale

SPOILER WARNING: The game serves as a better experience to a completely unprepared player, I consider the 'twist' to be interesting enough (although very obvious) to point out that I'm gonna spoil it here, although the game does that within ten minutes anyway. Minor story spoilers may be present via stylistic adaptation but are mostly meant as in-jokes for those who have already played the game.

Seeing that many people avoided reviewing Undertale because they couldn't do it without spoilers fills me with determination. I had an okay time with. Then I had a good time with it. Then I had a bad time with it. I spent a lot of time with it and we've become friends telling each other bad jokes and making spaghetti and whatnot. But then came time to break up and we had a very bad time which prompts me to use my special punctuation – :(

…

…

…

Yes.

Knowing that I'm boiling a cup of piss with this, it fills you with determination. There seems to be only one way to review Undertale: “Play it, it's good, I can't tell you any more.” I'm not one to shy away from a challenge though. I plan to include no meaningful spoilers, only what is readily available on the game's Steam page. What you can readily find on the Steam page is a short description that states “UNDERTALE! The RPG game where you don't have to destroy anyone.” and the tags of Great Soundtrack, Story Rich, RPG, Funny and 2D. What I'm getting at is that you can't exactly go into Undertale spoiler-free even if you live under a rock like... oh, wait, nevermind.

Undertale poses as an RPG, one similar in many ways to Earthbound (Mother 2) but borrows heavily from bullet hell shmups for its combat which is particularly noteworthy since “turn-based battles are a thing of the past” apparently. So as much as you take turns to act, each action results in a little action segment to draw your attention back. For the most part this isn't particularly difficult but when you're told you're gonna have a bad time, best believe that you will unless you're a full-time shmupper. I personally have never been a great fan of bullet hells, mostly for the hell part – I didn't even like the hell level in Spawn Armageddon and I'm a Spawn fanboy. Every combat encounter gives you an opportunity to kill your opponent or 'Act' to pacify them. The pacifying acts vary based on opponent, you can pet dogs or laugh at comedians' jokes subverting the classic “KILL ALL THE MONSTERS!” standard of RPGs. Outside of combat, it plays pretty much like a NES/SNES RPG with the clever omission of selling items, I mean why would any of these traders want to buy back your junk? That is by far not the only bit of clever writing in the game, however.

Oh boy, it's hard to talk about the writing without any spoilers. Toby Fox's writing is charmingly clever in ways that still surprise me, it truly is a labour of love. For each character lacking any self-awareness there is a character close to them all-too-aware for the both of them. For every seemingly evil action there is a deep and emotive reasoning. Nothing and no one is what it first appears, it's a game that subverted pretty much all of my initial expectations but none of these revelations come out of the blue and on subsequent playthroughs I noticed little hints at characters' true natures although there are two or three I'm still not so sure about. The humour of the game is eclectic ranging from Monty Pythonesque (Librarby, for the initiated), through the corny puns, past the fourth wall breaks, into social commentary. But it would be a real shame to say any more, I guess.

All of Toby Fox's writing and world building is underlined by an astonishing soundtrack. It's absolute 8-bit magic, a collection of 101 songs with 23 main themes and their slight alterations breathing an extra life into a fascinating world. The music accents the scenes perfectly and keeps drawing me back to Undertale, the pairing of song and scene being so memorable that when I listen back to the soundtrack even now, I have vivid flashbacks of my playthroughs as though they were past lives... oh wait, nevermind.

This all leads me to my conclusive point about this game. Not only have I greatly enjoyed my time with Undertale's world but I actually feel emotionally attached to it and touched by it in a kindred spirit kind of way. It's a game that carries various divergent stories within it, a game that expresses ideals akin to my own but also let's you follow those in direct opposition. It's a game that made me laugh plenty and even cry a little. When asked by a character whether I wanted to hang out, I could honestly answer 'yes' without considering in-game rewards – because the out-game rewards were sufficient. I can easily say, especially this late into the year, Undertale is my favourite game of 2015, it's a game I enjoyed the most and the game I thought was best made. Now, granted I haven't played the Witcher 3 or Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain and once I have my mind might be swayed but I'd say that's unlikely. Unless Quiet becomes an ostensibly loving mother figure to... oh, nevermind.

Undertale is: GOAT/10

If you agree (as you should) or disagree, let me know, I'm open to criticism. But you will have a bad time...

 

The Impact of a Death

Most video games are violent: Call of Duty and its murder of brain cells, FIFA with its brutal abuse of an innocent sphere or Little Big Planet and its eager dismemberment of level design. Violence is ever-present in video games and is probably unavoidable lest we play Cooking Mama forever (but then what of those poor animals we're cooking?). It is not, however, the violence in games that is my issue, it is the killing. There are games that cast you into the role of an insignificant soldier who murders hundreds of other insignificant soldiers until an insignificant soldier murders him (or now, incredibly, her) but there are also games that cast you into the role of a fully developed character with a history and ties who murders hundreds of insignificant NPCs. And that's fine, that's the purpose of insignificant NPCs – EXP, loot, points, something to use bullets on. My problem arises when after murdering hundreds of insignificant NPCs the game kills a significant (for the sole virtue of being connected to the protagonist) NPC and whispers “Isn't that just awful?” Well, yes, yes it is. It's awful that you've made me murder hundreds or thousands of insignificant NPC who all had their insignificant NPC lives but you ask me to care about the one NPC who you spent 25 minutes of gameplay/cutscenes characterising. Don't ask me to sympathise with a mass-murderer unless he is driven by some sort of moral code which justifies the killing in his own psychotic mind. If the character doesn't even attempt to justify the killing then he's simply a sociopath.

