Looking at: Metal Gear Solid

Legacy

Snake, in his natural environment

Metal Gear Solid Five: The Phantom Pain comes out tomorrow. I can't afford it right now, as it's eighty fucking dollars here in Canada, which is to bad considering that it might be one of the greatest games ever made. So while I put together the money to buy it/ wait for someone to have it on sale (looking at you GreenMan Gaming) I decided to get better acquainted with the rest of the series, having only played the third game to completion and a few hours of other entries.

To whit, I purchased the MGS Legacy collection for the PS3, the entire series consisting of all five original MGS games (1,2,3,4 and an HD re-release of the PSP's Peace Walker). That's certainly a lot of gameplay, and I decided to write my thoughts on the games as I complete them. That said, here's my thoughts on the 1998 game that started it all, Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid.

Northern Exposure

series favourite, Revolver Ocelot, making his first appearance. 

The set up to MGS is that you are the legendary mercenary Solid Snake. You've been hired by the pentagon to stop a terrorist incursion of highly trained Genome Soldiers that have taken over a nuclear disposal site in northern Alaska. You infiltrate the facility, remain as undetected as possible, and shut down the operation by any means necessary, killing anyone that stands in your way.

That's actually pretty much the whole plot throughout the game. Rest assured, there are twists a-plenty, it wouldn't be an MGS game if it made any damn sense, but the basic goal remains the same throughout. Take out any obstacles, deactivate the terrorists' super weapon, and escape.

It's all the details that quickly get muddled, and while this wasn't his first game, this is certainly the most high profile game Kojima had at the time, so for a lot of people this would be their first exposure to him. It can be... jarring. The game is, to say the least, cinematic, insofar as it feels like you're watching a series of movies inter-spliced with bursts of gameplay. You'll need patience to enjoy MGS, and not just for the stealth gameplay.

I'll say this, at least it has memorable characters. I can likely recall every major character in the game and give a decent account of what that character was or did, because they were so completely fleshed out. The bosses in particular, were almost insanely detailed, each of them having complete back-stories and motivations for why they did what they did, and even why they fought Snake.

That insane level of character certainly plays on both sides, and Snake and his compatriots are just as well conceived, to the degree that there's entire story arc that take place just over your radio. This would become another staple of the series in time, and it's not uncommon to brake for a ten minute conversation in the middle of an action scene.

There's certainly no shortage of plot and character in MGS, but it's just bizarre how the game approaches it's subject matter, like there's a hardcore military historian, a genetic biologist, and a stand-up comedian all screaming at the same time. It spouts rhetoric about the advances of science, the effects of combat, the mentality of soldiers, and the moral ambiguity of combat and genetic science in the same breath that it tells a lame joke, or has a naked character run around for laughs. It's like the game knows it's supposed to be an adult game, but refuses to grow up completely.

Stealth Action

Enough about the story, how does the actual game play, and more importantly, does it hold up? The answer is... sort of, but not really.

On the one hand, the stealth works great, even despite the game's age and limited resources for the time. Not even the fixed camera is an issue due to two factors:
1) the game wisely chooses to go with an overhead or very high isometric view for most of the game, something I wish it's predecessor would have kept.
2) In the top right corner is a radar screen.

It's this latter item that saves the game in many ways, and I found myself actually just playing based on that small screen more then what Snake was actually doing. The radar, when it's active, displays enemy patrols, cones of vision, and camera placement as well. In order to remain undetected, all you need to do is avoid the eye-lines of enemies and you're golden. That said, the radar can be shut off, either by the room, by being detected, or through jamming technology.

That's the good, the bad is the rest. MGS was before the series introduced the idea of non-lethal play-through's. Killing is the norm, and while it's more than possible to take out one soldier, fighting more than one is nearly impossible. This is because MGS was also before the introduction of first person aiming, meaning to aim Snake you had to spin him around and hope the auto-aim took over properly. Again, one, maybe two enemies this sort of works, but any more and it just falls apart, especially if the enemies are on opposite sides of you. There's one moment in particular, where you have to climb a fucking long tower, all the while being bombarded by enemies. It serves as one of the most aggravating gaming experiences I've had recently.

one of the many, many, many radio conversations throughout the game.

