Metal Gear Flaccid

"I couldn't get distilled water in my trailer. Why do I even bother?"

It seems that every single creative property, be it novel, record album, video game, theatrical play, painting, jigsaw puzzle, whatever, can be optioned and adapted to any other medium. We’ve seen instances where it has worked, and instances where it has failed, and I think you can guess which side of the scale carries more weight. But fans like myself will always clamor for movie adaptations and mainstream exposure because, in a way, we want the rest of the world to share in the joy we have for our favorite stories or characters. That, or we just want other people to validate our opinions on a particular creative property, but let’s not get cynical, shall we?

If you’ve been following the video game blogs, you may have caught that Metal Gear Solid has been knocking on the door of Hollywood for the past few years as Kojima and Co. try to bring Solid Snake to the screen. As a Metal Gear fan, I’ve been giving fist pumps to this project ever since I first heard about it. How could it not work? It’s fucking Metal Gear! Sneaking mercenaries, bipedal tanks and cardboard boxes, dude!

But, a few weeks ago, news came out that the Metal Gear Solid movie project might be in trouble. And you know what? It’s probably for the best.

Anyone who’s played Metal Gear, or even glanced at someone playing it, knows that the core game mechanic is stealth. The fun of the game comes from being in a situation that requires quick and precise thinking and action, where one misstep could have the entire army of a small country descending on your unprotected hide. Like with most video games, the interactivity was central to the experience and the fun. While I’m sure that the right director could invoke that feeling of anxiety and pressure (I saw a nice hiding scene in Burn After Reading), we also have to consider the characters we’re dealing with. Solid Snake is a badass, but he’s not very endearing to most people, in-game and out. He chases pussy like the family dog after the family cat, he’s humorless, and he’d rather shoot you than ask you how your day was. You’d have to get a helluva actor to pull off all those character traits and still be a guy we root for.

And then, we get to the 800lbs gorilla sitting on top of the Metal Gear movie issue: the story. To say that the story isn’t user-friendly is to say that a colonoscopy is “a little invasive.” Hideo Kojima spins a great yarn for a video game (anyone doubting that should take a look at Policenauts), but film stories and video game stories are two totally different entities. A film has to get from beginning to end within 90 minutes (or three hours, depending on the director) while a video game can take all the time in the world and even tell its story non-linearly. I clocked in about a full 24 hours playing through Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots; sure, a lot of that time was spent respawning after I got a bullet wedged in my mustache, but those were some long-ass cutscenes, too. The sad fact is that the Metal Gear saga, as told now, does not adapt well to a motion picture. It barely even adapted to a novel! If you wanted to get through Metal Gear Solid with changing as little as possible, it’d have to be done in an episodic TV series, a la 24 or Sons of Anarchy. Even then, you’ll never get through all four main games in the Metal Gear Solid series without four seasons, and that’s a lot to commit to. And, if at all possible, imagine what a TV series based around Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty would look and sound like! I can hear the TV Guide reviews now…

Kojima’s story, as it stands right now, cannot be told on film. It simply can’t be done and satisfy the needs of the film. If Metal Gear Solid wanted to get on screen, it’d have to lose some weight, like an old housewife trying to cram into her wedding dress. I’ve spent some personal time going through and trying to write up the entire plot of Metal Gear in a narrative outline, and several characters would have to be eliminated, motivations changed, and events ignored in order to make the story fit a cinema paradigm. By the looks of things, Kojima is heavily involved in the pre-production of the movie and is not willing to take the knife to his story. That’s his right; he created it and, as far as I know, his company owns the characters. But if he’s not willing to budge, then Metal Gear Solid will probably stay confined to your PlayStation.

As much as I love the game and would love to see a movie based on it, does the story you love staying the way you remember it sound like a bad thing?

REVIEW: Metal Gear Solid 4 – Guns of the Patriots

"I couldn't get distilled water in my trailer. Why do I even bother?"

