2051: In My Stomach

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is out this week and… I’m not excited at all.

Me not being excited at the latest big new release is nothing new, of course, but this is Metal Gear we’re talking about. I was a huge fan of both Metal Gear Solid and its sequel Sons of Liberty, but kind of fell off the wagon a bit before Snake Eater came out and have still never even touched Guns of the Patriots despite owning a copy. (I fully intend to play them at some point, I might add; I just haven’t done so yet.)

The Phantom Pain feels a bit different, though. My friend Chris and I have been discussing this recently and trying to pin down exactly what it is that’s bothering us both about it — particularly as we’re both fans of the older Metal Gear Solid games as well as Kojima’s batshit craziness.

I think the best way of summing up my feelings towards The Phantom Pain right now is to simply say that everything I hear about it sounds like almost the exact opposite of what I want from a Metal Gear Solid game. Past games were short, tightly focused, highly linear, well-directed experiences that had the pacing and structure of a (particularly long) movie. They kept you always moving onwards because there weren’t any unnecessary side missions or distractions; sure, there were a few secrets here and there that you could dig up if you wanted to, but for the most part things like Sons of Liberty’s dog tags were largely only there for the completionists; I didn’t care about the stats screen at the end of the game — I just liked enjoying the story, and Kojima’s vision for how that story should be presented.

The Phantom Pain, meanwhile, abandons the tight linearity in favour of an open-world environment and (apparently) upwards of 30 hours of gameplay compared to its predecessors’ 6-10. This set off warning bells as soon as it was first announced, I must confess, and what I’m hearing so far isn’t making me feel much better about it. Open worlds are cool technical achievements when done well, but they also often make for rather drab “gameplay by numbers” as you spend all your time looking for little icons on the map, completing arbitrary objectives and killing the pacing of the story, since open world games never, ever have any sense of urgency about them — they tend to be the very worst examples of “the world needs saving, but Armageddon will wait until you’re good and ready”.

Other things that I’m not a fan of the sound of so far are the microtransactions and the resource-gathering, base-building element. I don’t know much about either, to be honest, and it may well be that neither are particularly intrusive to the gameplay experience as a whole, but I don’t like what I have heard so far. I still believe that microtransactions have absolutely no place in a full-price brand-new triple-A game — if you want to get me to pay extra, provide me with some worthwhile content, not a means of paying to win. As for the resource-gathering element, a friend posted a screenshot on Twitter that looked to all intents and purposes like the message you get when logging into a grind-heavy Facebook or mobile game for the first time each day — yes, it’s a Daily Bonus, with rewards for logging in frequently and so forth. Not exactly what I have in mind when I think of the traditionally single-player, offline, “just you and Kojima” experience that is the previous Metal Gear Solid games, though granted I never delved into Metal Gear Online while it was a thing.

Then there’s the fact that several reviews have mentioned the fact that there’s more gameplay than cutscenes, and that the series’ iconic codec conversations have been replaced by cassette tapes that you can listen to while you’re walking around doing things. To be honest, a lot of things are making it sound more like a Splinter Cell game than a Metal Gear Solid game, and this is enormously offputting — Splinter Cell is one of those series that I respected for what it was doing, but just didn’t enjoy at all, and I always greatly preferred Metal Gear’s distinctly “comic book” approach to military espionage action, with all its supervillains, quasi-supernatural powers and giant walking nuclear warhead-equipped death tanks.

I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll end up playing The Phantom Pain at some point, but that time is not right now; the hype is just too much at the moment, and the things I do hear are offputting. I also want to play Snake Eater and Guns of the Patriots (and possibly Peace Walker) before I play The Phantom Pain, too, so I feel it’s going to be a while before I jump into Kojima’s swansong for Konami — if indeed I ever jump in at all.

We’ll see. I’m keeping half an eye on people’s reactions to the game now it’s in the hands of American players, but unfortunately as I’ve said so far, the things I have heard aren’t making me want to dash out and grab it as soon as it hits store shelves.

I’m also kind of bummed that Until Dawn came out last week and is promptly going to be forgotten about amid Metal Gear Solid mania — why the hell didn’t they hold that one back until Halloween? Who knows why these people do anything?

1503: Please Insert Gear 2

I finished the first disc of Metal Gear Solid today. I miss disc swaps; as inconvenient as some people find them, many games used them as an important part of their drama — look at how Final Fantasy VII’s first disc ended, for example, or indeed how Metal Gear Solid closes off its first disc.

