Metal Gear Solid

"'Some Cash Cows Can't Be Milked', with narration by Dennis."

Help, help, I'm bein' repressed.

To begin, I'm not trying to ''go against the mold'' and diss this game just for the sake of being the sore thumb, the rotten apple, the usurper in the happy kingdom. For some reason or another, critics had nothing but praise for the GameBoy incarnate of Metal Gear, likewise for any other games helmed by Hideo Kojima, including the horrible Snatcher. Many a self-proclaimed ''oldschool'' reviewer (usually a professional one at that) will wax philosophical about how Sony made a terrible mistake by not bringing Policenauts stateside, despite the fact that none of them played a complete translated version. Some will say that Snatcher was the best thing ever made for the Sega CD, not including Night Trap or Kris Kross: Make My Video. These same people drool over anything made by Squaresoft or Capcom. Or Hideo Kojima and his pals at KCCE/KCEJ (West).

Kojima had fairly little to do with this Metal Gear update, which is primarily marketed towards those who have played and enjoyed the original Metal Gear titles, horrible translations and all. They were enjoyable the way an old Shaw Brothers fist-and-foot epic was for the initiated; intense but not meant to be taken seriously. As all the paid reviewers wrote while hopelessly blinded by their own fanboyism, ''Snake has returned to his roots''. This might explain the severely dated gameplay and unbalanced difficulty, but certainly not overall quality or enjoyability. Call me a bitter cynic, but those who truthfully say those dreadful six words seriously need to lay off the posing and take a couple doses of Contra so they know what the true form of difficulty is. Anyone who played the original Metal Gear will immediately go into convulsions, usually followed by foaming at the mouth, upon remembering the horrendous difficulty and all the grand times they had mashing the Reset button on the battered old NES. No, this new Metal Gear rehashing is about as refreshing or exciting as a bowl of Grape-Nuts with your grandparents while discussing how quickly the grass is growing outside.

I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, people would put me away.

Konami has a stranglehold on the ''stealth'' subgenre. Right. Despite the fact that Konami can't hold a candle to its competitors when it comes to any other type of game, due to Mr. Kojima's efforts, he is now the Godfather Of Stealth thanks to the ever-suave Solid Snake, and consequently a huge name to throw around. At the time when they went around under the Ultra Games banner, Konami wasn't expecting Metal Gear to make a name for itself and sent out poorly-translated cartridges with Michael Biehn drawn all over them to the US. Surprise, surprise, it clicked upon release in October 1987 with its unusual emphasis on stealth over sheer firepower. Instead of mowing down legions of men, you turned out better if you sneaked around them. This touch added unheard-of realism, in more than one way.

The plan was simple. As Solid Snake, a rookie agent working for a government black-ops program, you were sent into a heavily fortified compound called Outer Heaven, run by the insane Big Boss, an ubersoldier with one eye (arrr!!). Since the game was so damn hard, a lot of masochistic (read: Hardcore) gamers fell in love with it; it was a godsend, and it was a rite-of-passage to beat. A lackluster American-made sequel followed (Snake's Revenge -- Revenge for what, I can't really say) whilst the official sequel never saw Stateside release.

More than a decade after the original Metal Gear was released, Konami announced a second sequel entitled Metal Gear Solid. Crowds were wowed at E3, anticipation built to a fever pitch leading up to October 1998. On the 11th anniversary of Metal Gear's debut, the game was released to a rabid public, where it recieved almost universal acclaim, shattered sales records, and raised the proverbial bar for games everywhere. No other game had blended a gripping story, likeable characters, a Snidely Whiplash-like villain and an engrossing atmosphere that made you feel like you were actually there, to an extent. While all the naysayers grumbled under their breaths before retiring to their Syphon Filter, hordes of fanboys were being bred daily in order to launch into the next phase...

True power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

While the powers-that-be took their time developing the next game in the now-legendary Metal Gear series, for fans, there was a seemingly endless lull between October of 1998 and November of 2001 in which there were no stealth games to whet the gamer's taste. While Metal Gear was not generally viewed as a ''cash cow'' franchise to be tapped at any given time, apparently someone at Konami decided that then was as good a time as any to give the impatient Gear-heads another adventure with Snake, albeit on a smaller scale, before getting a Bigger Taste come Fall 2001. So out of this rather desparate gambit for extra cash came the bastard child of the Metal Gear dynasty -- a little ditty called ''Ghost Babel'' in Japan, renamed and repackaged in the US as good old ''Metal Gear Solid'', even copying the famous cover.

Whose idea this was, we may never know. The fanboy in me thinks that Kojima would respect the integrity of his franchise, but one never knows how low one can sink...

Oh, NOW we see the violence inherent in the system.

In a short amount of time, the Game Boy Color version of Hideo Kojima's magnum opus hit store shelves to recieve more waves of staggering acclaim and joyous raptures which sounded less like reviews and more like hymns to the Gaming Gods for blessing them with the Game To End All Game Boy Color Games. Saying that it is the definitive title isn't saying much, but it's still a heinous lie.

