The Retrospective 09.05.06: Metal Gear (Part 1 of 3)
Posted by Sean McCabe on 09.05.2006
It's time for us to talk about Snakes and mechs and hot women, oh my! My ode to Kojima's ode to Hollywood starts here. Join me as I don my infinite ammo jockstrap and take on the worst screwy plot twists they can throw at me!
Well, having concluded my look at the Legend of Zelda, I thought to myself, what is the next series that should come under my scope? Well, with all that hoopla about a certain movie lately I thought why not go for a series with a lot of Snakes?
Disclaimer – There will be spoilers in this article.
The Introspective
Well, I am now a proud owner of an Xbox 360. That's pretty much the big news this week. I've been playing Condemned. I like horror games and I have to say Condemned is simply one of the scariest I've ever played. I also find it odd that it's the first game to try and latch onto the success of recent psychological thrillers such as Se7en and Saw, movies about very deranged killers and the investigators who in the course of attempting to track down these killers become equally deranged. That is where Condemned excels in its gameplay experience; with each attacker vanquished the protagonist grows gradually more crazy, even beginning to think like the killer he is after. Good stuff.
I've also been playing Shadow Hearts, the first part of what is the greatest pair of RPGs ever released. I like to speak my mind in this part of the column, so I will. When I find most RPGs that I play to be, shall we say, overrated, the Shadow Hearts games deliver upon what they promise, fun gameplay, great story, interesting characters, and a slant both of horror and of history that makes it very unique. Koudelka, the original game in the series was decent but not exceptional. However, all three of it's sequels are superb, particularly the first and second, which relate the story of Yuri, the son of a Russian noble woman and a Japanese Harmonixer, the last descendant of a warrior clan who fight demons. And of course, like most RPGs, there are plenty of hot babes, but they tend to be a little bit more sophisticated and modest than most, like Margarete, world class spy and the only character I know of to pull out a rocket launcher for a special move. But it's not penis envy, I'm sure, and it must also be a pure coincidence that she is holding a peacock in this official art…
Oh, and one last piece of new I only just found out (this is like a last minute edit) is that Bully's name will be changed in Europe and Australia, to the rather strange Canis Canem Edit. That of course is Latin for Dog Eat Dog, and one can only presume that is the motto of Bulworth Academy. Interesting name, but it's stupid that they had to change it in my view, and it's stupid that so many people are judging the game based on it's name and setting.
I didn't get any feedback at all this week, so I guess it's straight onto business.
Metal Gear
Format: MSX2, NES
Release: 1987
Notes: The NES port is so different to the MSX2 port some consider it a very different game. The NES version was directly ported to the Commodore 64 and IBM PC.
Well, this is it. Long before Metal Gear Solid rocked the Playstation like a hurricane, Konami released the first in it's "tactical espionage action" series. It was Hideo Kojima's first major project, and he wanted to create something that was very different, very new for the time, a game that mixes an immersive story with some nice weapons based gameplay. It was quite advanced for the time considering what else was available. I have only played the NES version and even then not that much… I suck at NES games without exception. The basic gist of the storyline is that special operative Solid Snake is sent in to infiltrate the terrorist base Outer Heaven; eventually confronting and defeating a nuclear equipped bipedal Mech known as Metal Gear. It plays pretty well even today, and the basis for the storyline is still important to the overall story of Metal Gear Solid today, as the game marks the change when Big Boss became the villain, the attempted creation of the first Outer Heaven and the coming of age of Solid Snake, super soldier.
In retrospect: I often wonder if Hideo Kojima had any idea while making this game what the all-encompassing storyline the series is famous for was going to be. It doesn't matter too much; this was a great and innovative game for the time, and still quite playable, though very hard, now.
Konami then took it upon themselves to develop a sequel to the very Successful Metal Gear, without telling Hideo Kojima. This game would become known as Snake's Revenge, a much-maligned game but I'm not going to look at it right now. Instead, I'm going to take a look at what Kojima created when given the proper chance to create his own game to follow up on the original.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Format: MSX2
Release: 1990
Notes: The true sequel to Metal Gear, rather than Snake's Revenge which was release as the second Metal Gear game in North America. Only released in Japan until the western release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.
