Solid Snake (Hurt) by Hungry Clicker

"Looks like an enemy recovered the car, so..."

It's hard to get a handle on what Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is going to be. All released footage has revolved around the infiltration of this particular POW camp. The emphasis on rescues and recruitment recalls Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (itself intended to be the fifth series instalment at one point), suggesting a hub based collect 'em up? Systems and gameplay feedback are also front and centre, looking delightful. The ability to create a solid, working foundation of interactive expectations is an undervalued ability. The best games allow players to generate a sense of security through basic calculations - cause and effect is everything. In that sense, Zeroes looks like it's got a rugged, but flexible machine pumping away under the hood. Out in March and budget priced, Zeroes would seem to be a slimmed down, chaser experience, with the real meat to come later in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Vid

20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #18 - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Saddled with a story best described as disastrous, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots instead excelled through incident interaction. With his evil twin causing trouble in the Middle East, a prematurely decrepit Solid Snake eases his broken bones into a muscle suit to go off after him. Series director Hideo Kojima involves us with the character by inflicting a stress bar upon him that fills rapidly if he's left out in open conflict for too long. Fill the anxiety gauge and Snake must retreat to the shadows and smoke a cigarette, or slap an ice pack on his aching back. Kill too many PMC stooges and Snake will vomit his guts up, disgusted. Although nowhere near as involving as series highpoint Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, MGS4 is notable for its forward-thinking approach to difficulty scaling. Lower settings could be played as a Rambo sim, while the expert difficulties demanded a fractional pace with movement dictated through learnt enemy patterns and ballsy opportunism. 

METAL GEAR SOLID (KONAMI COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT SOUND TEAM JAPAN - WARHEAD STORAGE)

Metal Gear Solid by Yoji Shinkawa

E3 2013: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

So far, the most impressive thing at this year's E3 has been Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Shown at the head of Microsoft's game heavy presentation, The Phantom Pain depicts a cybernetically augmented Big Boss sneaking around Afghanistan putting lumps on Russians; Rambo III by way of Red Dead Redemption. Franchise bells and whistles aside, the most exciting thing about this new game is the sense of scale it seems to be implying. Unlike the relatively linear paths of previous instalments, this Phantom Pain clip suggests a world teaming with detail and incident. The Metal Gear series has always been a playground - a set system for you to play with, and a variety of interactive options that each create different outcomes. This 80s set Snake Eater sequel looks set to be the most elaborate yet.

LIMB LOSS

Metal Gear Solid games are always fun and maddening to speculate about. Fun since Hideo Kojima never lacks for imagination, maddening thanks to series continuity being slippery at best. In this tease for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain it seems like we're seeing an older, late 1970s Big Boss taking hits fending off an imperfect clone and slipping into a coma, only to be rescued by Psycho Mantis and Revolver Ocelot of Metal Gear Solid's FOXHOUND unit.

It's interesting as well that in what appears to be a post-coma, pre-rescue sequence Big Boss has injuries similar to those he picks up during the original MSX Metal Gear game. Set in the mid 1990s, Metal Gear sees the player cast as Big Boss's clone son Solid Snake, out to thwart his father's apocalypse attempts. Given that mainstay Snake voice actor David Hayter has apparently been dropped in favour of Kiefer Sutherland for this instalment, it got me thinking that Solid Snake might pop up a minor, perhaps adversarial role? No such luck if Hayter's twitter feed is anything to go by - he denies even being approached to lend his gruff talents to this game.

REVENGEANCE CALLS

Just in case people weren't excited enough for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Producer Hideo Kojima has cut together a 7 minute hysteria trailer to get us hyped.

JACK THE RIPPER

Platinum Games bounce back after the Anarchy Reigns Sega shit out with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. This Raiden stand alone started out as Kojima Productions tech demo, in which users got to precision slash gigantic stationary fruit during slow motion super state sequences. Completely unable to tease a game out of the dicing concept, Koji Pro handed off the title to Platinum Games for a rescue. Not only have the studio delivered a title that looks like the spiritual successor to the wonderful Vanquish, they've managed to weave the precision slash mechanic into gameplay WHILST UPSIDE DOWN. Show offs.

