Monday, August 8, 2011

Metal Gear Solid 4

The first game I bought for my PS3 was Metal Gear Solid 4. I had wanted a PS3 just to play this game, back in the days before I had a job when it first came out. I managed to keep all the spoilers at bay and so I was able to enjoy this game. And shit bricks. Lots of them. The story was almost too easy for me to follow after MGS1/2/3's joy of twists and turns. It had a few, but they weren't hard to follow. And it had to make sure it cleared up everything at the end. And man did it ever. But that's not what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about is the engine used in MGS4. The story made me shit bricks at times(as stated), and the engine did things I won't talk about. But really, I have never had an engine in a game feel this perfect. Bungie does a really good job with their engines, as does DICE and Valve. But a "plain" (man, it hurts to say those engines are plain. I love you guys, really) FPS engine working perfectly isn't as impressive as a stealth game's. In a first person shoot your focus is on moving from point A to B, and killing everything you can (save a few games). If the environment reacts to you and your weapons it's a solid engine. Throw in bullet physics, destructible environments and such and you're pretty much golden. More than Call of Duty has done. (I hate on CoD so much not because I think their games are bad(though they are not my cup of tea anymore), but because I don't see them trying to push the envelope and do new things with their games anymore). But with MGS4 I can go from 2 points and kill anything, and do it any number of ways.  Or I can sneak by and kill nobody a number of ways as well. They took out the spinning boxes for items which helped make them harder to spot and make the world feel better. They added the Solid Eye which did a great job of adding nice H.U.D. features to enemies and such (really nice when you can't tell if that person hates you or not from a distance). And the guns, oh God the guns!

They got the guns perfect! Snake doesn't tactically reload "right", sadly. But if you shoot half a mag, reload and look on the ground you'll see that one of the rounds is still a live cartridge. So even though he works charging handle on that AK when he doesn't have to, it correctly ejects a live round. It's easy to see in the Shooting Range. I can't tell if the ammo count goes down because of this but either way it is very cool to see. It was really nice to play a MGS4 game that really allowed you to play it as a shooter just as much as it allowed you to play it as a stealth game. MGS4 is mostly stealth, but for someone who likes the story more it's nice to have the freedom to play it how I want to.

I loved being able to aim in either 3rd person or 1st person at the press of a button. And I could lock it into 1st person when aiming right in the menu. I kept it in 1st person most of the game while in combat. And I could finally fight and not totally waste ammo (and get shot up). But I could still explore the world in 3rd person which lends best to the MGS experience. I really REALLY want to see this engine used for the next Resident Evil game. I loved RE5, but the engine made it a bitch to play. I needed to be able to aim down my weapon sites a lot of the time (the laser dot was a joke on target) but 3rd person is just what RE games are. I think this engine would be perfect at accommodating both types of players.

Everything else about that game was really awesome. The way the environment reacted to you was awesome. The flashbacks and such were great. The little hidden things were awesome. The cut-scenes were just like a movie as always. Only thing missing was trophies to convince me to play the game on harder settings a bit more [when there isn't a way to track the awesome things I've done in a game, I'm often less likely to do them]. But I at least want to do a "kill everything" and "kill nothing" playthrough. Now I want to see the rest of the games remade in this engine. Both MGS and MG. Mostly the Metal Gear games, as those are hard as hell for me (as most NES games are).