“Soooo many complicated emotions about this book. Or thoughts, perhaps.
For starters, this is not the BFB title to read if you’re not at least fairly familiar with Metal Gear Solid. Of all the books, this one probably spends the least time laying out the plot and gameplay in a linear way. Which is fitting considering that the game is goddamn bonkers, but I still think this would be somewhat of a difficule read if you hadn’t played the game.
Oh, and DO NOT read the pdf version. The footnotes all get moved to the end of the chapters, but the footnotes are used in back and forth, location-dependent fun, which doesn’t work in that format.
If you’ve never played the game, reading this book would definitely make you certain that it was sexist garbage with a few neat quirks that happened almost by accident.
Which is why I’m really torn on this book.
On the one hand, I think the book is well-written. No complaints there. And I also don’t want to be confusing about one particular issue. Yes, I think Metal Gear Solid is sexist. No argument. We’ll talk about this more, but I absolutely think the game is sexist.
This book is more thesis than it is experiential, which is a departure from other books in the series. And the conundrum I’m left with here, does a book that’s well-written and make true points about a thesis warrant a higher or lower score based on my agreement/disagreement with said thesis when I get to the end of the book? In other words, does how I feel about the book’s success in making its argument have more or less to do with whether I’d recommend it? And if a book is about making a point, is my enjoyment of that book based more on the prose or the solidity of the point?
Let’s back up a bit.
The thesis of this book, I’d say it like this: Metal Gear Solid is a very flawed game. The authors’ experience with it was more about the way in which they enjoyed it together than the game itself. That togetherness experience is good and lasting. The game is not.
The authors take pains to create an introduction that explains they do, in fact, like the game. And the end chapter begins like this:
“So Anthony and I shit on Metal Gear Solid for about half this book.”
I’d put it more at 3/4, reading honestly.
The book said very little about positives. They felt the game environment was genuinely scary, there was one boss fight that was interesting, one side character has an interesting arc, the voice acting was a plus…and that’s about it.
Metal Gear Solid is not a short game. The cutscenes alone are over 3 hours, and a playthrough takes quite a bit longer on top of that. To have those basic positives, I think we’re missing something here.
At this point, I’m going to finish reviewing the book, then move on to talking about the game. I’ll warn you when the game talk starts in case you want to tune out.
Here’s the problem I had with the book. It talked quite a bit about the sexism and poor representations of both women and men in the game. And I’ll reiterate, on board with that 100%.
What I’m not on board with is the level at which it was discussed, more emphasis on convincing me the game was, in fact, sexist. Rather than proving that a sexist thing is sexist, I would have really liked to hear more about the deeper meaning of that sexism.
Roxane Gay’s book left me feeling much the same way. The essay about the racism of The Help was totally accurate, but I guess I’m not so much interested in whether or not The Help is racist. I’m interested in why something racist is so successful. I’m interested in why that was so well-received. I’m reading Roxane Gay’s book. You don’t have to take me all that far for me to buy into the premise that The Help is racist. Your book is in my hands. I’m with you there. I’m willing to make the short leap to “The Help is racist.” Now tell me something more.
MGS is sexist. I think that case is easily made.
Here’s what I’m interested in.
Does that mean it’s bad? Do we prove something is sexist and then it’s just, simply, bad?
I’m genuinely interested in this question, and I wish that the book had taken it further. I wish the book, instead of answering the question of whether or not something is sexist, had made the assumption that the reader was on board and gone further.
Let me talk about this another way.
Touch of Evil is kind of an amazing movie. It was released in 1958, and Charlton Heston plays a Mexican man. He’s in, what we’ll unkindly call, brownface.
That said, the opening shot is one, long, continuous shot that is absolutely incredible.
And so, the brownface is not cool today. Not okay. But. Is it therefore wrong to enjoy Touch of Evil? Do we excuse this because of the time period? How do we acknowledge the greatness of a technical achievement that has an embedded, racist, shitty thing?
These are the kinds of questions I wanted to discuss about MGS.
In Metal Gear Solid (the book), one of the authors trashes the game for its sexism. And then, in the next chapter about the voice acting, we have this:
“In fact, the acting in MGS1 serves as something of a gaming time capsule. In much the same way that performances in films of the 40’s have a distinct, Humphrey Bogart-esque cadence to them -going UP on WORDS so folks know you’re SERIOUS- the performances in MGS1 harken back to a time when games weren’t so focused on realism. Spending hours laboring over details on a tank’s hatch for a Call of Duty game didn’t make sense for games in the 90s because there’s only so much you can do with polygons. Everything was unreal, which often made it feel heightened and magical.”