Alright, to be honest, I know very little about this game besides the controversy surrounding it and Snake's Revenge, and it's story, and I haven't even had the chance to play it on Subsistence because Konami like to treat Europe like most other Japanese developers, i.e. very badly. It's out next month, and I do plan to be all over this game then, but until then, I ask for feedback from anyone who has played this game to say how good it is and if it's a worthy follow up to it's predecessor. What I do know about the storyline is it covers the events in Zanzibar land and chronicles the apparent death of Grey Fox after he betrayed Snake and Big Boss's final moments as his protégé finally kills him. It also was the testing ground for a lot of future gameplay elements of the series, including the radio/codec sequences and actual stealth based gameplay
In retrospect: From what I know a good game, but I'm hoping for feedback as I can't say any more than that unfortunately.
As for Snake's Revenge, I'll explain why I'm not going to cover that right now, but for now lets move onto the game that truly kick-started this series into the mainstream gaming consciousness.
Metal Gear Solid
Format: Playstation
Release: 1997
Notes: released 7 years after it's predecessor, Metal Gear Solid was one of the Playstation's truly huge releases (which also include Resident Evil and Final Fantasy VII). Often called the greatest stealth game of all time.
Now here we go. My experience with the original Metal Gear games is limited at best as you've pretty much seen, but fortunately I'm a bit more informed when it comes to all things with Solid at the end of the title. Released to a lot of hype in 1997 over it's highly advanced AI routines and it's attention to every little detail when it comes to espionage, Metal Gear Solid quickly blasted it's way into the hearts of millions of gamers, capturing their imaginations with an in-depth and meaningful storyline the likes of which had well, never been seen before. The game focused on the delivery of its story as much as on the delivery of its gameplay, and as a result both were ultimately top notch. There can't be too many people who don't know the story but lets go through it anyway. On an Alaskan Island known as Shadow Moses, terrorists led by the members of FOXHOUND, the world's premier anti-terrorist special ops unit, have seized control of a Nuclear Storage facility with the intent of making certain demands of the US Government. They respond by sending in the man who defeated FOXHOUND's founder, Solid Snake; that is despite the fact he was retired. Solid would battle his way through Shadow Moses despite quickly realising that there was a lot more to the matter than meets the eye, and despite the fact that he would have to once again confront the haunting spectre that seems to follow him wherever he goes, Metal Gear.
The man pulling the strings behind the terrorist action is also someone with a very special relation to Snake; in fact he is nothing less than Snake's genetic sibling, Liquid Snake. Snake eliminates each terrorist member of FOXHOUND one at a time, eventually making his way to the storage hangar containing Metal Gear Rex, as the new model is called, with some help from a female soldier who refused to join in the terrorist uprising, Meryl, and one of Rex's designers, Hal Emmerich. Despite being betrayed by the very people who sent him in, and tricked into activating Rex's launch code, Snake still single-handedly destroys Rex, with a little help from an old friend in an Exoskeleton, and I believe escapes with both Meryl and Emmerich in the canon storyline, but the game's endings only allow one or another. I have course skipped over a few plot points but then I should leave a few details out, to leave some mystery if there is anybody reading this yet to play the game.
Metal Gear Solid is probably the most cinematic games series ever produced, and it really started with Metal Gear Solid. The hardware of the Playstation allowed for some exceptional graphics for the time, and even though the texture set was a bit limited in the game, that didn't really affect it much due to the game's dark, muddy artistic style. The gameplay was also quite innovative and remains so to this day, with even other stealth games generally opting for a totally different approach as opposed to Metal Gear Solid's approach to stealth. That's fine, but the only stealth games I happen to play are the Metal Gear Solids.
In Retrospect: Still remains the finest hour in a series with many fine hours to it's name, and the start to arguably the most compelling ongoing storyline in videogaming history.
And well, that's pretty much all for this week, shorter than normal I know. Next week, much like with Zelda where I covered all the side story games in the second week, Snake's Revenge, Ghost Babel, The AC!D games and Twin Snakes will all get a look in. Join me then as we delve further into the twisted vortex of Hideo Kojima's mind. Keep things in perspective, or you might be one of those that got completely flummoxed by the ending to Sons of Liberty!
