Steven

SNAKE! Dum dum dumdumdum dum dum dum!

If you don't know what I mean, you probably wont want to follow me on this retrospective of one of the greatest series ever made.

Metal Gear games are a bizarre breed of game. Part stealth em up, yet you fight tanks and airplanes, and part action movie but you are constantly faced with reams of talking head exposition, part serious comment on nuclear war and part farcical self indulgent comedy.

In my review of the series I've gone back to look at the first game from 1987 in order to try and discover where these idiosyncrasies came from, and I've been both surprised and amused at what I've found.

The first game was released in 1987 which I never played this on release. I hold my hands up. It's only recently that I've gone back to look at the game, so I sort of missed the whole impact of it when it was first released.

Looking at it now you can't help but be overawed at how much of it is still being used within the modern Metal Gear games. This game came out in 1987, I bet some of you weren't even born then, that is how old this game is. The first thing that stuck me with this is that it has an excellent sense of place, it foreshadows Metal Gear Solid in that the first scene has Snake swimming out of a dock in order to infiltrate the base. From this blossoms a great story, which lets be truthful here, basically hasn't changed in the more recent Metal Gear games.

It's got all the things you'll know and love, cardboard boxes, cigarettes, electric floors and remote controlled rockets, crazy bosses (even got a flamethrower boss eh..), Hind D fight and last but by no means least a Metal Gear. The game uses the same mechanics as all subsequent Metal Gear games, one action button for items and one for weapons, and has copious exposition given through codec messages. This game literally must have blown peoples socks off when it came out, so many new ideas and takes on how a game should play.

Although looking back on it now there are some really shocking gameplay elements, the guards only see in straight lines, if you're stood next to one of them they will only see you if the actually turn to look at you, the codec discussions are room based, meaning if you go back to the a room you've previously visited you will get the same message as before, you can escape an alarm bell if you leave the screen.........oh hang on.

This first story sets up so many plot strands for the later Metal Gear games that it's hard not to play it now without a knowing smile on your face, you get to fight Big Boss! I mean for all the talking of Big Boss in the Metal Gear series you can't help but wonder when playing the later games what he actually looked like and whether he was as hard as you imagine him to be, a crack black ops leader who went power mad and set up his Outer Heaven. Well I've killed him and now I know.

A bizarre game which doesn't really fit into the main Metal Gear story arch. It's more like a best of album from your favorite band. It's got all the hits on there but doesn't listen as good as previous albums. Technically if you were to draw time line it would sit after the first Metal Gear game, but the story seems anachronistic in that it brings in elements from Metal Gear Solid on the playstation to a period in time when they may or may not have been relevant. This is a good thing in that it brings some of the improvements from Metal Gear Solid to a game which uses them wisely, it's got VR missions and also a series of bosses named after animals. Slash Hawk anyone? It was ok this game, it filled the time between the releases of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, but you couldn't help but feel it was just a stepping stone. Also it had an unholy reliance on using the new colour screen of the GBC in a tedious series of colour based box and conveyor belt puzzles.

Due to the great reception of Metal Gear a sequel was commissioned and Snake's Revenge was released in 1990 on the NES. However this game had no input from Hideo Kojima, and has subsequently been written out of the Metal Gear time line with his later games. Popular knowledge has it that Kojima didn't know of the existence of Snakes Revenge until he was told of it while traveling on a train, at this time he was told that he should make a true sequel. And following on from this Metal Gear 2 : Solid Snake was released in 1990. Metal Gear 2 : Solid Snake was only released in Japan and on the MSX. It didn't see a release in the West until Metal Gear Solid 3 : Subsistence in which it was included as an extra. So for many of us, including me, this game went totally unnoticed. Metal Gear 2 : Solid Snake had some major improvements over the original game and some of these improvements have carried forward for the more recent games.

There was now a radar system on the screen which showed your position and that of the baddies, this also got scrambled when you were seen and the guards went into alert phase, the alert phase now also having more than one variation, red, yellow and then normal infiltration. Remember these from Metal Gear Solid? The codec sections now showed the heads of both people who were talking and were situation specific rather than location specific as in the first game. The range of moves for Snake had also increased massively and he could now duck and crawl allowing for much more open and expansive environments. There were a series of maps each with various screens but each screen was linked and the guards were therefore able to patrol between the various screens. This was a massive leap and the gameplay benefited greatly from this, a much more consistent and believable universe was created and the game still plays well today. Due to this increased immersion the story benefited immeasurably, this was the first game in the series which had proper detailed codec conversations. And through this the story was allowed to progress apace.

