Nerdtales

Metal Gear Solid 4

Reading mittense’s review of MGS4 reminded me, that I wanted to write something about it for a long time. But I am a lazy bitch so I am taking his review as a basis to elaborate a little bit further.

At first, I have to agree, that the gameplay as a whole feels good and at times is awesome. The fear-ring is a very nice idea, the camouflage works very well and the combat is finally up to speed with video game standards. But still, the gameplay is heavily flawed and feels awkwardly uninventive. With the integration of a weapon shop that you can access any time in the game, even during boss battles, the game got way to easy. Huge ass boss? No problem, just buy the rail gun and some ammunition for it an you’re good to go. Out of ammo? Nevermind. In-game money is almost never an issue.

One could argue that you’re given the choice in which way to play the game and use it’s functions. That is true but I think there should be at least incentives for the player to play in a certain way which would suit the game better than others. The only thing that you get from MGS4 are some poorly presented medals at the end of the game. Apart from that the game never cares how you play it. You can run and gun as you want, there are no consequences except an alarm here and there, but there is an everlasting supply of ammo so nothing to worry about. The game wants to be a stealth-action game but never cares to act like one and set the rules like one.

What I didn’t expect MGS4 was to be this short. Yeah, when you count the cutscenes in it is at least 20 hours long. But without them the time you actually play is no longer then 7-8 hours. This pretty underwhelming. The ratio of game/cutscene is just too far off even for an entry in the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Some of the cutscenes just drag along for minutes and you hope they give you new information or advance the story but none of that happens. I don’t know who decided that this should be considered fun.

This brings me to the most disappointing side of the game, the narrative. Actually for the first couple of hours (and in this case also bosses) I liked the story pretty much. The narration is centred around a theme about war and warfare and their consequences for the people in it. This a nice change of tone and with Snake’s shape being representative for it a melancholic one, coming from earlier entries in the series where the fate of the world was the main focus, MGS4 is more personal, at least for the first couple of hours and bosses.

While there are neccessarily some ties to the main story archs of the MGS series, you first have to fight 4 warbeasts, girls that have been captured and tortured in warzones when they were little and that have since become traumatized and full of hatred. I really loved that part. Especially whenever I finished one of them, they lost their armor suit and became vulnerable little girls with tortured souls. What an awesome representation of real world conflicts and consequence. Shure, still a little bit over the top, but awesome nonetheless. At this point I thought MGS4 might really set a new milestone in gaming narratives. But my joy didn’t last long. It first became shallow when the back story of the girls wasn’t told via a short cutscene but just throught talking. Then, after finishing the 4th of the sisters, the narration suddenly changed. Oe might call it a full conversion because the main theme that was presented until here just got tossed away and didn’t matter anymore. The game was back in the old over the top MGS routine with villains Snake has fought for 40 years now and story archs coming from the first entry of the series.

From that point on I always had to have Wikipedia opened for all the hints and in-jokes because although I’ve played all of the former games, it is just not possible to remember every bit and detail, which you actually must to get at least something out of MGS4’s story from this point on. If anyone would ever write a detailed plot synopsis of MGS4 alone it would probably read like Tolkien’s Silmarillion - on speed.

I can’t get into much detail here, because it is obviously impossible, but MGS4 now desperately tries to finish and resolve every story arch since the first game. And compared to the first half of the game it really isn’t that good any more. Sure it is epic and a lot is being explained, but it is way too much and a couple of times cheap tricks are used to get some storys explained the fastest way possible (the weapons dealer?). At the end of the game the narratives are at it’s worst, when everyting (including Snake’s fate) resolves in a happy end. The game even betrays one of Snake’s core themes, getting a job done - no matter what, at that point and thus denies it’s own inner logic.

I once read, MGS4 is a flawed masterpiece. I think it is flawed and not a masterpiece. MGS2 is still the best game in the series because it is the most balanced one between fine gameplay and over top but in itself logical narration.