OK, so the Metal Gear Solid series is hardly known for its subtlety and brevity in storytelling, what with several 20-minute scenes in MGS3 and… well… the whole of MGS2, but the reviews of MGS4 are blowing my mind. Some of the reviews, notably Edge, are claiming that the game has two extremely long cut-scenes.

That’s a bit like saying that Metal Gear has a big robot in it, of course, but word is that these sequences are pushing the 90-minute mark. And Konami doesn’t want reviewers to mention it.

In the interest of fairness, GamePro is saying that it’s an exaggeration. We’ll find out for ourselves in less than a fortnight anyway, but I’ve always had respect for Edge and can’t imagine that such a prestigious magazine – possibly the only gaming publication that I’d use that word to describe – would make a claim like this about such an important game without there being some truth to it. And would Konami really care if reviews mentioned that the cinemas were no different to the other multimillion-selling games in the series?

True or not, it brings up an interesting question about storytelling in games. Would having 90-minute cut-scenes actually help games as a storytelling medium, or does it undermine it and defer the job to the conventions of film? Half-Life tells a story within a game and BioShock does it even better, and the irony is that the part of BioShock’s story that attracted the most criticism was the least game-like part: the ending. (more…)

I trust that everyone’s enjoying their first taste of Metal Gear Solid 4, with the online beta available for download now. Stunning menus…

…and not much else, because it’s still not working. Having been released for download over a week ago and taking an inordinate amount of time to download (I was at 17% of a 741MB file after three hours), it required the immediate download of the 1.01 patch, which would either time out on the HTTP download or, on the BitTorrent option, max out at about 16kbps while uploading at over 40. And now there’s a second patch, which you have to download after 1.01, because they’re incremental. And I’m having the same download problems after eight days.

Not to mention that when it does work, you need a Konami ID (lower-case alphanumeric), a password for that, a game ID (lower-case alphanumeric; must be different to the Konami ID), and a second password (this time only numerical). Given the fact that every online PS3 user will already have a unique ID… why!?

Epic fail, in other words.

Xbox Live gets a lot of stick for costing £40 a year, but I’d be more than happy to pay that for PSN if the damn thing worked half the time. I’ve never spent more than 30 seconds downloading a Live patch (unlike Super Stardust HD, a twin-stick shooter that inexplicably gets a 153MB patch) or dashboard update, and because it’s a closed system I know that my one account will work on all games. On Live I’ve participated in three betas – Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, and currently Battlefield: Bad Company – and all worked just as transparently as any demo or downloadable game.

That’s worth £40 to me. I’d rather pay for a nice steak than get a free grease burger and I’d rather have something that works to something that doesn’t. I’m not even demanding feature parity with Live on the original Xbox (universal friends list, cross-game invites, etc), though that would be nice; just a system that works. Yes, it’s free, but so is Steam, and that’s arguably better than Live at the moment.

In case I haven’t made this clear, I hated Snake Eater. But what a difference a little camera control can make.

After Sons of Liberty the MGS series lost a lot of goodwill, and so tried something new with MGS3. Now you play only as Snake (not Solid), and you’re not in the near future of infinite battery lives and soliton radar, but in a Soviet jungle at the height of the Cold War. You’re really on your own, with even the need to sustain yourself completely in your hands. It was just too bad that a bit too much digging in menus and a truly terrible camera let it down.

Luckily someone at Konami had played Splinter Cell. That second stick was put to good use and let you move the camera in full 3D (in a 3D game? Whatever next!?), and in doing so completely transformed it. What was game-ruining flaw suddenly become totally transparent to use and allowed the parts that the game does so well to shine through.

What it does well, it does very well. A slick and exciting stealth adventure with a wry sense of humour carries a superb story – all told through cinematics that can stand up with the best blockbusters – right through to an epic and emotional ending (around twenty minutes long) that gives the perfect finale to what had been a top class game. Bring on MGS4.

Ever since Subsistence revived my interest in the Metal Gear series, this one has been high up my wishlist. It fulfills both the need to continue the excellent Big Boss saga and the more pressing requirement for something to play on the PSP. I got my US copy this morning and, after a couple of hours spent trying to get the 3.02 firmware emulated so I wouldn’t have to upgrade, I gave it a crack.

The immediate concern when playing this game is the control system. One of my criticisms of MGS3 was the convoluted controls and although they still take some getting used to here and are overall inferior, Kojima’s team has done some much-needed pruning. The lack of buttons eventually stops feeling limited, and I hope that the lessons learnt here are carried over to MGS4.

The 3D camera obviously doesn’t control as smoothly on a D-pad as on an analogue stick, but is still a welcome transplant from the last game. The frustration of unseen enemies is further alleviated by a permanent radar/sound sensor thingy (no worrying about battery levels) and a full map of each area on the pause menu. I still got spotted by an enemy that I missed in the first room but that was my fault for not realising how the radar worked.

The fundamental change to this game comes with the recruitment system, where each mission can be played out with a squad of four allies. Almost any enemy in the game can be recruited into your little rebellion and then their unique skills can be utilised – uniformed enemies are less conspicuous when infiltrating a base, for example – in your efforts to complete the game. It even uses the wi-fi function of the PSP to generate random recruits, meaning that just stopping in a coffee shop can yield an S-class supersoldier. I’ve taken my PSP out with me a couple of times with the sole intention of visiting a known access point to see what I can get. (more…)

A few months back I complained that I didn’t get on with the “marmitey” gameplay (thanks for the excellent adjective, Martin) of the Metal Gear Solid series. I take it back.

You tend not to give games that you dismissed another chance but I stuck MGS3: Subsistence in again the other day. Maybe it was the nagging sense that I was missing something or maybe it was just that I’d bought the bloody thing twice and still hadn’t had my money’s worth, but whatever it was I’m actually enjoying it. Despite the silly story and tendency to drag in the cut scenes (almost twenty minutes at the end of Virtuous Mission!), the proper 3D camera really saves it.

I still maintain that, because of that camera, MGS3 can be classified as a bad game. It worked in the first two because they were (a) angular and (b) complete with radar. MGS3 was neither and might as well have been an FPS for all the time that I had to switch to first person to see a guard ahead of me. Subsistence’s camera is a significant addition that really should have been in there from the start.

Incidentally I’m now watching US copies of MGS and MGS2 on eBay. I’m such a completist whore.

I bought Metal Gear Solid 3 when it was released in the US after the unanimously good reviews and because it was the first hot import after I got my PS2 chipped but gave up a short way into it. It’s not that I thought it was a bad game…it’s just that the camera system was still in 1998, and while that worked in the angular environments of MGS and MGS2 it felt positively archaic in the organic Russian jungle.

Not only that, but as if the rampant surrealism wasn’t weird enough, the game crammed it into copious cut-scenes that I just couldn’t deal with, cinematic though they were. Some call it postmodern; I can’t remember what I called it because I fell asleep.

The first MGS was just a bit quirky which I could handle and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it, but I don’t have to explain the controversy around the direction that MGS2 went with its story (angsty Teen Beat coverboy finds time to discuss King Kong with ex-girlfriend while on top secret infiltration mission) which led to a premature end to my time with that one.

Cut scenes are skippable though, so since MGS3: Subsistence adds a 3D camera I bought a used import copy a couple of days ago (£15 = bargain!) to see whether that puts it closer to my stealth action darling, Splinter Cell. It’s an improvement, but the gameplay still just seems so outdated. I really can’t tell…is it Metal Gear? Or is it me?