I don’t care if people call me a fanboy at this point, because that’s what I am and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve collected Metal Gear games that I’m not able to play because I don’t have the right hardware (or the hardware has dropped its fucking backwards compatibility, leaving your PS2 library to serve as coasters and cock rings from here on out.) I’ll just come out and say it: I love the Metal Gear series, even to the point where I paid an insane amount of money for my copy and stood on a line for 4 hours to get Hideo Kojima’s autograph. Time well spent, in my opinion. That being said, you might think that this presents a conflict of interests; I love all the other games, so isn’t it a foregone conclusion that I won’t be as critical as I would for something like, say, Haze? Not true, I say! I did like Metal Gear Solid 4, but perfect this is not. The experience is one that’s hard to categorize, but easy to enjoy. The game doesn’t have a whole lot of “OMG!” moments, but it looks pretty, handles well, and is innovative enough to keep people playing. The best thing is that it stays true to what the series has always been, while trying to open it up to new players, at least on a technical level. It’s Metal Gear Solid, and with that, you’ve been warned.

Guns of the Patriots is the final chapter in the Solid Snake Saga. Snake, now looking more like a Wal-Mart greeter than hunky Special Ops guy, must throw himself back into battle one last time to save the world from his nemesis, Liquid Snake, who has taken over the body of another antagonist, Revolver Ocelot. Ocelot is after SOP, a micromanaging combat system which allows Private Military Companies to operate more efficiently, effectively controlling the soldiers’ bodies and minds. I won’t get into the story much because, as you can tell, it’s a tough nut to crack, and almost impossible for someone who isn’t familiar with every single Metal Gear game, with the exception of Portable Ops. And now, here’s where I’ll get scholarly on your ass:
According to lectures I’ve gone to on storytelling, the most important element of a video game is graphics. If a game looks like crap, then nobody’s going to want to play it. Here, the graphics of Metal Gear Solid 4 are beyond exceptional. They make you wonder why HD wasn’t integrated sooner. The best way I can describe how this game looks is to polish Metal Gear Solid 3. The characters have the same build and recognizable skin polygons, but it’s bumped up to the current-gen standards. In game graphics work and don’t offer that much of a gap between cutscene and gameplay. But graphics serve to hook the player, while the next step holds them in.

The gameplay in MGS4 is a thing of beauty. The top-down gameplay of the original Metal Gear Solid has been cast aside in favor of a more “Western” approach. The camera is over-the-shoulder and you have the option of (finally!!!!!) moving and aiming in First Person. People who couldn’t get through the first few games will definitely enjoy the Call of Duty influence on this game. At least Snake isn’t fighting Nazis (yet). If you recall my Metal Gear Online review, I did gripe a bit about the button layout and combos being a bit daunting at first, but after a few hours, they become second nature, and the control system is so nuanced that even CQC moves can be studied and mastered, leaving the player able to complete the entire game by using CQC against every baddie. Also joining Snake is the Metal Gear Mk. II, a droid that you can use to scout enemy locations and even knock enemies out for easier sneaking, and OctoCamo, a sneaking suit that automatically mimics the surface it’s against. These new additions to gameplay will help to shock Metal Gear veterans and bring them into a new experience, and the gameplay has so many layers that you can play through it several times with emphasis on different tactics. In fact, a rewards system is set up in the game to encourage multiple play-throughs, which ups the stock of the game in my opinion. It is in the multiple play-throughs that the game shines. Once you’re not worried about the story and concentrated on just getting through the game to meet a certain set of criteria, the tense moments become more tense, and the more tracks you find for your in-game iPod will make revisiting Metal Gear Solid 4 maybe even more fun that playing it through the first time.

