This week I have had very little time to play games. I
pre-empted this and played Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. Knowing the game
was very short and that I could potentially beat it in one night, I gave it a
go, and I did. This will end up on Backlog Beatdown eventually but I haven’t
finished my write-up. In order to avoid publishing two blogs within a week of
each other going over the same ground, I am instead going to cover what Metal
Gear means for me. This might sound like an odd thing to want to talk about,
but while it’s true that Ground Zeroes fell short of expectations, it wasn’t
for the reasons I was expecting.
 |
| This had never been done before... |
The first time I owned a Metal Gear game (Metal Gear Solid
on the Playstation,) I was fifteen. 3D games were still developing at that point,
and while some were good, there were some clangers as well. Metal Gear Solid not
only blew most of the 3D games out of the water, it also was the first game I
remember outside of RPGs to have a truly memorable plot. Rather than taking you
around the world on different missions, it stuck you on Shadow Moses island;
one military base to cover the entire game. Characters had complexity and
depth, there were betrayals, cover-ups, a reason to unlock both endings, and
some clever fourth-wall breaking. Not to mention, Snake was cool. It was one of
the few games on the Playstation I played through multiple times.
 |
| Snake. The hero we both need AND deserve. |
On the Playstation 2, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
was one of the most hyped games. The characters would look better than ever, it
would take advantage of the advancing hardware, there was even a demo of it
available in Zone of the Enders; it was an exciting time! Then the game came
out and, while very few people remember Raiden fondly, the game was very
well-designed – even if, you spend a lot of the time listening to the codec.
The plot was contrived; I had to go on to Wikipedia to make sense of it, but it
was fun to speculate.
Then we got Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. This is a
phenomenal game in terms of the camouflage system and survival mechanics. But I
didn’t like playing it without the radar anywhere. Snake was still a cool
character but I guessed you were playing the character who would eventually
become Big Boss – the overarching villain for the original Metal Gear games and
who overshadows the Metal Gear Solid franchise. So I had an idea of how the
story would work out and wasn’t interested in seeing it. I never got to the end
of it.
I missed Guns of the Patriots entirely, as I never had a
Playstation 3. From what I understand it wraps up the whole meta-plot of the
franchise, though there was still more to explore. But now Metal Gear Solid 5:
The Phantom Pain is out and laced with controversy surrounding Hideo Kojima’s
relationship with Konami. If the game wasn’t truly finished and never will be,
it’s not a game I have any interest in playing, even if I owned a machine
capable of it.
 |
| A good game, but not as much as I was expecting... |
The first two Metal Gear Solid games still resonate with me
to this day because they never forgot they were only games – radars, health
packs, fourth wall breaking and the like. I was a teenager when they came out.
I’m thirty-two now, and I’m becoming fed up with games where stealth is the
central mechanic. Ground Zeroes was a very competently-designed game, but felt
less like a Metal Gear game and more like a 3rd-person
action-adventure that could have been any game, really. I had no investment in
the characters, no reason to play this at all really beyond wanting to play and
beat a relatively short game. This done, I had no interest in playing the other
missions, or finding out what it was all about. I’m not saying it should have
stuck with the old style; of course it needed to evolve. But it’s become a very
different game to the one I enjoyed playing when I was younger.
No comments:
Post a Comment