Today on the Dispatches– oh, who am I kidding? Like none of you saw this coming…

For those of you who only visit the Game Design Advance blog online, and don’t have any real-world experience with the posters in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, let me clue you in on a little something– they don’t like Metal Gear. With few exceptions, Hideo Kojima and his two-decade’s worth of games are both somewhat taboo amongst a lot of the game-design centric students, who disdainfully look at his bloated, self-indulgent games as prime examples of the dying breed of games built on a balance that’s heavy on cut-scenes, light on gameplay, and entirely devoid of the kind of instant gratification that’s supposed to comprise all interactive narratives in our post-Portal world (or is it now a post-Passage? Post-Knytt? I know that BioShock was just a fad for most everyone, and pretty much everybody was bummed out by GTAIV, but I have a hard time keeping up with what the latest zeitgeist game is for all you pleasant dreamers).

To be certain, there are exceptions, but even when I’ve had conversations about the quality of Metal Gear games with classmates in the past, I couldn’t help but sense a familiar strain of closeted hostility that made them feel every-so-slightly like debates, instead. Now, maybe it’s just my own natural paranoia, or the residual deja vu I’ve got left over from conversations defending other such controversial pop-cultural favorites of mine, like the Star Wars prequels, the second season of Lost or pretty much all of Inland Empire (Plot? David Lynch doesn’t need plot, damnit!), but I’ve always felt that I’m in the minority of the opinion that Kojima pretty much knows what he’s doing, and that the pros of his decisions outweigh the cons.

Everybody else, including fellow fans, tend to believe that he hasn’t been trying hard enough, and that he’s basically been running on empty ever since the original Metal Gear Solid re-introduced the series ten years ago. Heck, check over on a number of fan-sites like JunkerHQ, and you’ll even find people who’ll insist to the death that Kojima’s glory days stretch back to the computer-adventure pop-up-books that are Snatcher and Policenauts, and that the sooner he quits the fool’s errand that is Metal Gear Solid, the better (to be fair, however, those nuts are also the ones who insist upon trying to provide translation-patches for Snatchers and Policenauts, two games that have never been released in the United States in a perfect form, or at all, so they’re perfectly entitled to their blasphemy). And while I’ll agree that over the years Kojima has been a little too willing to let his elaborate, sprawling stories be told through cut-scenes rather through interactive mechanics, I’ve always found exactly the same kind of engaging, inventive and expressive gameplay in the MGS series that I have in the original couplet he coined on the MSX system, back in the day.

They’re moments like the Psycho Mantis battle in MGS, the “Fission Mailed” sequence in Sons of Liberty, or The Sorrow’s “battle” in Snake Eater— levels that toy with the nature of video-game presentation itself to challenge the player’s expectations. They’re the moments like epic hide-and-seek duels of MGS3, between the master sniper The End or master huntress The Boss– matches that bring the very stealth-mechanics of Metal Gear into the fabric of the boss-battles themselves. Hell, they’re even moments like the cardboard-box invulnerability in the final fight against Gene from Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, once again proving that hiding is the wisest choice, even in the middle of a battle.

Those are the moments I play for in Metal Gear, even more than the simple fun of hiding from enemy soldiers, shooting down tanks and helicopters, or sitting through the kind of fan-fiction Tom Clancy might write for an anime. And so far, one boss-battle’s way through Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, I can certainly say that I’ve had a few of those already, but that I’m also still getting over a challenge I didn’t think I’d have quite as much of a problem with as I am– change.

See, with this latest, and possibly last Metal Gear game, Kojima decided to change a lot of the stuff we’ve all gotten used to in the last several installments. First of all, he ditched the familiar, nostalgic overhead-view of the fixed bird’s eye camera we had in the last three MGS games, and instead has opted exclusively with the 3D player-controlled camera that’s basically become the norm for games. From the opening moments of gameplay, this really threw me off, not just because I felt it replaced the cool aesthetic of the last games, but also because I just wasn’t used to it.

