indefinite articles

This week: A few hours further through Snake Eater, Jake speaks his mind on the gameplay of the first three installments of the series.

For a game that so regularly wrests control from the player, the Solid series’ big appeal is, oddly enough, a sense of freedom. Certainly, the plot is going to play out the same way every time, and the game is ultimately one long funneled experience, but each step along the way is a sandbox within which the player is invited to experiment. Solid Snake enters an area, is given a specific goal, and must overcome a sequence of obstacles. And when that goal is accomplished, the game successfully makes you feel like you noodled a solution out all on your own.

Despite all the constant interruptions of gameplay, the leaden dialogue and thecutscene tsunamis, the game’s most invasive flaw is one which utterly undermines this sense of accomplishment. Coming to a solution is always satisfying, but the execution is anything but. As the controls and options have slowly ballooned over the course of the three games, the gameplay, once tactile and snappy, has grown so heavy that the whole structure collapses under the weight.

Imagine, for example, that Solid Snake wants to cross an open area where two guards are patrolling, and enter a building on the far side. Even such a simple scenario can be tedious, but the tension of the process, if the difficulty is balanced just right by the designers, can be exhilarating. Here’s how a simple situation like the one above might play in the first Metal Gear Solid:

First, in the upper right corner of the interface is a map of the surrounding area, showing the architecture, security cameras, and enemies wandering around the map, along with their cone of vision. I can throw out an electric pulse grenade to jam the cameras, and then scuttle across the map hidden under a box, being careful to avoid being spotted. If I am spotted, I can simply lie still until the guard ignores me again, or if that doesn’t work, retreat to hiding for a half-minute until the alarm dies down, and take another go at it. If I’m shot, I can eat a ration to regain my health.

When the difficulty is right, the scenarios can be a rush to play, rewarding lateral thinking rather than punishing it.

Now, let’s look at what the same situation would involve in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Indulge me for a minute:

The game, so far, has taken place entirely in the jungle, and to reflect the lower tech of the 1960s, my oh-so-helpful radar is gone. The camouflaged guards can be difficult to spot, so I might use my low tech submarine-esque radar to try and spot some movement down the way; or, I can put on thermal goggles and look for the white hot glow of something alive.

Maybe there’s a guard I’d like to take out so I can get through a tight spot. I equip the Tree Bark camouflage and creep up to a tree, pressing myself against it. Continuing to hold the stick up to stay prone against the tree, I draw my tranquilizer gun and attach a new silencer so as not to alert the other guards (for some reason, silencers wear out after a while). I can lean around the corner and take a potshot, a simple action which requires carefully sequencing five or six button presses.

The camouflage system seems promising at first, but ultimately adds very little to the gameplay.

What happens if I mess up during all of this and one of the guards spots me? Well, the alarm sounds and I have to find a place to hide and go unseen while waiting for three — yes, three — successive timers to count down, each 100 seconds long. Most of the time, however, finding adequate hiding from all of the guards who flood the area is nigh impossible. When I do find a spot, I have to sit on the couch and wait for the timers to wind down.

If I’m shot or hit by a grenade blast, my life bar and my stamina bar go down, and I have to go into yet another screen to heal myself. By using certain items I can repair the wounds and get myself healing again. For a gunshot wound, use the knife, disenfectant, styptic, and bandage; for a broken bone, use the splint and bandage; for burns, use ointment and bandage; etc. To replace stamina, I eat some of the food I’ve caught, being careful that it isn’t poisonous or rotten. If it is, then I have to administer antidote or a digestive medicine.

And so on, and on, and on.

In other words, there’s a lot going on, far too much, in fact. The option to experiment is there, and I’m sure to every challenge there is a brilliantly bizarre way to overcome it. But the game is so determined to have the aire of a simulation that it almost always ends up punishing experimentation. Slip up once and I either have to kill myself to reload or simply wait and sit for six achingly long minutes until the alarm dies off. Consequently, in every situation I take the exact same tact: thermal goggles, leaf camo, a groin-achingly careful pace, and a dollop of fear.

After being spotted by the enemy, the player often has to wait more than five minutes for the game to return to a playable state. I played my Nintendo DS to pass the time.

Fans of the series say they love the game because of the depth, both in terms of story and gameplay. In the former case, there certainly is a certain comic book appeal, and in the latter, an intriguing conceptual complexity. But in neither case would I say there is depth. It’s a collage of interesting ideas, but when you step away and look from afar, the gestalt is a jarring mess.

I began the unwieldy task of playing through the Metal Gear Solid games out of a strong sense of curiosity. Here is a series which is known for its complexity, unchecked authorial voice, and outrageously surreal plot — and yet, it’s one of the most visible and popular video games of the past two decades. Whereas films built from this equation get relegated to short runs at arthouse theaters, to be remembered only in the annals of Nyetflix, the Metal Gear Solid series is treated like the Faulkner of interactive media.

Some 35 hours into the series, I think I understand what the fans love about the series. And I have long since come to realize just how much I disagree.