Revengeance

Sounds to me like somebody has just dethroned Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for "worst video game title ever."  Tetsuya Nomura's esoteric titles at least usually make you pause for a split-second before determining that they are complete rubbish.  This, on the other hand, is immediately and aggressively stupid.  It's Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, folks!

I have little doubt that this title came directly from the top, Hideo Kojima himself, the man who brought us "Transfarring."  I sincerely believe that Kojima, with his limited grasp of English, doesn't realize how stupid a title this is.  But this is one of those (many) times when one of the many native English speakers working for him should have the stones to speak up and tell him it's no good.  It's a sad testimony to just how bad it is that I'm actually hoping that "Revengeance" is an intentional reference to the 1969 Supreme Court case involving the Ku Klux Klan.

Pull the Trigger

SPOILERS FOR METAL GEAR SOLID 3 AND GUNGRAVE

Speaking of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, remember that amazing ending? Remember that part where our hero was asked, by the most important person in his life, to end theirs after having faced and defeated them in exhausting single combat? Remember how stunned you were when you realized that it was you, as the player, who had to pull the trigger in order to finish the game? Well, did you know that that moment was a complete ripoff of the ending to Gungrave, which did it better two years earlier?

Okay, maybe better is debatable, but that awe-inspiring moment of the player being forced to pull the trigger was, first of all, done already in Gungrave. Moreover, the memory that many people have of the MGS3 take is somewhat of a lie. It is apparently a little known fact that, in Snake Eater, Snake actually will fire the shot if left on his own. It might take about two minutes, and I'm sure it's not more than five. I know because, one time, I left the gun in his hand while I took a short bathroom break. It was my third time through the game, my second playthrough in one week, and I really needed a break after having to snipe a Kerotan, capture three unique food items, and defeat The Boss through stamina-kill, all before the bombers were supposed to arrive. When I came back, The Boss was dead and Snake was cut scene grappling with young Ocelot. I was quite surprised, but, just to be sure there had been no foul play, I replayed the fight and verified that, yes, Snake eventually does pull the trigger on his own.

Anyway, it's not a big deal. They were both great games. Just sayin'.

Some Guy Reacts to Month-Old News

About a month ago, Hideki Kamiya, director of PlatinumGames's upcoming Bayonetta, unveiled his game's "Very Easy Automatic" mode.

Players of Kamiya's Devil May Cry may remember "Easy Automatic" mode. In the original Devil May Cry, if the player struggled in the early stages, the game would make the one-time offer to switch over to "Easy Automatic" difficulty. "Easy" was self-explanatory, but "Automatic" was an additional setting that activated auto-fire on Dante's dual pistols. That was all.

With Bayonetta, Kamiya has gone quite a bit further to design an action game accessible to players of all skill levels. Not only does the easiest difficulty apparently feature regenerating health and pathetically weak enemies, but the new Automatic setting allows players to play with only one hand.

In the demonstration video, the player essentially just presses the "punch" button repeatedly, only switching to the kick for certain special attacks. The AI automatically homes in on enemies, even jumping when necessary, and performs appropriate combos. Noting that you can still manually take over movement or turn off Automatic mode entirely at any time, Kamiya describes it as like "a helping hand from an incredibly skilled expert in the game."

It sounds a lot like the theory behind the "Demo Play" feature that Nintendo has patented for use in future titles. Demo Play will supposedly allow players to hand off control to the AI any time a game becomes too difficult to get through manually. Nintendo hasn't provided any demonstrations yet, but I can think of any number of past games where the AI didn't seem to know how to play very well, so I'm intrigued to see how this turns out.

Some old-school gamers, however, worry that this will mean the end of challenge, or even interactivity, in video games. Bayonetta's Automatic mode at least is still run on the player's repeated pressing of the punch button, but it's clear from the video that the manual input is effortless, the engagement practically nonexistent, yet the onscreen action is highly complicated. To be sure, there could be ill consequences down the line to this catering to the lowest common denominator. But, for now, I'd like to just think of it as an extra option, and I'm additionally excited about the possibilities raised by Bayonetta's take specifically.

Just in the demonstration video, one can see the potential for Automatic to be utilized as a "live demo" mode. A player could play the game with one hand while using the other to point things out in real time. It would make for a much more natural presentation than having to stop and go constantly, or having a second guy doing the talking while the dude with the controller is stern-faced and silent in concentration.

That would really be more helpful for a producer than a consumer, but the idea could be further expanded in ways that I think players could have fun with. Remember the "cinematic camera" mode in Grand Theft Auto III? Set to dynamically cut to the most dramatic angle available to produce film-like camerawork, it could create for some striking shots, but it also rendered the game practically unplayable, since the most cinematic angle rarely provided the most informative view for gameplay. I think the idea could work, however, if paired with the simplified control mode of Bayonetta. With the AI handling most of the work, the player would be at ease to better appreciate the visuals and camerawork.

Taking the concept further, a developer could implement a full-blown "director" mode. Map all the normal gameplay actions to a single button, and don't even bother making the player press it repeatedly--just make it a "go" button that, when held down, tells the AI to play. Then the remaining buttons could be dedicated to enhanced camera controls. While playing the game with one button, the player could simultaneously rotate, pan, zoom, or cut to different angles. Why would you want a mode like that? Well, you probably wouldn't want to play a game that way, but it could provide a nice option to explore a game's visual assets in new ways. A player could use it to grab some dramatic images, or frame footage that could be edited together for, I dunno, a fan-made music video. It would be like the replay mode in sports games, except it would be even more dynamic, since you could act while operating the camera, instead of just reviewing recorded actions. Metal Gear Solid players could finally get those impossible gameplay angles that Hideo Kojima uses in his highly directed trailers.

I'm also thinking of the unlockable "audio commentary" in Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. It sounded like a cool idea, but then I watched my brother turn it on. You could only run it during a mission, and, once in, my brother had to pause the game for the duration of the commentary, because he could not concentrate on both listening to the audio and surviving the action. That struck me as really lame, because clearly the point of having the audio accompany gameplay was to match the finished work in action with behind-the-scenes discussion from its creators, a la a DVD commentary. But my brother was pretty good at the game, so if even he was reduced to listening to it while staring at a static pause screen, then they probably would have been better off just making a documentary video. As it was, the best way to enjoy the commentary was probably to have someone else play the game while you got to listen and watch. Again, Bayonetta's Automatic mode would allow the concept to work much better. The talk could be appropriately synced to gameplay, but an AI assistant would let players devote more attention to listening, less to performing well.

Although, in theory, "Very Easy Automatic" and "Demo Play" are meant to aid unskilled or casual players, things like audio commentaries or a director mode would only be of interest to hardcore fans. I hope developers are considering options along those lines, because I think there could be plenty of promising applications to truly suit players of all skill and enthusiasm levels.

Gears of War 2

The sequel plays essentially the same as the original, but it's a better and more varied experience. The first game was a pretty limited cover-based shooter with some occasional melee combat. Gears of War 2 mixes up the basic gameplay by including a few new enemy types, most notably some classes of larger enemies that do not rely on cover, instead advancing on the player character directly. Breaking up the standard shootouts are many sections of alternative play styles, including a variety of on-rails and vehicular segments, a Bowser's Castle-type stage full of lethal contraptions, and a few really crappy boss fights. Most memorable in co-op was a short mission that required each player to lift one end of a heavy trunk, reducing movement to a coordinated three-legged race. Comparable to the rappelling and car chase sequences of Metal Gear Solid, these bits may not be fully realized or altogether successful, but they keep the gameplay from becoming monotonous, and most are thankfully short enough to keep from wearing out their welcomes.

The core shooting action still provides the most fun, but it remains limited in scope. Despite being able to move and shoot at the same time, the Gears of War characters never feel as versatile as, for example, the heroes of recent Resident Evil titles. The clumsy melee attacks come into play only when smaller enemies are fool enough to charge at you. The majority of the time, you just exchange fire at long range from behind cover, and unless you have a sniper rifle for headshots, it doesn't really matter where on the body or even with what weapon you tag the enemy.