And finally, we have story. If you’re a Metal Gear Solid fan, you know how twisted and convoluted the story can get at times. It’s had its high moments (death of The Boss) and its low moments (reveal of The Patriots). With this installment, I feel the story is ambitious, almost to the point of being detrimental. Kojima talks about many real-world issues, the main of which deals with Private Military Companies and the rise of the proxy war, but what fans care about (Solid Snake vs. Liquid Ocelot) can be a bit dodgy at times with all the double crosses and confusing character motivations. There are times when I feel that the heart of the story is crushed by how intellectual it is, and by that I don’t mean smart. Smart is good in a story, but here, you are spending most of your time trying to connect the dots as to why someone is doing something, or about the little details of the plot that probably no one thought of (or I just missed. This is what a second play-through is for). And energy spent trying to figure out the story** is energy not spent enjoying the story. I spent most of the game hanging on by an intellectual thread, but the game does offer the ability to pause and skip cutscenes, which is very welcome, considering I need time to talk my way through what just happened.

(Author’s Note: I have a theory about Western audiences. I believe that we can only handle up to one double-cross in a story and still be humming along merrily on our way. We can understand that a person is on Side A and then changes over to Side B. Once you start getting into a triple-cross or a quadruple-cross, heads start to spin. A person is on Side A, goes over to Side B, and then reveals that he was always on the never-before-mentioned Side C. Sounds like that old Eggo commercial.)

Apart from the twisting story, the big thing that fans have been worried about are the rumors of insanely long load times and cutscenes over 90 minutes long. I’m here to say that some of the cutscenes can stretch close to (and as I’ve heard, beyond) the one-hour mark, but none of them come close to 90 minutes I didn’t notice the length, though. I was engaged in what was going on and it looked so damn pretty, too. As for the load times, the most time you’ll spend waiting for the game to install is 5 minutes, and Snake will be there to keep you company the whole time. Are these problems? Nope. I only have three legitimate gripes with the game outside of plot. The first is that the mechanic for turning over and firing can use some work. One of the coolest things you can do in the game is lie down, and press the Triangle button to quickly turn over. When you’re using it as a stealth tool, it’s cool to lie in wait as your prey passes right by you, and then you deliver the coup de grace. But, when you turn over and ready your weapon, Snake instantly reverts back to the direction he was facing before he turned over, meaning you have to quickly rotate the camera into the right position in order to pick off your targets, who by then have probably gone off to eat some ice cream or something. Also, I had hoped for more tense gameplay with the feeling that the enemy was constantly breathing down your neck and one wrong move would lead to finding yourself the recipient of the PMC’s lead generosity. It’s almost embarrassing to say, but the original Metal Gear game for the MSX2 has more of those moments than this installment, and for me, that’s a problem. The only other thing I can say about MGS4 that I wish was different was that they used the motion-controls of the Sixaxis (or DualShock 3) more.

These are really minor gripes in a game that otherwise is stunning. You’re in the thick of it from the moment you take control of Old Snake, and on tougher difficulties, you can feel the stress of staying hidden amongst super-nosy soldiers. Kojima is able to make a game that is accessible, but also spends most of it’s time dropping little prizes and moments for the fans that have been there forever. This game feels like Kojima taking a victory lap of where he’s been before, the graduation ceremony before the euphoria of being able to toss your cap in the air. Some moments are sublime, such as tracking Naomi Hunter’s footprints and using OctoCamo to stay hidden. That reminded me of what a real Special Ops guy does! And, even though it’s a short level with not a whole lot of enemies to encounter, I could play through that level three or four times in a row and still find it fun. The moment where Snake, at the end of his rope, walks through a room filled with microwaves while the outside world goes to hell is so heartbreakingly beautiful that it epitomizes what games can make us do. That’s the contribution Metal Gear Solid 4 has on the gaming world.

Final Verdict: 4.5 nuclear-equipped walking battle tanks out of 5

This is one of those games that people will talk about for a long time. It gave the Playstation 3 it’s first knock-out exclusive. It opened the door for more narrative expansion in video games. It closed out one of the defining game characters since Mario and Donkey Kong, and it’s a damn good game. I wish I could give it a perfect five out of five, but I felt I wouldn’t be true to my feelings if I didn’t take one half point away for story. Regardless, it’s worth your time and money if you have a Playstation 3 to get this one and keep it a treasured part of your library.