SPOLIER WARNING! PLEASE BE SURE TO HAVE COMPLETED MGS4 BEFORE READING!

Before writing any article which might lead to controversy within the gaming community it is always prudent to explain the context in which it was written. I have no hate for Kojima or the Metal Gear series. This is as far from the truth as you can get. He is the Kubrick of our industry and a visionary yet blinded by that very vision and unable to see the flaws that come with it.

MGS 1 is my all time favourite game. The second was far too pretentious and bloated story wise while the 3rd was equal to the first or at least would have been were it not for the god awful over the head camera and an unwillingness to move with the times, a fault which was to reappear in the forth and concluding chapter in the saga.

My main problem with 4 was the story and way it was told. But that's subjective. So here are things that I believe can't be disagreed with. They may not change your mind about the game but that’s not my intention. I just want those who gave it perfect scores to stop and think a little. For even if we search out and see the flaws which cover those we love the most, that doesn’t make us love them any less. As it is with the people in our lives, so it is with the works which populate it, whether they be crafted through the medium of literature, music or games.

Broken Cover system. Can't shoot over objects, only around. Makes it far less useful than it should have been. And on the last Act just before the beauty boss fight there's an arena fight reminiscent of the one at the end of 2 in arsenal gear against the ninjas. In this room it won't even let you shoot around the pillars, proving perhaps the cover system was a late addition and as such never benefitted from the care that was lavished on other parts of the game. While you may argue that MGS4 is a stealth game and therefore criticising a part of it which does not classify as such is folly let me remind you of the original title’s tag line: Tactical Espionage ACTION. There’s no way you can sneak out of certain sections in the game as Kojima forces you to fight your way out instead and if the means to do so is flawed, it hampers the overall enjoyment of the game.

I have read reviewers stating that in the same way that Super Mario 64 revolutionized the way we play videogames, Metal Gear Solid 4 revolutionizes the way videogames are presented. The transition between cut scene and actual gameplay is seamless and constantly surprising. And indeed some of these transitions do indeed impress. My jaw dropped when I released I was in control during the motorbike chase and I was amazed by how others were handled as well. But like the controls, it only goes to highlight what’s missing. Some transitions are seamless but not all. Almost every cut scene is bookended by a load, whether that happens at the start or end (it’s rarely both which I am indeed thankful for at least) which then amounts to only about 50% of them actually being seamless yet this was never mentioned. And if I must critique the technology then no amount of love for the series will allow me to excuse the following:

Otacon makes a point of ridiculing the CD system of the first game when he asks you to change discs before remembering that the game is on Blu-Ray and there’s no need yet the irony of this very statement is lost on him. We lose one inconvenience and have it replaced with another: installs. It would actually be quicker to change discs than re-install game assets at the start of every Act and the fact that Konami made a point of asking reviewers in advance not to mention this is ridiculous. It may not affect many people’s enjoyment of the game but when Sony feel arrogant enough to proclaim the wonders of their system while dismissing the flaws in such a blasé manner, I can’t let it go.

Now I delve into a part of the game that I will agree is completely subjective but humour me for a moment. When you have invested so much in these characters over the years, you expect a lot in return and this is the area where I felt Kojima succeeded the least. There were hints early on which lead me to be hopeful. In fact, I’ll admit I’m being harsh as it was only until the last act that those hopes were crushed. The plot and characterisation kept me playing and credit is deserved for that as is so much praise. But that has all been given by thousands of players and hundreds of reviewers already. I’m here to deal with the faults which seemed to escape so many.

When Meryl launched her first verbal tirade against her uncle, I was shocked. Not just for her pain but because the Colonel I’d known for so long was no longer merely this commanding authority figure. He had flaws and vices just like the rest of us. This infidelity (whether you see it as Rose’s or Campbell’s to his own daughter) made him one of the most interesting characters I’d come across in a videogame for a long time. He was given so much character that it hurt all the more when it was then stripped away at the end. For the greatest problem with cherishing something is fear of losing that which you hold most dear. Kojima’s fairy tale ending for all made me feel as though he’d betrayed his artistic vision. It not only wiped the slate clean for the Colonel but cleansed him of all his personality and interest. While this part of the plot felt unrealistic to me, what I felt to be worse was the ethical questionability of Raiden’s epilogue; one which disallowed a crippled man to go on living with his disability. Which reconstructed his entire body and family. For someone with friends who were born without a limb or lost one during their lives, I found no solace in his happy Hollywood ending.

