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