That's actually something that happened a lot, total aggravation. Boss fights often annoyed the hell out of me, rather then challenged me, and several sections were insanely tedious. The last action you do before the end of the game requires you back-tracking through a facility twice in order to (seriously) change the temperature of one of your items. That sort of boring, game-padding back-tracking happens more than once and it grew on my nerves.

The other major issue I had with the game were the controls. Maybe this wasn't an issue on the original PS1, but on the PS3 I found it tantamount to menacing. First, the game doesn't use either of the joy-sticks, not even the left one for movement. I had to control the entire game on the D-pad, and damn near wore that poor thing out. Next, Snake can really only look/move in the four directions, thanks to the aforementioned D-pad controls. This means aiming him, already an annoying prospect due to the lack of proper aiming, becomes damn near impossible. There's a section near the end of the game where you're in control of a mounted machine gun that might be one of the worst vehicle sections I've ever played, and trying to line up a shot properly was almost impossible.

There's other aggravation as well, the lack of crouch movement, something that wouldn't be addressed in the series until MGS 4, ten years later) Trying to aim the few first-person weapons with the D-pad was impossible, making a sniper fight much harder then it should have been, the constant interruptions with cut-scenes, and the over-reliance on radio calls for exposition. All told, MGS hasn't exactly aged that well. I've heard the Gamecube re-release Twin Snakes is better, but I'm unable to play that version.

Cubic Snake

a rare moment of actual gameplay.

I won't harsh to much on the production side of the game, as it is nearly twenty years old now. For it's time, MGS was likely pushing the PS1 to it's absolute limits. The amount of detail pumped into every polygon is spectacular, and it's got an almost retro charm to it. Effects look decent and character models, while low-fi, do look decent. There's no mouth movement on any character faces, but their body language is impressively expressive.

The idea to keep the game localized to a single location was a smart one, and each room of the facility feels incredibly detailed and lived in. Everything from the offices to the prison or a refinery feels completely thought out and believable. There's a logic to how the facility is laid out and everything makes a lot of sense.

MGS's Sound might be the best age'd thing about it, since the voice work is the series' standard over the top and expressive. The characters come to life more then any other PS1 game I've ever played (in fairness, I've only played like, five PS1 games) and it really does feel like a super extended spy thriller movie. David Hayter is doing a damn serviceable job as a young Solid Snake, but there's others that would become series regulars like the illustrious Jennifer Hale, Debbie Mae West, Cam Clarke, and Paul Eiding. All of them doing a great job, even when the script they're reading veers off into the completely insane.

Sound effects and music all work too. Obviously, it's not nearly as good as later entries, but I didn't encounter and major problems throughout the game. Music set the mood well, from the fight with Psycho Mantis, to the unavailing of the Metal Gear itself. All of it worked well and never detracted from the experience.

Soldier's Honour

Snake's relationship with women is...complicated.

If not for it's insane script, unique and memorable characters and completely outlandish plot, it's likely MGS would have fallen into complete obscurity. The gameplay aged like milk and trying to play it much later became a test of patience to me. I don't completely know if I liked it, although it's fair to say I enjoyed it more then my brief experience with it's predecessor, and my next game, MGS2.

The first game created a legacy, and has been called a masterpiece. I don't know if I agree with that, but as far as PS1 games go it's certainly an experience unlike any other.

Next for me: pretty-boys, ninjas, fat men, and one of the best bait-and-switches ever pulled.

All screenshots taken from the Long-play video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpG9XIfFkE0

Looking at: Alien Isolation

In Space...

Amanda Ripely, spitting image of her mother

Everyone remembers Aliens, the 1986 James Cameron sci-fi classic that pretty much shaped the modern sci-fi world. It's a great film, another example of James Cameron's amazing film-making abilites, and it's easily one of my all time favorite 80's movies, right up there with Cameron's Terminator 2.

What a lot of people don't remember, or don't remember as well, is the predecessor to Aliens, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). Alien is a decidedly different film from Cameron's choosing to focus on a small cast, few action scenes, and a great horror vibe. It's this smaller, more intimate feel of Scott's movie that we find the setting for Alien: Isolation, one of the best sci-fi horror titles since System Shock 2.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far

Emergency stations are your save points, and their beeping is an odd comfort.

