Note: This review covers the whole of the recent Metal Gear Solid series.
Recipe for the Overdone Premise
-1 cup troubled protagonist
-3 cups epic cinematic
-2 oz. drama
-1 cup plot twist
-1 dash iconic look
-2 cups villain supergroup

With the release of the newest Metal Gear Solid just a couple days away, it might be worth it to take a quick look at one of the most popular franchise revivals in recent video game history.

The Metal Gear series has always prided itself on several basic trademarks - a game that made you sneak around instead of running through enemies like Rambo on crack, a storyline filled with more twists and turns than a roller coaster, and a protagonist inevitably manipulated by forces beyond his control. Metal Gear followed the story of Solid Snake as he stopped nuclear holocaust while discovering a deeper conspiracy behind the events of the game.

These were simple concepts that Metal Gear Solid and its subsequent two sequels, Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater, brought back in spades. Snake, now considered a "legend", veteran of many battles but grumpier than your grandfather about society, is called upon once again to face ridiculously impossible odds and uncover more manipulations. At least Snake didn't have it as difficult as his father, who is the protagonist of Snake Eater, the Metal Gear Solid game exploring the origins of Solid Snake and his enemies. In short, the Metal Gear Solid series has been a wildly successful resurrection of what most consider a classic 8-bit game series...at least in game sales.

Several additions to the normal Metal Gear formula - "sneaky + nuclear war + plot twists = $$$" were made in Metal Gear Solid. The first of these is certainly apparent in the plot. Where radio transmissions were, well, simply radio transmissions in the original Metal Gear games, the Metal Gear Solid series has made sweeping changes. And by sweeping changes, I mean glorified extended exposition on par with most movie exchanges. Ever see a movie where, in the middle or just before an epic encounter, the characters will stand around and have a dialogue about life, the universe, and seemingly everything under the sun in order to engage the audience and get them to "buy-in"? That's pretty much what Metal Gear Solid does. Transmissions in Metal Gear Solid are not just a way to communicate - they're a way for Snake and his friends and foes to wax political, philosophical, and even have disturbing conversations about Snake's unusual habits (boxes, anyone?).

Now, I'm one of these people who likes a deep story and a lot of exposition. I'm an RPG player so the more plot and more character, the better it is. But Metal Gear Solid isn't really an RPG - it's an action game. An action game with elements of stealth and intelligence, but an action game nonetheless. While some action games present the plot like a garnish on a fancy dish, Metal Gear Solid opens your mouth forcibly and tries to shove it down your throat in the form of 10-15 minute exchanges of spoken text. So what turns out to be some of the best selling point in the game also turns out to be one of its greatest (and most annoying) weaknesses. Hey, don't get me wrong - I like it - but I'm a story whore, and that's not what the fanbase of an action game necessarily purchases an action game for. There's an adjective for something that gets shoved in your face constantly shouting at you, and that's "pretentious". Long sequences about evolution and control, romance, the horrors of nuclear war, sibling rivalry - you name it, it was in a codec transmission in Metal Gear Solid.

But most of this pretentiousness can be forgiven in the actual gameplay, right? For the most part, they are. Metal Gear Solid's trademark of finding equipment and weapons onsite, and providing stealthy solutions to problems as opposed to going in guns blazing, almost forgives having to suffer through walls of text worse than this review. Snake crawls, knocks on walls to distract enemies, knocks them out silently, and even shakes them down in order to get by or otherwise deal with the many threats in his way. The series does a good job of presenting a more cerebral method of gameplay when you're sick of running around blowing things up in other games.

That isn't to say the game doesn't have problems. Probably some of the more frustrating elements of the game involve annoying camera angles and button presses that make Snake do things you didn't mean to do, such as duck when you mean to roll, and crawl when you mean to run. Controls in certain portions of the game, such as throwing grenades or aiming, feel uncomfortable and make it difficult to play, something which really sucks when it comes to fighting one of Metal Gear Solid's patented, gimmicky boss fights. These are probably some of the most enjoyable parts of the game since they combine action with thinking of the right solution (even if it means plugging the controller somewhere else), and they're marred slightly by control issues.

Regardless of its flaws, the Metal Gear Solid series is definitely worth your time. Sequences can be skipped, minor controller glitches can be dealt with or overcome, and overall you get enough to keep you entertained. The games, as they have unfolded are fairly free of what could be considered game-breaking flaws. Well....unless you want to talk about that one Raiden guy...

Buy it.

You spent a great deal of time complaining about something that you, in essence, like. Still, I'll admit the plot isn't always what other want. But they can go to the devil.

Okay review though.

I like Green Rambos and Ham.

Never understood the whole Raiden hate. Granted, I played MGS2 before the other games, which might be part of the reason but still... I dunno, people just don't seem to get what was the point with the character.

