It took me four hours to play through the first act of "Metal Gear Solid 4." I don't know how many acts there are. As the game goes on sale in the early morning hours of Thursday when I'm posting this, I've saved my game and gone to bed. I can wait for more. "MGS4," as languidly and skillfully paced as its immediate predecessor is a game I'm happy to play and observe slowly.
I'm taking my time with this one and focusing. "MGS4" is a game to squint at. Like designer Hideo Kojima's previous games in the series it is dense with detail and interactive quirk. The point of the game may not be at every minute to play -- to direct hero Solid Snake through sneaking missions and skirmishes -- but it is always to remain unblinkingly focused on the TV screen, to spot and prod at a creative work that kicks back with unexpected reflexes. Such attention and tinkering delivers constant rewards.
The pixels of my (standard definition) television can barely render all the detail Kojima Productions is trying to deliver with this game: the digits that appear near enemies who you view with a special gadget, indicating their distance from you, and the colors that show whether they will cheer you or shoot; the detailed stats of each of the arms dealer's guns for sale, the costs changing based on how much trouble you've been causing in a region that looks like near-future Iraq; the text directions that appear in an item menu and teach the player how to get into Snake's head for a first-person view of the dirty magazines he can flip through before planting as diversions. There's a lot to spot. A lot you wouldn't expect to find if you weren't squinting for it.
I play a "Metal Gear Solid" game expecting to break fourth walls. |
I've played "MGS4" so far like a prospector, carefully sifting through everything. This is the way I think the "MGS" games are meant to be played, by a player who is constantly quizzical, even skeptical. And everything I shake reveals a surprise, like (begin mild spoilers) the discovery of exclusive in-game podcasts that will be updated after the game's release, new ways to spam the controls to make Snake throw up, and the wildest attract mode and title screen I've seen in a game. (end spoilers)
Like few other games, I conduct experiments with "Metal Gear Solid"s to see what I can make happen. This is what playing a Kojima "Metal Gear" means to me. It's a chance to search for the buried treasures I trust his team has put in there. These games aren't straightforward; the player isn't spoon fed. And while the plots get convoluted, a fault of their creator(s), the density of the overall game package invites a tinkering and prodding that I enjoy.
I played the first act, which is set in the desert of an unnamed Middle Eastern country in just the way I described. During trademark back-to-back-to-back cut-scenes I tapped at buttons to see what I could manipulate -- triggering flashbacks, changing camera views and other stuff I don't want to spoil. My only disappointment so far is in the enemy who failed to chase me up a ladder. It's the one thing that so far has made me feel I could break "MGS4"'s limits in a way not expected.
It feels like I'm controlling Snake in some other character's game. |
And this is the most interesting and unexpected aspect of Act One: It feels like I'm controlling Snake in some other character's game. For all my prodding, there's a new feeling with this new "MGS," a feeling of remove, of being on the outside of something. In the case of Act One, it's a case of being outside the main battles, of being in control of a character who himself can only tinker and prod. It's a new feeling for me in a game.
I'm not sure I've ever played a game in which its hero was less central to the action. Snake is a bystander, on the battlefield. You can play him as a warrior, but you're expected to more successfully play him like a sneak and a scavenger. Early in the game and then repeatedly thereafter, you will hear battles happening near Snake. You will see hints of them occurring on the other side of half-destroyed buildings. And you'll hear item drops. The dead soldiers leave rations and guns with the twinkle-beep of an alert noise. But these items are often out of reach. The twinkle-beeps often jingle in clusters, an audible sign that an entire platoon of soldiers has just been wiped out somehow by someone or something. You can't really know. You're on the other side of a wall, on the opposite edge of a boundary that as of yet you can't break. I don't know another game that drops power-ups you can't even be near to fetch, no other game that suggests that the center of the action and the violence might be somewhere other than where your hero stands. Maybe this game is about the loss of ego, the loss of being central. We shall see.
Plenty of "MGS4" feels, so far, like previous "Metal Gear Solid" games. I've hid in lockers and flattened Snake upon a bed of tall grass. I've waited for soldiers to pass. I've hid in cardboard boxes -- until they were upended. I've shot tranquilizers. I've heard voice-acting delivered through gritted teeth. And I just sat through 27 minutes of back to back to back semi-interactive cut-scenes (that I liked!).
It's late. I can sleep now, happy to squint at all the detail and poke at the game some more on another day. I want to test its limits more and get to the other sides of its walls. Boundaries will be broken. And I will finish this fight, even if just from the side.