A:I sees you playing as Amanda Ripley, a last name that should be instantly familiar to any fan of the franchise. Indeed, Amanda is the daughter of Sigourney Weaver's character from the films, and was about 10 during the events of Alien. Now, a decade later, the flight recorder from the Nostromo has been found in a backwater station on the far reaches of space, and Ripley, along with some Weyland Yutani executives, decide to go pick it up.

As you might expect, things don't go nearly as planned. Ripley and co. arrive at Sevastopol station to find it nearly deserted and completely in ruins. The surviving humans have split into warring groups and factions, scrounging around and fighting with each other. The station's AI has gone insane, turning the synthetic robots onboard into murderous killing machines. And there's the Xeno herself, come aboard with the Nostromo recording box and killing without mercy wherever she goes. Sevastopol, in other words, fucking sucks.

Under the Covers

Sevastopol is falling apart, and fire suppression almost never works.

Gameplay wise A:I is largely about stealth over everything else. Combat is hugely risky, the few times you actually can engage in it, and you'll spend most of your time crawling around avoiding a fight. Human enemies are easy enough to engage, and while the game emphasizes avoidance, you can lure single foes away and bean them over the head with your maintenance tool. That only works a fraction of the time, however, and only on humans, who aren't really your main concern. Synthetics, on the other hand, can't be attacked in a stealthy manner, can withstand a fury of blows, and will hunt you relentlessly, even through a hail of gunfire. They're creepy, monotone, grey as the moon, and really hard to kill, making them the perfect enemy for a game all about sneaking around.

Of course the biggest threat is the Xeno, huge, hulking, and black as night. Everything about how the Xeno is handled in this game is amazing, and it makes the whole experience that much more terrifying and authentic to the film it's based on. The Xeno doesn't even show up for the first 90 minutes, rather you follow her path of destruction and death so that when you do get a look at her you're instantly aware of how dangerous she is.

Dangerous indeed, since the Xeno's attack is an instant game over. This might seem aggravating, and it is at times, but it reinforces the idea that you need to avoid her at all costs. A:I is a game that demands patience, and you'll find yourself waiting out the Xeno in cupboards or under tables while moving through her patrol pattern. If you get board easily, this is really not the game for you.

Fear and Loathing

Alien: Isolation's lighting does a great job of creating atmosphere.

There is combat, but as I said, it's mostly a last resort option. There are a few weapons, a trusty revolver or a flamethrower, but open firefights draw the Xeno, and no amount of ammo can take her down. The rare time the game does force you into a fight, it's usually in a way that you can easily control the situation, and only with a handful of combatants.

This is for the better, since A:I might be one of the worst shooters I've played in a while, strictly speaking as a shooter. Weapons handle like shit, and they're just not fun to use at all. Again, this all feeds back into the stealth and avoidance, but when you do have to pull iron and fire it's a horrendous experience that almost made me long for Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Just kidding, no one has ever longed for that pile of steaming Xeno shit.

Thankfully the stealth works great, with a full compliment of leaning controls and the ubiquitous motion tracker from the films. It's easy to avoid a fight, and that works very well in the game's favor. To compliment this are a handful of tools you can craft, everything from smoke bombs and noise makers to pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. Let me tell you, there's no more satisfying feeling than nailing the Xeno with a Molotov, and it's probably the only effective way to get some breathing room.

Crafting itself is handled pretty well, sort of similar to The Last of Us. There's several types of crafting components scattered through the levels and the different items require combinations of them. Medkits are, of course, the easiest thing to build, but some of the better weapons, like the aforementioned Molotovs or pipe bombs, can require a bit of time to put together, and it makes using them that much more costly.

Gunmetal Grey

The ubiquitous motion tracker, capable of tracking the Xeno and other living beings.