I have had this issue with The Last of Us and more recently with Mafia II. If I spend 95% of the game murdering people, only the deaths of the protagonist or his inevitable side-kick can have ANY impact. A game that understands the balance of death is Yakuza. Now, Yakuza is a very violent series but also shows glimpses of self-awareness about its own violent nature. There is an interesting exchange after the protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu, beats the shit out of his friend, Dojima Daigo, to convince him to do his bidding. Daigo makes a joke about Kiryu always using violence and Kiryu says that it's the only way he knows – that's self-awareness. The devs know that the use of violence for every situation is ridiculous and play up to that fact through their main character. Where Yakuza finds the balance of death is in not killing. You don't kill any insignificant NPCs (well, you can shoot them in the later stages but nobody seems to really die) or significant NPCs. The game, through cutscenes, kills several significant NPCs in each instalment instead. This gives the deaths more impact on the account that they are deaths alone and further weight is added when you consider the characters who die, particularly in the first installment. Every death is a 'moment'. Every death has an impact on both the world and the characters in it. Every death takes away a fully developed character. In a sense, Yakuza is the pacifist among violent games. Sure, you beat the shit out of hundreds of insignificant NPCs, but you let them go after they pay you to stop beating the shit out of them. Sure, people die, but when they do it leaves a mark.  

Monument Valley

Every now and again something happens in a game that makes you go "Oh, wow! That's cool!" but seldom does a game happen that made entirely out of "Oh, wow! That's cool!" The question you have to ask yourself is whether the 100% "Oh, wow! That's cool!" factor justifies the short length of the game and at least this one forewarns you about only having ten chapters instead of ending abruptly like the Banner Saga.

As a puzzle game, Monument Valley's original ten levels are far too easy but make up for it with their creative designs. The entire thing is built around the Escherian stairwell idea complete with adjustable parts. Much like that one bit in one of the God of War games but much more "Oh, wow! That's cool!" and substantial. The controls are straight forward but my tiny phone proved to be a nuisance with my huge fingers and I would struggle to spin a lever how I wanted or slide a platform the right amount. The controls come down to just that: tap to go, hold and spin or slide to move the environment about and as simple as it all is, even replaying the levels for the third time I'm amazed by the beautiful complexities in each level. Each of the puzzles lasted me a mean average of about seven minutes and a mode of about five. The one I found the hardest turned out to be my favourite: the box. Part of the puzzle here was finding where the princess actually was before moving on. I'm not sure whether this level was supposed to create separation between character and player or symbolise just how lost the princess is in this valley but it definitely did the latter for me. Not being able to find the shining conehead, I felt lost myself  and reopening the box for a third or fourth time only to find one of the "annoying crow people" made me scoff in that way you would at a cat or a dog that just laid on its back grinning, asking for tummy rubs. One thing I have to strongly commend this game for is making the objective clear. Despite its many winding pathways and movable objects, I was never for a second in doubt what bit of the level I was required to get to, only slightly confused as to how. I wish life could be more like Monument Valley in that sense, I guess.

The game has a plot, I think. It's something about geometry and theft and annoying crow people and really cool stairwells. I don't wanna spoil anything because there is a nice little twist along the way and the story is hugely speculative so I might write about at some point later in a separate piece. I will say though, it has some interesting parallels to Journey and even in some very Escherian stairwell (get it? they're like roundabouts, it's a roundabout pun) ways to Undertale. But in short, buy it. And if you don't wanna buy it, download Amazon Underground and get it for free. And then buy it. It's an awesome little title with lots of heart and bravery that'll cost you less than a takeaway (in London) and last you about as long but you'll be able to show it to your friends and they'll go "Oh, wow! That's cool!"

Monument Valley is: getting home drunk/10

Child of Light

Child of Light is an indie game
Developed and published by Ubisoft (for shame!).
It came out a while back but I’ve only just finished
The wondrous and confusing colourful skirmish.
To follow the rules the game has set for us,
It doesn’t matter if it rhymes, that couldn’t last.
The story is the strong point, the pillar upholding
The rest of the game which I would say is folding.
Oh and don’t worry about thinking too hard,
You can always just go and play the comedy… Angle.

(Surely, you mean “card”. Yeah, that joke got real boring real fast.)

The witch is evil, boo-hoo, Margaret Thatcher,
Queen of dark, haha get it? Now go and thrash her.
You’re a child dressed in white like it says on the tin
And you use violence and friendship to fend off all the sin.
You fight for justice just like the police
And you’re unintentionally ambiguous – oh pur-lease!
The battles are samey, full of samey opponents,
But you usually level up and gain some components
Of which there are plenty – eight all in full –
In different tiers of ‘-shit’, from holy to bull.
The betrayal is obvious, betrayed by the trope,
But when you lose the helpful partner, another brings hope
With no repercussions and little agency.
The game doesn’t rush you even when it faints urgency.
Aurora magically ages and no one bats an eyelid
Within the game itself, but God knows that I did.
The music is pretty, both of the songs,
I suppose they don’t tire because the game’s not so long.
Finally, the absolute best feature,
Our protagonist is a creature
Of fairy tales, what with being a fairy,
And one who flies! How fun is it? Very.
The medieval jetpack of magic and wings
Carries you everywhere and with you joy brings.
Is the game good? Only as much as its protagonist,
It gets shit done and looks good while at it,
So give it a shot and get… Prepared.

