Metal Gear Solid 4: No Country for Old Snake
So at long last, it's come to this. After a brief romp in the past, showing the origin story of the saga in all it's cheesy James Bond/Dr. Strangelove glory, the Metal Gear Saga returns to the present, 50 years after Snake Eater. The intention is to wrap up the series once and for all, tie up all the remaining plot threads and provide a sense of closure to all the characters somehow have survived to this point.
Metal Gear Solid 4 succeeds at this somewhat. I've been batting my feelings about this game back in my head for several days and it's going to be interesting to articulate exactly how I feel about it. It's a very mixed bag, with some very high highs and some very low lows. In general, it's better than I expected but it had the potential to be so much better.
Metal Gear Solid 4 is very nostalgic and there's no escaping this fact. The game is well aware that this is Snake's last hurrah, and indeed, the end of the line for pretty much everyone in this series. In some ways, this works nicely when the game reflects on Snakes 20 year career and how he's been screwed over in almost every way possible (even to the point of having premature aging written into his cloning process) and yet he refuses to give up or let it break him.
MGS4 picks up 5 years after MGS2, in an alternate 2014(which was half a decade in the future when the game was released) where the world has changed. War is now so perpetual that constant military spending on weapons development, logistics and Private Military Companies(PMCs) has become a vital part of the economy. Some PMC's have the armies that rival nations and it's implied, if not stating that actual standing militaries are starting to go into decline because apparently PMCs are cheaper. This is implied to be a result of the big shell incident from MGS2, though it's stated the Patriots are directly responsible for this particular state of affairs. The proliferation of Metal Gears that Snake spent so long(ultimately in vain) trying to prevent is also implied to have contributed to this.
Since disappearing from Arsenal gear in a RAY 5 years ago, Ocelot (still acting like Liquid Snake because of that stupid arm thing) has apparently taken control of 5 of the largest PMCs on earth and is preparing a revolt against the Patriots. Despite the fact that this would seem like a good thing, Colonel Campbell shows up for the first time since Metal Gear Solid and tracks down Solid Snake one last time. However, things haven't been going great for Snake in the last few years. Despite being in his early 40's, Snake has aged significantly, now looks like a man in his 70's and is now referred to as Old Snake for the duration of the game. Apparently when Snake was cloned from Big Boss, the process was deliberately tampered with by the Patriots to make sure he didn't live longer then he needed so, thus a built-in expiration date and accelerated aging. When the game begins, Snake learns he has a year to live at the most and this weighs on him for the entire game.
So naturally he's more than willing to accept a suicide mission to kill Liquid Ocelot because....he needs killing, I guess. Granted, Ocelot is kind of a terrible person (and a backstabbing bastard) but it feels like a fairly large chunk of the game is try to get to Ocelot or foil his plans and failing miserably at it. It adds to the already dark tone of the game where each and every goal snake pursues, up until the very end, ends up being yanked away from him, often because Ocelot is often 3 steps ahead of him
However, it does beg the question that since it's acknowledged at several times that Ocelot is trying to take down the Illuminati....er, Patriots, and Snake and Co are ALSO trying to take down the Patriots, nobody ever seems to bring up why they?re in such a hurry to stop Ocelot. They do discuss how the Patriots are now tied into the backbone of civilization itself, but it's also been established that they're more than happy to kill people, kidnap children, frame people for terrorism they themselves committed, turn people into child soldiers, ruin peoples lives, etc, etc, etc sometimes all for the sake of running experiments. It just feels like, couldn't they have had a 5 minute conversation about the possibility of "Hey, Ocelot and us want the EXACT SAME THING. Could we discuss the possibility of helping him and maybe finding a way of limiting the collateral damage afterwards?" There?s some talk about Ocelot enslaving humanity, but you only get that from the Colonel near the end and it?s unclear what he?s basing that on.