There's an art to making something as boring (relativity speaking) as a space station look good and A:I nails this perfectly. Sevastopol is a dilapidated derelict falling apart and on the edge of complete breakdown. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the tunnels of Metro 2033, and it's a dark, gloomy and very claustrophobic affair. The station is absolutely cramped, with no breathing room, and it actually manages to justify the lack of a jump button. Even better, is that it actually looks lived-in, with clutter everywhere, rather than just a boring run-of-the-mill space station. It's possible to believe that, until recently, Sevastopol was a bustling industrial station, now it sits in ruins falling apart at the seams.

Graphically A:I looks amazing, with stellar lighting effects that help sell the mood perfectly. Smoke effects look great and the art direction of Sevastopol is top notch. Character models all look pretty good in-game, but it's in the cut-scenes that they really shine, and we dip deep into the uncanny valley with some of the characters.

My favorite part of the visual design of A:I is how it approaches it's look. It's a retro-future feel that fits perfectly with the original movie, considering it was made in the late 70's. Computer screens are mono-chrome green, with scan lines, and there's chromatic aberrations on every screens, making them look like old worn-out CRT technology. Everything is bulky and old-fashioned, exactly like they would be in a future created back in 1979, and it's an extra touch that does a lot to sell the game as part of the franchise.

On the audio front, the game is equally great. Sound design is excellent, with Sevastopol creaking and moaning, creating a tense atmosphere that something isn't right. You'll constantly hear the Xeno hunting you from the vents, and enemy footsteps and conversation pieces echo through the abandoned halls alerting you organically to their presence. The machinery littered throughout the station beeps and blips and computers all sounds like they came directly from the early 80's. Most importantly is the save stations, who's beeps can be heard a mile off. At first they seem annoying, as the beeping is constant a la the low health warnings in Zelda, but as you progress you begin to savor this annoyance, as it's a sign that safety, however relative, is nearby.

Voice acting too is really great. Ripely sounds decent enough, considering the wide range of emotions that she has to go through. Other characters sound good to, and there's no one that stands out as annoying or particularly bad. The synthetics deserve special notice for being so monotone and creepy that the very sound of them unnerved me to no end.

Game Over Man

The Xeno is a terrifying sight, and often spells the end.

In a lot of ways A:I shouldn't be as good as it is, and there are some complaints I have against it. There were parts that I just found aggravating, especially one early encounter that became almost Hotline Miami-esque for me and took me several dozen tries and completely breaking the game to move past. The loading splash screens may say Ripely isn't a violent person, but in my hands she sure as hell was.

Alien: Isolation reminds me of games like Metro 2033, Bioshock and the aforementioned System Shock 2 in the absolute best way possible. It's a scary game the emphasizes the idea of survival and patience, and flies in the face of other games in the genre. It's certainly not for everyone, but Alien: Isolation is easily one of the best sci-fi horror games I've ever played.

looking at: Ridge Racer: Unbounded

Unsullied

cars only seem to ever come in one paint colour.

The nice thing about racing games is that you really only have to play them for about an hour or so to figure out what's going on with them. At least, that's the justification I'm going to use to write this review because honestly, after an hour I just don't want to play Ridge Racer: Unbounded anymore. This is easily one of the worst racing games I've ever played.

This is the first racing game I've reviewed here at LAATIAB, so I want to set a precedent here: I like racing games and racing simulation games. I love Mario Kart, Burnout: Paradise, and I really enjoyed GRID 2. I've played more Need for Speed games than I can remember, and I've likely logged over a 100 hours in Burnout 3 for the Xbox as a kid. I like racing games, I get racing games, and playing racing games is usually a good time for me.

Unless it's Ridge Racer: Unbounded.

Which is a stupid fucking name.

Off the Ridge

smashing through obstacles will give you shortcuts, often in the form of ramps.

The Ridge Racer series is huge, and stretches back to the early 90's as Japanese arcade and console games. Some of the old games are extremely well liked, and many of the PS2 entries in the series top out that console's best racing games list, no easy task considering some of the other games on that list. I can't say I've played any previous RR games, so it's perhaps unfortunate that Unbounded is my first experience.

This is the thirteenth console entry into the series, and by it's own description it breaks away from some of the conventions of it's predecessors. Judging by my experience with it, that number is rather unlucky, despite the pedigree going into it. Not even Bugbear, the company behind Flatout 2 or the upcoming Wreckfest could save this wreck.