(Surely, you mean “strapped in”! – Shut up. Just shut the fuck up or I will rip your dialogue boxes out and shove them down your throat.)

Child of Light is: a cursed poet with a bloodied pen trying to end his life/10

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

                                               

And here we are: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: the last MGS I'm reviewing for now: the culmination of a series of reviews so weird I've used four colons already and it's only the first sentence. But why are you here, reader? No, reader, *WHY* are you *HERE*? Regardless, I appreciate that you are, cheers.

So yeah, the opening cinematics in MGS4 are weird to say the least. I got the one with the beauty and the beast corps and the mantis security one, I believe the David Hayter interview was patched out because Konami. The game prepares us for the weird stuff that's about to happen with the strange cinematics and although they don't directly relate to the story they make for great world building early on. A lot of shooters were set in the middle east around this time, weren't they? The shooter mechanics have changed too, there's much more stress on score-based multiplayer killing rather than narrative experiences, we're all just mercenaries and statistics. Shooters have changed. Or so Snake says at the beginning of the first level. Anyway, the first level happens, set in the middle east, you're given plenty of weaponry and ammo and two interchangeable conflicting sides. The levels have the openness of MGS3 but are even bigger this time and Snake has a wider array of gadgets at his disposal. The Solid Eye is the one I used the most, it analyses the battlefield for you spotting enemies and items lying around. It comes in the form of an electronic eye-patch and adds another similarity between Solid Snake and Big Boss. I feel that the Solid Eye is a commentary on Big Boss' own eye situation since with it Snake sees everything a lot clearer and Big Boss in similar fashion learned the plots and subplots going on around him after losing his eye. Losing sight to see truly isn't that alien a concept, in recent memory alone I've seen it in Dune and American Horror Story. It also inspires a different approach to what is shown to the player in the game, you must abandon your conventional shallow vision and peep between the proverbial lines, best done with one eye. It's a speculative approach and Kojima's games really lend themselves to it.

Each video game has several separate but deeply interconnected facets: the audio-visual, the narrative and the interactive. Ideally, they should all inform and compliment one another in such a way that the game comes together as a whole. Kojima's team have been pretty good at attention to detail in all three aspects throughout the series but I've overlooked the sound design in my previous reviews, mostly because who want a to read a 25,000-word essay that isn't about how awesome they are? The first game had a mixed bag of voice acting, three songs I remember (main theme, sad theme, danger theme) and some clever splashing and knocking noises. The second game had terrific outdoor ambience both on the tanker on the roof of the plant and clinical silence indoors, all fitting into the narrative perfectly and some more cringey voice acting, which fitted even better. The first game is a masterpiece in terms of sound for me, every bit of music underlines the setting and the subject, the main theme makes me feel like I'm in a Bond movie, the jungle sounds very much alive and it is. If you hear something moving, singing or roaring in Snake Eater, you can hunt it and eat it. The Boss is an excellent addition to the cast of voices with her level-headed and subdued tones. Now, MGS4 follows that path and only strays off it a little. The Old Snake theme is sombre and carries sadness as well as strength and determination in its tones. The song's placement continues a tradition of terrific sound direction from Kojima's team and all the other songs work in a similar way to impose feelings on the player and compliment the visual. The final trick with the music is nostalgia, the game culminates in a fan-service boss fight with a transforming Ocelot featuring HUDs and theme songs from the previous games right up until MGS4. On the one hand, it's a nice reminder of what's gone on in the series but on the other, Kojima backhandedly reminds us we've been playing basically the same game for a decade. Except war has changed.

There is a bigger emphasis on guns and a bigger selection, though not necessarily variety, of them. One of the main characters is a gun launderer in a world where guns really need to be laundered. All weapons in the MGS4 universe are controlled via nanomachines and are ID specific to a user's DNA (a player login?) grantic the Patriots ultimate control over the battlefield. The battlefield becomes more commercial in this way, every soldier a commodity much like the weapons they're wielding and it is up to Snake to change that. Interestingly, during the first level we are treated to a cut-scene involving the monstrous Geckos, bi-pedal cow monsters and a cardboard box. The Geckos are hunting Snake and the camera pans towards a cardboard box with the phrase “No place for Hideo” on it, implying Snake is hiding in there until the Geckos smash the box to only find watermelons (red herrings? I know, I'm really stretching it now). Is Kojima suggesting he's outsmarting the industry, his critics or the players themselves here? Most easily acceptable line of thought would be that the Geckos represent the industry and gameplay informs that since these two-legged twats are indestructible here. And through this leaping and mooing segway we get onto gameplay. MGS4 is more arcade than arcade stealth and although a stealth approach is encouraged, you can easily get through most of the game being trigger-happy. Stealth is enhanced with the octo-camo which helps Snake blend in if he remains still for a moment, lending to a slower, more careful stealthy style of play. Or you could just grab a machine gun and a rocket launcher and destroy everything in your path. The game progresses through 5 acts and each one presents the player with a different challenge and in my case required a different playstyle. I ran through the first level all guns blazing, playing up to the modern military shooter stereotype. The second act takes place in a jungle and is reminiscent of MGS3, so I sneakily knocked guards out and freed the resistance soldiers who offered a good distraction. Act 3 is the one I can't quite place in terms of a meta-narrative, though I suppose it's Kojima's attempt at a 'bad spy game' and it certainly is bad. It's not so much that the level is difficult as that it is incredibly boring until Eva does her thing again and drives Snake around but then ALL of the challenge disappears and we get a quick rails on section. Maybe this section serves as a segway of its own distinguishing the war-themed MGS3 from the more Espionage, post-war MGS and MGS2? Then we reach Act 4 – Shadow Moses. I needn't mention that this Act reflects the original and chronologically second game of the series. We're even treated to a little bit of the PSX MGS which Snake experiences as a nightmare, an idea since stolen for Wolfenstein: The New Order. This section forced me to be stealthy since the little security bots are surprisingly durable and overwhelmingly numerous. This is the section I gave up when I first played the game a few years back and none of it meant anything to me. This time around I stuck it

