metal gear: retrospective: part II: mei ling, shut up: also, peeing.

metal gear solid was released in japan on september 3rd, 1998. north american gamers had to wait 6 weeks later until they were able to play mgs. between those two dates, i bought every video game magazine that had “metal”, “gear” and “solid” somewhere in an article somewhere, just to read reviews. after reading everything from diehard gamefan to playstation magazine, i felt like i was ready for the challenge.

the morning of october 21st, 1998, while baseball fans were preparing to watch the yankees sweep the san diego padres to win the world series, a small section of video gamers went into their local video game stores to purchase metal gear solid. when i went to eb games in chesterfield towne center @ 11am while i was supposed to be working, you’d see one nerdy kid after another walk into the store. another one would walk out with a wide smile with the little white bag that eb games was famous for. inside was a cd case with a white cover on it. the only thing that was written on the front of the case was “tactical espionage action” in small white lettering. below it in bolder more stylized red foil lettering was “metal gear solid”.

i purchased mine and said “fuck the world series” and planned to spend the whole night playing the game. i had to be at work the next day to do a service call at someone’s house but “fuck it”.

everybody that played video games was playing it. all of my friends owned it and in between key moments in the game, we’d call each other up at ungodly times at night and talk about how great the intro was and how cinematic it seemed.

the release of mgs wasn’t only a critical and commercial success almost instantly, it marked a critical milestone in the realm of gameplay: seamless cinematic cutscenes. kojima’s first love was art and illustration but he discovered how much he wanted to become a film director. with each of these cutscenes, there was a way to tell a story without just reading text on a screen and pressing X or A in order to read more text. you read body language, music swelled and built with the action and more importantly, it blended the suspense of a movie with the action of your way above average video game.

the intro of mgs starts when solid snake is shot out of a submersible towards shadow moses island, where a group of terrorists, known as FOXHOUND (snake’s former unit) takes control of metal gear to use as a bargaining chip to receive the remains of the legendary soldier, BIG BOSS. during this cinema, you notice how much of the playstation’s power is used for camera angles, lighting, water effects and even opening credits. while snake swims to the surface to the scene fades out and the title screen shows up, almost jabbing you to let you know that you’re still playing a game:

when you first start playing, you notice that even while you sneak into the dock area, opening credits still roll, making the game experience seem more like a movie. as with all previous mgs games, you have the opportunity to either dispose of the guards in the area, or just let them go as you sneak around corners and memorize patrol patterns in order to make it to the elevator, located north of you.

to help you not get caught and receive a premature game over screen, you have the soliton radar. the radar is helpful in that it gives you the whole area that you’re located in in the top right hand corner of your screen. which is more helpful is that the soliton even notes guards in your area, as well as a cone, dictating the line of sight of a particular guard.

if you do get caught however, you get to see the new techniques at the guards disposal, as well as snake’s disposal. snake is not limited to just the one punch death as he previously employed. now he has a punch kick combo which is used to incapacitate enemies until he has a chance to find concealment. also he has a judo flip he can use to put them down as well, which came in handy when you were running and needed a quick getaway.

the guards have their own tricks as well. if snake is caught within the line of sight of a guard, an alert mode is triggered. when in alert mode, the guards attack you and chase you until you hide. when you hide, you’re in “evasion mode”. evasion mode means you’re concealed but you still have to stay that way until you’re back into infiltration mode, which is the mode you want to be in unless you like bullets in your face.

instead of just creeping around like the previous versions of metal gear (with the exception of mg2: solid snake) you can hide under objects, hug walls, and even make noise to distract enemies. if you were in alert mode for too long, you were most likely going to die. this promoted a less violent approach if you wanted to. you can even play through the whole game without being caught at all unless the game is scripted to in order to trigger a cutscene.

another way mgs carried the story along was with the codec system. as with all other metal gear games, the codec is a necessity during snake’s mission. to make the codec an integral part of the gameplay, you had a support team at your disposal:

- colonel roy campbell, snake’s commanding officer gave you mission briefings and advice during combat.
- mei ling, the creator of the soliton radar and your visual and data processing specialist. she saves your game as well as gives you sage advice in the form of useless chinese proverbs.
- natasha romanenko, provides weapon and item tips if you needed them.
- naomi miller, the medical officer
- master miller, former drill instructor and survival coach. he’s very knowledgeable about the mission at hand.

as you go throughout your mission as snake, you encounter a few allies along the way. one major ally is meryl silverburgh, who you’ll discover is roy campbell’s niece. she is a rookie soldier who didn’t join in the revolt that FOXHOUND started since they’ve gone rogue. the addition of this character was a welcome one to gamers around. aside from some of the annoying characteristics (why’d she talk about herself so much? psssh women.) she gave snake a sidekick to drive the story and dialogue as you progressed throughout this mission.

