Metal Gear the story so far…

As promised I will provide the means to brush up on your Metal Gear knowledge on the internet and in any other ways I can think of. First off all, those who are not aware of this yet: Konami has released a standalone encyclopedia on the PSN store that includes all the information on the past titles and everything on the newest game. Still I would like to give you some links and possibilities to revisit the waste story of Solid Snake’s past. I will post them in chronological order (story wise).

Metal Gear Solid 3 – Snake Eater:

The limited edition of the Subsistence release of the game included a third DVD that had the cut scenes, some codec messages and the boss fights cut into a 3 hour movie.

The youtube user alexfung23 has added an extremely large collection of Metal Gear Walkthrough videos that include the whole game and are interesting if you want to see EVERYTHING that happened to Naked Snake. I created a playlist of MGS3: here.

Metal Gear Solid – Portable Ops:

There is sadly no video that I know of on the internet and no comic/novel depicting the events of this game.

Metal Gear 1+2 (MSX):

Here is another playlist created with the videos of alexfung23.

Metal Gear Solid:

Now this is the title you will probably find most ways to recap. First of all you can view the cutscenes and the codec messages when you have finished the remake Twin Snakes. Then there is the possibility to relive the events of Shadow Moses through the comic by Ashley Wood and Kris Oprisko, which was such a success that it was even released in a digital version for the PSP called Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel. This digital comic includes music and sound effects. It will be released with voiceovers on DVD once the second part including the digital comic of Sons of Liberty will hit the shelves.

The most recent addition to the Metal Gear Solid franchise is a novelization of the game by Raymond Benson.

And for all of you who still have not enough here is the playlist of Phoenix9215987’s videos.

Metal Gear Solid 2 – Sons of Liberty

MGS2 was also treated to a comic book again with the artwork of Ashley Wood and story adaptation by Alex Garner. The digital version has not yet been released but will probably include complete voiceovers by the cast of the game series.

Here is the final video playlist of alexfung23.

This is it. Several hours, if not days, worth of material for all of you who cannot get enough of the world that Hideo Kojima created over 20 years ago. I’m tempted to write a review on the newest title, but I’d also like to shift my attention to something else. So who knows…

Solid GOLD!

It’s the year 1998 and the Sony Playstation has been around for a few years. With the new CD-Rom support, game developers got the opportunity to vastly increase the multimedia elements of their games and amongst them was also Hideo Kojima who had heard a lot of good things about Sony’s first console. It is not surprising that he decided to continue his most popular franchise on the new console, enriching the game world with a new adventure of Solid Snake dubbed Metal Gear Solid. On September 3, 1998 Kojima’s newest masterpiece finally hit the shelves and became an instant hit selling over 6 million copies worldwide.

The story continues Snake’s adventures several years after the incidents at Outer Heaven. Once again the soldier is recruited by his former chief Roy Campbell, to infiltrate a facility on Shadow Moses Island that has fallen into the hands of terrorists. This time the villains are none other than members of Foxhound, the special unit that Snake was a member of himself when he was still in active duty. He has to rescue several hostages, amongst them Meryl the niece of Campbell, and stop the terrorists from launching a nuclear strike against the US. Everything works according to plan until one of the hostages dies of a heart attack. As Snake proceeds to the ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker he faces Revolver Ocelot in a challenging gunfight. However their duel is cut short when a ninja in a strange exoskeleton appears out of nowhere and cuts off Ocelot’s hand. Snake’s opponent runs for cover and the ninja also disappears using high-tech stealth camouflage. After telling Snake that the facility is only a cover for a new Metal Gear, Baker also dies of sudden heart failure.

On his search for a way to disable the powerful walking weapon Snake runs into Hal “Otacon” Emmerich, the scientist behind the new Metal Gear called Rex. Once again the ninja makes an appearance and divulges that he is in fact Gray Fox, who was supposed dead after the Zanzibarland incident. Snake defeats him in an honorable fistfight and makes his way to the holding facility of Metal Gear. On his way he defeats most of the other members of Foxhound until he finally faces of with their leader, Liquid Snake. Liquid reveals that he is in fact Snake’s twin brother and that they are both the result of a cloning project in which a group of scientists tried to replicate the legendary soldier Big Boss. He jumps into the cockpit of Rex and tries to kill his brother, only to have his precious weapon sabotaged by Gray Fox. Fox disables the tank’s radar but gets crushed in the ensuing battle. After destroying Rex Snake and Liquid have a face-off on top of the burning carcass of the tank and ultimately Snake emerges victorious. He frees Meryl and tries to leave the facility but moments before they could escape Liquid reappears and just as he tries to kill them, he falls to his knees and dies of a heart attack. It turns out that Snake is carrying a virus that was programmed to eliminate the terrorists and everybody who knew too much about the Metal Gear project. Ultimately the virus should also kill Snake, but the programming was changed last minute.

Metal Gear Solid had such a huge success that it was remade for the Gamecube in 2004. The game was called Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes and retold the events of Shadow Moses with updated graphics and more impressive cut scenes.

I have left out several characters and key plot parts about this recap, since I don’t want to spoil too much of the games for you. I have also decided to stop my recap session here, since Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is way too vast to summarize in such a short blog entry. However I will post several links, where you can brush up on your Metal Gear history in my next post, so keep your eyes open.