Big Boss by Ashley Wood

XOF

Well, this is all I'm going to be thinking about from now until the day it's released. Details are scarce, but it certainly looks like Big Boss is back in this ten minute hype reel for Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. Awesome things to look out for include: a kid with a microphone port in his chest, a chap with the skin and mouth of a snake, and rainy contra compounds full of angry dogs. Maybe we're finally getting a game inclined to wade into the moral gray of Latin America's secret wars? Series fans may also notice that this sequence is basically a this-gen upscale of Snake's arrival in 1990's Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Listen out too for an Ennio Morricone track last heard in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

PRESS START

WALL RUN

After this week's VGA reveal, here's Hideo Kojima and Kojima Pro staff openly discussing the circumstance that lead to the original incarnation of Metal Gear Rising getting shitcanned. Also of interest is Mr Kojima's brief outline for a possible Metal Gear Solid 5 - what were MGS3's Cobra Unit up to during the D-Day landings? A title focusing exclusively on this fictional World War II outfit is an incredibly exciting proposition. Formed in 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad, and espionage active throughout the rest of the conflict, the multi-national Cobra Unit would be a great framework to interactively examine the shifting battle lines of the Second World War. Look out for more sneak peaks at Platinum Games hyper-caffeinated recalibration too.

VGA 2011: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

After more than a year of radio silence, we finally get a new look at the upcoming Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Looks like the rumours were true; this troubled title has been handed off to extreme action stalwarts Platinum Games. Ludicrous subtitle aside, Raiden's solo adventure seems to have finally graduated from a slice mechanic tech-demo to a hyper combat game in the vein of Platinum's Vanquish. Is it me or does Raiden sound more than a little like Willem Dafoe too? Although Revengeance appears to have zero in common with the usual Metal Gear tactical espionage, it does scratch an itch every series player has had since 1998 - we finally get to play as a cyborg ninja.

Cut Cut Cut

As well as selling on a controllable cyborg ninja, this trail for Metal Gear Solid: Rising also apportions a large amount of its screen time to demonstrating a variety of mechanics more or less new to the series. Dubbed 'free slicing', Metal Gear's new toy is a precision slash, allowing players to dismember their foes using controllable geometric paths during free-frame play. Director Mineshi Kimura has been quick to point out that although the user is able to horrifically carve up enemies, this new installment, like the rest of the series, will still encourage them to seek pacifistic alternatives. More than likely, ripper-play will attract all kinds of armed unwanted attention, hassling up the experience. Still, with a Raiden this powerful, who cares? Let them come! They shall be cut too. Also interesting are the destructible environments, an idea teased very early on, but more or less junked from the final build of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The ideas been flipped on its head though. Rather than be the fleeing party, suffering ever shrinking cover, you're the monster removing any sense of safety.

Disaster Year 2004: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

For the third game in the Metal Gear Solid saga, series director Hideo Kojima shifted focus off millennial subterfuge, winding the clock back to a 60s set inception event. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater details the super soldier souring that facilitated a dreadful future. Players are cast as Naked Snake, the CIA trained secret agent that goes on to found a couple of psychotic paramilitary nations, and provide the raw code for his clone son Solid Snake.

Equipment skews lo-fi, forcing a more deliberately paced advance - sites and clearings must be ruthlessly scouted before proceeding. The jungle stranded Snake also requires a constant upkeep. He must be fed to keep his motors running; sweets and mythological delicacies offer the greatest boost, but positive tastings can be developed through repetition. Any wounds Snake acquires must be swiftly dealt with. A bandage isn't enough, injuries must be stitched and disinfected before dressing. This menu heavy micro-management instills a protective player-toy bond. It stresses the physical frailty of the Snake figure, whilst the narrative drives him into ever more dangerous situations. It also establishes a sense of human failing in a character previously portrayed as an archetypal bad father. This sympathy deepened by the constant betrayals Snake must shoulder. As Naked Snake limps to the finish you realise there was method in his madness.

Guy Savage

Whilst imprisoned in a hyper-tech Gulag, Metal Gear Solid 3 hero Naked Snake dreams a playable mini-sequence entitled Guy Savage. In this interactive nightmare, users take control of a ninja swift trench-coat killer, dicing swathes of swollen undead coppers in a sepia-grain urban-decay corner.