Then again, Solid Snake didn't seem that impressive to me either (in Twin Snakes) if you compare him to Big Boss. On the other hand, he was much more impressive in Sons of Liberty... No more angsting about his way of living.

IMO, the series has only gotten better... In MGS you felt a little separated from the rest of the world and there were very few characters you were in touch with (other than codec), which gave it a bit...
MGS2 was different, having more and also deeper characters with more complex motives, which made at least me more attached to the story. I also enjoyed the plot, despite how convoluted it got in the end, and although I don't know if I wanted it in any other way, I have to admit it strayed to the wrong side of believable once or twice.
MGS3, despite having pretty shallow set of super villains and a plot that felt almost a little too straight-forward, was also much more sophisticated. And even if the bosses didn't usually have much story behind them, the rest of the characters and their complex relationships kept you intrested, especially when there's no bigger and funnier bad ass than Big Boss out there. Not to mention they finally managed to make a touching ending with some plot twist.

Fondant:
You spent a great deal of time complaining about something that you, in essence, like. Still, I'll admit the plot isn't always what other want. But they can go to the devil.

Okay review though.

I did, definitely. A lot of it was trying to come at it from the tack of a casual person picking up the game. The basic point was, I like it, but can see why others don't.

I purposefully stayed away from the whole Raiden issue. Honestly, the first trailers for MGS4 seemed to indicate that even the developers saw the hate people were leveling at Raiden and played off of it. I personally don't really care to get into it in this review mostly because I think people hate Raiden not because of Raiden, but because he isn't Snake, which doesn't really justify worth mentioning as a negative.

fsanch:
Sequences can be skipped

This negates what appears to be your primary complaint, the length of conversations/cutscenes. Everyone who enjoys the aforementioned exposition can indulge it, whereas everyone who does not can skip it. This combination of potential and accessibility seems advantageous to the series, not detrimental.

I've been trying to replay MGS2...and you know, after beating it, like, three times, I just can't get the motivation to do it again. Every other MGS game I've beaten six, seven times. 2 is just...he just doesn't catch my interest.

gonna do a little n00b thing here and say...

Sam Fisher would kill Solid Snake blindfolded.

splinter cell FTW

ChristianxKrupps:
gonna do a little n00b thing here and say...

Sam Fisher would kill Solid Snake blindfolded.

splinter cell FTW

Is that kill Snake while Snake was blindfolded? Becasue that would be unfair ;)
What i would say about cutscenes in games is that if watching cutscenes takes up more than 10% of a game's duration, something has gone wrong in developement. Considering that I'm a MGS fan this may sound odd, but I remember my experiences of playing these games, not watching the cutscenes: the early part of MGS2 on the tanker (which came as a demo with ZoE), the boss battle with The End, etc. These to me are the essential MGS experiences, despite what Kojima would like me to think.

for me it goes

gameplay
story
characters
scenery
extra-gameplay
taking it a step farther
and then my own scoring
how awesome would the game be if all the enemies were robot zombies from the future?

thats why i dont like MGS
the controls are like trying to convince a fat kid to eat healthy
the levels are repetitive
i despise the characters, they have no realism
and secondly if the enemies were robot zombies, then the game would maybe be better.
but in truth i find it highly insuferior to the Splinter Cell series

Fuck Splinter Cell--any game that makes it that damn difficult to pick locks can just choke on whale semen and die.

RentCavalier:
Fuck Splinter Cell--any game that makes it that damn difficult to pick locks can just choke on whale semen and die.

What's difficult about it? You move the analogue stick until you hit the sweet spot, and leave it for a second, then repeat. Not the most inventive way of picking locks, granted, but I'd hardly call it difficult.

I played the original on the Xbox and literally spent half an hour trying to pick a lock. That killed it for me.

Now, I don't understand all of this "rivalry" between Splinter Cell and Metal Gear. I have an understanding of Splinter Cell, I know what it's "thing" is. To me, it's like comparing JRPGs to Western RPGS--they are totally different things. JRPGs, for instance, are linear, passive and showy, lacking perhaps in depth, but totally packing with candy-colored entertainment value, especially to the rabid fans who devour every latest installment of Hiro-sans adventures with jailbait girl, mystery swordsman and cute, fluffy mascots. You either love it or you hate it. Western RPGs are open-ended, non-linear sporting grizzled, brown-haired barbarians or else something similar, opting for deeper plotlines, more user-generated results and outcomes, but lacking in the gameplay factor. I mean, try playing Morrowind and actually kill something. Seriously, it's a pain. Oblivion, on the other hand, is just "whack until dead. Block if needed. Rinse, repeat." I'm not saying JRPGs sport better combat, but in general there's an ease and flow, even to the turn-based fair, that make the gameplay more accessible.