After having taken much criticism concerning the shallow plot of the first game, developer Epic Games made much of its recruitment of novelist Joshua Ortega to script the sequel. I'd be surprised if any players had actually heard of Ortega before this, and Epic was clearly patronizingly selling with his nebulous profession rather than his name or past works, but his addition definitely shows as an asset, as Gears of War 2 features a much stronger story than the last game. At least in parts. It has some dramatic moments, but it's spottily implemented and flimsily held together, and, once again, I rarely knew how or why the characters were in a given location. It left me pondering what an unusual office it must have been to serve as writer on a project that so blatantly did not begin with the script. Or rather, the design team must have had its own disjointed script of set pieces and environments already in mind, which Ortega then had to screw together and fit his plot around. To be fair, I hear many blockbuster movies are produced the same way. But why must that be the ideal that every triple-A video game aspires toward?

For all the complaints of Western critics about the passivity of the Metal Gear cut scenes, never have I found the disconnect between game and story so jarring as in Gears of War 2. There are the little things, like how these characters are able to go through traumatic experiences, only to emerge bloodthirsty as ever, as they mow down their enemies while gloatingly calling them "grubs" and "bitches." Perhaps these could be taken as signs that their psyches snapped long ago from the alien wars, but I know better than to think too deeply about that. The real issue with Gears of War 2 is that the narrative arc does not at all agree with the interactive progression. The story reaches its climax midway through the fourth chapter, but instead of arriving at appropriate resolution at the end of that act, the player must still fight through one more final full-length chapter. Epic seemed determined to save its biggest interactive set pieces for the finale, but, whatever the developer may have intended, the reality was that I had become more invested in the plot than in the gameplay, so that when the final chapter strayed from the engaging earlier threads to move on instead to a practically unrelated episode, I no longer cared how big the action got, because it could only be anticlimactic within the narrative structure.

Then there were those damn "active briefing" segments in both games, where, instead of cutting to a cinematic, characters would simply put away their guns and activate their earpieces to receive new orders. The transition is meant to appear seamless, and players are expected to continue proceeding forward even as their characters converse. Except that you can only walk at the slowest gear. Personally, I found this so much more frustrating than the interminable MGS4 cut scenes. I generally don't mind video games that can shift between active and passive modes. If I see a movie coming on, it triggers a switch in my brain telling me to relax and enjoy the show. It can be both a reward and a relief. I'm not so ADD that my fingers need always be pounding buttons. Gears of War thinks it knows better, however, and presents the player with a transparent illusion of interactivity, whereby you can tilt the stick to move your character around, but you'll quickly tire at feeling unable to do anything but inch along the path that the game leads you on. Because there's no obvious cut to cinematic, it's not a clean break from the action, and so my brain is still set for battle.

While, as a story it dragged on too long, the campaign was actually incredibly short. The game shrewdly omits any sort of clock, preventing me from determining exactly how short it was, but it could not have been ten hours. Without anything to unlock or upgrade, neither is there much incentive to revisit stages. And, however active the online community may be, the cover-based gameplay was clearly never designed for competitive multiplayer. The cooperative "Horde" mode offers perhaps a more balanced take on the Resident Evil "Mercenaries" concept, but it's disappointing that the different playable characters do not come with unique moves or animations. Honestly, I don't really see myself returning to the game now that I've beaten it.

Although I am glad I waited for it to drop in price before picking it up, I did still have fun with Gears of War 2. Whatever my complaints, it is undeniably a well-made and entertaining experience for most of its short duration. At its very best, it does feel like an interactive summer blockbuster, which, right in the introduction in the manual, director Cliff Bleszinski states was exactly his team's aim. Am I a fool to ask for more than that?

One more Metal Gear anecdote

Along with my purchase of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, I also picked up the collector's edition of Prima's official guide. The book was actually put together by Piggyback, a UK publisher of video game strategy guides that certain nuts have, for years, held as far superior to any of the domestic BradyGames and Prima stuff. I can't personally attest to its quality because, for fear of spoilers, I didn't consult it on my playthrough. It was a very sleekly built hardcover, however, and I bought it primarily as a collector's item.

Besides being hardcover, the "limited edition" bonuses were a few pages of artwork and the inclusion of a numbered lithograph illustrated by Yoji Shinkawa. Still nothing too exciting, until I took a closer look and immediately recognized the five-digit number on my lithograph. It was the first five digits of my bank account number. A meaningless coincidence, but an eerie one, given that this was the series that had brought us Psycho Mantis and "Fission Mailed." Almost as bad as that Silent Hill 4 demo...

The Essentials #35: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

SPOILERS

Arriving ten years after Konami's seminal Metal Gear Solid, 2008's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the Sony PlayStation 3 was to be Solid Snake's final mission, as well as (once again) the last Metal Gear helmed by Hideo Kojima. Kojima, having expressed his desire to step back after Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, had already assigned Shuyo Murata, writer and director of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, to succeed him as director of MGS4, but, supposedly acceding to demands of both fans and crew, Kojima decided to return after all to direct alongside Murata, and the end result was a work permeated with the sense and soul of the series's original creator.

Picking up several years after Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Guns of the Patriots finally put players back in the role of Solid Snake for the entire game. But it would not be the Solid Snake that players had been anticipating. An early piece of promotional artwork depicting a slew of returning characters, including Raiden with sword in one hand and his other arm cradling a baby, had given fans some idea of what to look forward to in the all-encompassing magnum opus. Solid Snake, front and center, resembled his gruff and bearded MGS2 self. By the time the first trailer debuted, however, Kojima Productions had evidently gone in a different direction. Snake was now an old man sporting a questionable mustache. He was not too worn to kick ass, but his deteriorating condition added a sad angle to his return.


If Snake looked a little worse for wear, at least players could still be excited by the transition to a new generation of console hardware. After two installments on the PS2, Metal Gear was ready to take advantage of the power of the PS3 by delivering a gorgeous game that also broke significantly from the past in its mechanics.

Like Snake Eater before it, Guns of the Patriots introduced a number of annoying and largely extraneous new systems, although they were integrated more organically this time around. Though heavily promoted during pre-release, the new camouflage system again saw little practical use for most of the game. Removing the need to go into a menu and continually select different camo patterns, Snake's "OctoCamo" suit, like an octopus, could take on the color and texture of the surfaces that it touched. Again, I found little use for it and mostly ignored it, but at least, when Snake did adopt new camo, it happened dynamically with little thought on my part. The new "Psyche" gauge was similar to but a little more obtrusive than the MGS3 stamina system, since you could not as easily hunt and hoard supplies to keep it steady. Its hindering effects manifested with greater frequency than in MGS3, but it was still just an occasional irritation that would be dealt with as needed with items. The "Threat Ring," functionally comparable to the radar from Portable Ops, surrounded Snake only when he was crouching or prone and warned players when enemies were close.

The truly drastic changes came at the more basic level. The controls were completely overhauled. Although I had found the old Metal Gear Solid controls to be highly functional once picked up, they had, even by the time of Snake Eater, begun to feel outdated and clunky, with key functions spread across too many buttons. For Guns of the Patriots, Kojima Productions took some inspiration from Western-developed shooters, placing the fire button on the shoulder for a more natural pistol grip feel. Combined with a camera that built upon Subsistence's third-person view, adding an over-the-shoulder angle and the ability to move in first-person, the new controls allowed players to approach parts of the game almost like a third-person shooter.

These more action-oriented controls were important too, because the stealth elements were now far removed from the action puzzle feel of Metal Gear Solid. As advertised, the game largely dispensed with the old process of hiding in one place and slipping through observed holes in patrol routes. Security was tighter and Snake was slower, so it was now very difficult to progress without some proactive approach toward enemies. Moreover, in a world run on the "war economy," Snake would find himself walking into battlefields where mercenaries engaged rebels. Kojima Productions played up this element as one of MGS4's revolutionary bullet points, as Snake would have to progress through dynamic situations between hostiles and neutrals, and it was up to the player to what extent to involve Snake. In the finished product, however, this element turned out to be a minor feature during the first two missions, after which the rebels never reappeared. The hostile mercenaries would always hunt Snake, so the player's only choice was whether to aid, ignore, or antagonize the rebels. The latter option was idiotic (though easy to do accidentally), so, in practice, the decision was between moving along using the rebels as a diversion, or stopping to help the cause and earn some items as rewards.