More than that, though, I’m impressed with how well Metal Gear Solid is holding up. I mean, sure, there are some aspects that have dated worse than others — the painful lack of motion capture and facial animation in the cutscenes being the most glaring issue, and the somewhat clunky controls being another — but as an interactive experience, its limited technology certainly doesn’t hold it back from being a thrilling, compelling and exciting experience just as worth having today as it was back when it first came out. (And I maintain that the original is just… better, somehow, than the technically superior The Twin Snakes for GameCube; the revamped music and voice acting in that version just didn’t feel quite right, somehow)

I’m also quite impressed with how much of the game I’ve remembered since its original release. I don’t think I’ve beaten it that many times over the years, but I still remember all the peculiar little quirks as if it was only yesterday I played — changing the controller port for the Psycho Mantis battle; how to spot Meryl when she’s in disguise; how to get Meryl to be in her pants when you reunite with her; how to get out of prison. (Actually, I must confess to messing the latter part up — I remembered the whole “ketchup” thing, but cocked up knocking the guard out and ended up being released by the Ninja, which I didn’t even know was a possibility. You learn something new every day.)

Snake remains an awesome hero, too; convincingly badass, yet vulnerable and human at the strangest of times. He’s at his most interesting when interacting with the diverse other members of the cast; whether it’s struggling to show his feelings for Meryl or trying to work out the best approach to dealing with Otacon, who is terrified to the point of literally pissing himself one moment; overconfident and cocksure the next; emotional and irrational the next.

The game still packs a surprising amount of emotional punch, too, even with its primitive technology, and it’s at least partly down to Kojima’s strong direction of the game’s cutscenes. Say what you will about the series and its lengthy storytelling sequences between bouts of crouching in the dark (and, of course, “Snake, SNAKE, SNAAAAAKE!”, which I have heard a good few times today during some challenging sequences I didn’t remember quite so well) — Kojima knows how to make a good movie with some interactive elements, and I think it’s a fairly well established fact by now that I have absolutely no problem with games that prioritise storytelling over what we might traditionally call “gameplay”. (I’m particularly looking forward to revisiting Metal Gear Solid 2’s infamous 20-minute cutscene towards its conclusion.)

Anyway. Onward to disc 2 tomorrow, and a confrontation with Metal Gear, along with some other parts I’ve no doubt forgotten. For now, time for bed, possibly with some Senran Kagura Burst before sleepytime… Oh yes.

1501: A Hind D

I’ve finally acquired all of the mainline Metal Gear Solid games and have decided to play them through. To date, I’ve only ever played the first two (the first two Metal Gear Solids, not the first two Metal Gears), though I have had a copy of Snake Eater on my shelf for years now that I am yet to boot up. (Despite this, I picked up a copy of the HD collection for PS3. Why not, eh?)

Despite the fact that I’ve only ever played the first two, I have always thought of the series very fondly. I recall playing the original PS1 game to absolute death when it first came out since it was far and away one of the most gobsmackingly impressive console games around at the time.

Today, it’s not looking quite so impressive thanks to its 320×200 resolution, limited colour palette (so much dithering!) and complete lack of facial animations, but Hideo Kojima’s artistic intentions still clearly shine through thanks to excellent, movie-like direction of the cutscenes and high production values for music and voice work. In terms of sound, at least, the original game is very much on a par with modern games, with spectacular voice acting and a stirring, memorable score accompanying the action.

I think one of the reasons I enjoy the Metal Gear Solid games I have as much as I do is because they quickly subvert expectations. Obviously I don’t have the same expectations of them as I did back when I first played them, but I still remember how enjoyable it was to see the game’s setting and narrative evolve from gritty, manly super-soldier preventing nuclear war to comic-book style character-driven tale with a series of ridiculously overexaggerated villains. The gritty, manly super-soldier preventing nuclear war story is still there, of course, but with all the other stuff going on atop it, it becomes far more interesting than your average Call of Duty or whatever.

This is, in part, Kojima’s craft. He can blend things together remarkably well. He can blend the realistic and the fantastic; the mundane and the ridiculous. The first game is relatively tame compared to what happens in some of the later installments — even the second one — but it’s still not afraid to let its hair down every so often with villains like Psycho Mantis, who requires you to plug your controller into the other slot so he can’t read your mind, and Vulcan Raven, who manages to come off worse in a fight against Snake even when attacking him with a tank.

Divisive though it may be, I’m also a fan of how Kojima tells his stories. My friend Mark described the Metal Gear Solid games as one part tactical stealth action game, one part movie and one part radio drama, and it absolutely is true. The stealth action stuff is solid, enjoyable and challenging; the movie is well directed and as enjoyable as anything I’ve seen on the big screen, despite only starring computer-generated characters; and the radio drama that unfolds any time you whip out your Codec to chew the fat with any of Snake’s colourful cast of allies is well acted and always worth sitting through. I feel a bit sorry for those who feel the need to skip cutscenes and dialogue; they’re missing out on a significant part of the Metal Gear Solid experience.

Anyway. This time around I’m hoping to make it all the way through to the end of 4. I’ve renewed my interest in the series somewhat since looking a little into the new games Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, you see, and it would be nice to be up to date with what’s going on before I play those. Plus everyone always says Metal Gear Solid 3 is amazing, so I should probably see what they’re all banging on about at some point, huh?