At least Snake and Otacon remained the character’s I’d always loved, always wanted to fight for and with. But even here Kojima backed away and gave in to what everyone wanted. The microwave room was the most powerful bit of gaming I’d ever experienced. Did I dare stop pounding triangle in order to see if my efforts were actually affecting the speed with which he dragged his wretched body along the floor? Hell no. I couldn’t bring myself to do so as I’d done countless times in God of War or any other Quick Time Eventful games. I even had to look away as Liquid then proceeded to beat a broken man and was on the verge of shattering him into a thousand even smaller pieces. Then Snake got up and the fate of the world was decided by a fist fight on top of a submarine. Snake’s pain; that which had become my own was undone as he stood up, fit and healthy in order to confront liquid. All which I had felt within the confines of that hellish room was undone in an instant as Snake instantly recovered from his wounds and went out with a macho bang. This has been called the greatest final boss fight in recent games. Yet was it necessary? Liquid is no longer Snake’s nemesis. Snake’s fighting himself. Fighting against his failing body, his own ticking doomsday clock. That’s where the real battle was being lost and won. There was no need for Liquid to appear (from nowhere I might add, seriously – where did he come from?!) and destroy all the work done in the prior scenes where Snake was so savagely destroyed.

Although having said this, a word must be said about the montage in the microwave room (praise that isn’t being spread enough even in those 10/10 reviews). Kojima takes a traditional Hollywood device and subverts it. Something I wish he’d done more of. Any other game, any other film would have merely added what is a clichéd and overused emotional device as a bookend to that section. Yet by interspersing it within the actual gameplay itself, Kojima elevated that whole scene into something beyond powerful. This is the sort of genius I wish had been able to shine so brightly through other parts of the game.

One area where I felt this influenced was lacking was in the creation and execution of the Beauty and the Beast Squad: Ever since the first game, Kojima has been attempting to analyse the emotional side of war but what this has amounted to in practice is a stripping down of all other aspects to his villains. Fox Hound were awesome. Dead Cell also. The Boss' unit was where he began to limit them to one just emotion; The pain/fear/fury etc. Yet they still felt like people driven to the edge due to broken dreams and lives. By removing the outer layers of their humanity, Kojima hoped to probe the depths and see what drove them on. Yet in doing so they lost all humanity and became single, unchanging, one note characters which is typified by the fourth entry. The Beauty and the Beast squad lacked depth. Without this, there was no reason to care when Drebin gave you his bed time stories and the characters became one dimensional. Even if you give a 2d character the most emotionally engaging back-story you’ve ever heard, that doesn’t then mean that they stopped being that very same 2d character over the past 16 hours. It's not what we are inside, but our actions which define who we are. If nothing of this comes to the fore, then we are never allowed to glimpse it and the characters remain one dimensional and emotionally uninteresting - keeping you detached from them and not caring as we once did for the likes of Sniper Wolf and Pyscho Mantis.

Also, if they're going to lose their armour, why make EVERY fight the same when they're in their human form? It was just dull and uninspired. I expect more of Kojima and usually he delivers - bike chase with Big Mamma was my most exhilarating moment in gaming of the past few years and cut away cut scenes during the Vamp fight and especially in the microwave room were beyond inspired. And looking back at previous boss fights; the breaking of the fourth wall with Mantis in the first game, the fight against an undefeatable Fortune in 2, the myriad ways of taking out the End in 3, the way you could poison The Fear’s food all show a man who clearly knows how to craft his villains. While visually they awed and made the best entrance of any MGS squad (for this go and re-watch the cut scene introducing them in the first act), I just found them to be lacking as characters and as bosses.

While Kojima did try new things during these encounters, many of them didn’t permeate all the way throughout the game. The destructible environments during the standoff against The Rage only went to highlight the lack of environmental interaction in the rest of the game (a few key scenes not withstanding during Shadow Moses). This, compounded with the fact that many of the boss fights introduced entirely new control schemes for sections amounting to a small percentage of the game all just went to show how it was lacking in other areas.