Reinforcing the interpretation of Guns of the Patriot as more of an action game was the alarming abundance of firearms. Snake's MGS4 arsenal was several times greater than in all of the previous games put together. All of those guns could furthermore be tuned and modified by paying the arms dealer Drebin.

Crammed full of set piece battles, some memorable sneaking sections, and multiple vehicular segments, it was the most varied Metal Gear yet, delivered in the most linear fashion. As far back as the original 8-bit Metal Gear, the series had employed Zelda-style "overworld" maps paired with an overhead camera. Even Snake Eater, although relatively free of backtracking, contained many large open environments to provide the illusion of a world to explore. Guns of the Patriots proceeded practically on rails. In fact, as noted, there were multiple on-rails sequences throughout the game, which was broken up into five acts set in self-contained locales. For a final installment, I thought the mission structure was a great idea that allowed MGS4, now a globe-trotting adventure spanning multiple diverse and exquisitely detailed environments, to be greater in scope yet tighter in presentation. And each successive act brought new highlights, including the spectacular return of Raiden in the epic Act 2, the confrontation with the ghosts of Snake Eater in the revelatory Act 3, and the haunting return to Shadow Moses in Act 4.

The downside was that you had to install each act separately. During my initial playthrough, I actually kind of appreciated the breaks that the installation periods represented, but the process made it beyond inconvenient to return to earlier segments, since you could not have more than one act installed at a time. MGS4 needed these installs supposedly because of how hard it was pushing the still young system. It was already the largest PS3 game yet, allegedly taking up the whole of a dual-layer Blu-ray disc only after cuts allowed it to fit. The only possible evidence of cuts was in the Codec conversations, which were scaled back considerably from previous games. The Codec screen presented a wide frequency band, but, across that entire span, there would remain for the entire game only two numbers, one at each end, that Snake could dial out to. It stuck me as odd visually to have all that empty space, but if cuts were made in that area, the decision must have been made early on. Snake had enough allies who would contact him from frequencies in that blank middle range, but it would not have made sense for him to call characters like Raiden and Meryl, who would not always be around or cooperative.

One guy you probably should have been able to call was Drebin. He certainly had a lot of nonsense to spew, as he would call Snake after every battle against the "Beauty and the Beast Corps" to tell you the tear-jerking life story of the poor girl you just obliterated. Somewhere between the sentimental personal narratives of Metal Gear Solid and the voiceless villains of Snake Eater, this was probably the worst approach yet, but the Beauty and the Beast Corps members themselves may have been the most awesome boss designs. No more giant shamans, bisexual vampires, or bee men. Yoji Shinkawa's designs blended, yes, beauty with beastliness, but also endowed them with the cool mechanical intricacy of his Zone of the Enders mechs.


Intended to tie up every series loose end and conclude the story of Solid Snake, the plot would be incomprehensible to anyone who had not played through the previous MGS titles. But that baggage that was its greatest barrier to mainstream acceptance would also be MGS4's greatest asset to those legions of loyal fans who had been following the series for years. At times billed as the true sequel to MGS2, Guns of the Patriots managed almost miraculously to address all of the unbelievable questions raised in Sons of Liberty, albeit it had to cheat for some of its answers. Even more surprisingly, it added a whole new dimension to MGS3, tying it into the "La-li-lu-le-lo" convolutions in unexpected ways that gave the third installment brand new relevance, while completely altering how I perceived the story and characters of Snake Eater.

Few works of any medium have ever earned the emotional investment that this series had over its seven installments across more than two decades. Its fans had shared in the life of Solid Snake and the story of Hideo Kojima for maybe ten or even twenty of their own years. The finale to that arc delivered one of gaming's truly cathartic moments, as Snake walked, then crawled his way down that microwave corridor. Helping him along, the player needed only to press forward while tapping one button repeatedly to keep his health from depleting too rapidly due to the radiation. Mechanically, it was the simplest sort of gameplay the medium could offer, yet it was also one of the most awe-inspiring and emotionally rewarding moments in video game history. I've traditionally regarded rapid-button-press sequences as degenerate game design, the Metal Gear Solid torture sequence included, but, given all the buildup to that moment, I simply could not have lived with myself had I let Snake down. Pushing myself to my limit tapping that stupid button as fast as I could, I felt connected to Snake's drama in a way that just doesn't happen in non-interactive media.

No bizarre post-credits questions this time, Guns of the Patriots was as ever a story about existence and life, but it was this time less about seeking answers, more about living. Transcending the anguished explorations of gene, meme, and scene, it arrived finally at a simple peace for a simple man who, ever the dupe in a struggle between forces beyond his comprehension, had been stuck repeatedly undertaking the same bloody task he never enjoyed in the first place. It gave fans a conclusive and poignant ending to a saga that had allowed us for a short while to live beyond ourselves. Mechanically and narratively, the game's flaws were not hard to point out--the gameplay systems were bloated and its cut scenes, the longest ever, were even more so--but its grandness outshone any defects. Even as it catered to its hardcore fans, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots remained utterly true to its creators. As long as that was the case, it could never be a disappointment to me.

The Essentials #34: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

SPOILERS

"What the hell?" Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty's apt final line left many players--those who didn't abandon the series in disgust--aching for answers. Yet as development drew to a close, series creator Hideo Kojima was the one speculating that it might be the last Metal Gear he worked on in such a hands-on capacity. Ultimately, Kojima would change his mind and helm Metal Gear Solid 3 for the Sony PlayStation 2, but the result would still not address any of the baffling questions raised at the end of Sons of Liberty. 2004's Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater would instead be a prequel to the entire series up to that point.

Once again, Solid Snake would not be the player character, a non-canonical mini-game appearance notwithstanding. In this story set during the 1960s, the protagonist would be none other than Big Boss, or as he was known then, "Naked Snake." The curious code name struck me as rather a tragic misfire. Japanese Kanji characters can be read a number of different ways, lending multiple meanings to a name, but Kojima has repeatedly insisted on applying the wordplay to English as well. Although the in-game explanation was that Naked Snake was "naked" in the sense that he carried almost no supplies with him into the mission, the hidden significance was that Naked Snake was the "bare" or "basic" Snake, no Solid or Liquid modifiers, since this was the original. Except that reading didn't really work, because "naked" was a modifier. (Perhaps "just Snake" was The Boss?) In any case, Naked Snake looked and sounded just like Solid Snake, which was good enough that most players could simply think of him as the same guy.


While the new player character provided a pleasingly familiar return to the form of the first Metal Gear Solid, the gameplay of Snake Eater was a significant yet incomplete departure from its predecessors. Naked Snake's mission came with a number of extraneous new systems, including camouflage, the stamina bar, injury treatment via a menu, and expanded grapple mechanics.

By far the most cumbersome of the many cumbersome systems was the camouflage mechanic. Sentries were no longer limited to tiny cone-shaped fields of vision, and, in the more organic jungle setting, there were fewer corners to hide around, so Snake would have to slip beneath his enemies' visibility by donning appropriate camo. The problem was that the best camo for the job could change rapidly as Snake walked just a few steps from the grass to the dirt. If the player was determined to keep up, it would mean going into the menu to equip different fatigues and/or face paint every few seconds. This would have been tedious at best, but Snake Eater was afflicted by some egregious load times when accessing menus.

Sneaking was further burdened by the loss of the old radar. Some weak alternatives came in the forms of the sonar, the motion detector, and MGS2's vibrating enemy sensor. Switching back and forth between these three imperfect substitutes was such a hassle that I didn't even bother. Without the added vision of the radar, the traditional overhead camera became a huge detriment, and progress became slow going, as I found myself inching along and constantly switching to first-person view to scan my surroundings. If I spotted a guard, I would, as I had in Sons of Liberty, take him down first with the silenced tranquilizer gun, then put him to sleep permanently to keep him from troubling me later. This was made somewhat more difficult by the vintage weapons, which had no laser sights, but I still made it through with minimal direct confrontation. If I did get spotted, I would just make a dash for the next area.