See, I’m one of those players who’s always played best under retro-circumstances. I like seeing a bird’s-eye view, because it gives me the clearest idea of what the level is like. Sure, it sometimes amounted to an artificial advantage, or at other times it didn’t give you the best angle to see that one security guard that caught you, but that didn’t matter– I liked the overhead view, and it’s what I was used to. It’s how I learned to play Metal Gear Solid, and having that changed on me, here in the final game of the series, provided a much steeper, pretty unappreciated learning curve that I had to die a few times thanks to. Quite frankly, it’s pretty fucking annoying.

Then again (I’m a Kojima fan, so you know I’m going to a bit of an apologist here) the 3D camera system is something that I was able to ease back into a little once I remembered how I used it on the PSP in Portable Ops, and once I got my bearing, I was able to use the new system to my advantage just as I’d always been able to do with the bird’s-eye view in the previous games. Furthermore, I can appreciate how by his willingness to change one of the oft-maligned aspects of the Metal Gear experience for something a bit more palatable to a mass-market of players more suited to military-themed games out there, that Kojima is making efforts to widen his audience and reach as many people as possible– not just people like me who were going to stand on line for the midnight opening of this game to begin with, and get over minor alterations like these, anyway.

It’s the same way that aiming-and-shooting has changed from R1-and-face-button to L1-and-R1, using the same trigger action that even GTAIV employs. That sort of thing makes a certain amount of physical sense, and it’s easy to get into, and even enjoy. The one thing I haven’t really yet gotten used to, however, is the way that wall-presses now work. In all the previous console games, all you had to do was stand next to a wall and press the analog stick a little bit more to flatten against it, and I always loved the extra degree of control it made you feel over Snake. This game, however, follows the example of Portable Ops, which couldn’t afford the luxury of such sensitive controls, being on the PSP, and instead forces you to move against a wall AND press a face-button, which removes a lot of the nuance and subtlety I felt from just using the analog stick in the past, and feels a bit too simplified.

The only way I could possibly rationalize this decision is how it works with the OctoCamo system– because flattening against the wall is such a deliberate, easy-to-make decision now, it makes more sense to let it be the moment Snake’s futuristic camouflage suit changes. I might ask why a face button itself couldn’t be used to adopt a new pattern based on your surroundings, and let the analog-flattening stay as it was, but whatever– it’s a small price to pay for a really, really freaky piece of uniform.

Of course, what really matters is the gameplay itself, and how that ties into the narrative, and so far, MGS4 is pretty spectacular in that regard (though by no means revolutionary). Playing as Snake in the middle of a Yojimbo-style war between various rebel militias over the world and the reigning regimes with troops supplied by Outer Heaven, under the control of the nefariously identity-confused Liquid Ocelot, there’s a genuine conflict the player experiences as to whether or not to help the rebels by attacking the Outer Heaven troops, or play it safe by simply sneaking around all of them altogether, using their battle as enough of a diversion not to be noticed. It’s a nice little moral-dilemma that doesn’t overstay its welcome like other “are you good or bad?” decision moments in games, and the fact that it plays directly into the gameplay and overall theme of interventionism itself feels very appropriate for the game. If Snake is looking to defeat Liquid Ocelot and stop the lumbering giant of Outer Heaven once and for all, should he stop and fight Outer Heaven troops along the way, or is that just making him more of a target to his enemies? Is it smarter to slip by unnoticed, or is it more risky not to try and make allies, as otherwise you’ve just got TWO warring armies attacking you, instead of one?

Ultimately, the saving grace of this constant question– whether to help the rebels or not– is that it basically amounts to a question of gameplay itself, one that, say, the question of the Little Sisters in BioShock, for example, never did, actively. The real question isn’t whether or not it’s better to help the rebels, but whether or not it’s more fun. Furthermore, it’s all basically a question of which way to play Metal Gear you prefer– staying out of the conflict by sneaking around all the time, or pulling out your gun and fighting the good fight, consequences be damned. It’s a great variation of the rules, and one that has a lot to say, just as the kill-or-knockout-and-recruit function of Portable Ops provided a concrete advantage to tranq-ing a soldier rather than popping a cap in his skull. Hell, so far I’ve had a lot of fun just staying on one battlefield for a long time, just fighting alongside the rebel militias, and listening to them cheer as I shoot down an enemy helicopter. That’s the sort of moment I play for.