Finally, a minor gripe which I know is unlikely to be shared by many but the most devout and rabid MGS fan. Virtually no codec conversations: Seriously, as a fan of the series, I loved snake's little one on ones with Otacon and the team but they're been stripped down in the fourth for the sake of 'accessibility' while the cut scenes are even longer than before. It makes no sense to cut one down and not the other. In doing so, one loses the connection which each entry helped tighten between you as the protagonist and those who helped you from behind the scenes.

Some may argue that reviews are subjective and as such not everyone will be willing to share my opinions on the game. However, I beg to differ and insist that when you award a perfect score to a game it leaves the realms of subjectivity and the game must be of such craftsmanship to be able to withstand all criticisms thrown its way. Either it is as near to a perfect refinement of already accepted gameplay conventions and mechanics as can be produced at the time or it reinvents and revolutionises its respective genre. If we review MGS4 in a bubble, away from the splinter cell’s and Gears of Wars of the world and chose to hold it only against the other games in the series than a far more forgiving light is cast upon it; it truly does refine all the ideas Kojima had previously introduced, setting it apart from the last entry. However, we do not naturally live in a vacuum. Everything we do has an influence on something whether intentional or not. The only conclusion I can draw is that either Kojima is ignorant to the progress made over the years or that he chose to encase himself in his very own artificial sphere; hidden away from all outside influence. By holding MGS4 up to the standards already set over the previous years by games of a similar ilk, the light shining upon it seems that much brighter and harsher. The shadows left by the game grow longer and cover, however partially, all the good done within it. They’re visible to all those who take the time to look instead of turning their gaze away. For those who chose the latter path I hope that what I have said becomes the flash of light that makes the shadows strike out upon the ground. MGS4 has received more than enough praise, raining down and seemingly cleansing it of its flaws. All I want this article to be is the lightning in that rain.

From the cultural downtrodden to the high; our views on what constitutes artistic expression

The misconception that games are nothing but an entertainment medium for the masses is one of the many obstacle that the industry has to overcome before it will be taken seriously in its aspirations to legitimate status as high culture and art. The main problem with this aim is that games do not seek to be nor are in any way in compliance with the traditional canons of elite taste, an absolute necessity if they are to break through this barrier, nor have they had any pretentions of adopting these canons through stylistic modification. The fact of the matter is that what is considered high culture is regulated by an elite minority who fail to realise the untapped potential of this nascent artistic medium. The thought of claiming such a stigmatised medium to be capable of reaching such lofty ambitions may have many questioning whether or not such a goal is realistic but I assure you that it is, maybe not immediately, but it is attainable.

What sets games apart from other artistic forms of expression is the fact that they are undeniably an interactive medium - something no other art can really lay claim to. You may interact with a painting or music in so far that you are yourself a spectator but never truly more than a passive one at most. Such things may move you, they may affect you emotionally and mentally but ultimately, without you there, what is being displayed would remain fundamentally unchanged. The experience is the same for all, it is merely each individual's perception of it which changes.

This is an area where games have limitless scope and potential that has yet to be capitalised upon in any meaningful way. When we see a film or read a book, the vision behind each medium is in the end limited by accepted self imposed constraints every writer or director agrees to work within. A film has, on average, two hours to flesh out every character, develop, shape them and mould an engaging narrative around what is undeniably a constricting framework. Yet if a game lasts less than eight hours, it is considered poor value or to have been rushed through development. The length of your typical RPG (Role Playing Game), the genre most dependent on a strong narrative drive, is generally around the sixty hour mark. Sixty hours to flesh out each character and the world they inhabit. This can't be seen as constrictive, but rather liberating in almost every way. It frees the writer to do things that would seem inconsequential or overly time consuming within a film. But more importantly, it strengthens the all important bond between ourselves and the characters on screen. It can deepen the emotional attachment and our own involvement to what is occurring.

Games not only have the potential to develop existing narrative styles but also to allow the patron to experience it in the way he deems more suitable. When we read a book, we have no choice but to follow the descriptions laid out to us, limited to only seeing what we are meant to. From a cinematic point of view, every camera shot, every take is set in stone and unchanging. In a game you choose how long to soak in every vista, how to deal with every character and yet by doing so you need not deviate too far from the original vision. People prefer and appreciate different things in different ways and by giving them the freedom to do so you not only enhance the narrative experience but also deepen the connection between writer and reader, developer and gamer.