Slightly less annoying was the new stamina gauge. As Snake exerted himself, the meter would deplete and his performance would be negatively affected, afflicting him with shaky hands and stomach grumbles. In order to restore it, Snake would have to hunt down and devour the flora and fauna available throughout the jungle environment. The system had limited impact. I would just refill the meter every once in a while, usually with hoarded non-perishables like rations and instant noodles.

If you felt disinclined to indulge the new mechanics, you could play the "Very Easy" difficulty. This considerate mode equipped Snake with the awesome "EZ Gun," which raised his camo rating, kept his stamina full, and came equipped with an exaggerated laser pointer. The only sub-system that could not be entirely ignored was the "Cure" system. If Snake fell ill or suffered an injury, the player would have to treat him using items via the pause menu. This was a simple process, and, as long as you kept out of trouble, it happened infrequently.

The new "close-quarters combat" or "CQC" system was actually a prominent part of the plot, as it was the almighty fighting style practiced by Snake and his mentor, The Boss. In cut scenes, it took the form of vaguely defined Bourne Identity-style martial arts, but the gameplay applications were nothing like that. In practice, CQC just added a few new options to the old grapple move. With knife in hand as you held a guy, you could, for example, threaten him for info and/or slit his throat.

The load times even discouraged me from consulting my support team over the radio as frequently as I had in past games. Then again, they also had less to say compared to previous crews. Para-Medic, the save game keeper, was the chattiest, and she would provide levity with discussions of real sci-fi and horror movies of the time. The other characters mostly stuck to the mission. Snake's commanding officer, the former British SAS agent Major Zero (whom everybody would remember as "Major Tom," since that was the name he used in the trailer and demo), had particularly little to say, which was a shame, because, when he did contribute, the results were usually hilarious.


Young Major Ocelot and the mysterious double agent Eva made for a more entertaining supporting cast during cut scenes. The criminally forgotten Colonel Volgin merits special mention. The lightning-casting, bisexual sadist was the most menacing antagonist in the entire series, and his relationship with Major Ivan Raidenovitch Raikov provided some classic Kojima humor. The other villains, the Cobra unit, were, by design, devoid of personality. In response to complaints about previous series bosses, who would agonizingly recite their entire life stories as they took eternities to expire, Kojima filled Snake Eater with foes who had no stories and barely spoke. As they fell in battle, they would instead yell out their own names before literally exploding. I don't know that that approach was better, as it reduced the Cobra unit to just a set of gameplay obstacles, and I was never in it for the fighting.

Speaking of which, Snake Eater's boss battles were the most epic and open-ended the series had seen up to that point, with special recognition going to the "classic" fight with The End. I initially mistook it for a snipers' duel a la the battle against Sniper Wolf in Metal Gear Solid, and the result was one frustrating hour as I could not locate him at all with my scope in that dense jungle. In reality, the easiest and most logical way to proceed was to simply follow the tracks he left and sneak up behind him. It was a testament to the game's depth, however, that some players apparently did manage to outsnipe The End. I've also heard of players beating him by anticipating his sniping points and laying down mines for him. Additionally, Kojima's team inserted, not one, but two unthinkable options. You could actually bypass the fight altogether by blowing up the defenseless wheelchair-bound old man at an earlier point in the game. Alternatively, you could wait for him to die of old age during the fight by saving in the middle of it and waiting a week to come back. I still didn't enjoy fighting The End, but I had to admit that no other game had ever included a battle like it.

Given my disenchantment with the mechanics of Snake Eater, I was surprised to find that many fans listed it as their favorite Metal Gear, above even Metal Gear Solid. Although I had considered it an essential experience for its story and cinematics alone, playing it through a second time in anticipation of Metal Gear Solid 4, I gained a greater appreciation for it within the context of the entire series. While the hammy dialogue and excessively long-winded speeches were still there, the game definitely exhibited a growth and maturity in Kojima's direction. Although I found the playable portions to be mostly aggravating, Snake Eater did include some fantastic interactive set pieces. The infamous ladder sequence was particularly awe-inspiring for how it sneaked up on the player; I didn't realize I was experiencing a "moment" until I found myself in the middle of it, with the solo rendition of the vocal title theme kicking in as I scaled the interminable ladder one rung at a time.

My other favorite moment was the walk down the river of ghosts, although, the second time around, I recognized that it was a flawed scene. In this "boss fight" against The Sorrow, Snake had to slowly tread past the ghosts of all the soldiers the player had killed up to that point during the game. If you had, as I had during my first playthrough, eliminated hundreds of enemies, the walk would take a very long time, and the morbid sequence would perhaps leave you feeling some remorse over your actions. On my second playthrough, I avoided killing anybody, so the only ghosts were those of the bosses that Snake could not avoid fighting. The walk became very short and uneventful as a result. The sequence was stripped of all power when the player performed "correctly" by avoiding lethal violence, and, in my opinion, there was a better way to convey a message.

As was the case with its predecessors, the best reason to play Snake Eater remained the story. In developing MGS3 as a prequel, Kojima sought to reshape players' understanding of series antagonist Big Boss, who, in the time of Snake Eater, had been an American hero. Had the man himself changed and become corrupt, or was it the world and the times? The message may have been complicated by the reality that most players would only have known Big Boss through secondhand accounts in the last two games, and Sons of Liberty had imbued us with a distrust of hearsay. Accordingly, his arc from Naked Snake to Big Boss would be conveyed indirectly through the like story of The Boss, who, once America's proudest warrior, had somehow become its most bitter enemy. On the surface, Snake Eater was more straightforward than Sons of Liberty, but it was still full of innumerable twists, and the storytelling--so forceful yet so ambiguous--continually challenged players' perceptions of The Boss.

Even after the credits had rolled, I couldn't figure out what The Boss had been trying to communicate to Snake. Some players believed what Eva reported--that The Boss was loyal to the end and playing the villain under secret orders from her country. But Eva was unreliable at best, and that explanation didn't seem to build toward Naked Snake's transformation into Big Boss, which I thought had to be the point of the prequel. I considered that, in forcing him to kill her, The Boss was giving the disillusioned Snake his mission to carry on the fight that she no longer had the will to undertake against those who had taken more from her than should be asked of even the most loyal patriot. Given how things turned out, that seemed at least to be how Snake took it. But I still couldn't be sure if it was the truth. It only seemed appropriate when, in Metal Gear Solid 4, it was revealed that the characters themselves could not agree on what she stood for.

I did not enjoy Snake Eater as much as the first two Metal Gear Solid titles, but there was no denying the power of the story. Although I found it a chore to play, it was a rich game full of beautiful and inventive moments. If it was not quite so fresh as its predecessors, it nevertheless included amazing bits like the ladder, which immersed the player in the narrative in an unexpectedly more artful and organic manner than the previous games.

Subsistence

In 2006, Konami released Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, an enhanced version of Snake Eater for the Sony PlayStation 2. While it did not boast as much additional playable content as Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, Subsistence was overall a more meaningful upgrade that sought to repair some of the issues with the original Snake Eater release.

The major addition was the new user-controlled camera. Finally replacing the limiting overhead view, the new camera mitigated many of the frustrations in sneaking without a radar, as you could now see ahead to spot guards without having to switch to first-person. Since maps and enemy routes were left unchanged from Snake Eater, the new mode perhaps made the game easier than originally intended, though I find it hard to believe that Konami could have intended for the original release to be as awkward as it was due to the camera.

Further upping the playability, Subsistence managed to eliminate all the old load times into menus. This was perhaps an even more welcome improvement than the camera, and the result was a better game all around.

Bonuses included an entire second disc, titled "Persistence," that contained the first iteration of "Metal Gear Online" (which I never played, so I can't comment), an expanded set of missions for the "Snake vs. Monkey" mini-game, ports of the two 8-bit MSX Metal Gear games, and a library of gag cinematics that had previously been posted on the official website.