Last time I posted the first of GameTrailers.com’s recaps. The others, can be found here: MGS recap

Metal Gear: a retrospective

Most of you who are into games will probably have heard, or even anticipated the release of the latest Metal Gear Solid games. “Guns of the Patriots” is in fact the last game that will be spearheaded by Hideo Kojima himself, but in an interview he said he would be looking forward to a new generation of Metal Gear games by younger developers. Over 20 years ago Kojima pitched his idea of a sneaking based game to Konami and after some initial doubt the development firm agreed to producing the game, without knowing it would turn into one of the most important gaming franchises of our time. In Metal Gear initially released on the MSX2 in 1987, you control a special agent with the codename “Solid Snake” on a mission to infiltrate Outer Heaven, a fortified military state supposedly having a WMD. On this mission he is also supposed to rescue another agent (Gray Fox) that is held captive inside the base. It turns out that the WMD is in fact a bipedal walking tank called Metal Gear and the legendary mercenary leading the base is none other than Snake’s mentor Big Boss.

The game had such a success that a few years later Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was released (sadly only in Japan). Once again Snake has to infiltrate a base, but this time in the mercenary nation Zanzibarland. He is supposed to rescue a scientist who has developed a new way to refine petroleum in a very effective and cheap way. However during his mission he finds out that once again the real threat is a Metal Gear tank. He has a run-in with Gray Fox who has defected to Zanzibarland and also Big Boss survived the destruction of Outer Heaven to take revenge on Snake.

Gametrailers have created a recap anthology of the Metal Gear games which I will include with each small article on this page. Next up will be a revision of Snake’s first adventure on the Playstation called Metal Gear Solid.

The Moral Choice

I have played many games on almost any possible medium since my early youth and as a gamer, you are constantly confronted with people talking about “the next best thing”. Most of the time however these hypes don’t come through and you end up with a mediocre game and a foul aftertaste of wishing you had spend your money on something else. It is therefore even better, when once in a while a game comes along that not only lives up to the hype but manages to surpass every expectation. One of these games is the new GTA IV. Every blogger who has only the faintest interest in gaming is writing about the new Grand Theft Auto game by the developers Rockstar and so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and talk a bit about my recent source of sleep deprivation.

What makes GTA IV so different from its predecessors is not that it redefines gaming in any way. It does not include any extreme game play changes, nor does it change the way the story progresses. It still is and feels like a part of the previous installments. You have to pass missions for different NPC characters to advance in the story and gain money, power and become infamous amongst the different gangs and law enforcement agencies. The difference with GTA IV lies in the details and this is where the game really shines. You don’t feel like you drive through a computer generated city anymore with polygon characters that just populate the sidewalks, but you feel like you are in a real breathing metropolis. The pedestrians have conversations, talk on their sidewalks, look at shop windows, react to abrupt weather changes, scream for help when an accident occurs and react in a genuinely realistic way to foreign influences. If a murder occurs on these streets the other pedestrians won’t walk idly by as if nothing had happened, but they will react with horror and fear.

Rockstar improved almost every negative point of the previous game series. They have included a virtual cell phone that lets you plan activities with the friendly NPCs, you can take a cab to any location in town (which saves an enormous amount of time), and the radio stations don’t feel as unreal anymore due to the frequent news broadcasts that are introduced into the shows to talk about the recent happenings in Liberty City. Animation details like the way you break into cars, reload weapons and jump over fences are big plus sides of the game. The aiming system has also drastically improved and the characters new ability to take cover behind pillars and boxes makes it easier to survive in this world of crime and corruption. Which takes me to my next point: in-game violence.

Due to the realistic animations and lives of the population of L.C. you feel genuinely inclined to not harm any of them. They are for the first time really innocent bystanders and your conscience will prevent you from plowing through a populated sidewalk with your car. Furthermore the protagonist of GTA IV is not a cold hearted criminal anymore without any remorse or ideals. Nico Bellic does not come to America to live a life of crime, but to escape a violent past of war and poverty. The game also gives you the opportunity to spare the people that cross you and therein lays the key to a more likeable hero. Nico is not a dumb criminal anymore who does everything to gain power, he does what he has to, to help his family and to find the people who destroyed his life back home. The story telling fits in with movies like The Goodfellas or The Godfather and could also be compared to shows like The Sopranos or Rescue Me. The game includes strong language and violence and is therefore not available to minors and the responsibility lies with us adults to keep it that way. So if your teenage kid at home cries about how much they want to play this game, don’t give in. It really is not the right kind of entertainment for them!

IGN.com Review

Cthulhu fthagn!

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”

Have you ever had the feeling that the world is not quite the way everybody seems to think it is? Do you believe in a higher power? And no I don’t mean God. Well I don’t mean your God. Do you dare to look behind the shrouds of reality and be swallowed by the Old Ones? Then step into the world of the almighty Cthulhu and beware of his eternal slumber. If you like horror stories and have never read the works of H.P. Lovecraft you should definitely look him up. Among his best work are the “Dream Cycle” stories and the “Cthulhu Mythos” stories. Lovecraft was plagued by frightening night terrors which gave him the inspiration for his horrifying stories. In 1981, half a century after the death of Lovecraft, his work and especially the mythos he had invented had gained such an enormous popularity that it spun off a pen and paper role playing game. Since then the publisher Chaosium has released several different versions and additions to the game. The basis of the game is simple. To play you need a game master (the person in charge of the story who presents it to the other players) and several investigators (how many is entirely dependent on the scenario). The story is usually situated in one of three different eras: the 1890s, the 1920s or the present. Recently there have also been additions to the game that take place in the Middle Ages (Cthulhu Dark Ages) and the future (Cthulhu Rising). So if you are into horror and suspense stories and also like to role play (and I don’t mean in the bedroom) you should get together with some friends and try out the dark world of dread Cthulhu.

“They were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape…but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them.”

The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft

Neil Gaiman parody