Then there’s the new Drebin-point system, and how it affects the kind of firearms you’re able to pick up and use over the course of the game. In previous Metal Gear games, finding weapons was very much a purely physical matter– find the one or two places in the game where the weapon exists, and pick it up. Often that meant backtracking, or sometimes just never, ever finding certain items on your first way through the game, and having to find a way around that by playing creatively. All of that’s fine and well, but the new way works pretty interestingly too– here, you can pick up weapons from both fallen rebel soldiers and Outer Heaven troops alike, but weapons from Outer Heaven troops are locked until you pay a mysterious “gun-launderer” called Drebin to unlock them for you, you is payed by the points you pick up from collecting extra weapons along the way.

Furthermore, Drebin also offers a store through which you can purchase new weapons and items at any time through the game, thus taking pretty much all the old challenge of finding weapons and throwing it out the window. On the surface, this is great for a player because it means no more moments where you’re caught fighting a sniper without a sniper-rifle, but it’s also really complicated from a design perspective. Remember, the sniper battles of MGS and MGS3 were built around starting out without a sniper rifle, and the first moments of panic they induced were wonderful from a perspective of expressive design. Sure, it was annoying to have to trek halfway across Shadow Moses or scramble around in the bramble of a Russian jungle to find a rifle and stand a fighting chance against Sniper Wolf or The End, but it meant something, too. It made the moment where you actually got the rifle incredibly satisfying, and the moment when you fired your first bullets against your opponent that much more validating. Therefore, why take that moment away by allowing Snake to simply buy a fucking sniper rifle as soon as you can afford it?

One word– economy. So far, Kojima’s latest theme-of-the-day seems to be the way that war affects world economy, and by making buying-and-selling a concrete mechanic with Drebin points, he’s taking the idea of war-economy out of the cut-scenes and putting it into the player’s hands, themselves. Therefore, the system works, even if it is sacrificing one of the most delicious flavors of the Metal Gear experience.

Of course, none of that matters as long as the core foundations of the series remains the same, and they do. We’ve still got the same hide-and-seek mechanics, the same oil-drum tight combat control, and if Laughing Octopus is any indication of things to come, the same weird-as-hell boss fights. Now, I just finished playing the imperfect-masterpiece that is No More Heroes, a game that is basically built entirely around its boss battles, even though its boss battles really aren’t all that good. Playing against Kojima boss is like a breath of fresh air, compared to that, and once again shows off his best thinking in terms of constructing a battle that inverses the circumstances of Metal Gear‘s stealth mechanics.

From the invisible threat of Night Fright in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, the stealth-camo of the Cyborg Ninja in MGS all the way to the most-dangerous-game marksmen of MGS3, the boss battles of this series have been at their most challenging when Snake is forced to hunt for opponents who hide, instead of merely hiding from opponents himself. While the cramped office-room environment of the battle with Laughing Octopus doesn’t quite offer the same sprawling landscape as the war with The End, or the same intimate, blinding ring as The Boss, it allows for a number of nice traps and tricks built on clever Kojimian level design. Without giving anything away, it’s nice to see that some of the archetypes of Metal Gear have been around so long that the bosses have started using them, too, and being able to spot stuff like that makes being a long-time fan feel like an advantage, more than just a preference.

Now, I’ve got a lot more that I could say about this first playthrough, but I’ll save that for later. Next time, I’ll go over the new ways this game is structuring the Metal Gear experience, talk a bit about the way the new psych-meter system works, as well as recapping major insights from gameplay up to the next boss-fight. Until then, pleasant dreamers, smoke’em if you got’em…