It's the same deal with MGS and Splinter Cell. Metal Gear Solid is flashy, erring on the side of the fantastical and thoroughly in love with itself and its plot. It has great gameplay but, like in the case of the recent MGS4, the Japanese developing quirk will have the gameplay take a backseat to the story. Just, in pure style, it's radically more...I'm iffy on saying "artificial", but until MGS3: Subsistance, you exist in inflexible, staged environments where you hide where you are expected, and there's little flexibility to your actions outside of just the different places to hide. With controllable camera, that changes, but that brings me to Splinter Cell.

Splinter Cell is thoroughly realistic, grounded in the Tom Clancy school of military espionage fiction, focusing on realistic plot points, gameplay being a big focus, the story being typical Typical Clancy faire, with Russians or Chinese finding Nuclear Weapons and causing shit to happen. There's no flash, no fluff, no super-ninjas or anything, it's basically very, very realistic. More or less, it grounds itself in it, and ultimately you get a totally different feel from it--the experience of playing MGS and Splinter Cell is totally different. Comparing them is fair, to a point--I mean, they are in the same genre, but they have such radically different approaches to them that it's unfair to compare them in the same way it's unfair to compare JRPGS to WRPGS.

New_Indigo_Dingo:
Well, off the top of my head, he contrasted Snake by looking like a Male Model, he was a woman beater (He smacked Rose around a couple of times - then again, after listenening to just how insane that woman is, I can't blame him, and I subscribe to the Chopper Read theory of domestic violence)

The contrast with Snake was very intentional, for the rest I can only say; Get over it.
Yes he is not like Snake, but no, it's not the end of the world if you don't make it one.

And he wasn't exactly a woman beater... Rose pretty much says it was unlike of him and she was more shocked by what caused him to act like that. Not that it's cool, but that was the point in the game Raiden's darker side and traumas started to unfold - up until that point he was just some guy with awfully normal relationship put on a mission way over his head.

he was flamboyant in just about everything he did, and he didn't have enough emotional baggage for us to like him - he had no parents to avenge, no partner to find, no cause in his heart (Snake didn't, but he at least looked dark)

Flamboyant? Not really... I mean like what?

And you miss now exactly what they tried to keep slapping at your face through the game. Raiden says himself he has no reason to fight, the emptiness and lack of real identity is underlined bright red (and what identity he seemed to have with Rose is revealed fake), he even goes to say how it feels like a videogame, and finally he throws away his dog tags with YOUR name on them saying he'll find his own way.
It's not that hard to see it now, is it?
He might be on the outside one of the most lacking in personality and depth in the series, but that's exactly how Kojima meant it, and managed to make him deep and complex through that, which is pretty genious.

Even Hideo Kojima hated Raiden, and proved it. Look up Metal Gear Raiden - so fucking funny man. Hell all of those videos are funny.

Doesn't mean he hates Raiden. Just that he acknowledges the general dislike for the characters among the fans, and it's not like there aren't similar videos of other characters in Subsistence. I mean really, Kojima being serious and completely wacky about his creations at the same time? Unheard of.

dear fsanch ,

you have a great writing skill . i congratulate you . i played all three MGS games . your review is very meaningful about what metal gear solid manifests around .

i like also video games with long storytelling and long cutscenes . i can suggest you to play Xenosaga series .

i always like watching MGS cutscenes while playing but sometimes those radio transmissions get me to sigh .

i am wondering if making metal gear solid movies is possible with its beautiful crafted storylines .

ja ne !

Hanji:

This negates what appears to be your primary complaint, the length of conversations/cutscenes. Everyone who enjoys the aforementioned exposition can indulge it, whereas everyone who does not can skip it. This combination of potential and accessibility seems advantageous to the series, not detrimental.

That's a great point. My criticism was pointed more at the design decision to have such exposition in the game in the first place, though. I pretty much said this in another thread somewhere about the "90 minute cutscene" rumor on MGS4, but even if you could skip such sequences, that doesn't mean to say there should be a question as to their existence. I'm planning on reviewing the king of cutscenes (Xenosaga) on here at some point, so I will certainly get more into detail then.

I actually asked 5 or 6 people waiting in a midnight MGS4 line (yes, we are all sad geeks) whether they skip the cutscenes or not. Most of them say they just skip or forward through it.

fsanch:

Hanji:

This negates what appears to be your primary complaint, the length of conversations/cutscenes. Everyone who enjoys the aforementioned exposition can indulge it, whereas everyone who does not can skip it. This combination of potential and accessibility seems advantageous to the series, not detrimental.

That's a great point. My criticism was pointed more at the design decision to have such exposition in the game in the first place, though. I pretty much said this in another thread somewhere about the "90 minute cutscene" rumor on MGS4, but even if you could skip such sequences, that doesn't mean to say there should be a question as to their existence. I'm planning on reviewing the king of cutscenes (Xenosaga) on here at some point, so I will certainly get more into detail then.

