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)