out, I took extra care and I was rewarded with a battle of Metal Gears. This is ridiculous and ridiculously satisfying as you watch two humongous Mechas battle it out in a decimated Shadow Moses. This is where the game should've ended but instead we reach Act 5, the MGS2 clone. It probably isn't but I could swear that the ship Snake invades here is the same one he was meant to have destroyed with Raiden at the end of MGS2 but then I might just be going loopy. Anyway, the gameplay encourages more action here again, much like the final stretch of MGS2 and this is the final stretch of all the final stretches – it involves an exhausting button-mashing sequence for which I used both hands. As Snake slowly crawls towards his target, nearing his death with it, we're forced to mash the triangle button at an almost impossible speed in the single greates QTE of all time, one where the gameplay informs the narrative and vice versa.

One cannot simply write about a Metal Gear Solid game without talking about the story. It begins with Snake moaning about war not being what it used to be back in his days and then we find out that he isn't actually 60+, he's just experiencing accelerated ageing so “back in his day” is more like a decade ago or so. Every MGS story is supposed to have a meta-story and Kojima has often used Snake as a mouthpiece so I can only assume that Kojima felt archaic at this point in time despite still being relatively young, just on the brink of turning 46 at the time of release. Snake being old now is kind of the main point with the game serving as a massive cable tie for all the loose ends. See, unlike Ubisoft, Kojima never intended to turn every game he makes into a franchise and he had wanted to stop making MGS games for a little while and at least leave them to others, the irony being even this narrative dead-end wasn't a sufficient escape route and thus MGS V. Anyway, let my train of thought not derail too far – the story's crap, but why is it crap? Vamp returns and again his only interesting traits are immortality and an unusually long tongue, some other characters make a cameo including the colonel and Rosemary, the spice of Raiden's life. Most pleasingly though, Raiden takes over the cyborg ninja duties for this game helping launch his Platinum spin-off. A complete role reversal occurs with Raiden and Snake here, Raiden being the competent character. I'm not gonna do a synopsis of the plot or anything because the cut scenes alone are about 7 hours long and that would just be silly but there are two things I wanna talk about: Snake's age and the fried eggs. The whole point seems to be about Snake being old and useless, people, women in particular because Kojima has some unresolved complexes, repeatedly reminding Snake of his aging – Naomi gasps and cries then bangs Otacon instead, Meryl calls him OLD Snake and bangs Johnny Akiba instead, Sunny calls him grandpa (Okay, that last one is a lie). Sunny takes a few attempts at frying some eggs during the course of the game. The first attempt ends with a good egg and a spoiled egg, the second attempt results in two spoiled eggs, the third attempt produces three good yolks from two eggs, the fourth and final sees two yolks combine into one (as seen here). I've read numerous theories about the eggs and how they represent the clones but I have a slightly different standpoint on this. The common theory is that the first pair of eggs are Big Boss himself and a clone gone wrong, the second pair are another set of clones gone wrong (there were supposed to be eight in total), the third signifies Solid and Liquid being twins with the third egg presumably being Solidous, and the final signifies their coming together or the merging of Liquid and Ocelot. I would like to argue that the egg scenes serve as commentary on the games in the series. Consider the phrase “bad egg”, in the first game, the two main characters, the twin Snakes are a good and a bad egg. In the second game, Raiden works for an oppressive AI against insane terrorists and there truly isn't a traditionally “good” side, even Snake is technically a terrorist and each side has an argument for being pragmatically “good”. The third game has three main characters that may fall on the “good” of the old D&D morality board: The Boss, Big Boss and Ocelot, all of whom serve to protect their country and the world from nuclear war in their own devious ways. And so we come to the fourth game, Big Boss finally meeting and accepting his clone, the AI being overwritten and the world returning to “normal” again. Oh, do excuse the spoilers and the frivolous use of the speech marks. 

Ultimately, I enjoyed my time with Metal Gear Solid 4; though it's something of a let-down in comparison to the other entries and has A LOT of issues, the visual presentation has been polished to a point of incredible shine allowed by the progress in technology. I think the entire series serves as a showcase of what we've been able to do technologically and in retrospect how far we've come in such a short amount of time. We've come such a long way that Solid Snake is an outdated kind of character, the simple soldier who follows orders to fight for his country. We're in dire need of a renegade leader who decides to start his own military state and do mercenary work until his protegé comes to destroy him. 