I actually asked 5 or 6 people waiting in a midnight MGS4 line (yes, we are all sad geeks) whether they skip the cutscenes or not. Most of them say they just skip or forward through it.

It was interesting about you saying fans skipping through the cutscenes. I was surprised by that. I suppose my critisism of long cutscenes in games is that the time they spent on making those scenes and the space on the disc could have gone into extra gameplay. Seeing as MGS4 apparently takes up almost an entire 50GB Blu-ray disc, a lot of that must be cutscenes. And I wanna shoot stuff!

ChristianxKrupps:
for me it goes

gameplay
story
characters
scenery
extra-gameplay
taking it a step farther
and then my own scoring
how awesome would the game be if all the enemies were robot zombies from the future?

thats why i dont like MGS
the controls are like trying to convince a fat kid to eat healthy
the levels are repetitive
i despise the characters, they have no realism
and secondly if the enemies were robot zombies, then the game would maybe be better.
but in truth i find it highly insuferior to the Splinter Cell series

There's not much wrong with controls after you get used to them. Shooting things in first person is made unnecessary complicated, though it's not really a problem in MGS3 at least, in which even the automatic weapons became after a little practice very inuitive to use.
In MGS2 I remember some difficulty with the assault rifles, sometimes firing anwittingly... But that too was nothing like impossible to learn.
MGS doesn't have the easiest controls, that's true, but it shouldn't take anything above a normal person to learn them without much pain. Small price to pay considering how different ways there are to work your way around in each situation.

Levels are repeative? The fact that you can do so much different things in the games itself makes that untrue. And I don't remember myself ever noting "Gee, this room is just like the other one...". Simply by throwing couple new guards in harder modes makes most area ask for very different solutions.

And lack of realism puts you off... Hate to say it (well... not really, but don't mind me), but that might win you the title "a boring guy". First of all, since when has realism been so good thing? And secondly, you must really have gotten something wrong about MGS to complain about some insane psychics, immortal vampires and lightning shooting colonels there and there.
Complaining about MGS not being realistic enough is like complaining about your ice tea not being warm enough. Just does not compute.

No one can really say you're wrong for liking Splinter Cell more, it's your opinion. I just think that despite the gameplay being technically quite good, it also is awfully unimaginative and the plot is just boring. If you necessarily need to compare it and MGS, I would say Splinter Cell is the one the one that tries so hard to implement stealth, when MGS just simply has fun with it without taking itself too seriously.

The Metal Gear series has always taken the sci-fi and supernatural approach to a politically charged, terrorist threat. That alone makes realism unnecessary, and it's not as if the game isn't realistic; the every-day, run of the mill actions that you carry out, the weather, guns, atmosphere, scenery and the way the characters (and animals from MGS3) move and behave are beautifully done, it's not as if you're seeing human characters with arms for legs and vica versa.

The realism is broken when fiction and imagination comes into play, and even then, what would a game be without those two things? I believe you are being a bit too short-sighted about the characters when this is indeed a work of fiction, and the cast doesnt consist of Joe from the local McDonalds and Dave from the office across the road.

The article was a nice read though you did seem quite negative towards something you supposedly love.

The one problem I always had with the MGS series (well, MGS2 specifically) was the sheer amount of story that Kojima trys to cram in there. It's like he has no idea of how to properly tell a story. "Cram enough story and pseudo-intellectual bullshit in there and it's bound to look good" is exactly what I figured Kojima was thinking with the MGS series.

I remember literally laughing at the absurdity and terrible story that was the ending of MGS2. It's the perfect example of someone trying so hard that it actually hurts them in the end.

Hopefully Kojima learned his lesson for MGS4 and cut out the unneccesary bullshit that dragged the storyline under.

Joeshie:
The one problem I always had with the MGS series (well, MGS2 specifically) was the sheer amount of story that Kojima trys to cram in there. It's like he has no idea of how to properly tell a story. "Cram enough story and pseudo-intellectual bullshit in there and it's bound to look good" is exactly what I figured Kojima was thinking with the MGS series.

I remember literally laughing at the absurdity and terrible story that was the ending of MGS2. It's the perfect example of someone trying so hard that it actually hurts them in the end.

Hopefully Kojima learned his lesson for MGS4 and cut out the unneccesary bullshit that dragged the storyline under.

As much as I like the MGS games I can't argue with this, from MGS2 to 4 Kojima seems to be under the impression that Exposition equals Story, which is untrue. He needs to learn some subtlety and stop hitting us with these overt exposition sequences. Pretty much every new character introduced in MGS4 gave a lecture on whatever field they happen to be an expert in
(Drebin = War Economy, Naomi Hunter = Genetics, EVA = Politics, Otacon = Machines, even Meryll, it's rediculous)