Kind of like how nobody really talks about the "Ocelot is possessed by Liquids Arm" plot device very much, despite the fact you'd think it would be of interest to people. In MGS2, one could make the argument that since Ocelot was the Dragon to Solidus and Dead Cell, Raiden's mission control were Patriot AI(s?) and Raiden was rarely in a position to actually notice it or ask about it, it didn't come up. However, by MGS4, Ocelot is kind of a big fucking deal and runs a bunch of powerful PMC's. You'd think the whole "He's possessed by the arm of a dead man" would get SOME mention and maybe people speculating that Ocelot is just crazy. Instead, people treat it all "Liquids bad vibes are flowing into Ocelot" with a straight face, like this a normal thing that happens to people. And granted, it's the Metal Gear universe, that has crazy stuff happen all the time but even thing you'd think this was a bit out there. Then at the end, we find out it was faking it the whole time, for reasons I still don't quite understand. Apparently, it's to fool the Patriots so he could take them down but considering Liquid was against the Patriots (per the MGS2/4 retcon), I don't understand why/how this is supposed to work. Maybe confuse them with such bizarre and illogical behavior that they get confused, which means he can slip shit past them?
MGS4 has a LOT of cutscenes, close to ten hours? worth and some of the longest cutscenes and blocks of cutscenes in history. Strangely enough, the effectiveness of this is highly variable. Some cutscenes are amazing, but quite a few of them are either silly or involve a lot of talking without really saying much. The game spends a lot of time trying to tape all the loose edges and threads together, often through slideshows and sometimes outright retcons (as usual for this series), so it seems strange that sometimes cutscenes run for a while but don't seem to go anywhere. Some of the Act Briefing/Debriefing cutscenes feel like this, but there's also a lot of talk about Kojimas favorite plot device.....NANOMACHINES! I will give it to the man, when he picks a form of pure fucking magic, he commits himself to it, whether it makes sense or not. It's not going to stop me from making fun of it.
A lot of discussion is given to SOP (Sons of the Patriots) system which apparently is the thread tying the Patriot AIs(it's confirmed that the Patriots are actually a group of AIs) to every weapon on earth, though most of it is pretty dense and the rules seem to be fairly arbitrary to the point it's almost not worth criticizing it. Why do their weapons work one moment but not another? NANOMACHINES! SOP! Why are all the weapons on earth ID locked? NANOMACHINES! SOP! PATRIOTS! FUCK YOU! Why is it terrible that all the guns on earth fall silent because apparently nobody wants to buy working, non-ID tagged weapons? NANOMACHINES! FUCK YOU, STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!
Then there are the retcons, which get really, really heavy in Act 3.EVA makes her reappearance in the series as Big Mama, and not coincidentally, also Snake's mother, as in the woman who the cloned embryos of Solid, Liquid and Solidus were implanted into. Though a rather long series of cut-scenes, she explains that the Patriots were founded by pretty much all the main characters from MGS3, including Big Boss. SIGNIT became the DARPA chief from MGS, Zero ran the show and Paramedic ended up becoming the Dr. Clark who turned Grey Fox into the Cyborg Ninja, as well as spearheading the Snake Cloning project. Buying the idea of Zero running the patriots or at least being involved isn't a big leap considering he outright name drops them at one point. Signit, sure, why not? Paramedic being a mad scientist who turns people into crazy cyborgs? The same chick who wanted to talk movies all the time? It's hard to see that, honestly.
And Big Boss being in on the whole thing seems really weird considering how fucking broken and betrayed he seemed at the end of MGS3. Apparently, they had a falling out over using his DNA to make the baby snake clones but it still feels weird to me. Added to that is the weird religious symbolism and iconography that starts hitting hard around this point, something that was never so forced or prevalent in the series thus far. And then there's a lot of talk about Big Boss not actually being dead after Snake BURNED HIM TO DEATH in zanizbarland, only mostly dead and in a coma because apparently the Patriots really wanted to keep him alive but in a coma for reasons that never seem adequately explained in game. And then he dies again, except he doesn?t (I'll get into this later). Also, apparently Big Bosses DNA is the key to the SOP system, also for reasons, which is why Ocelot spends half the game collecting clone DNA to attempt to replicate Big Bosses DNA, but Solid and Liquid aren't perfect clones so it doesn't work so... NANOMACHINES!
