Down the Rabbit Hole – Part 1

What am I getting myself into???

WARNING! This post may contain spoilers – though really are they spoilers when we’re talking about games that are more than a decade old?

Sometime last week I decided I was going to do something a little crazy. I was going to play through the Metal Gear series for the first time! I talked to a few people about it before hand – some were enthusiastic, some laughed at me and told me I was crazy. I’ve only ever played one Metal Gear game until now – Metal Gear Solid 4. And I didn’t even play that one all the way through. My knowledge of the series going in boiled down to just a few things:

1. Kojima is a crazy person! (For those that don’t know, Hideo Kojima created the series)
2. The story is insane (as if written by a crazy person….)
3. The games are not chronological after the first few (see image above)
4. At least one of the main protagonists is a dude named Solid Snake
5. They are stealth-action games

That’s it. That’s 100% of my knowledge going in. The time I’d spent with MGS4 did more to confuse me about the story than it taught me. I put it down after a few hours, not because it was bad, but because I was too confused by what was going on. I had no context! Characters were introduced that I was supposed to already know and didn’t. Events were referenced that I’d never heard of. Places were visited that you’d supposedly been before in previous games. It just was too much.

So what brought me back? Well, for the last couple of years I’ve been a big fan of a gaming news and review site called Giant Bomb. They do a weekly podcast that is ostensibly about gaming, but is actually just about whatever randomness the guys want to talk about that week. It’s hysterical! Because it’s only out once a week, I’ve resorted to going and listening to older episodes between the new ones. During some of their earliest podcasts, MGS4 was released, and they talked quite a bit about it. The conversation mainly focused on how crazy the story of the series was, and how insane Kojima is. On top of that, they all really enjoyed playing MGS4. OK, I’m in! Where do I sign? I really want to see this insanity unfold!

So I went out and bought a copy of Metal Gear Solid The Legacy Collection which includes TEN Metal Gear games (only missing a few handheld entries in the series, and the two games that have been released post-MGS4). After rushing home, I dug out my PS3 and got it hooked up again, then dove right in to Metal Gear.

Big. Mistake.

I’ll spare you the details – mostly because I’ve tried to enumerate the details 3 times already while I sit here writing, but each time they quickly got out of hand – but suffice it to say that the game was stupid hard for all the wrong reasons, even looking at a walk through. I didn’t have the patience, and the game just wasn’t that fun for me. Instead, I jumped over to Wikipedia to get a summary of the story. Mostly, you’re introduced to our protagonist Solid Snake, and a few of the people who will surround him and inform the story as we progress.  If you want to know what happens, you’re probably better off going here and reading about it, than having me regurgitate it for you. I’ll wait while you go check that out……

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Back? Great! Let’s continue! This post is getting long as it is.

Naively I think to myself that surely, Metal Gear 2 has to be easier to play these days than Metal Gear was! EHHHHHHH! WRONG! While some pretty big improvements had been made (like a map that shows you enemy locations!), the game is nearly as stupid hard as the first. (I’m seeing another post in the near future about the difference between the hard games of yesteryear and the hard games of today). So I head right back over to Wikipedia for another primer in the Metal Gear lore. It’s more of the same, really. Espionage, betrayal, and a healthy dose of anti-nuclear proliferation (a theme that I’ve been assured runs rampant through the series).

Now, this post has gone much longer than I originally anticipated. This wasn’t supposed to be a novella! So, in our next episode, I’ll be recounting my time with the 3rd game in the series (and, SPOILER, one which I actually finished and quite thoroughly enjoyed) Metal Gear Solid 1. There’s more espionage! There’s more betrayal! And dagnabbit, there’s more of that anti-nuclear message! Lets see how deep that rabbit hole goes, shall we?