A limited edition release added a third disc, "Existence," which presented the story of Snake Eater as a linear movie. The first disc already added a handy cut scene viewer allowing the player to watch any of the Snake Eater cinematics, but "Existence" was more than just all the scenes in order. Clearly, a lot of time had been spent in the editing room. The movie actually began with the final confrontation between Naked Snake and The Boss, before rewinding to the events that led up to it. Bridging the scripted sequences were clips of the interactive portions, presented as dramatically as possible, though they still stuck out badly due to the canned gameplay animations. I haven't actually watched the whole thing, but, at the very least, it's an interesting novelty.

Portable Ops

After having answered a bunch of questions that nobody asked while raising several more, Snake Eater received a followup in 2006 in the form of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PlayStation Portable. Kojima would not direct the non-numbered installment, but he would continue to write for this canonical entry.

Employing the same camera as Subsistence, Portable Ops featured familiar Metal Gear gameplay broken down now into short missions for easy digestion on a handheld. The camo system of Snake Eater was done away with, and a new radar told the player vaguely how close and in what direction hostiles were. The major new addition was the "Comrade System," which allowed the player to take a squad of up to four troops into a mission. For the most part, Big Boss would have to acquire allies by turning enemies over to his side. It was amusing, if a little annoying, to knock guys out and drag their bodies to the back of your truck, whereupon they would undergo days of reprogramming to bring them over to your team. In practice, you didn't actually need that many allies, so it was unnecessary to spend too much time recruiting. Once you brought them on board, you could play as them instead of Big Boss. Although they were invariably weaker, they sometimes possessed unique abilities, and, if you brought the right type of soldier into a specific area, you could even infiltrate incognito. "Hidden" characters included almost the entire supporting cast of Snake Eater, and, while they sadly did not impact the plot, being able to assemble a team of Zero, Para-Medic, and Sigint provided one of the highlights of Portable Ops.

Big Boss's team would also include a young Campbell, marking the beginnings of FOXHOUND. But the assembling of a mercenary army of no nation was even more clearly laying the foundation for Outer Heaven. The story would not quite arrive there as Portable Ops ended, but these suggestions were about the extent of the entry's meaningful contributions to the overall Metal Gear story.

In place of the customary real-time cinematics, Portable Ops expanded upon 2006's Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel for PSP by delivering its story via animated comic panels drawn by Ashley Wood, who had become attached to the series through his work on the 2004 comic book adaptation of the first Metal Gear Solid. Wood's explosive illustrations could be jarring for fans accustomed to Yoji Shinkawa's art, but it was good stuff, and, accompanied by voice acting of the same high caliber as the console titles, the animated drawings could be stunning.


Perhaps because of the new cut scene format, perhaps because it was a handheld game built for short play sessions, or perhaps because Kojima himself was less involved, the dialogue of Portable Ops was appreciably sharper than in the console installments. Mind you, there were still some long speeches and the plot was still convoluted, but it was less pretentious overall. The soldier characters were existentially distressed as ever, but most of them were warriors rather than schemers, and instead of dwelling on philosophical debates, they contented themselves by fighting. If this is how future Metal Gear titles could be without Kojima at the helm, that future wouldn't be bad at all.

Portable Ops also featured the best set of villains in the entire series, including a demented former friend/rival, good and evil psychic sisters, and the blade-swinging perfect soldier. Their leader, Gene, possessed charisma and persuasiveness for superpowers, but he was also programmed to succeed The Boss as commander of America's military. Voiced by prolific anime and video game voice actor Steve Blum (Spike in Cowboy Bebop, Roger Smith in The Big O, Vincent in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII), he was definitely a worthy foe for David Hayter's Big Boss.

I bought my PSP primarily to play Portable Ops. For more casual fans of the series, I don't think its meager contributions to the saga justify the cost of the system. The gameplay, with its aging stealth mechanics and dodgy controls, is no great selling point. But the characters are cool, the story is solid if not transformational, and there is enough there to excite hardcore fans. If nothing else, it's worth watching the cut scenes on YouTube.

The Essentials #33: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Arriving late to the original Metal Gear Solid, I didn't have to wait as long as some for Konami's followup, but my anticipation was enormous nonetheless. As soon as I completed the first game, I went online and loaded up the trailer for the sequel. It was the E3 2000 debut trailer, so this must have been late 2000. Based on the amazing video, Metal Gear Solid 2 looked to be everything I could have hoped for. Solid Snake, more badass than ever, was back for a direct sequel. The stunning graphics showed off the next-gen power of Sony's PlayStation 2, and I foolishly remarked that we had arrived at the point where real-time models could look as good as pre-rendered stuff. Little did I suspect that what I had actually seen was a trailer for a demo, and the real Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, arriving in 2001, would not at all be the game I'd expected or hoped for.

Booting up that tanker stage that had been the demo, the game appeared superficially to be just a sharper-looking version of its predecessor. The overhead camera was the same, the radar was exactly the same, and Snake himself had more or less the same moves and animations. The trailer showed off several new features, however, including the abilities to fire from the first-person perspective and to shoot from behind cover. Snake could also hang from railings, hide in lockers, stash bodies in same, toss empty ammo clips to divert sentries, and lay down erotic magazines to distract them. Frankly, none of this stuff was necessary nor even very useful, aside from the hanging, which was only required at a few specific points. But all this interactive minutiae was a testament to the painstaking craftsmanship of the engine.

Enemies meanwhile behaved more realistically. Alarms no longer meant infinite guards appearing from out of nowhere. Instead, if there was trouble, they would call for backup, and a more heavily armed squad would arrive to clear the room. Ironically, although they were among the showcase additions, if you were playing Sons of Liberty well by its own stated terms as a stealth action game, you wouldn't even come across the new sweeper squads or riot shield soldiers. The shoot-from-cover mechanic likewise saw no real use past the demo. The same went for Hollywood composer Harry Gregson-Williams's much publicized contributions to the score.

But the ability to aim and shoot in first-person view was a significant addition that completely altered my approach to the stealth progression. With the brand new silenced tranquilizer gun, I simply sniped each and every guard I came across from a safe distance. The only tricky spots involved the radio men. If they didn't make their scheduled reports on time, HQ would send squads to check in on them. If you were just passing through a room, however, there would still be plenty of time to pop everybody before anyone even noticed. It was only years later, while I was collecting dog tags, that the game became even remotely challenging. Another new feature, the dog tags determined what rewards the player unlocked upon completion of the game, and they could only be won from guards by sneaking right up behind them and holding them up. For most of the game, this was still easily achieved by just knocking them out first, and then rousing them and sticking them up as they rose. Some guards yielded immediately and wiggled the items out of their clothes, while more stubborn would-be heroes needed extra "encouragement" to the arm, after which they would be begging for their lives much like those scientists I incinerated back in Syphon Filter. I'll leave it to your imagination how I responded this time, but I'll say that, on one very sad occasion, I forgot that I had the Socom equipped instead of the non-lethal M9, and it was a slippery slope from there.

A slightly less significant change, once past the tanker stage, the radar was no longer active by default. Rather, in order to activate it in a given room, you would have to first locate the room's "node" and download the data. Since you wouldn't even know where the node was without the radar, this meant that, on first entering an area, you would have to sneak through without the omniscient advantage of a map marked with vision cones identifying all personnel. The new "AP Sensor" was a poor substitute that vibrated the controller as you got closer to an enemy. I had considered the radar to be rather an essential part of Metal Gear Solid's design, so this move away from its use confused me. The ability to track all enemy movements, placing the emphasis on the player's strategic response, lent the first game its puzzle feel, and the node-hunting, while perhaps fairer to the weak AI, also exposed the poorness of the overhead camera that clearly relied on the radar to give the player a more complete sense of a space. It led to a lot of stumbling around in the dark on my part. Needless to say, I gave up on that pretty quickly and switched to the "very easy" difficulty, which considerately left the radar on at all times. I did come back to the higher difficulties later while collecting dog tags, but, by then, I already knew all the guard routes by memory.