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is: tying yourself up to a radiator/10 (enjoyable at first but soon exhausting and life-threatening) 

Metal Gear Solid 3

No previous Metal Gear Solid game wears its influences on its eye quite like Snake Eater. With Snake being a cross between Kurt Russell's Snake Pliskin and James Bond, Snake Eater adopts many of the stylistic choices of the 1960s spy movies, not least of all the bondesque main theme. As with the previous iteration, there's a shorter introductory section and the much longer main section of the game except this time hero and setting remain the same in both. Reading up more about MGS2, I found out it was badly received (I knew I should've moved from under that rock) and this one aimed to be a real crowd pleaser - it's about survival this time. 

So Kojima had to come up with a crowd pleaser for the masses to save his series from disappearing which happened to be at odds with what he wanted to do (leave the series to others and work on new projects) so why did the game turn out so well? Could it be Konami's Yakuza links, was Kojima threatened into making a good game? Was it his artistic pride? Was it his love for games and gamers and if so, why dick-slap them with MGS2 in the first place? Now, I enjoyed getting dick-slapped by Kojima but I'm aware that a lot of people found it uncomfortable. This is the midpoint in the series, the sequel which is a prequel that begins the entire continuous plot and cements the gameplay. And the gameplay finally reached a point where the game can be commended and recommended based on gameplay alone. The radar is gone but so is the top-down view, letting you see from Snake's perspective without having to hold the first person view button. The enemies are harder to spot, however, since the game puts a stress on blending in with its camouflage system. You micromanage Snake's outfit and facepaint to help him blend into the environment, his ability to do so represented by a percentage in the top right corner of the screen. I imagine 100% means completely invisible and is only obtainable by wearing The End's moss camo and laying down in grass. For the most part though, with a 60% guards won't think twice about checking out that strangely human looking bush or rock. There's a whole bunch of jokey camouflages and facepaints to be found and a couple of quirky ones like the moss camo. There are pyjamas and zombie paint but there's also a Spider Camo. This one, I think, you get from The Fear and it raises your camo level to around 75% in any terrain but it continually drains your stamina at an accelerated rate. Stamina being the other new addition to the game, as you run around it drops and as it drops Snake gets a little bit useless at things. You can avoid your stamina dropping by eating food you hunt in the jungle, including snakes the first of which gets a little animation of being eaten by Snake. Now, we know Kojima's smarmy post-modernism took a backseat here, but how much of a backseat really? Consider this: MGS2 was too weird and fans wanted a 'normal' game like MGS again (psycho mantis and clones notwithstanding) so Snake Eater has to adapt to its environment to survive but because it's Kojima's baby it can never adapt entirely. Snake for thought, that. 

The camouflage and the not-useless camera aren't reason enough to recommend this game though - it's the freedom it grants you. I wrote that MGS2 became more open than the original MGS and well, MGS3 is basically a sandbox. It's only right that the game ends with Big Boss breaking free from the government much like Raiden broke free from player control in the previous game. You get given a massive map divided into sections (one or two of which can be completely ignored), you get a whole arsenal of toys and a whole host of enemies to test them on. Please, feel free to leave a comment telling me what makes MGS3 less of a sandbox than GTA 3 or Assassin's Creed. Now, I grant you, it's not open world but nor was the sandbox I was playing in when I was four years old. The toys at our disposal here include new hand-to-hand combat which is a lot more extensive and plays a major part in the plot. Gone are the days of mashing the square button to the tune of "uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-UH!". You can grab enemies, interrogate them, hold them up. The CQC is shown in cut scenes to be incredibly competent and is encouraged since it's non-lethal and always wins against firearms but blowing up a munitions shed after surrounding it with claymores and then watching unwitting guards literally walk into their deaths is just that little bit more fun. There are mechanics in place for emergent gameplay, there is often more than one way to solve a problem. You can sneak past people using timing and camouflage, you can knock guards out with CQC or your tranquliser gun or you can blow everyone up. If you do choose the action path the game will throw more and more enemies your way and radio silence encourages reinforcements. The mounting challenge is a great form of discouragement, the game literally tells you, "play it your way. IF YOU DARE!" All this sneaking around, scouting and preparing traps culminates in possibly the greatest boss fight apart from the massive foetus in Earthbound. 

The boss fight with The End is justified by its means (pun intended, sorry). It's a boss fight that employs all of the core mechanics and requires you to excel at them: you have to hide from The End, track him down and kill him. He can hide anywhere across 4 stages and is easily startled if you get too close, which will prompt him to flashbang you and run away. He uses the Moss Camo, making him difficult to spot unless you're wearing the thermal goggles which even expose his footsteps. Now, I'm short-sighted and played this on a PS Vita so I couldn't see myself doing it without the goggles. You can discover his general direction using the directional microphone which lets you hear his breathing and his pronouncement that "This is The End." Now, the fight can literally take days if you're having trouble finding this guy but worry not, Kojima's team thought of ways to help you out. The guy's old and we're talking like 100+ years old, so if you wait a real world week (or change the date on your console) he will die of old age. This is well hinted at earlier in the game where Volgin questions The End's ability and The Boss remarks that he's saving what little life he has left for battle. You also get a chance to snipe the end well before his boss fight occurs while he's being wheeled out on a wheelchair, saving you the trouble of fighting him for a week. I imagine this was done with speedrunners in mind, although I can't see there being a huge speedrunning community around MGS3 (I might be horribly wrong). 