No other medium is capable of doing this so readily and while it may not be ready to handle such artistic responsibility now, the industry is young and growing. It just needs to be treated with the same amount of respect and maturity you would afford any struggling child in their aim to fulfil their intrinsic artistic potential.

Underneath is a letter I addressed to N'Gai Croal of newsweek concerning game reviewer integrity and credibility. If he's kind enough to take the time to answer my points and reply, I'll be sure to post it as well:


Dear Mr. Croal,

I’ve been an avid gamer for a little longer than yourself and as a consequence over the years have seen the creative output of the industry grow and change in ways I would never have imagined. However, what has remained fundamentally the same throughout is the way this output is reported via our very own gaming media – one which still seems to be mainly populated by adolescent tastes, views and humour. Only recently has this also started to change and finally mature yet in a world where Gametrailer’s podcasts are populated with sexist jibes and the most respected game designers chose to market their game on the fact that a friend can hop online and murder the players in game family, I still wonder whether those who share my passion will ever grow up as I have.

Finally reviews are beginning to trickle through where the writer chooses to focus not on what will appeal most to the masses but that which stimulated them the most. Yet even these (as I’m sure you’ve seen in reviews of Braid or even Eurogamer’s own controversial MGS4 8/10 review) seem to have now swung too far in the opposite direction, often leaving behind talk of gameplay mechanics in favour of self important, pretentious rhetoric.

I find myself now living in a time where games writers are more than happy to make for the rooftops and preach at the top of their voices of the return to a golden age of gaming where perfect scores have begun to make their own messianic second coming, harking back to the age of Zelda, Golden Eye and the like. Yet no-one mentions the frustration of GTA IV’s arbitrary mechanics, wherein those whom you find yourself in full chase of suddenly develop an extraordinary immunity to bullets just so they can showcase the route the designers chose to have you funnelled down and the set pieces contained along it, having you waste half your semi-automatic ammo in the futile hope that maybe you’ve just been misjudging your aim and the next time that lead will connect for sure. You’ve just been too impatient, not willing enough to take your time, aim careful and look the devil in the eye. Nor how the much lauded morality tails off just as its starting to take off.

Below is a link to a tirade I felt needed to be launched on one of my most beloved game series and I hope that you take the time to read through it rather than being daunted by the mountain of text rising out of the screen before you (something I found myself to be as I was confronted by many of your Vs Mode articles yet I was always glad to have persevered as I hope you will be as well). Just as the flaws in GTA IV were overlooked, so they were (and to a much greater extent) in MGS4 and yet no site I came across has had the willingness to mention what took me a single play through to see, preferring either to call it Kojima’s magnum opus (and ignoring the fact that it’s impossible for it to be so as he already reached that goal in crafting MGS1 and that every game in the series after that, minus his PSP outings, has merely been the story of the first game retooled and told) or launching so much rhetoric against it that I can’t make rhyme nor reason of what point the writer was attempting to make other than that he hates the way Kojima tells his tales with gameplay left completely to the side (i.e. Eurogamer review).

Twilight Princess was my 12th foray into a series which has been around for longer than I have and while it would undoubtedly be hubris to claim it was the 12th that betrayed me, I feel this to be a somewhat apt a description of my feelings regarding the game in this venerated series and also, quite funny.

I feel like I cannot really blame Zelda directly, it’s not really its fault. The games are, essentially, as good as ever. Well designed, artistically pleasing and a wonderful mesh of engaging (if never overly taxing) combat, devious puzzles and exploration. It’s certainly not for lack of trying or skill on the developer’s part. Then why this feeling of tedium and déjà vu which began to set in as I worked my way through yet another intricate dungeon? If familiarity breeds contempt than I’m afraid I’m beginning to feel as if I know this series better than any single one of my closest friends and our relationship’s suffering because of it.

Maybe I’m missing the point entirely. Perhaps it’s the use of the Wii-mote which changes the experience. Yet while Nintendo have been lavished with near unanimous praise over the innovation they’re currently bringing to the industry, I can’t help but feel that when it comes to the more established franchises, the Zeldas, Marios and Metroids of this world, that they’re playing it safe. It doesn’t do much to change the method of control if the underlying game is practically the same thing we’ve been playing for the past 22 years.