Whether the gameplay had changed too much or too little, the general consensus was that MGS2's mechanics were very strong. The controversies lay in the characters and story. Anybody who bothered to flip through the instruction manual first probably would have raised a curious eyebrow at the description of Raiden as the player character during the plant chapter. Perhaps Raiden's mission would be as short as the tanker episode, and then it would be back to Snake? Or maybe Raiden would just be cool? The reality was a twist that some players still have yet to get over. I personally didn't mind playing as Raiden, and, moreover, I wasn't even all that shocked to see him relieve Snake as the star. I suppose I was accustomed to series like Castlevania, where the player character changed all the time. I also always found it just a tad odd when players identified themselves too closely with their player characters. Whether I was controlling the rugged Snake or the effeminate Raiden didn't make any particular difference to me, so long as their abilities were the same. During the interactive parts, it was all me, while, during cut scenes, all the characters were just themselves and it was no reflection on me. That was how I preferred it.

Even if playing as Snake would not have made me feel manlier, might I not have preferred a story centered around him? Maybe, but Snake was still a major character in the game, and I honestly found Raiden and Rose to be fairly interesting, their relationship quite unlike any other in gaming. On the surface, Raiden seemed innocuous enough, especially in contrast with the legendary Solid Snake. But, precisely because he wasn't a legend and arrived with no backstory, he was a mystery, and I was intrigued to see this initially blank character filled out gradually, sometimes in unexpected directions, through his conversations with Rose. And if Raiden sounded whiny for a soldier, it only seemed to me a natural and human response to the contradictions around him. After having seen Snake play the unwitting dupe to four competing interests in the first game, I was pretty glad to hear Raiden voicing his frustrations.

Hideo Kojima would later offer a few different explanations for why he introduced Raiden as the new lead. According to one account, during focus testing for the first Metal Gear Solid, one female player memorably declared her disinterest in the talky story full of old men characters. The pretty boy Raiden was thus designed to appeal to female gamers. That explanation implied that Kojima thought that Raiden would make the sequel more marketable. Why then, instead of being used to promote the game, was Raiden's existence kept such a secret until after its release? In those pre-release trailers, Konami even went so far as to hack Snake into scenes that, in the actual game, would feature Raiden instead. No, the bait-and-switch, with Snake the lone star of the trailers, the demo, and the box cover, seemed to me a calculated move to provoke players by betraying their expectations. In a more convincing explanation, Kojima insisted that Snake was the main character of Sons of Liberty, and the point was to elevate him by showing him from the perspective of a supporting character that shared in the player's admiration of him. Mission accomplished in that case, I'd say, because, whether or not Kojima intended for it to play out quite as it did, I suspect a lot of fans came away appreciating Snake more than they ever had coming in.


Even if marketing had played a part in Raiden's creation, Sons of Liberty was nevertheless a project driven by artistic aspirations far beyond most other games of its time, perhaps beyond what most players could appreciate. The original Metal Gear Solid felt very much like a video game version of a big-budget Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Some roughness in the script could be attributed to the newness of the medium, although I would have argued that Snake at least was a deeper and more contemplative soul than a good many action movie heroes. Nevertheless, for many gamers, myself included, a Bruckheimer production was exactly what we wanted from an action game. While those movies may not be the highest art, they thrill us with the spectacular moments that we then fantasize about experiencing ourselves. Metal Gear Solid allowed us a sampling of those experiences and left us wanting more. Sons of Liberty disappointed a lot of fans by shooting higher.

Agonizing quasi-incestuous angles notwithstanding, the story could not be labeled mere melodrama, nor was it trying for drama. It bordered on farce, laced jarringly with blunt philosophical meanderings. I don't know that I've ever come across a story more explicit in its messages than Sons of Liberty, yet the experience was still often bewildering.This was a multi-faceted metafictional narrative that could only be told through an interactive medium. Raiden was literally and figuratively the video game soldier prepped for the field through virtual reality simulations, including a Shadow Moses scenario that mirrored the player's experience with the last game. If the player had a hard time growing attached to him, it was no more than the alienation that defined Raiden's own existence, as a hollow man running away from who he was, and who ended up a pawn in a construct where possibly nothing was real. He was a game piece manipulated most of all by the player, yet when things went crazy, it was the player that the game would turn on, and, in the end, in order to "win the game," the player would have to share his role as a performer with no real say.

For those patient enough to wade through the hundreds of screens of text in the "Previous Story" section, the weirdness actually began even before the first bit of gameplay. Among the many cool inclusions in the original Metal Gear Solid had been the dramatic summaries of the previous two titles. Just as the VR training familiarized the player with the gameplay mechanics, these formal backstory synopses got the player up to speed with the events of the first two games, which most players would not or could not have played. Before the game even officially began, I came in consequently with a reverence for Solid Snake, despite never having actually seen him at work. With Sons of Liberty, I looked forward to a similar summary for Metal Gear Solid. Instead, I got a whole mess of bunk and one account that sounded plausible yet distressingly unfamiliar in parts. It seemed to me that anyone who had missed out on playing Metal Gear Solid would have been badly served by these misrepresentative reports. But then that made me question the reliability of the MGS summaries of the first two games. Years later, when I finally played them myself, sure enough, the most pertinent detail in those--Big Boss being Solid Snake's father--never even came up in the actual Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. It was a later revision, and the MGS account had practically assumed my ignorance and taken advantage of it to rewrite history.

I had of course heard the old "nature vs. nurture" arguments before, but, at the risk of sounding ignorant, I'll admit that it was this video game that introduced me to the now Internet-prevalent concept of "memes," as introduced by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. Although the word "meme" would not be used in Metal Gear until the Metal Gear Solid 3 trailer, Kojima's familiarity with Dawkins's book on evolution was already established with the first MGS. That game had used genes as a theme, and, looking back, it was denser than I had thought during my first playthrough, but it was still not exactly Gattaca. It had seemed about as deep a contemplation on the implications of genetic manipulation as James Cameron's Terminator movies were on artificial intelligence. In other words, it was intriguing, but, as far as I was concerned, it was only in there because the sci-fi action story had to be about something. And at the end of it, MGS made the optimistic argument that we as human beings were more than our genes. Hideo Kojima's work of fiction did not offer any scientific support for its conclusion, but it was a warm and fuzzy ending to a thoroughly satisfying journey. Sons of Liberty, however, perverted that idea with the truly disturbing suggestion that, if genetic manipulation yielded no supermen, the cultural engineers were nevertheless capable of controlling the rest of a man's makeup. And the worst part was that MGS2's ending offered no uplifting message to suggest otherwise. Indeed, in an increasingly senseless world awash with such Internet trash as TMZ, Twitter, Adult FriendFinder, this blog, I at times almost find myself agreeing with Fake Colonel Campbell that somebody ought to be regulating the nonsense. Honestly, I think these troubling questions without answers may have been at the heart of many players' frustrations with the story.

Or maybe it was the game's roster of the lamest villains ever, including a fatso named Fatman, a bisexual vampire named Vamp, and an obnoxiously self-pitying woman who could not die, though it was her one true wish. Ugh. Even Solidus, the third and most well-balanced Big Boss clone, was at times a goofy Dr. Octopus ripoff. And let's not forget Revolver Ocelot, back from the first game and periodically possessed, in perhaps the plot's most absurd and unexplained element, by the ghost of Liquid Snake, who somehow lived on through his arm that had replaced Ocelot's lost hand. Keep in mind, this was a universe where Big Boss had had all four limbs replaced by cybernetics. Yet Ocelot had to settle for a transplant from a cadaver, and Liquid specifically? And Ocelot kept it even though he knew it was allowing Liquid to take over? Crazy stuff.


Metal Gear Solid opened my eyes to where video games could go technically, but I still never imagined a game like Sons of Liberty. My enthusiasm for gaming soared after the first MGS, and, amazingly, by defying and far exceeding my expectations, the sequel managed to raise it another whole level. No less a milestone in my gaming history than its predecessor, Sons of Liberty changed the game again, and the pre-MGS2 world seemed so small in the face of the infinite possibilities it opened up for storytelling and narrative scope in the interactive medium.


