Backloggd Review: Metal Gear Solid
Originally written for Backloggd
I want to start of with saying that I do think Metal Gear Solid is good! I wouldn't have finished it in less than a week if I wasn't compelled to keep playing. Its story and the fantasy it plays into is really engaging. Be a spy! Do 80s action movie cool stuff! Listen to melodramatic characters monologue about genes, the meaning of life, and dramatic plot twists! All of this is great. It's a wonderfully over the top story that aims to tackle some capital T Themes and wears its heart on its sleeve. And all of that is super awesome! I love that so much!
For me, the failure of these ideas comes more in the execution of them. Very much in line with the style of narrative it's trying to pull off, there's a sense that every moment of this game has to be a uniquely epic and mindblowing moment. "Wow, to beat Psycho Mantis you have to change the controller!! How cool!" And there's something commendable in that approach, wanting it to be an epic romp from setpiece to setpiece, but the quality of these setpieces varies so extremely. To me this came down to two major reasons - the quality of communication and the conflict between the basic mechanics and setpieces.
For communication, it mostly just felt like you had to be perfectly in sync with what the game wants you to do, and sometimes that's intuitive, while other times it just feels completely baffling (it kind of reminded me of classic point and click adventures in that sense). If this communication had been more overt, if every time the colonel just goes "Hey, you should do this to have your epic moment" then that'd be fine. I want to play along with the game! Just tell me how!
The other aspect of this to me is the main mechanics. It's built to be a stealth game - the overhead camera, the radar, hiding behind walls, the silenced pistol, the cardboard box. But then there's honestly not that many just straight up stealth bits in the game? And instead this toolset is used for gunfights and boss battles? I think if so much of the game was going to be focused on cool action set pieces, it would've benefitted massively from systems and mechanics that reflect that. It feels like it's just a holdover from previous Metal Gear games, and almost feels resentful of that fact. "We can do so many cool setpieces now, and sick monologues! Why would we make boring stealth levels?" And again, I say, sure! I want to play along! Let me!
I want to play a cool stealth game that uses these mechanics! I also want to play a cool action game playing through all these cool setpieces! Instead I got to play both at once and it made me want more of the former and made the latter feel awkward and unintuitive.
But I would take this game any day of the week over some perfectly-polished-to-a-sheen, appeal-to-everyone sort of game. It's got so many ideas and so much vision, even if some of it is endearingly melodramatic, awkwardly at odds with itself, or just kind of stupid, at least it tried to do something interesting! And that vision is cool, even if a lot of that didn't end up landing for me.