It's still Kojima's baby and so it still has no regard for the fourth wall and drills a peephole in it so it can stick its tongue out at you through it. Snake Eater plays with the fact it's a prequel and its time setting. Paramedic, a stand-in for Mei Ling/Rose, talks about movies like Godzilla as if they'd just come out, which of course is the case within the game world. Major Zero fanboys over Bond but Snake isn't convinced, outlining the differences between the two (see Stewart Lee's 41st best stand up, "He's like you!"). I remember having a conversation with Paramedic where she hinted at the stealth suit, "Maybe some day you'll be able to turn invisible." I did chuckle at a few of the references and they never intruded on the serious parts of the plot, or at least not as much as Volgin shooting lightning from his fists. The game sets characters well for the most part and the important ones are easily recalled and described. Eva is a liar, she acts two roles for the player to see: Volgin's punching bag and a sexy and confident KGB double-agent. She blinds Snake with boobs and turns him on with guns, the one time you see the bastard smile. Volgin is an entitled sadist, worst kind of white privileged "the world belongs to me, I'm mad at the world and will nuke it" type of twat. He's obviously a spoilt middle-class brat with a weird skin condition and a thunderous temper. The KOBRA unit isn't really that interesting but they're supposed to represent emotions of War except Pain and End aren't exactly emotions, are they? The Pain controls bees and shoots them out of his mouth, The Fear turns invisible and shoots you with a crossbow, The End we've discussed and The Sorrow is already dead but haunts you throughout the game. The Sorrow is actually the second most interesting character in the game for me, beaten only by The Boss. In life, The Sorrow was a medium, much like Psycho Mantis in MGS, he was sensitive to the spirit world and so his spirit has remained strong post-humously. He usually appears accompanied by rain and serves as a Grim Reaper of sorts, either taking someone's life or saving it (Snake's mostly). He is revealed to have had a relationship with The Boss culminating in pregnancy and to have died by her hand. Now, this brings about it a degree of dramatic irony: The Boss killed her lover for her country, carrying out her duty; we are playing as Big Boss before he gets that title and The Boss is our enemy but also closest friend; anyone with half a brain knows where this is going to lead. Knowing that, however, doesn't make it any less heart-breaking. 

The Boss is by far the most interesting character in this game, perhaps even the series. She enters painted as a war hero and Snake's mentor. She takes the early moments of the game to say that alliegances change and your allies may soon become your enemies just because their countries' leaders decide to fight each other, she says as a soldier you must abandon personal allegiances and simply do your job. This little philosophical lecture shows off her cold professionalism and makes Snake bemoan the potential of fighting his hero. Soon after that, The Boss defects to Volgin and beats the living crap out of Snake who's left with a broken arm and pride (literally, not the euphemism). And that's the end of your introduction to the game, The Boss absolutely dominates Snake, takes his gun apart and drops him off a bridge - well done, mate, your mother figure just scolded you in front of all your mates. Snake 're-enters Groznyj Grad for operation Snake Eater and is soon met by The Boss again and she again takes him gun apart. Snake gets beaten by The Boss several times in the story but each time you can see that she's holding back. Until the big reveal at the end, I was convinced that she simply felt bad for Jack/Snake/Big Boss and because of her former friendship she simply wanted him to give up but it turns out she actively wanted him to succeed because it was part of her mission. And this is where her character truly shines: it turns out she was a double agent pretending ding to defect but Volgin's unexpected rashness forces to go deeper under cover to the point of actually giving the impression to a traitor and accepting the fate of one. To retrieve the secret stash of money Volgin was hoarding and stop a nuclear war, she officially betrayed her nation while secretly still working for it. Her utter loyalty pits her against Snake who is forced to kill her. I absolutely love the narrative at the end here, just as Snake is forced to kill The Boss, the player is forced to actually pull the trigger. I actually had a double-take when it occurred to me the game was waiting until I personally pulled the trigger, it was the kind of shock that chills your heart and makes it jump a little. It's not often a game makes me feel the feelz, actual real human emotions, thanks to a combination of rationalisation and a tough childhood, but Snake Eater managed to make me feel sad. It's silly and campy and cringey and maybe childish but I saluted The Boss' grave with Snake. I suppose the whole game is silly and campy and cringey and maybe childish but I saluted The Boss' grave with Snake. I felt like a murderer after Spec Ops, I wanted to be friends with Sans and Papyrus after Undertale, I wanted Tidus and Yuna to be happy together after Final Fantasy X, I mourned Aerith for a day after Final Fantasy VII, I was devastated about Lee after the Walking Dead and I saluted The Boss' grave with Snake.  

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is: James Bond on acid/10 

P.S. 