When the game isn't throwing technobabble at the player left and right or making some interesting retcons, it's working on character arc closures for pretty much everyone still alive. Naomi and Vamp make a return, as does Raiden, Rosemary, Meryl and Johnny "I POOPED MY PANTS" SASKI. Some of these arcs are more interesting than others, but I honestly wasn't terribly invested in any of them. Naomi is still a backstabbing ***** whose major reason for being there is to explain some of the technobabble, switching sides over and over again and then dying of cancer that she only revealed she had 5 minutes before she dies of it, because NANOMACHINES! Meryl is fine and at least is somewhat important the plot, as well as having a personal connection to Snake.
OTOH, Johnny suddenly goes from being pretty much an extra (and it's possible to miss him in MGS2 quite easily) to Meryl?s love interest, and apparent DEUS EX MACHINA because apparently he's the only one on the planet who doesn't have NANOMACHINES and nobody knew but him until it was plot relevant. It's justified that Johnny hates needles and spent 10 years ducking MANDATORY shots in the military, but this is also the same dude who was at both Shadow Moses and Big Shell and somehow walked away unscathed from both of them despite always coming across as a massive fuckup, so why not?
Raiden and Rosemary and Col Campbell all show up again, mostly inoffensively. Campbell plays much the same role before, except now he and Rosemary are an item. Rosemary acts as a therapist of sorts here and at least has the decency of not trying to talk about relationship issues every 5 minutes (though Snake would likely cut her off if she tried). Apparently this whole thing has caused a rift with Meryl and Raiden in a relationship....square(?) of some sort that I didn't care too much for.
Oh, and Raiden is back, but now he's a cyborg ninja now because of stuff that happened offscreen in the intervening 5 years between MGS2 and MGS4 that, as far as I can tell, is never explained. It also means that instead of having an actual character arc (except for a few bits here and there), Raiden is a walking death machine who conveniently pops in to save Snake several times, almost to point he could be called Mr. Deus Ex Machina. Oh, and apparently, he breakdances while he fights now, means that reference Yahtzee made actually wasn't a joke. While some of his scenes were interesting, I mostly didn't care about him one way or the other.
Beyond that, Vamp shows up yet again and still refuses to JUST DIE ALREADY! Raiden fights him in a cutscene, then Snake fights him, then Raiden shows up again and fights him, while Snake fights off a horde of mini-metal gears with cow legs called Geckos who are all trying to suicide bomb them. This is done as a split screen, where Snake (the player) fights the geckos on one side while Raiden and Vamp have a knife fight on the other. It's an interesting idea, except that fighting the geckos is intense enough that you can't actually pay attention to fight on the other side of the screen and expect to survive.
OTOH, I don't really like Vamp. Part of it is the fact he refuses to die no matter how many times you put him down and part of is that he's a repulsive creep, so despite the interesting idea of him being the MGS universes idea of a Vampire, I was more then happy to see him finally die. At least this time he wasn't flying around the room and htting me with his magic tricks.
If it sounds like I'm spending a lot of time griping, it's because the game is very flawed. A lot of the cutscene time is poorly used, which makes the sheer amount of it feel wasted. THere are some good cutscenes in there, though, Notably the final set of cutscenes from chapter 3, which might be dumb, but were entertainingly dumb. Some of the cutscenes in Chapter 4 and 5 were also quite good. Ocelot ends up stealing the show every time he's on screen, mostly because he's taking large bites out of the scenery and it's fucking glorious. Even his Snidely Whiplash impression at the end of Chapter 4 somehow works. There's also an interesting use of split screen in Chapter 5, where all the characters are shown enduring particularly difficult obstacles at the same time, just minutes before Ocelot's plan is able to be completed (Namely, blowing up a satellite with the Boss Patriot AI's on it so the AI Ocelot controls will become the new boss AI, allowing Ocelot to shut the system down). It's nicely done and since Snake's part of it isn't too taxing, it's actually possible to watch both screens, unlike the similar scene in Act 5.