Additional Information

A year after the original North American release, Konami came out with Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance as a timed exclusive for Microsoft's Xbox. In 2003, Substance arrived on the PS2 and PC as well. An expanded version of Sons of Liberty, it left the main game mostly unchanged, aside from swapping out the in-game pinups--many of them originally taken from magazines of the time--for more generic Konami-owned images. It added content in the form of tons of VR missions, as well as a set of "Snake Tales" scenarios that allowed the player to control Snake in non-canonical short stories. These goofy missions were presumably meant to appeal to Snake's fans who were disappointed at having to play as Raiden for most of Sons of Liberty, but without relevant plot contributions nor any voice acting to lend personality, I really didn't see the point, which I felt only strengthened my case that it didn't matter who you played as while you were playing. The VR missions likewise went ignored as I realized that I was only interested in playing MGS2 for its story.

For me, the most interesting thing in Substance was the "Casting Theater," a feature which had previously appeared in the Japanese and European releases of Sons of Liberty. It allowed you to view a small selection of the game's cut scenes while replacing the character models with different ones chosen from a list. A few scenes even included a completely different and much better-looking Meryl than the one in Twin Snakes.

The PS2 Substance also included a lame skateboarding mode that was supposed to help promote Konami's unremarkable Evolution Skateboarding game.

In 2002, Konami released The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2, one of the most bizarre titles on the PS2, at least among North American releases. An "interactive documentary," it was essentially a database of MGS2's art assets. There was Hideo Kojima's script that included the catastrophic New York end scenes that had been cut following 9/11. I hadn't noticed anything unusual when I first played through MGS2, because, by that point in the game, nothing made sense, but, replaying the game with knowledge of these edits, there were definitely some abrupt cuts where those scenes should have been. The Document also included a sound test, a concept art gallery, and a development timeline. You could also view any of the Sons of Liberty cut scenes, but with none of the audio. The most interesting inclusion may have been the complete MGS2 trailer history, which allowed the player to relive the deception that began over a year before the game was even released.

The Essentials #32: Metal Gear Solid

When Konami's Metal Gear Solid arrived on the Sony PlayStation in 1998, my video game diet still consisted primarily of 2-D fighting games, with the occasional racing game or JRPG now and again. I considered myself an enthusiastic gamer, but I didn't go out of my way to follow the industry through magazines or websites, or even really discuss them outside of when I was playing them. So if Hideo Kojima's stealth action game was a big deal, I didn't know it.

I mean, I was vaguely familiar with the 8-bit Metal Gear. I had even briefly tried out the NES version, but, after getting helplessly mauled by the dogs at the beginning of the mission, I dismissed it as pretty terrible by the action game standards even of its time. Snake's Revenge was equally unremarkable. I certainly didn't recognize it as a series to be revered alongside other Konami staples like Castlevania and Contra, and I hadn't been waiting for a 32-bit revival. Yet, looking back now, if there were one single game that I would credit with having kept me playing video games to this day, it would have to be Metal Gear Solid.

I didn't purchase Metal Gear Solid on release day. I acquired it a year or two later, after already having played 989's Syphon Filter. In fact, I picked it up on sale precisely because I had heard, somewhere or other--the sentiment was common enough that it had trickled down to me without my having to conduct research--that Syphon Filter was actually a mediocre wannabe imitation of Metal Gear Solid. Given that I had already been enjoying the supposedly lesser title, I figured it was worth a look to see how much better the cinematic game could get, although I still don't think I would have bothered but for the Toys "R" Us coupon that allowed me to get it for five dollars off its already reduced Greatest Hits price. And thank goodness I did, because it was way better than Syphon Filter!


When Mario 64 added a third dimension to video games, I personally wasn't all that excited. I had tried the game, and, to me, it was still just running around and jumping on things, mostly just for the sake of jumping on things. The new dimension that I sought, though I hadn't realized it, was what Metal Gear Solid brought with its revelatory degree of immersion achieved through cutting-edge technology, spectacular art direction, and bold storytelling.

The density of this script and the level of detail of this world and these characters were as nothing I'd seen before. Final Fantasy had some gorgeous backgrounds, but they were always pre-rendered and static. Metal Gear Solid was all real-time, which allowed for dynamic camera work that felt truly cinematic. The voice acting, no longer a mere novelty, was of a much higher caliber than anything that had come before it. This was no Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Resident Evil. These were actual actors with notable voice credits to their names. Liquid Snake, voiced by Cam Clarke (AKA James Flinders), despite a blurry and expressionless face, possessed more screen presence than many Hollywood actors. This first would also be David Hayter's least exaggerated and consequently best performance as Solid Snake, at least until Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

The story was perhaps not a drama on par with the greatest in film. With weepy characters like Meryl and Otacon, it was really more melodrama, while the cadre of villainous freaks could only have existed as video game bosses. And, while this was all so new that I was still unsure how to critique the verbose dialogue, even then I found the consecutive speeches on the "selfish gene," the "asymmetry theory," and "Gulf War babies" to be a bit much. But what it lacked in finesse it made up in audacity and raw power. Syphon Filter, though a fine game, was not visionary. Its script read just like a movie, but not a great one. The bolder, more eccentric Metal Gear Solid, on the other hand, operated with a forceful conviction that expressed no intention to merely imitate any previous work of any medium. It felt like a blockbuster, but it was also fantastic in that Japanese video game way. How often, after all, did James Bond ever go up against cyborg ninjas or bipedal, nuclear-equipped tanks? And there was an anti-war story in there too, as well as something about the Human Genome Project, although, at the time, I just saw it as comic garnish to the action.


I think, even more than the real-time cinematics, what I most enjoyed was the Codec radio, which was quite unlike a movie, or any other game for that matter. These optional dialogues allowed the game a volume of personality normally reserved for epic-scale RPGs, but these weren't just random townspeople talking to you for no reason. The conversations between Snake and his support crew were often interesting, amusing, sometimes even a little touching. I often found myself spending over ten minutes doing nothing but listening to Codec dialogues.

Of course, back in those days, I valued Metal Gear's story and gameplay equally.

To my surprise, while I had been expecting some sort of gun-based action game, this was almost more of a puzzle game. The first thing I did was load up the VR training exercises, and I quickly gathered that Metal Gear Solid was based almost entirely around patterns. Upon entering any room, the first thing to do was to find a good spot to hide and observe the enemy movements and map layout. I would spot the holes and then make my move. It was not a game about pulling off precision headshots while evading fire. Beyond just skill with a gamepad, there was a level of thoughtfulness and strategy at work as I perceived solutions to these puzzle boards. And it was fun!

But the experience was at its very best when gameplay and cinematics merged. While the series is these days criticized for its non-interactivity, Metal Gear Solid was a game which truly allowed the player to live the action movie moments that no other video game could offer. Rappelling down the side of a building? Check. Taking out a helicopter with a missile launcher? Yep. And it all flowed effortlessly, never taking the player out of the experience, thanks to a perfectly balanced default difficulty level. The final vehicular chase sequence down that tunnel was, up to that point, the most exhilarating video game sequence I'd ever experienced. Yet, if it was possible, I was even more excited after it was over than I had been during it, because this game showed me a vision of the future of gaming that I had never before dreamed of.

Metal Gear Solid was the first title to evolve the video game experience from what I had known since I first started gaming. I look back now and wonder how things might have gone differently, had I never picked it up at Toys "R" Us that day. Considering the other games I was enjoying back then, would Street Fighter, Castlevania, and Final Fantasy really have kept me in the game? I think I would have still played Street Fighter now and then, but it wouldn't have been a year-round thing. I've already grown somewhat bored of Castlevania and Final Fantasy. No, Metal Gear Solid is not the best game I ever played, nor is it my favorite, but it may have been the most important in my development into the gamer I am today.

The Twin Snakes

In 2004, Konami released a Nintendo GameCube remake developed by Silicon Knights. Conceived jointly with Shigeru Miyamoto, the object was to introduce Kojima's classic to the Nintendo audience, in the process updating it for new technology with enhanced graphics and gameplay mechanics out of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The result was a mixed bag that most fans would not consider a canonical part of the series.