If you're not entirely bored of my rambling on about this game, Ocelot is the third most interesting character. He places below The Sorrow purely because so little is known about the spirit soldier. Ocelot secretly works for the American government, whereas Eva works for the Chinese, playing up to the fickle nature of nationalism presented in this game and drawing back on The Boss' opening speech. We meet him early in the game, face off with him ending with his gun jamming and we get an opportunity to kill him but this creates a time paradox and gives us a Game Over screen (and the "series solved" trophy). Another bit of fan service comes in the next meeting when Ocelot takes Snake's advice and switches his pistol for a revolver but this time his ineptitude makes him expend his magazine without realising. Now, it isn't until the very end that we learn his ineptitude was probably feigned and he too wished for Snake to succeed. Ocelot is presented as a much more sympathetic character here, a healthy rival to Big Boss, facing off with him in a game of Russian roulette that is rigged from the beginning to produce no casualties. Ocelot ruins everything. Or does he just give that impression? A genius is supposedly hardly recognised in his lifetime, right? 

Patryk Krzywon

Metal Gear Solid 2

I remember playing the MGS2 demo when my dad got us a PS2, he banged on about how amazingly realistic this game looks. About a decade later, this realism turns out to be a very deliberate choice, the game being ambiguous about which parts of the plot are 'real' and which aren't. I purposely kept myself a little in the dark about the game but already knew that Raiden was the main character and Snake was only playable in a small portion of it. Oh, by the way, I spoil pretty much the entire game here.

It's almost impossible to talk about Metal Gear Solid 2 without mentioning the first one - this isn't so much a sequel as it is a direct response to the predecessor. I wanna start with this because after more than a decade I still think it's something worth discussing, just what is this game about exactly? The first MGS was an anti-war stealth action game with likeable characters and truly heartfelt moments surrounded by a load of camp. The game was silly and at times outright ridiculous (psycho mantis, grey Fox, Metal Gear Ray howling) but was also punctuated by real drama. Every boss fight would culminate in a truly heartfelt speech from your adversary and weirdly, in the end, all of them except for Liquid wished Snake well. I'd like to propose that after his learning about the NES Metal Gear games, it was Kojima's response to the knock offs of his previous games and thus the twin Snakes, a Solid one made by Kojima and a Liquid one, a knock off. At the end you learn that Solid has the recessive genes whereas Liquid got all the dominant ones. Kojima's Metal Gear games came out on the MSX and the American versions came out on the much stronger and more popular NES; Solid is genetically a lesser man (the MSX) but still proves to be better and stronger than Liquid (the NES). Note that Liquid doesn't die the first two times you kill him, it's this third game that's sure to stop knock offs. Now, MGS was incredibly well received and Solid Snake was universally loved by nerds worldwide. This prompted Kojima to do something petulant, risky and ultimately hilarious. MGS2 starts off with Snake, as you'd expect it but a couple hours in, Snake dies in an explosion. Enter: "Snake." It's actually written in speech marks and said with a sense of distant irony, although everything the colonel says in this game has a hint of distant irony (maybe I've just played the game for too long and should find something better to do with my time). This "Snake" is soon renamed as Raiden and revealed to be nothing like the old Solid Snake. Raiden's inadequacy begins at Snake already being a step ahead of him in this mission through him being unable to actually defeat any bosses and ends with Raiden barely holding it together mentally towards the end. Raiden also happens to be a massive fan of Snake's, much like you, nerd (ooh, double-meanings!). Much of the game unfolds in the same way Metal Gear 2 and Metal Gear Solid did: infiltration, codec calls, intrigue, codec calls, Cyborg Ninja, codec calls, boss fights, codec calls, love interest dies, codec calls. Eventually Raiden meets his surrogate battlefield dad in Solidus Snake who, as ocelot remarks, is a spitting image of Big Boss and they have themselves a fight to the death. The game itself makes it known that this entire scenario was created to closely resemble MGS1 and help Raiden become Snake. This is Kojima basically telling the nerds playing MGS2 that they're not Snake. Snake's always a step ahead of Raiden, Raiden's enemies are never truly beaten apart from Fatman, Raiden's entire support team is an AI based on real people and apparently even his girlfriend never existed. In fact, the colonel several times remarks that Snake isn't a part of this simulation which would suggest that the entire game is one long VR mission. So when Rose says that she's been to Raiden's room, she may have meant his files. There, she found nothing – Raiden has no identity whatsoever, he's entirely a clean slate, the random player element. Raiden is referred to as Jack the Ripper and is revealed to have been a child soldier. This too feeds the metanarrative since the player is likely to have played games from a young age and what are skilled gamers if not child soldiers? The game plays you as much as you play it and Kojima wants you to know it. At this stage, I feel like Snake serves as Kojima surrogate and Raiden represents the player. Raiden is conditioned to be a copy of Snake, the player plays out the character Kojima wrote for them. Only towards the very end of the game, does Raiden gain his own identity along with a ninja sword, something he could potentially best Snake at. I've looked this up and the game was hugely hated for this "post-modern mettababble" but any game that at 1am tells me I've been playing it too much gets kudos from me.