However, I did actually like the game. The series looks better than it ever has, which is specially noticeable when comparing character models between MSG4 and even as recent as Snake Eater, let alone not having to remember Meryl as a creepy faceless human looking creature from MGS. The CODEC conversations are mostly forgettable, with only 2 contacts this time around: Otocon and Rosemary and neither one had much memorable to say. OTOH, the number of mandatory conversations are far, far fewer because the series finally figured out how to have the characters converse during normal gameplay, like almost every other game out there.
Gameplay, in general, feels steadily improved. For the first time in the series, Snake has to move through active battlefields, notably in the first two chapters. It felt surreal at first, like Snake had somehow infiltrated one of the COD Modern Warfare games and didn't realize it. Both sides are hostile to snake, at least initially, but the fact they're pretty focused on fighting each other makes it easier to maneuver past them and escape if alerted.
Snake has a few new tricks up his sleeve this time to make things more interesting. Notably the Octo-camo, which works as a higher tech version of the camo/facepaint system from MGS3. If snake is prone or next to a wall, his suit will actually change to help snake blend in (though it can be switched to manual mode, which makes it work like it did in Snake eater). It helps snake to hide in plain sight, which can make the game too easy if not the for the fact Snake takes face less punishment (or so it seems) then he used to. There?s also the Solid Eye system, which looks much like an eyepatch but functions as a multipurpose sensor, including a RADAR, NV/IR, binoculars, and a HUD for keeping track of enemies and items on screen. Its big downside is that it runs on battery power, much like the sensors in Snake Eater.
Instead of stamina system, the game introduces Psych, a meter under Snake's Health bar meant to measure his state of mind and sanity in battle. Presumably it's supposed to move up or down depending on how well snake is doing and act as a mechanic for battlefield stress and PTSD, but mostly it seems like a joke to be used during cutscenes. Because things that happen in cutscenes make it go up and down as well. Snake gets called old or is implied to be going senile (Act 4 pulls this particular trick on you), the meter goes down. Snake looks at a pretty woman?s ass, it goes back up. The only time it really works as intended is during the final run of chapter 5, where Snake's will to go on, both by his aging body and a particular brutal hallway filled with lethal amounts of radiation are pushed to the limit, reflected in both the cutscenes and by his psych being slowly draining the entire time. It's quite powerful, but sadly, it's the exception.
Finally, there's the Drebin shop, which is a special menu that allows snake to purchase or unlock new weapons or buy ammo and accessories. DP or Drebin points are gained by collecting enemy weapons, and presumably selling them back to the shop to be laundered, on a sliding scale where dead enemies provide a fraction of the value, while weapons taken from a held-up enemy are fully redeemable. Notably, all purchases are done instantly and delivered directly into your inventory, including boss battles. Which beats scrounging around for more ammo in the middle of a heated firefight like the older games occasionally necessitated, if a little immersion breaking.
Despite the game being divided into separate acts and not a single large map, it actually feels like the game is bigger at times then most if not all of the previous games (Snake Eater might be bigger). Act 4 really stands out here, where Snake returns to Shadow Moses and has to traverse the entire base to reach Metal Gear REX one more time (because REX still has its railgun which isn't connected to the system). While the entire games maps aren't accessible (namely some of the basement floors), it really puts into perspective just how small the game area from MGS when you don't have to backtrack and find a way through roadblocks every few minutes. Even taking into account that the Comm Towers/Snow Field before reaching the final building was scaled down, it's still beautiful to look at and possibly the best use of Nostalgia in the entire game.
