Player Vs. Player: MGS4

Posted by Gary Hodges at 1:01 AM Jul 09, 2008

Welcome to a new feature we're going to try and play with once in a while, "Player Vs. Player" - Joystick Division's equivalent of point-counterpoint. Why not just call it "point-counterpoint" then? Well, um... to justify our existence as working writers?

This time, Gary Hodges and Nate Patrin discuss the controversial Metal Gear Solid 4. Gary has banished the game from his house to wander the Earth for all eternity, while Nate has a somewhat kinder view.

Both, though, agree that any and all problems with the cutscenes would be easily forgivable if they looked like this:

Click through to read the two most verbose members of the Joystick Division team talk MGS4 (as well as Brock Samson in hushed, reverent tones).

Gary:

Dug your review of Metal Gear Solid 4, even if I enjoyed the game a fair bit more than you did. Sort of. Unlike your piece on Grand Theft Auto IV (from my narrative/immersion/character-obsessed standpoint, it's still a 9.5/10 -- same as No More Heroes), I found myself agreeing significantly with your gripes, or at least sympathizing with them.

The only significant disagreement I have is with your complaints about the deliberate, two-button nature of aiming firearms, since this is one of those games where you actually have to think about what to do with your gun and when to do it instead of going apeshit spraying everyone and everything with lead. And at least the codec calls aren't as interminable as the ones in MGS2. You might also want to keep in mind that I do have a soft spot for the notion that such a massive, overwhelming blockbuster title can be so willingly bonkers; I'll take "a massive nanotechnology-hacking conspiracy controlled by a man with a possessed arm must be stopped by a rapidly-aging genetically-engineered supersoldier who must find a way to stop the virus running through his body from turning into a pandemic; also there is a monkey in mylar space diapers" over "our faux-Tolkien kingdom has been invaded by monsters; you are the one to seal the gates of evil with your magic sword" any day. I attribute that to some kind of design flaw in my brain.

But every other gripe seems fair enough: the cutscenes are ridiculously long and intrusive, the automatic OctoCamo isn't a particularly interesting or challenging gameplay mechanic, and I really have no idea what parts of the story to pay attention to and what parts to toss out. Jeez, Kojima's "editors are for chump-asses" informational overload makes Thomas Pynchon read as straightforward and matter-of-fact as an IKEA manual. This has to be one of the most inefficiently-told stories in video game history, and I have never been more bored and annoyed playing a game as I've been while sitting through all those scenes in that flying fortress watching Snake and Otacon talk about a whole lot of what the shit who the hell cares argledebargle. A lot of jaded geeks gave BioShock grief for rehashing System Shock 2 without being as difficult, but the idea of being able to soak in the entirety of its narrative while still being able to run around and shoot stuff more than made up for it, so you're dead on there.

But the funny thing about Metal Gear Solid 4 is that, like most MGS games, it seems designed to be played more than once: first to find out what the hell's going on, and then at every playthrough afterwards to refine your playing technique. The first time I made an attempt to plow through it, I treated it only marginally as the stealth game it's supposed to be. I watched the cutscenes, ignored the bits with the tedious diagrams of computer cores and soldier mugshots, chortled at the monkey antics, got mad that Raiden finally turned awesome and you can't play as him this time, then plowed through a level with my array of superbad custom rifles like it's Metal Gears of War or something.

This is where you learn what the game's about, come to grips with new gameplay developments and formulate basic strategy for new scenarios and enemies, plus all that plot plot et cetera. Familiarizing yourself with a Metal Gear Solid game in this way is probably a make-or-break point for a lot of people, and if you don't give half a rat buttock about picking this game up ever again, I don't blame you. But once you get past the game the first time and beat it in reckless, get-it-over-with guns-blazing fashion, there's the likelihood you'll get this nagging feeling that you played it "wrong" -- and that if you really want to get the most out of MGS4, you've got to go through it again and make your own challenges: sneak through a level without any alerts, without any kills, without using anything but the tranquilizer gun and maybe a bit of close-quarters combat.

