There's no distinction - moments after you hide in a pile of slaughtered bodies the game seizes the opportunity to make a joke about your companion pissing himself.īy now, however, that's the tone the series takes - it's part of the adolescent charm, a levity that allows Kojima and his team to tackle legitimate situations without undercutting the 'fun' games are so often burdened by, and it's a philosophy present in the entire game. You can be playing with your puppy dog in one scene and rescuing child soldiers in the next. What I'm saying is that the series has always swung wildly between silly and serious, and MGSV is no different. It will push you to your limits as you marathon mash a controller to save the world, and it will spend way too much time distracted by a soldier who has the runs. In one game it will make fun of the saves on your memory card and force you to confront the idea of torture, and it will give both ideas the same degree of gravitas. Sometimes it's nothing but dick and poop jokes, and minutes later it's non-stop serious conversations about the nature of war and the value (or lack thereof) of Mutually Assured Destruction policies. Metal Gear Solid, as I have already established, has always had a problem with tone. Because the gameplay is beyond reproach.īefore I get into that, let's discuss the story specifically. Because if you avoid this game just because you can't invest in a mad man's story, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. You can, if you like, skip every single cutscene just to move on to the game itself - and if you hate whacky stories about all of the above, you should do exactly that. It's adolescent power fantasy at its grandest, a militant reaction to bullying so epic it involves torture, giant robots and a dog with the ability to parachute people away to an oil rig in the Indian Ocean.Īlong the way there are invisible people, rock people, people who can rust vehicles, tanks, helicopters, more robots and more. You and your friends Ocelot and Miller kidnap soldiers and convince them to join your cause, the whole time seeking revenge on the man who destroyed your last attempt to do exactly what you're currently doing. In essence, you play as Big Boss and your job is to build up a private army so grand that nobody can ever screw with you again. The opening is crazy long and not remotely indicative of the contents of the game, the cutscenes following are shorter but still complete lunacy. It's more bananas than you could imagine.
And soon they'll spread the virus as well, tricking people into ignoring the story just so they can enjoy the gameplay within.Īllow me to begin the obligatory trick by saying that the story is bananas.
Because if you're into Metal Gear Solid, you're a vector for the virus of Metal Gear fandom, and you know if you can just get them into the game they'll be infected as well. So instead you tell them to ignore the crazy story and just try it out. And they'll turn the game off and never listen to you again. If you dump someone who isn't open-minded into Metal Gear Solid, they'll learn in the first 10 minutes that the protagonist's name is a dick joke and he shelved a packet of cigarettes so that he could smoke on his mission. I guess I just did that, but I'm a super genius. It's too difficult to explain that the game is basically "Escape from Alaska" in the same vein as "Escape from L.A." except with less basketball. So if you think of Metal Gear Solid, you probably think of sneaking in cardboard boxes, perving on Meryl in the bathrooms or whatever. Metal Gear Solid as a series has always been the butt of jokes, because it's not easily digestible and gamers are lovable but easily distracted types. It's not cultural cringe driving people to deride the story in a game they love, it's a con job. And so you cringe as you recommend it, praying they make it past the Love Hina-esque bullshit and through to the good stuff lest they think you're one of those anime fans. Like the anime Shiki, which - if you haven't watched it - will seem like utter trash for the first three episodes until it becomes something awesome. There's always a lot of hand-waving, a lot of 'yeah, it's bananas but.' that seems superficially like cultural cringe. People always try to downplay the story in Metal Gear Solid games.