This second entry feels a lot more open than the original MGS. Not so much in level design, which is still rigid and linear, but in gameplay. There's a lot more the player can do in this iteration, we're given a tranquiliser gun, for example. This offers a non-lethal way of dealing with enemies which is a completely new angle. In fact, you could have a playthrough with a grand total of 2 casualties: Solidus Snake and Fatman (notwithstanding NPC on NPC crimes [NPCide?]). Another clever mechanic is the holding up – you can point your gun at a non-boss enemy, telling them to freeze and interrogate or mug them. Some soldiers drop dog tags when mugged and collecting enough grants you the stealth suit. Now, this is more interesting than just a mere collectible and unlockable. In the first Metal Gear Solid you unlock the stealth suit by finishing the game and the infinity bandana by finishing the game and also saving Meryl through button mashing. Consider that at the end of the game, Jack/Raiden/Nitwit throws his dog tags away, the ones with whatever name you've given him (Nitwit, obviously). This symbolises him no longer being controlled by the player who in turn is no longer controlled by Kojima through the linear design of the game. If the dog tags symbolise being under another's control, then by stealing them you are freeing the soldiers. Although the game is not at all fussed whether you kill them afterwards. First person aiming isn't shit, for a change. You can actually see down your gun's sights and aim quite accurately and headshots aren't too difficult. There's a whole bunch of nice little mechanics again (see, hand-dryer) and most of them are incredibly fun to discover. There are seagulls you can use for target practice, which you might feel inclined to do after slipping in their droppings. Raiden is able to walk across them but running lands him on his arse every single time. You can hang off ledges to hide but only for a limited time, subject to your grip gauge. This grip gauge can be improved by doing pull-ups, up to 3 levels. You can now hide in lockers and see out of them slightly, a mechanic which has survived in games like Alien: Isolation today. Some lockers even have quasi-erotic posters for Snake/Raiden's enjoyment. These lockers can also be used to store corpses of enemy soldiers or their unconscious bodies and many of them hold ammo and other items. You get a coolant to stop fires and you get my personal favourite – the directional microphone. This little badboy lets you snoop on those behind walls, like the voyeur Raiden totally is. You can overhear some amusing conversations and other... erm... sound effects. You're given a toolbox and a playground and this probably 10-hour game suddenly becomes 20 or 30 hours long. I wouldn't argue that MGS2 is a sandbox game, but I'd definitely argue that it's a playground game. Through all of its linearity, it lets you do things your way, mostly. You're forced into sniping again but this time you don't have to face off another sniper, instead you have to protect a tortoise. I jest, but E.E. makes for one of the most annoying NPCs I've encountered in a loooooooooong time. I would like to dedicate the following paragraph to why I hate her.

E.E. Gets introduced early on as Otacon's long lost ADOPTIVE sister and a brilliant scientist of some sort. She also happens to be the one who tips Otacon off about Metal Gear, suggesting she's involved in its construction, which she is, as is her terrible fate. Later, Raiden finally runs into her, cut off by water which she's terrified of because her dad drowned and Otacon ran away after that. It turns out E.E. had the hots for Otacon, but so did her mum. Now, this is a personal thing but, when you finally meet Emma, she looks A LOT like Otacon. I have two issues with that: firstly, she's meant to be his adoptive not genetic sister and, secondly, people who look alike being together is gross even without it being some sort of faux-semi-incest-type affair. Raiden finds her cute, though, for some goddamn inexplicable reason. So once you've met her, you have to swim with her on your back and make sure she doesn't drown, the little freeloader. As if that wasn't enough, she can't even walk on her own because reasons. Literally, the reason given if I remember correctly is that she's been injected with something that's stopping her legs from working. She hates bugs so you have to get rid of any bugs you might encounter on the way (with the coolant, mind you, not the shotgun). You have to clear a room of guards, then backtrack to drag her across it only for another guard to come out. Then comes the shit-stained biscuit. The girl that will obviously die horribly has to be protected while she slowly crosses a bridge filled with mine and enemies whom you've got to snipe. Nevermind that she can conveniently walk on her own again, she might as well not. The pace she moves at is comparable to that of a lazy slug. Her being annoying right near the end of the game is fine, the game deliberately sets out to annoy you, the problem here is that this entire section is just plain boring and drags on for too long. I'm sure Kojima wanted this section to highlight Emma's determination and perseverance but it's just so awfully sleep-inspiring. She then goes on to die anyway but not without getting all creepy about Otacon. And this is the first MGS trope I'm calling – ANYONE ROMANTICALLY INTERESTED IN OTACON WILL DIE. I'm sure Otacon represents a part of Kojima, maybe his personal face, and expresses his creator's feelings in this way but for Fox sake, Hideo.

The first review was about over-exposition and lack of substance, this second one is somewhat about that first one but it's also about the bizarre nature of reviews and how they colour our perceptions a certain way. Except it's not, but I hope you see what I'm getting at. The game sends a message, a muffled, distorted, somewhat nonsensical message. The fourth wall is made entirely of glass and even that glass is shattered at the end. Raiden runs around naked, he is reborn like Adam before him, he now knows shame so he covers his bollocks up until Snake comes to the rescue again and lets Raiden be himself – a useless side-kick. A key thing to look at here is subverting expectations. Snake says at the end that his legacy will be more than his genes, he wants to pass on ideas so that future generations can do better, so in a sense Kojima doesn't want MGS to be his legacy, he instead wants to inspire a new generation of game-makers to create something better as a response. MGS2 is like the second Death Star, purposely imperfect, seemingly unfinished. There are whole sections of the plant we can never visit, making the game world unfinished. The game glitches out at the end and gives the player a bunch of bizarre immersion-shattering messages, it's an unfinished narrative. The player is often reminded that they're playing a video game made by Hideo Kojima, a Hideo Game®. The game literally asked me if I have nothing better to do with my time and I'm not mad at that because I literally don't. So here's a thing I'd like to propose as an afterthought: maybe we take video games a little too seriously.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is: Metal Gear Solid on mushrooms/10

Patryk Krzywon