gear solid metal: part I: a sardonic retrospective: about a game about not killing people.

three years ago, i had a friend over who thought my place was the perfect study hall. she was writing an outline about criminal justice stuff (apparently you can’t stab people. s’all i learned). i was playing metal gear solid 3, which had JUST released 3 or 4 days prior. since i had been a metal gear veteran since i was 8 or 9, i can get through most of the solid series without killing guards. as i’m sneaking through the soviet jungle she stops me: “why aren’t you killing those guys?”

she’s saying this as she looks up from her book and peers over her check cashing window sized glasses.

“well, the point of the game is to NOT get caught. you really don’t have to kill anyone in this game.” i said as i paused the game and looked up at her.

“that’s the most retarded shit i’ve ever heard in my life” she replied. she wasn’t much of a gamer outside of pong or bejeweled. i remember she had a thing for tekken because the fighting system is so simple, you can beat someone by banging on buttons like a monkey without a central nervous system. i quickly got into defensive metal gear solid fag mode.

“you think it’s retarded because you’ve never played it. and you don’t know the history of metal gear!” it sounded so gay and geeky i think i said it with a lisp.

she continued her studies, i continued spending 45 minutes trying to kill the end. after she fell asleep, and i finally defeated the end. i turned off the ps2 and watched a little tv. it just so happen double impact was on one of those random channels that show action movies at 1 in the morning. then i thought “you know what? NOT killing people in a video game is pretty fucking retarded”.

generally in most action gaming situations, you have a central objective: kill every enemy that crosses your path. grab powerups or more ammo to kill more enemies. then continue killing enemies.

and that formula has worked pretty successfully for video games. that’s the POINT of most video games. to shoot stuff. and the stuff turns into power ups or points. there was no real logic to it. final fight had you eating turkey legs off of the streets of metro city without blinking an eye. you really didn’t have to analyze that much in video games.

then some kid named hideo kojima (who shares a birthday with moi: august 24th) came to konami and released a game that not only challenged that ‘kill em and turn em into power ups’ mentality when it came to games. he challenged the player as well. that game became “penguin adventure” for the MSX game console.

no but really, after that he released metal gear.

metal gear is set in the south african state of outer heaven, a military stronghold state run by a legendary mercenary. you are SNAKE, a new operative of FOXHOUND and your mission is to infiltrate the stronghold, rescue a previous operative by the name of GRAY FOX and carry out his mission, which is to destroy a walking bipedal tank by the name of metal gear.

the most interesting thing about the story (aside from the bipedal tank being called…*gasp* metal…GEAR?!) is the mission. infiltrate. not kill or assassinate. but infiltrate. and 90% of the game, you will be infiltrating outer heaven. the first enemy you come upon is a guard who exclaims “I’M FEELING ASLEEP” (it’s a japanese to english port, sue us) and therefore, falls asleep. you have a choice whether to stroll past him or punch the shit out of the guy. sure punching the shit out of a person while they are sleep sounds like a funtime at the frat house to me. but your mission is to infiltrate.

what kills me about the first metal gear is that when i was 8 years old, i didn’t care about reading the instruction manual. just tell me what button is the kill button. and i’ll mash that kill button until my thumbs bleed. and i always went out of my way to punch the shit out of guards just because i could. i also realized that i wasn’t living that long using my preferred approach. i didn’t realize until after christmas (when i got the game) when i went to my friend’s house for his birthday party and saw him so far in the game. i asked him how’d he get so far. he looks back and says “i’ve been sneaking”

sneaking? sneaking?! SNEAKING?! in a video game? in contra aliens attack the world and you send two shirtless commandos do no nothing but shoot the shit out of them. rush n attack you literally…rush and attack the shit out of people. you’re supposed to shoot the shit out of people because it’s the american way. we’ve been doing it for years and it’s worked pretty well for us so far. but SNEAKING?

i took the advice of my friend “you have to sneak everywhere” and went home to play it. i was surprised how far i had gone by just not killing people. eventually i got to the twin gunners and got destroyed because i thought i could sneak past them too.

as i began to traverse through the story of espionage and murder and double crosses. i didn’t notice it but this was the first time i’d seen a game with such a sprawling storyline. the story takes place through codec conversations between you and your multiple contacts. you rescue a hostage and they tell you info that can help you during your travels. when you finally watch that outer heaven explode, you feel accomplished. you went against all odds and won. everyone that was holding you back, including your commanding officer, couldn’t stop you.

then you continue on with your next mission. metal gear 2: solid snake was commissioned by konami without kojima’s consent. the game did release to great reviews and still kept the sneaking gameplay with the addition to a few new toys such as robotic mice and three different types of rations.

note: what kinda did bother me is that the game is set in 1999, which was the end of the cold war. the END of the cold war? kinda late there, don’t you think?

MG2:SS didn’t get a release in the united states until 2005 with the release of metal gear subsistence. instead we received snakes revenge, which infuriated the metal gear fan public mainly because the story itself wasn’t attributed to metal gear canon. also the game forced you to actually kill people because they added these retarded side scrolling missions which broke the gameplay up and reduced metal gear to rush n attack. it wasn’t metal gear. it was so unmetal gear, that even the instruction manual was fucked all to hell.

the manual had the distinction of being one of the few that conflicted the plot in the actual game by miles. instead of big boss (who is actually the villain of snakes revenge. spoiler warning, btw) the main villain is named higharolla kockamamie. which is a play on ayatollah khomeini. even metal gear wasn’t named metal gear but the “ultra sheik nuclear attack tank”. that’s like calling a washing machine the “crazy mother’s box that cleans clothes better than hands machine”. across the country, we wasted our money (and time) on this game and to find out that the story didn’t even stick to metal gear mythos was the double punch to the groin.

the two separate sequels to the original metal gear were met with positive reviews. one accepted by fans of the MSX2 version. one not accepted by US gamers. a few years later, metal gear 3 was planned for release on the 3D0 but when the console failed it was halted and moved to the playstation for development.

along with the conceptual artwork by yoji shinkawa and support of a phalanx of developers at konami, kojima used every resource to make the game as realistic as possible. from SWAT teams doing demonstration of vehicles and explosives to individually designing each desk, metal gear 3 was to be the best playstation game ever.

the name was changed to metal gear solid, due to them creating a new story for snake. the first two MSX games weren’t really known about worldwide but fans were familiar with snake. also considering the game is in 3d using polygons and texture mapping, the game looked more solid, hence the name.

in 1997, i remember dialing up into my 56k modem because i had just heard that a new video dropped, showing demo footage of the new metal gear solid, shown at E3. it’s amazing that it took me an hour to download this 11 years ago:

after fueling the hype machine for 2 years about the newest current gen title which was destined to be the best game ever made for the playstation, metal gear solid finally releases with critical and commercial acclaim.

come back through in a couple of days for part 2 of this terribly written metal gear solid retrospective when i blog about gaming’s first onscreen pissing of the pants, girlsgirlsgirls, raiden’s raging vagina and breaking down fourth walls.