(One Penny Arcade forum thread I read once applied this principle to MGS3, opting to use no camo and nothing but the knife in terms of weaponry; he referred to it as "Brock Samson mode". I cannot hate any game that can let you do anything that could theoretically be called "Brock Samson mode".)

And the best part about the second playthrough? You got it: skippable cutscenes.

Nate:

"Brock Samson mode" - brilliant! Let's take a moment, shall we?

But seriously, you brought up something I’ve always had a pet peeve about. If you wander over to NeoGAF (I don’t recommend it, but if you do anyway), you see lots of people engaging in that sort of talk. “Play it on the hardest difficulty, go for no kills, go for no alerts, go for only CQC kills,” and so on. My question – regarding MGS4 or any other game – is: if you need to come up with what are essentially house rules to make a game more compelling, isn’t there a problem? When I was playing Street Fighter II in the arcades back in the day, I’d bet quarters I could beat people with one hand. It makes the game more interesting, but it doesn’t make it better. It’s a stunt, like the crazy Japanese gamers who go through Resident Evil with only a knife. It has nothing to do with the game, instead it's about the player.

It’s a lot like when people say “well, you’re not playing it as it’s meant to be played.” Take God of War – I cruised through that game just spamming the same easy-to-remember combo the entire time, and found the game tedious and one-dimensional. “Well you shouldn’t be playing that way,” an anonymous gamer online lectured me. “Learn some different combos.”

Why? I can beat the game with my simple 4-hit combo. Why would I bother trying to remember a more confusing series of button presses when the 4-hit works just fine? I mean, if I’m going to come up with self-imposed challenges to make a game more interesting, I might was well try playing it with the controller upside down.

That’s my feeling when I hear talk about how MGS4 “should” be played. I went through on the second-to-highest difficulty, stealthy when possible but shootin’ fools when necessary, and it all went fine. If the game is beatable with bland play, then it’s a bland game. I shouldn’t have to play in an unusual way to make it fun; the game should demand interesting play from me.

I already talked about the OctoCamo suit in my review – in short, a huge missed opportunity when it comes to gameplay. So here’s another example: the Metal Gear Mk. II. Aside from when I first got it and tested it out, I never used the Mk. II again, not even once, in my entire playthrough. Did you? Or more importantly: was there any situation where the Mk. II was a critical tool to progress? Sure, you can rely on it all the time, stunning enemies and scouting the areas ahead, but to me, it’s house rules again: you don’t really need to. Too bad you can’t sell the Mk. II to Drebin and put the cash towards a good grenade launcher or sniper rifle – I found those a lot more handy.

This is a mistake the MGS series has been making for a while now (in terms of gameplay). Up to and including MGS for the PS1, the inventory was very thoughtfully designed and balanced in tandem with the gameplay – it really was a militaristic reimagining of Legend of Zelda: go into areas, find key items, use key items to overcome geographical puzzles or bosses. Every item and weapon was generally useful in addition to having a key purpose at some point – even, as was the case with the first Metal Gear, the cigarettes.

Not so from MGS2 on. Suddenly you had twice as much inventory (or in the case of MGS4, many times even that), but in reality you can easily get through the game without laying a finger on 75% of those items. Like that damn OctoCamo suit: it’s illusory gameplay. A couple dozen different machineguns gives the player an impression of depth, but practically speaking it doesn’t add anything to the experience if one machinegun is essentially just as good as another. Illusory gameplay.

In a way though, I don’t want to bag on the gameplay too much. At worst, MGS4’s gameplay is merely bland, uninspired, and routine. Far from high praise, sure, but not nearly are bad as “broken, unplayable, and aggravating.” Ultimately, my take on MGS4 is that it’s a mediocre 5 or 6-hour sequel drowned in 9 hours of the most atrocious storytelling I’ve ever seen – and because that's the majority of MGS4, the experience – middling to begin with – suffers terribly. Simply put: MGS4 isn’t a good enough game to survive the handicap of its cutscenes.

They say if you have a bunch of monkeys in a room banging away on typewriters for eternity, eventually by pure chance they’d turn out all of Shakespeare’s plays. MGS4’s script would take ‘em half as long.