Directed by Zone of the Enders:The 2nd Runner helmer Shuyo Murata, Guy Savage is an excellent stealth time-out. The player is allowed a brief stretch of undemanding hyper-violence in the midst of a game primarily dedicated to methodical sneaking. It's an expert breather. Lasting a little over two minutes, Guy Savage has the barest of slash interaction mechanic, with a fizz of super-mode escalation. After a set number of enemies are dispatched the action-man enters a frenzy mode: the screen blurs, and normal hack attacks become ribcage rending atrocities. Guy Savage is paced so that this power-up sequence can be fleetingly achieved twice, deftly building a sense expectation, then delivering on it. The title's brevity keeping the willfully shallow death-count building blocks from going stale. Why mention this now? Rumour has it that series director Hideo Kojima is working on a full-length version entitled Max Savage. No stranger to endless interact invention, lets hope Kojima can maintain this grue minded cause-and-effect over a feature length game.

Disaster Year: 2008 Awards - Mark Out Moment of the Year: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Mark Out Moment of the Year: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Colon overload!

Wilful suspension of disbelief and the Metal Gear series go hand in hand. Even discounting the near-future cyberpolitics storylines, you're left with a game that's completely devoid of any interaction for long stretches. Early on the in fourth Solid series entry, even the barest of steps will trigger yet another lengthy pad-down movie sequence, easily distancing the impatient player. If you're not interested in the latest minute detail in a barely glimpsed character's life, MGS4 is an endless interruption of naval gaze hell. You'll feel held to ransom that the dull movie indulgence unspooling before you might contain some clue vital to the next area, so you won't skip it. You can't skip it. You'll watch. You'll grow to hate Hideo Kojima. That's if you despise the cut-scenes; if you love them, if the tiniest fragment of tail-eating sub-conspiracy thrills you, MGS4 had treats galore!

Kojima's intention has always seemed to be that he wants you to relate to Solid Snake as a character, not an avatar. You're participating in his adventures rather than driving them. Not that Snake ever shapes much of his own destiny, he's a sluggish warhorse perpetually drafted into hot-spots to eradicate the mess. He's the trump card reacting to the latest in a string of insane plots to create government toppling soldier utopias.



1998's Metal Gear Solid saw a retired Snake reactivated into service to sneak around undoing the schemes of a psychotic brother, and his motley crew of superpowered soldiers. MGS1 emphasised Snake as an underdog; unlike those he faced, he lacked any kind of special / magical abilities, he didn't even have a gun to begin with. All Snake has to keep him out of trouble is the player. Snake is so fragile, he can barely even trump the two patrolling guards that prowl around the first screen. Intro credits still rolling, you could find yourself prematurely dead if you try to engage them. You have to wait, and angle past them. MGS1 taught the player to study patterns and search for weakness. Boss battles seemingly unwinnable if the player did not keep their wits about them.



Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty teased another Snake centric adventure, before yanking the figure back, withholding him from the players. Instead you were saddled with Raiden, a green cyber-soldier, who had barely seen any non-simulated action. Raiden frustrated the action himself, constantly (and automatically) interrupting play to seek reassurance from his intel team. Teeth where gnashed. Solid Snake breezed in and out of proceedings, always several steps ahead of the befuddled user and Raiden, even apparently betraying them. Kojima sought to re-establish Snake as some unknowable mentor figure, able to rescue the player, then impart Kojima's personal philosophy at games end. If the user selected that this was their first Metal Gear game when beginning their quest, Snake's section was skipped, heading straight to The Big Shell. After completion, Snake's mission became selectable. New users would likely shake their head at this unlock portion, Snake handled no differently from Raiden; he had no greater skillset or abilities, and his myth-making early encounter with episode mcguffin Metal Gear Ray was something of a disaster. That was the point though, Solid Snake isn't a superbeing, he's just a dog-eared soldier, trying to make a right.



Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater went back to the root of the problem, casting Snake as his clone father. Perhaps skeptical that players would form any kind of bond with a character that amounts to Satan in the series, Kojima implemented an exhaustive medical bay that had to be constantly referred to. If Snake was shot, the bullet had to be yanked out, the wound disinfected, and bandages applied. If not, the characters stamina would rapidly drop until inputs became sluggish, and imprecise. A crushing liability in a stealth action game. Rather than become an irritating sub-chore, the medical maintenance aspect of MGS3 instead engendered sympathy for the character that would become Big Boss. He was a fragile toy. The narrative had this Snake jumping through hoops trying to make sense of his mentors defection to the USSR, and his place within back-stab black-ops missions. This Snake begins MGS3 as a post-war patriot, by the end he's so disgusted with his countries double dealing, he goes AWOL.



Which brings us to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. A prematurely decrepit Snake slings on a synthetic muscle suit and wanders off out after his evil twin. Kojima involves us with the character by inflicting upon him a stress bar that fills rapidly if out in open conflict too often. Snake must retreat to the shadows and smoke a tab, or ice-compact his aching back. Kill too many set-dressing PMC stooges, and Snake will vomit his guts up, disgusted. MGS4's finest moment (and subject of this award) though comes deep into the final chapter. Snake is aboard his nemesis' nuclear death barge. He's disposed of the last of the superpowered trauma unit his brother sic'd on him, and he's stumbling his way towards an upload point for the super-virus he's carrying. First though, he must cross a tunnel flooded with searing microwaves.

Rather than making a side-line observer of the player, the barest of controls are handed the user to steer Snake through. Health artificially diminished by a series of shuddering fits, Snake is extremely fragile wandering into this flesh-cook hell. The screen splits to show Snake's friends battling desperately against ridiculous odds to buy him enough time to make the upload. All you can do is push the figure forwards with the Left stick; even with the analog nub held fully forwards, Snake can manage no more than an injured limp. You push him on and on. Steam starts squealing out of his armour as the synthetic muscles glow and rupture. Snake collapses to his knees vomiting and bleeding, as friends scream and plead in his ear.



You're hammering the Triangle button just to keep him from stopping. Snake's wheezing heart is pound-high in the sound mix. No matter how fast you're bashing the move button, an insistent prompt keeps appearing, as if your efforts aren't enough. It's an exhausting, relentless task. Snake's health depletes to nothing, miles away from any sort of conclusion, before switching over to a rapidly disappearing stamina bar. Through your action, Snake is literally giving it everything he's got. You and Snake contorted in agony, pushing him forward inch by inch.

Disaster Year Is Away

Playing Metal Gear Solid 4

This, On The Other Hand, Is Definitely Not How It Ends: Big Boss Part 3

The Kojima-less NES port of Metal Gear sold extremely well outside of Japan. It shifted over a million copies in North America alone. Konami sought to generate extra coin by putting together a more action orientated sequel specifically for the Western market: Snake's Revenge! Never officially regarded as part of the 'official' series, Snake's Revenge is the red-haired step child of the Metal Gear family. It's widely hated, although not widely played. Again, it's the story of Solid Snake (now known as the double ranked Lieutenant Solid Snake) infiltrating a wonkily aggressive nation that purport to have a disaster weapon.

Snake gets two allies this time, John Turner and Nick Myer.



Both trot off and promptly get themselves dead. No help what-so-ever. Lt. Snake battles on. In an red jumpsuit. With jaundiced skin. Sneaky! There's even side-scrolling spam sections. Upset the faithful!

Big Boss pops up at the end. The Cobra Commander look alike spouts some perfunctory revenge speak, then gets his run and spam on. Shoot him enough and he does an explode and mutates into a twenty foot tall death-bot. Oh my giddy aunt!

"Ha, ha, ha! I have no weak point you can penetrate."

Quite. At this point you're absolutely sunk unless you immediately hightail, and are packing landmines. See the whole sorry / awesome episode here. Me likes!

After all that Snake storms off to shoot rockets through a tunnel system at a stationary Metal Gear Mark 2. Glowing weak spot!

Despite everyone hating Snake's Revenge, Kojima seems fairly pleased with it. He's quoted as saying it's a faithful sequel. He's still down on the NES version of the original though. Ah man. Don't get him started. He hates them damn life-draining dogs in the tacked-on Jungle entry point. Who can blame him? They suck!

Credits! See our hero smile!