Let's start off with what works. Graphically, RR:U is pretty good looking. There's an odd orange filter on everything, but reflections look good and the cars all look great, even at high speed. Even at high speeds my framerate was really good, and it's an overall decently optimized game. There's almost no graphics options whatsoever, so you better hope your system can run it.

The other thing I liked about RR:U was the idea of destructible terrain. This is something Bugbear seems to have taken from their Flatout games, and here they've gone above and beyond. Tracks will have destruction points that you can boost into, provided you have some boost saved, to create shortcuts or destroy several opponents at once. These are hugely satisfying to activate and I went out of my way to try and activate them if I could.

Cliff Diver

The game looks great, to bad it's all for naught.

Ok, that's the good, here comes the bad. That is, pretty much everything else.

First, and probably most importantly, are my issues with the controls. The actual layout was ok, but controlling the cars themselves was a chore. I wasn't stupid enough to try to play the game on my mouse and keyboard, but on a controller cars felt sluggish, and unwieldy. Trying to drift was a death sentence, and more often then not resulted in my completely spinning out, unable to recover easily and moving me way down the rankings.

I really want to make sure you understand how bad this drifting is. It's hard to explain accurately in words, or even video, and the only thing I can suggest is playing a really good racer, like Burnout: Paradise, then playing RR:U and you should instantly understand. Trying to use the handbrake as suggested by the game was a no-go, as it would send my spinning like a top. Trying to use the brake peddle wasn't much better because it didn't do anything to slow me down. Trying to take a turn well in RR:U was nearly impossible, and I'd either end up sliding into a wall or spinning out.

This all brings me to my second issue, the game is fucking hard. Coming from Namco Bandai, I was actually surprised not to see From Software's name on it, since it feels like it would fit in perfectly with their Dark Souls series. The AI kicked my ass, no matter what car I used or how I changed my tactics. It took me four tries to beat the first race, and subsequent races took even longer, to the point where I gave up completely to write this. I don't know if it's weird rubber-banding, or the bad controls, or both, but I was just never able to create a solid lead, the few times I did manage to get ahead.

Cars feel sluggish and unresponsive.

Maybe it's because all of the cars are just awful. It's usual for the starting cars in a racer to be junkers, everyone expects that. You have to earn the better cars, either by earning money and buying them or unlocking them through challenge. But it seemed like non of the AI had any problem, and they all started with top of the line racing machines while I was stuck with 1995 Oldsmobile Royal 88. Loosing a race still gives you XP that's used to unlock new cars, so maybe if I had farmed the same failure over and over eventually I could have placed, but that's a bad way to structure a racer.

Sound effects weren't bad, you could hear the rumble of the engines and the sound of squealing tires, but the music was just annoying. As far as I could tell there wasn't any licensed music anywhere in the game, likely because between EA and anyone else competent a lot of music was taken. Instead there's just endless techno music that made me feel like I was in a shitty nightclub with people I didn't like being around. There's no option to supplement your own soundtrack either, so if club music isn't your scene you'll need to alt-tab out to not want to kill yourself.

The map making feature is powerful and simple to use.

Mechanical Failure

This happened every login attempt.

Maybe one day I'll review a good racer here on this blog. I hope so, because there are a lot of racing games I really like, just this one wasn't one of them. It's worth noting that there are. or rather were, multiplayer features. I say "were" because every attempt to log into the RR:U servers failed instantly. The game is on sale right now, so it's possible the servers are overloaded, and you could still play single-player just fine, but I think the servers are probably just offline and no one is playing this game.

There's also a track creation tool that's actually pretty cool. It reminded me a lot of the create-a-park modes from old Tony Hawk games, only for race tracks. There's a lot of room to play around with it, and you can create some cool tracks, but it's nothing we haven't seen from Ubisoft's superior TrackMania series, and doesn't have nearly the visual charm.

Ridge Racer: Unbounded has the distinct honour of being one of the worst racers I've ever played. At least Diddy Kong Racing on N64 had a charm factor, but RR:U is just a bad, poorly made, and un-fun racer that pales in comparison to better racers. When it comes to fun racing games, this one doesn't even cross the start.