This game also introduced many series stalwarts, anonymous codec helper (remember Deepthroat) , Master Miller, Roy Campbell and Gray Fox and discussed seriously for the first time consequences of war and nuclear armament. From this point forward the series would always comment on the futility and morality of war and nuclear weapons. In fact this game includes so many aspects from Metal Gear Solid that many people have come to look upon Metal Gear Solid as a kind of pseudo remake of this game. Both games have Snake coming out of retirement to do one more mission, both include a double cross (yeah again), a kidnapped scientist, a spiral tower building with guards chasing you and a lift encounter with invisible guards. The Metal Gear series as we know it today was truly born.

It's actually something to go back and play it as it feels so like the later Metal Gear Solid games that it's unnerving, including all the tedious backtracking and the meta references to the fact you are playing a game like having to look in the booklet for new frequencies.

Oh and while I'm talking about plot strands, remember the famous fight between Gray Fox and Snake which is referenced in Metal Gear Solid? Yeah I've done it. In a room full of mines and using just my fists.

Bizarrely, and for no apparent reason, this is a turn based strategy game, and not a very good one at that. Well ok... it was alright. It used a similar view point and graphical style to the Metal Gear Solid games and still had many of the series hallmarks and items, however the major departure for this game was the use of a card based battle system. This worked like most other card based strategy games in that you had a deck of cards to make your attacks and moves.

This was an early release on the PSP and as such had garnered a fair bit of pre-launch hype, however upon the realisation that it was a turn based card strategy game many traditional fans turned away from it and were disappointed. It was a very brave move from Konami and not only showed their support of a as yet unproven platform, but also showed how they were constantly thinking outside the norm with what to do with the Metal Gear series, not just with the turn based system but also with the brave cell shading used in the story elements, an aspect the sequel took even further. This did well enough at retail that a sequel was commissioned and Metal Gear AC!D 2 was released the following year.

And then we turn to Metal Gear : Solid a game which for many of us will represent the first time we ever played the series. Lets cut to the chase here, this game was phenomenal and came out at the best possible time when the PS1 was dominating the world and Sony couldn't do anything wrong. I remember when this game was coming out there was a huge amount of hype building for it and by the time of the actual release anticipation was running at fever pitch.

For the first time the game was given the moniker Tactical Espionage Action, and that has stuck with the series ever since. The game had an amazing introduction and far outpaced any other game currently on the market for generating a sense you were watching and playing in an action movie, with the game actually starting and allowing you to get past the first obstacle before the title appeared on the screen in a blaze of glory while Snake ripped off his diving mask.

As I said previously many people looked upon this as a port or retelling of Metal Gear : Solid Snake, and whilst this does share some story elements it's definitely a third game in the storyline. And given the new medium of CD this story was able to be told with far more involving codec moments, using voices for the first time,which lent a particular emotional depth to the characters.

And what new characters! This game introduced us to the Cyborg Ninja, Liquid Snake, Otacon, Merly and Revolver Ocelot, all of whom are recurring characters in the later games. This game also had some audacious bosses, we all know and love Vulcan Raven and how he used to slowly destroy the scenery during your battle making a constantly shifting environment in which you fought, Sniper Wolf and how you could just hide from round the corner from her and use Nikitas to kill her, and last but no means least Psycho Mantis who could read your mind, unless that was you used controller port 2!

The extra space of the CD also allowed for video clips to be integrated within some of the cutscenes, which Kojima used to further emphasize story and in turn his views on the nature of war and especially nuclear war. In fact disc 2 was comprised largely of video footage. He also used the extra space to put on mission recaps of the previous games in which you got to read through iterative menus and discover the plot of the earlier games yourself.

This game wasn't shy from using mature and often violent scenes, and in fact it was subject to some editing when it reached our shores. Does anyone remember seeing Gray Fox's head get squashed by the Metal Gear, the Japanese version showed it but for us the camera cut away. There was also cutting of parts of the scene in the corridor with the Ninja when he slaughters the squad of soldiers. All this at a time when people still though mature games should involve Lara Croft in a catsuit. This game was amazing and started a whole generation of people on to the Metal Gear series.