you also meet dr hal emmerich. otacon (because of his fondness of anime) as he likes to be called, works for ARMSTECH, the company that designed metal gear rex. after hearing that metal gear rex is going to be used to launch a nuclear warhead, he accompanies you on the mission to assist you over the codec. when you meet him is sort of a historical event, however. most people wouldn’t realize it but it is history:

when meryl tasks snake with finding otacon, he ventures to the labs where he works. the hallway to the lab is covered in blood and the bodies of dead and/or mutilated soldiers. as snake rounds the corner, he sees (or doesn’t see) a ninja that has adapted a cloaking technology similar to predator. when snake sees the ninja completely sword fuck his last enemy he follows him into the lab where he has cornered otacon. otacon is cowering in a corner as the ninja walks slowly toward him, with his sword in hand. then one of the best things happens in video game history (the 0:18 mark):

btw. this isn’t the metal gear solid for psone. this is the gamecube version with better graphics and redone cutscenes.

aside from mgs for psone being a turning point in story driven gameplay and gameplay in general, it also introduced fleshed out boss characters. the members of FOXHOUND seemed to be a pretty normal bunch (sarcasm off). aside from looking like members of an industrial synth electro punk group, they all had specific specialties to be used to keep solid snake from preventing the nuclear attack.

liquid snake- the leader of the rogue team and snake’s genetic twin.
revolver ocelot- accomplished gunman and interrogation specialist.
vulcan raven- a gargantuan inuit soldier who has a FUCKING CHAINGUN on him at all times and was an employee of BIG BOSS in outer heaven.
sniper wolf- the first female enemy in the metal gear series. is able to sit for days to kill her prey. aside from being a worthy adversary, she is pretty much a player. she actually puts it on otacon so hard that he cries to snake not to kill her. snake encounters her twice through the game.
decoy octopus- specializing in impersonation, he is able to mimic any person he can get his hands on, down to the dna. in an unorthodox fashion, this is the first time there has been a boss character that dies without you fighting him. also he’s the only character you don’t see in his true form.

if you’ve already played mgs, you maybe wondering why i left off psycho mantis. well. every gamer has to do it. so i’ll follow and do it as well:

PSYCHO MANTIS

psycho mantis is the psychic expert of FOXHOUND. why FOXHOUND needs a psychic expert is beyond me but it sounds cool. he uses psychokinesis and telekinesis as his special abilities. your first encounter is near the beginning of infiltrating the main base and he floats before you while babbling some cool shit about “death” and i think “ashton kutcher” but i maybe wrong. you encounter him again when he takes control of meryl, which is probably the same as getting meryl drunk because she gets ALL ON SNAKE’S DICK, FAM. she coos and flirts and i think she touched his swimsuit area at one point.

after snake punches the living shit out of meryl (i can’t front, it was kinda fun to do), mantis reveals himself before him. after a small talk, mantis demonstrates his psychic ablilities to snake. what happened next was something i’ve never seen in a game:

if you had a memory card with previous konami saves in it, mantis would read the data and tell you what games you liked to play. also he demonstrates his ability by telling you to put your controller on the floor. when you do so, he makes the controller move by initiating the dual shock controller’s motors, making it shake. BUT if you didn’t have a dual shock controller, you just sat there and stared at it like an idiot as it was sitting on the floor in front of you.

during the fight however, the psychic brainfucks didn’t cease. during the fight, the screen would black out and only the word “HIDEO” would be seen in the corner of the screen in green writing as if your television was screwing up on you. you would fight psycho mantis for about 30 minutes until you realized that none of your weapons were hitting him. while psycho mantis was reading your mind and could tell your moves before you did them, you had to think. what’s the best way to circumvent this? nothing is working. you used guns, you tried to fight him hand to hand. you dodged that fucking furniture he threw at you to no avail.

nothing worked until. your friend told you that you had to switch your controller from port 1 to port 2 in order for him to not predict your moves.

best boss battle ever.

among the boss battles throughout included vulcan raven in a tank, a great hind d helicopter battle on top of an antenna with liquid at the controls and the two sniper wolf battles. then you encounter metal gear rex.

when you first see metal gear rex in it’s glory, you see how huge it is in scale. you enter that bay where it’s being kept and the camera angle is pointing up towards it as if you were right there with snake.

but of course because it’s snake, that intimidating hunk of metal with a maniac liquid at the controls was nothing to him.

after the battle, snake and meryl (or otacon, depending on a crucial part of the game…hint: just keep tapping. and don’t use turbo!) escape the base in a jeep while liquid follows, leading to an epic chase scene through the tunnel leading out in the middle of the alaskan tundra.

liquid dies of an uhhhh…”headache” and snake and meryl (or otacon…but hopefully not otacon because it looks really gay) ride off on a snowmobile into the sunset.

after the game, i still played it multiple times to see what new ways i can complete the game. i did a whole game without getting caught. i let otacon die. i let meryl die. i smoked cigarettes the whole time. i got infinite ammo and a tuxedo. i played the game numerous times after and it didn’t get stale not once.

metal gear solid went on to ship over 6 million copies worldwide. every game magazine gave it near perfect reviews. it was official: konami had brought it’s franchise back. even the mainstream began to take note, with hideo kojima being one of newsweek’s “top ten people” and entertainment weekly saying that MGS “broke new ground”.

in a couple of days, i will be back here to talk about who’s the real snake, retarded plot devices and OMGZ who’s that floozy with the hair?

thanks for reading.