indefinite articles

This Week: Metal Gear Solid 4, on first blush, turns out to be … actually good!

Ladies and gentlemen, sing it from the rooftops! After emerging from the vision quest mire of Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater, those monuments to design indulgence, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot is not only fun, but suprisingly so. Perhaps it has the advantage with the ornate punishment of the previous games so fresh in my mind, but this latest endeavor is refreshingly clean in comparison.

The big game of the year thus far along with Grand Theft Auto IV, Guns of the Patriot was released to massive buzz and, as is sadly to be expected of high profile releases, critical acclaim. Sons of Liberty also was lauded, with a Metacritic score of 96, and not until later did it rightly come to be regarded as the steaming pile of shit that it actually is. So, despite the initial rush of dopamine that Guns of the Patriot offers right off the bat, the true cut of its jib remains to be seen.

One of the new beasties in Guns of the Patriot, the Gekkou, whose cow-like “moo” will strike fear into even the most battle hardened warrior.

Although at its core the gameplay of Patriots isn’t fundamentally different from that of Snake Eater, the balance of all the elements has been readjusted to be more lenient in almost every regard. The alarm timers are dramatically faster and less touchy, granting the player the ability to explore at leisure. Subsystems have been streamlined and incorporated into other systems, and in some cases, such as the camouflage system retained from Snake Eater, they are invisible within the in-game action. Finally, the game liberally provides the player with tactical information, meaning maneuvering around the levels is nearly as simple as it was in the first game.

With these simple tweaks to balance and design, paired with the smoothed out controls that allow Solid Snake to move and shoot much more easily, the game unfolds at a clip more akin to a zippy first-person shooter. And the dopey guard staples of the series are joined by hyper-aggressive enemies that instill a raptors-in-the-kitchen level of terror, who occasionally turn the typical stealth gameplay into some wild Mexican standoffs.

The plot has done a fine job so far of keeping up, too. The game globetrots along like a good espionage flick, changing locales through each of the five acts (only the first of which I’ve completed). It’s a fresh change of pace in a series that usually sticks to one locale over the course of a entire installment.

Jumping into the near future, the game once again follows Solid Snake, now an old man due to an accelerated aging process built into his genes, a control valve purposefully installed to limit the lifespan of a human weapon. The world has devolved into an international culture of war dominated by private military corporations, with the armies of national governments having evaporated in the conflict-focused economy. In an effort to maintan this stable chaos, every soldier, vehicle, and piece of equipment is monitored in a massive computer database, like some kind of stock market of blood. The System, as it is so cleverly named, is used both for tactical information and to constantly adjust the going values of territory, the PMCs’ services, and arms on the fly.

It’s actually a fairly compelling setting, despite the myriad plotholes I’m sure lie beneath the surface. Many flaws from previous games cling on for dear life, but they’re impact on the actual gameplay is reduced nearly to the point of invisibility — excepting, of course, the ample cutscenes, slick and exciting as they are.

Hopefully, the quality of the gameplay will allow the game’s — and the series’ — themes and authorial quirks to rise to the surface. Now in the final chapter, it’s time to dig in and chow down and see what Hideo Kojima has really been up to all of these years. Has the Solid series just been a gun nut’s rambling military fantasy, or an auteur’s thoughtful allegory on the modern world?

Next Time: Gravitas vs. diarrhea. Toilet humor, fan service, and sexism.