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

Metal Gear Solid

I first tried Metal Gear Solid on the GameCube about 8 years ago: I got to the first boss, couldn't hit him, decided the game was retarded. What I didn't know is that I missed out on a gem of a game; one that I think glistens better in its original form. See, I think the PSX graphics contextualize the game better, give a better feel for its age. In the end, the two deciding factors convincing me to give MGS a proper go were my best friend's high opinion of it and my own enjoyment of Peace Walker. On this second run through the game, or maybe rather first, since I played the original version this time (PCSXone works better than Dolphin), I beat Ocelot with ease. I even beat his torture.

The game's top down view is a point of interest thanks to the inclusion of the radar. The radar more or less shows the same thing, except you can actually see your enemies on it. I dare anyone to try beating Raven without the bloody thing. It also separates the player from Snake, makes us something of an overwatch, a spectator screaming, "No, Snake, don't go in there!" But on some level also acts as Snake's unconscious mind. The game perspective isn't the only aspect of the game that questions player identity but more on that later. The top down view furthermore serves as an homage to the previous Metal Gear games. In fact, Metal Gear Solid is almost a carbon copy of Metal Gear 2, including many of the same plot points and set pieces. Set pieces are something that has to be talked about with this game, because they almost outnumber core gameplay (they do if you take away the backtracking or consider the PAL card backtracking a set piece). At its core, the game is a sneaking challenge with some really inventive mechanics that are criminally underused. As far as I remember there is one puddle that makes a splashing noise alerting a guard, one guard near a snowy area who might notice Snake's footprints and one spotlight for the entire game. There is a mechanic, an iconic one from what I gather, of hiding in a cardboard box to remain undetected. Now, at first this seems silly but there are three or four different boxes and I did once make the mistake of using a random one and getting discovered by a patrolling guard. It turns out that Metal Gear Solid has better AI than Assassin's Creed. The patrolling routes are stiff and methodical and don't garner much realism – the guards can hear snake knock gently on a wall or run across a puddle but can't hear his running footsteps on dry ground – yet it still feels more natural and realistic than a lot of modern games and I'm confident I can knock that up to my personal favourite aspect of art - the little touches.

About halfway through disc one you go into a toilet where you can see your reflection in the mirror and if you walk too close to the wall you might turn the hand dryer on. If you stay out in the snow for too long you might catch a cold and Snake will start randomly sneezing alerting guards to his presence. One or two of the guards in the game do have colds and sneeze occasionally brandishing them blind for a split second (only demons kiss and sneeze with their eyes open). Otacon gives you Sniper Wolf's handkerchief and if you equip it, the wolves in the cave won't attack you. Cameras have blind spots right underneath them. All this goes to create a pretty familiar and realistic setting, where everything more or less works as it should. Then, the game throws you curve balls. The tutorial is given to you without breaking character and the colonel and Mei Ling straight-facedly tell you to "press the Select button" or "press the action button." There's a torture scene late in the game and your torturer unabashedly says "Press the circle button to regain health." But the biggest example of the flourth wall shattering comes in the form of Psycho Mantis who comments on how often you've saved until that point and what other games you've played and created save files for. He then outright forces you to reconnect your controller into port 2 to beat him. This bleeding over of the meta narrative into the main narrative prepares the player for the lectures they receive at the end of the game. The visual separation from Snake and the repeated pointing out of the neural connection through the controller the player has with him serves as a reminder that we're playing a game and Snake only does what we tell him. This effect is crucial to the game's narrative.

Metal Gear Solid is an interactive movie but player input only affects whether the story moves forward and not the way in which it does, with one exception being the torture scene which decides whether Meryl lives or dies. I've been playing a load of God of War in the meantime so I managed to survive the torture and save Meryl; I never bothered playing the game through again to see the alternative path. The narrative also somewhat relies on the player being a little homicidal but I played on a low enough difficulty to only kill the bosses and maybe 4 guards. So when Liquid asked how many of his comrades I'd killed, I replied with "about six, maybe?" But the overarching point of the narrative is that war is bad, killing is bad, yet video game players enjoy it all. The narrative puts the player's own morality into question by addressing Snake and asking why he's killed all the guards and why he plans to kill Liquid, other than because that's what he's been told to do. This works in a linear game and soon has you thinking about whether you're becoming desensitised to virtual violence and makes you reconsider your actions on subsequent playthroughs, unless of course, like myself, you're an absolute sociopath. In all honesty, I bypassed killing guards because it was a chore, I wanted to beat the game quickly and move onto the next one, but following the revelations near the end of the game I might attempt a 100% non-lethal run-through. An interesting point can be made about the boss fights in the game – every single boss apart from Liquid and Ocelot seems relieved to be defeated. The narrative plays into the player's hands here, most of these bosses want you to win and help you once you defeat them. Finally, one cannot write about Metal Gear Solid and simply not mention the blabbering. There is a shit-ton of blabbering. “Blabbering?” You ask. Yes, reader, blabbering. Repeating more or less the same thing over and over for no good reason, extensive monologue and dialogue without any real purpose in dire need of an editor to cut down the word count and sentence length and correct the structure to a point where it is more easily and pleasurably consumable as to maximise the player's enjoyment through conciseness and wit and not simply write out all the exposition into pointless and unrealistic conversations. “Conversations?” You ask. Yes, reader, long, drawn-out radio calls mostly telling you what you already know, stuff you had learned along the way, stuff you had guessed and sometimes even stuff you had previously heard in the very same radio call. “Radio call?” You ask. Fuck off.

Metal Gear Solid is: McGyver on hallucinogenic mushrooms/10