Sure, someone had to embellish on the fact that Snake is ''returning to Outer Heaven'', as detailed in the rather simplistic introductory sequence -- A rather uncool dude named Black Arts Viper and his ragtag group of terrorist buddies have gone to somewhere in Africa and taken control of the fortress called simply ''Galuade'', not bothering to tell us who is using this fortress, why they wanted to take it over, or why it's imperative that they get out. Needless to say, the Big Cheese informs you that this is indeed the old Outer Heaven masquerading under another name. Ho hum, nothing serious there. You are once again Pressed Into Service by your old military superior Rambo-style and dropped into Enemy Territory quicker than you can say ''I have a bad feeling about this''.

You have a group of advisors (like a motley governmental cabinet) that can be reached via a crude radio system. Dialog with these advisors is accomplished by presenting the gamer with talking heads and mundane rolling text screens. Beeps sound out in a strange attempt to replicate a vocal tone. The beeps are in various tones, apparently to convince you that the people's voices sound different. Huh. While this pointless touch gets style points, it's about as useful as a spoiler on a Volkswagen.

The camera is perpetually in an overhead view, giving the gamer (not necessarily Snake) a prime advantage over his Ernest-Like foes, of which there are many. Combat is a joke in itself, like The Country Bears was a joke... no, scratch that. It's a tragi-comedy of Freddy Got Fingered proportions that thinks its as clever as a David Mamet production. Even more so than in the original MGS, an enemy will be easily overtaken while walking down a hallway and punched in the temple due to their inherent lack of peripheral vision or any reflexes worth a damn. A guard standing next to a comrade will stand perfectly still as you gun his friend down from afar with an assault rifle (the sounds of loud rifle shots don't seem to alert them, either), then walk up and turn his torso into Swiss cheese. Knocking on a wall will attract a guard's attention until he takes a good, long look at the area where the sound came from. Staring at the wall for a few seconds is a vital part of a guard's patrol route, as is not moving for a good ten seconds after a sweep is done. Posing absolutely no challenge at all, the guards seem more like an annoyance than a threat. And since sneaking past guards is the biggest bulk of the game, a good portion of your time will be spent wading through true gaming tedium. This can be viewed as the polar opposite of the Playstation Metal Gear in an editorial stance; in an objective view, it can be viewed as Unadulterated Crappy Gameplay.

Yes, you have your variety of weapons -- a pistol, an assault rifle, grenades, landmines, and rocket launchers, but unless you're fighting one of the infrequent Bosses, an enemy can be effortlessly taken care of with a few punches to the jaw. Using a weapon can be fun like using a Weed-Eater to squash an ant can be fun. The Boss fights are just more of the same only they require you to use weapons in order to do any damage at all. None of them will be challenging to anyone who has beaten Tic-Tac-Toe once in their life. All Bosses follow obvious patterns and no thought needs to be taken in order to exploit the weaknesses they make so clear in the first place. Revealing a sample strategy would qualify as a MAJOR SPOILER since there are only four Boss fights in total, so I won't bother beating the dead horse any longer.

I know it's an eight-bit GBC game, but still... the graphics are of Sub-Hydilde quality since the artists made a rather vailant attempt to cram as much detail into the microscopic amount of space as they could, and the end result ends up looking like Galuade/Outer Heaven was built by pre-schoolers that went crazy with those big Lego blocks and built in seemingly random patterns, while Snake looks like a blurry, purple mass. While exploring one of the many drab, monotone environments in Galuade/Outer Heaven, one notices that hallways often lead to dead ends, gates seem to block off vital doorways and require transversal of the sewer system to reach, and prisoners cannot be released from their cells without major renovation involving C4.

''C4?! Wait, psxgamer813, this is sounding too familiar,'' you may have scoffed at me.

That wasn't a typo. ANYONE who has played the legit Metal Gear Solid will immediately notice the ''similarities'' plaguing this release. There is a hot tomboy military recruit who you must meet inside a building who is wearing a disguise; there is a traitor amongst your friends; nobody seems to pick up on the fact that the bad guys have a far more sinister agenda until it's too late. In addition, all of Black Arts Viper's henchmen are direct rip-offs of their PSX incarnations (only Psycho Mantis and Decoy Octopus are absent) -- Slasher Hawk, Pyro Bison, and Marionette Owl -- see if you can match 'em up. Music is monotonous and repetitive, thus does not deserve its own paragraph nor further mentioning.

In Japan, this might have passed for an original game, therefore the original title. Nonetheless, it is at heart a shallow reworking of Metal Gear Solid's themes in a slightly different environment with slightly different characters. There is absolutely no reason to play this game and expect something decent out of it. Aside from the extras, which consist of Honest-To-God VR Training, a short set of minigames in which Snake has to accomplish goals that involve sneaking past guards or shooting targets within a time limit. Beating all of the challenges unlocks a useless little bonus that can be accessed in the System menu. The VR games can be fun to play in the loo or on the bus in the morning, and save this game from an all-out panning. No further questions, your honor.

Did you see 'im repressing me?

If it works fine, don't fix the bloody thing. That's what I'd like to tell the greedy money-plunderers at Konami right about now for exploiting such a wonderful franchise with all the shallowness of Microsoft. Perhaps this astronomical failure might teach them to avoid trying to milk a cash cow that simply won't put out anything.

Moo.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/20/03, Updated 05/24/03