Metal Gear Solid is a pretty cool game. (It sneaks around in cardboard boxes and fears virtually nothing).
In all seriousness, though, Snake’s cardboard box is a good symbol of what I like about the franchise, and it’s a reminder that I don’t like it for what I thought I’d like it for. I’m not sure what serious fans and critics say, but gamers in general seem to praise the MGS franchise for its story. It took me a few games to realize that this just doesn’t work given that its story is a joke. Not a joke in the parody sense, but in the genuinely bad sense.
But bad is the wrong word to use. Is James Bond bad? The storylines are impossible to take seriously but few would call them bad. It’s hard to even call it postmodern knowingness–MGS and Bond seem to work without the self-consciousness of Quentin Tarantino flicks. Yet this is a story that unironically builds armies of shounen anime-style nanomachine-enhanced superhumans against a backdrop of nuclear war and serious business; how is it anything but terrible? (On a related note, is Pussy Galore really a sillier name than Liquid Snake or Fatman? Only slightly.)
It’s style that makes it good, anyway. Metal Gear Solid is excessively stylized and it always has been. The cutscenes, the over-the-top villains, and the mechs launching nukes complement the tongue-in-cheek cardboard box escapades and Psycho Mantis meta gimmicks. The franchise rarely feels ironic and never feels sarcastic, yet the straightforwardness of its drama comes across as sincere rather than contrived. The nanomachines jokes about the fourth game are legitimate; it’s entirely reasonable to not take desus ex machina pseudo-science seriously. Yet the game isn’t really about the war economy, or at least it doesn’t feel like it is: it’s about two old men beating the crap out of each other on top of a boat in the middle of the ocean as the sun sets (with gorgeous graphics and non-realist character designs). MGS has style and it has it in spades.
So maybe it is comparable to the likes of Kill Bill. (Let’s not forget that Kojima is a film buff). Unironic and melodramatic on the outside, yes, but it becomes evident very quickly that stylized action eclipses whatever themes the story might be trying to unsubtly unveil.
The odd part is that once you get caught up in the action (and by action I mean cutscenes), the story grows on you. The plot is concluded awkwardly but it’s exciting to follow from game to game, and it’s interesting to observe the often radically different themes expressed in each entry despite their connected plots. But my point is that you don’t play MGS for its probing examination of the endurance of the human spirit in times of strife, or at least I don’t–I play it for mechs launching nukes. In a medium where most stories aimed at teens or adults end up clumsy, pulpy, melodramatic, and far too serious, it’s refreshing to see one that has fun with itself without turning into parody or satire. Oh, and it’s also awesome.