The ability to aim and shoot in first person made the game drastically easier and removed a lot of the thoughtfulness that went into sneaking. On the other hand, enhanced senses on the AI and the addition of radio men made some parts harder to slip through. With a few very subtle exceptions, the level designs were left the same as in the original, and, in that respect, Twin Snakes felt almost more like a port of a six-year-old game than a full-fledged remake for a new generation. Featuring much simpler layouts than in MGS2, most rooms were just boxes. It felt dated.

No less controversial were the redone audio and visuals.

The original PS1 voice recording sessions were conducted without the benefit of a sound-proof studio, and, with the better sound systems of 2004, all sorts of gnarly background noises became newly apparent in the old files, so Konami decided to bring the entire cast back to re-record all the voice acting for the mostly unchanged and still massive script. In the process, they also effected a few significant changes in the performances. For starters, Naomi and Mei Ling had their accents removed. I personally thought Naomi's English accent gave her a cold-blooded edge appropriate to the character, and I know a lot of players loved Mei Ling's wild Chinese accent, but, apparently, based on their backgrounds, those characters were never supposed to have had accents in the first place.

The ninja was re-cast entirely, with Rob Paulsen taking over for Greg Eagles, who would reprise his other role as the DARPA chief. If you grew up watching cartoons in the late 80s and early 90s, then you know Paulsen's voice. He is probably best known for having played Raphael on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but he was in practically every show, almost always playing the sarcastic characters. To say the least, his sardonic, even slightly shrill voice was an odd fit for a psychotic reborn ninja. Even though Paulsen is a professional, who can modify his delivery to suit a role, in this case, I found his voice just too recognizable to the point of distraction.

Konami and Silicon Knights also replaced all of the music, with the exception of Rika Muranaka's vocal theme, "The Best Is Yet To Come." The new stuff was not bad, but I can remember maybe two tracks off the original score, and none from Twin Snakes.

In terms of the visuals, the updated graphics were mostly a nice upgrade, and it was cool to see the old characters with actual faces on the polygonal models. That said, compared to the PS2 titles, there was something a little off about Snake's face. From an artistic standpoint, the Twin Snakes designs were neither better nor worse, nor even necessarily less faithful to Yoji Shinkawa's artwork, but it was another slightly distracting discrepancy next to the canonical Kojima games.


Most contentious were the redone cut scenes by Japanese film director Ryuhei Kitamura. The director of Versus and Azumi, Kitamura injected a lot of slick over-the-top action choreography. Some of it was cool, much of it was excessive, but, for me, the one inexcusable change was to the ending. In the original, Snake was pinned hopelessly under his jeep and would have been dog meat had not the FoxDie virus activated in Liquid right then. In Twin Snakes, Snake slithered easily out from under the vehicle and looked ready to go another few rounds. Liquid, battered and gasping for air, could barely lift his gun. Clearly, Snake had the upper hand, and, as a result, the FoxDie was rendered almost extraneous.

Whatever its flaws, I would say Twin Snakes is worth playing for any fan of the series. But I wouldn't consider it a suitable substitute for the experience of the original.

Metal Gear

While replaying the Solid titles again in preparation for the release of MGS4, I also took the opportunity to finally play through the 8-bit installments for the first time via the PS2 ports included on the second "Persistence" disc of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.

To be sure, the original Metal Gear, first released in 1987 for the MSX2 home computer, was a dated product, but it was also surprisingly playable even over two decades later. In fact, besides Metal Gear Solid, it was the only Metal Gear that I actually had fun playing.

Gameplay was simple yet elegant. As in the PS1 game, you would enter a room, observe enemy patterns, and then slip through a perceived hole. This must have been an even more novel experience in 1987. During the course of Snake's first mission, you would also have to evade cameras, detonate plastic explosive, spot laser tripwires with infrared goggles, and don a cardboard box. I was especially surprised when I came upon a sequence that required me to use a remote-controlled missile launcher to take out the circuit box powering an electrified floor. When I did the same thing in Metal Gear Solid, it felt new and inventive. Who knew that Kojima was actually reusing an old trick from eleven years prior? It even had an early precursor to the Codec, although the feature was more often used for lame gags than to dispense useful advice, let alone story.

Indeed, aside from the fantastic twist at the end--the unexpected origin of the "Campbell flips out" moment in MGS2--there really was no story to the original Metal Gear, so, except for history's sake, I don't see much reason to play through it now. While the mechanics are easy to pick up, the game is still a chore due to tons of backtracking, heinous pitfalls and level design that's twisted, nonsensical, and maddeningly repetitive.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

More relevant to the plot of the series was the second installment, originally released in 1990 for the MSX2.

Although Metal Gear Solid essentially kicked off a new series, it was itself very much the sequel to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which featured both Gray Fox and Big Boss prominently in a much more fleshed-out script than the first game possessed. Even Master Miller was there, and, to my surprise, the real thing was about as inane as the Liquid-with-shades version. No wonder Snake was fooled.

The version included in Subsistence, by the way, was actually a little more than a port. The character portraits in the original MSX2 version were all made to resemble real-life actors (and Albert Einstein). For the Subsistence version, those images were replaced with new Yoji Shinkawa artwork, and, while it was amusing to see Sean Connery as Big Boss, it was far cooler to see Shinkawa's rendition of Gray Fox's pre-ninja face.

Here we had the real roots of the trademark Metal Gear storytelling. Villains would subject Snake to long philosophical speeches about war, while allies would be spilling their life stories after having barely met you. Even four sequels later, it was strong stuff, and, for any fan of Metal Gear Solid, I would say that Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is well worth experiencing, despite its often irritating gameplay.

In relation to its predecessor, I felt about this sequel very much as I felt about Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The fundamental design was the same as in the first game--you still progressed via an overhead perspective while trying to stay out of enemies' sights--but the formerly elegant experience was now muddied with all sorts of new complications.

MG2 featured the introduction of the radar, but there were no vision cones, and, as in the first game, enemies could spot Snake clear across the length of the screen. Moreover, the guards could now turn in eight directions, and I would almost always find myself foiled as I walked into a diagonal stare. Also, guard routes were much longer and could span multiple screens. Given their slowness and the radar's limited usefulness, I often didn't have the patience to wait and see where they were looking when. After a while, I gave up trying to play it straight and just ran like crazy, knowing that their bullets could not catch me, and the alarm would be silenced once I entered a new area. (That, by the way, is a reliable tactic throughout the series.) Still, there were some great moments, many of which were recreated in Metal Gear Solid. In one familiar mission, Snake would have to make an undercover female by stalking her to the ladies' room. And the "shape memory alloy" trick? Yep, Kojima first used it in 1990.

But I was personally more excited to experience the scenes that were actually referenced in the story of Metal Gear Solid. In that game, hearing Snake describe to Naomi how he fought Gray Fox hand-to-hand in a minefield, I was imagining the most hardcore fistfight of all time. When, years later, I finally arrived at that moment in MG2, and Gray Fox said to Snake, "I've been waiting for this," chills ran down my spine. But then the fight turned out to be totally lame! The mines, no threat at all to either man, only lined the edges of the small room. Meanwhile, Fox himself just ran in a circular perimeter around Snake. For the entire fight, I just stood in one place and punched Fox every time he passed by.

The fight against Big Boss, on the other hand, was superbly designed, absurdly conceived. Big Boss himself was the cyborg this time, and he was indeed tough. The only thing that could hurt his rebuilt body was a makeshift flamethrower that Snake would have to construct from components found during the fight. At the end, Big Boss would gasp, "It's not... over... yet..." But, actually, it was. And that part where Snake found out that Big Boss was his father? Never happened.

Possibly the most ridiculous moment in the entire series, however, was a boss fight against the Albert Einstein-esque scientist, who would grab Snake from behind and lock him in a chokehold. The only way to save Snake was to direct several remote-controlled missiles around into the old man's back. Why was Snake being overpowered by an old scientist? Why did it take multiple missiles direct to the body to take the mere human out? And why wouldn't Snake himself be killed in the explosions? Ah, 8-bit Metal Gear...