I desperately want Nintendo to finally start delivering on their promises. If you intend to innovate than be sure to do it all the way through. In every new game the player is begins stripped of the equipment and skills of the prior, with each new dungeon built specifically around the one new/retrieved item found within. I think they could: throw a wrench in the works and really start tweaking the Zelda formula - maybe skipping the boomerang, bombs and bow and arrow altogether or--gasp--starting players off with those items. But just as films and TV series (with exception to 24) stopped using amnesia as a convenient device to introduce viewers to a character’s back story, so should such archaic methods be abandoned here.

Back in 1982, another Japanese company, Namco, produced Pacman for $200,000. Now, the average Next-Generation title is estimated to cost $15m. While production costs have tripled in recent years, sales and revenue have hardly changed. It’s becoming ever more expensive to take a chance on the unproven and this fear gnaws away at all the industry giants, even those not usually adverse to upsetting the balance and doing something as radical as Nintendo did with the Wii, a console considered a sure fire flop by industry magnates before launch.

And there are steps being taken in the right direction with Nintendo’s recent announcement of ‘WiiWare’. New and downloadable games different to the vintage games already being offered. What's more interesting is that Nintendo isn't only seeking WiiWare from established publishers and developers like Ubisoft and Sega but rather indie developers as well. Shorter, original, more creative games from small teams with big ideas whose products would not be vetted by Nintendo. If Nintendo itself can’t tap into the potential they created in their own system, maybe one of these can.

Too often games are held up to unfair standards, criticised for not being something which they were never meant to be. We don’t fault paintings for not telling stories as well as comic books, nor so photography for not telling a story as well as television. Each medium should be judged on its own merits.

To ignore the output of this growing industry and remain unknowing would be equal to any other sense of cultural ignorance. They add up - the words you can't pronounce, the events you haven't heard of, the ideas with which you are not and do not wish to be acquainted. To remain ignorant is to lose any sense of intellectual stimuli, to be immersed in feeling of utter weariness and discontent. This ennui is so often endemic of ‘intellectual’ and ‘cultural’ circles but wherever an art form resides, so such a condition is ever possible. Yet to remain aware of one’s own shortcomings and then do nothing leads to what can be better described as the alienation of the intellectual. At some point the accumulation of missing information and curiosity amounts to your not being in the world at all.

Games are in essence dialogic works. They find themselves in a continual dialogue not only with other mediums but also other developers within the industry. Such a state does not merely answer, correct, silence, or extend a previous work, but informs and is continually informed by it. This is not merely a matter of influence, for the dialogue extends in both directions.. Even the bad works of art, whether in gaming, literature or on canvas, still help shape others.

An artist’s aim is not to imitate but to represent. This free play of the imagination enables one to bring concepts to bear on an experience that is, in itself, free from concepts. When we view art, we are forced to use analogy for what we experience and this can only be done through the imagination. What’s expressed is often intangible, ineffable, outside of this world and moment. This need for the law of correspondence, can often sweep a man's thoughts entirely beyond that which is a justifiable scientific continuation of the impression received from nature. As such, many of the great thinkers of the past had a grounding in both the scientific and artistic. Goethe was a student of science; and his poetry owes much to his scientific studies. Dante and Milton were scientific in their poetry, and Plato and Spinoza were poetic in their philosophies. Games are at a base level scientific creations but are capable of being so much more; to merge the scientific and artistic in ways which convey more meaning to the viewer than any other form of expression as in no other do you find yourself so actively involved.

Games are too ready to imitate rather than innovate. To be ‘cinematic’ is the ideal yet they are unwilling to craft their own language, to speak freely and truly differentiate themselves and in doing so find a means of expression impossible in other mediums. Videogames privilege agency over empathy and as such should be crafted with this in mind.

Commercial games that are most often cited when trying to uphold games as art are light on explicit storytelling (where meaning is communicated through dialogue and cutscenes) and heavier on an embedded narrative (where the meaning of things is communicated through the world itself, as in Ico and Shadow of the Colossus) or impressionism (the recently re-released Rez).

What's great about such approaches is that suggestive sparseness of the plot and the absence of characterization leaves us plenty of room to fill in the blanks with our imagination, which, when supported by a precisely and elegantly thought out framework, delivers a more powerful final product than many other games that give us plenty of characterization and story but precious little genuine mystery. Such games approximate the mood, texture, emotion, astonishment, mystery and ineffability that generally signal the presence of genuine art.