Topping it off is the end, where Snake and Otacon(somehow) activate Metal Gear REX once more and use it to confront Ocelot, who is driving a RAY unit in what might be one of the best boss fights in the series and certainty in MGS4. It's more then entertaining enough to make me forgot that the whole thing shouldn't be possible, considering that RAY was specifically designed to hunt down and destroy REX copies and the fact Snake did quite a number on REX at the end of MGS and it's been sitting there abandoned and exposed to the arctic elements for 9 years. Otocon just "hacks" it and somehow it works. No explanation (Not even NANOMACHINES), but I'm willing to forgive it.
The Quirky mini-boss squad for this particular iteration of MGS are the "Beauty and the Beast Corps" or as they shall be known from here on, B&B. Their name stems from the fact that they are a group of really hot looking women(The Beauty) who wear animal themed personal mecha-suits, the Beast.
Gameplay-wise, the B&B are interesting, combing aspects of bosses from previous games though their execution is mixed. Laughing Octopus has mecha-tentacles and the ability to blend in with the surroundings, Raging Raven has a personal wing-suit/jet pack she uses to fly around and bomb you with, Crying Wolf is essentially riding around in a wolf mech and occasionally pops the hatch so she can snipe Snake with a very familiar looking Railgun (Fortunes from MGS2) and Screaming Mantis, who floats around and has some of the same tricks as Pyscho Mantis from MGS4(including using Meryl as a hostage). In some cases, it's shown or implied that they are channeling previous bosses, particularly Crying Wolf who fights snake in pretty much the same place as Sniper Wolf was fought to the death in MGS(complete with a phantom wolf who is implied to be Sniper's spirit). Psycho Mantis actually shows up as a ghost of some kind (ghost in the machine?) and was possessing Screaming Mantis.
I actually rather enjoyed the Octopus and Wolf fights, since Octopuses fight requires you to be properly paranoid because she can disguise herself any pretty much anything (but a savvy player can catch her in the act and get some free hits in) while Crying wolf is a Sniper duel nostalgia level with some FROGs along for support. Screaming Mantis and Raging Raven I found a bit more tedious, due to Mantises flying around with a ton of human shields and Raven just flying around and making it really hard to get a hit in (though not terribly difficult to avoid getting hit, ironically).
Unfortunately, the B&B are a good idea marked with some very questionable and flawed execution. The main deal with them is that they all have incredibly sad and traumatic backstories which lead to them having heavy bouts of PTSD, as well as being extremely emotionally and mentally damaged (which is a good idea when you want to toss someone into power armor) and their power suits/armor reflect their damaged animal "personas". The idea of personifying victims of war as becoming fucked up next generation soldiers is a cool one and something previously explored in this series.
However, the real problem comes in when you deplete the Beasts health bar and the power armor falls off, revealing the Beauty underneath. What was a bestial opponent in power armor is now a sexy, but no less damaged, young woman in a skin-tight latex bodysuit. Which is where Kojima's wiener seemed to get in the way of his message, because it's one thing when you go with "These poor girls! They were children that had very awful things happen to them and it broke them and now the only thing that keeps them remotely sane is the thrill of battle, but they're still obsessed with one particular emotion and think they're animals" but then continue with them being sexy supermodels in very tight and curvy latex catsuits, who then stalk snake with a creepy/sexy walk, usually just after the camera pans over their ass/hips in a very noticeable way. It both undermines the legitimacy of what he was going for and seriously makes me wonder what kind of weird and disturbing fetishes Kojima is into.
And this is before taking into account Kojima apparently wanted them to be naked after their beast forms are defeated and the wierdass photoshoot and J-POP dancing Easter eggs you can trigger, because they breathe through their skin, apparently.
Kojima has done sexy characters(EVA) and sexy villains(Sniper Wolf and/or Fortune) before, but somehow here his personal sexual preferences seem to be getting in the way of anything else. It's really jarring when you take the FROG troopers into account, who are not sexualized at all and are basically lady ninja storm troopers (albeit better at combat when not in a cutscene).
Ironically, The FROGS get particularly dumb at times, turning into redshirts for pretty much all of act 5. It's hard to tell if the scene where Meryl and Johnny are somehow able to hold off dozens of them for something like 20 minutes(while discussing their relationship and why nobody noticed that Johnny wasn't using the apparently mandatory nanomachines) or the scene where, confronted with a crippled, armless Raiden(holding his sword in his teeth), the FROGS decide to pull out knives and try to fight him that way, despite, you know, having guns and no reason not to shoot Raiden from a safe distance. Also, Raiden somehow gain the ability to shoot lightening.... probably because NANOMACHINES! Yeah, I know that joke is getting old.Blame Kojima's stellar "writing".
Despite all of this, the game does bring the entire series more or less to a sense of closure, even if the closure isn't always interesting or well executed. With the main story and the Patriots dealt with, there?s one more boss to fight: Ocelot. The whole thing is done on top of Outer Haven?s island as a fistfight not unlike that of Liquid and Snakes battle atop Rex in MGS. The combat, the HUD and even the music proceeds through MGS, MGS2 and MGS3 as liquids health is depleted and eventually ends with two old man beating each other into hamburger with slow, heavy blows.
It?s weird that it works so well, considering there?s no real point to the battle. Snake doesn?t have long to live regardless and Ocelot?s plan has been thwarted (though he claims he wanted snake to win all along), so it really ends up coming down to the two taking out their long standing frustrations on each other one on one. Well, that and it?s practically mandatory at this point to have a one and one melee fight with the boss at the end of a metal gear game.
However, Metal Gear always felt like Snake?s Story, and to a less extent, Big Bosses, and it?s their arcs where the most impact is felt. MGS4 does a fairly good job of winding down Snake?s run, giving him one last mission to overcome and give some kind of closure to his life and career. It?s weird to think that MGS4 marks 20 years, both in game and real time, since a young Snake went on his first mission for FOXHOUND and his first encounter with Big Boss, both of them cardboard cutouts of characters that have evolved into something more.
The final scene provides a fine coda to the whole experience, where Snake leaves everyone else behind to go to the Cemetery for a final visit to graves of the Boss and (implied but not shown) Big Boss. He prepares to kill himself by eating his gun and for a moment it looks like he succeeded, only for another scene to present itself. Snake doesn?t go through with it, and turns around to see Big Boss, alive and well, standing there with a Comatose and Vegetative Major Zero in a Wheelchair. After some handwaving about Big Boss being only mostly dead (and not killed as earlier suspected), the two achieve some sort of closure with each other before Big Boss and Zero both die, with Snake left with a short time to live how he wishes to.
While the circumstances that lead to that moment are iffy at best (the explanation is along the lines of ?Something Something Coma Something Something Solidus?), the scene overall feels quite moving and appropriate and I?m hard pressed to think of a better way to end Snake?s story. It even, strangely enough, clears up a point of contention between MG2 and MGS, where Snakes status as Big Bosses Clone son didn?t exist during their last battle and is never discussed prior to it. Big Boss in their final moments says he never considered Solid Snake a son, but respected him as a soldier, with jives nicely with their final conversation about the burdens of war and how society treats soldiers.
And it?s far preferably at any rate to the planned ending of MGS4, which (apparently) was for Snake and Otacon to turn themselves in and be executed for terrorism. It would seem Kojima originally wanted that ending and his studio staged a revolt to prevent it, feeling it would be a kick in the balls to end the series on such a downer note.
Anyway, with that being said, the next entry is going to go back to Big Bosses Story and show his transition to being the Villain of MG and the rise of Outer Heaven.
Next up MGS: Peace Walker: Let's do the time warp again!