In the excerpt above, I BUY the fact that the acting is over-the-top. What I’m interested in, what made me enjoy that section, is that the author is grappling with and explaining the enjoyment of something that she shouldn’t enjoy. THAT’S an interesting premise to me.
Here’s why I bring it up. And I feel like I have to keep saying it, MGS is sexist. Video games have lots of sexist shit in them.
I don’t really care to read a book that proves to me that video games are sexist because I totally buy that premise already.
Disliking something sexist or stupid makes all the sense in the world. It just doesn’t make for the most interesting thesis. This is sexist, and sexism is bad. This game mechanic is dumb, and it would be better if it weren’t so dumb.
I guess what I’m saying is, I’m interested in what the sexism and stupidity of a game like MGS really mean.
What does it mean that I enjoyed a game that is so thoroughly sexist? Is it impossible to play games from 1998 with 2015 eyes? In our current world where everything is accessible, are there experiences, such as MGS, that are better left in the past, better as the broad stroke memories formed as a 15 year-old? What’s the value/danger in re-treading old experiences?
These are not questions for which I’m writing answers. These are the kinds of questions I wish had been more fully explored in the book.
I want to put this in a coherent way here.
Today I read a comic strip someone posted online that pointed out the silliness and lack of utility in female superhero costumes. A point that was made by showing male superheroes in equivalent costumes.
I get it. I agree. I don’t really need Power Girl to have a boob window. I don’t know who it’s for or why it’s still a thing.
All of that said, that exact point has been made in that exact way many, many times. Google it. It’s all there. Punisher with a skull Speedo is probably my fave.
And as these continue to come out, I think the truth of the message is making up for the unoriginal laying out of the ideas. More to the point, I wouldn’t read a book about female superhero costumes being sexist. I would read a book about the origins of those costumes and why they continue and what it means about us as a society and why we didn’t seem to give a shit about that in 1985 and now we do. That’s interesting to me. But a book that sought out to demonstrate that something clearly sexist is sexist and pretty much leave it there…I guess I just don’t feel like I need to read a book convincing me of something I already believe is true. Maybe this is why so many people don’t actually seem to finish the Bible?
I wanted more from this book. Or maybe I wanted something that it was never meant to be.
Okay. Now it’s time to talk about the game itself. Book nerds, adios.
Let’s talk about some of the negatives pointed out by the authors and why I don’t agree. These are all opinion, and really more game-based than anything else, so I suspect this has more to do with what a given person is looking for in a game.
+Gameplay mechanics are picked up and abandoned rather than being deeply explored+
This is totally true, and for me, it’s a plus. The authors point out one particular mechanic, which is at the beginning of the game. As the character Solid Snake, you’re trying to infiltrate a large base. It’s snowing. And as you walk, you leave footprints in the snow. If guards see these footprints, they will follow them, they will find you, and at this early stage of the game, you have no hope for survival. However, this really only comes in to play during a single, early sequence of the game.
One of the authors does point out, correctly, that a great game can come from exploring a single mechanic very deeply, Portal being the cited example. I agree with that 100%. And I also feel that a game like MGS, with its constant abandoning of one old mechanic for a new one, makes for an interesting, different experience.
Let me put it like this. Daniel Johnston’s song “Some Things Last A Long Time” is very simple, a few chords on a piano repeated, and just a few lines, really. It’s a great song, and its simplicity and re-use of a few things make it great. Dragonforce’s “Through the Fire and the Flames” is also great, and it’s an insane, 8-minute song mostly designed to prop up an epic guitar solo. Its variety and pace, and its willingness to abandon simple melodies and rhythm make it a new experience every few seconds.
These songs are both great for different reasons, and I want both kinds of songs to be around.
I love Portal, and I love Metal Gear Solid.
+The lack of choice in the game narrowed the narrative and tossed out interesting possibilities+
Can I tell you something? I don’t like BioWare games. And it’s not BioWare’s fault, but the makers of Mass Effect have created something that’s nearly impossible for me to enjoy.
Here’s why.
When I play a game, I always get the feeling that making a choice other than the one I would make in real life leads to a more interesting outcome. When I have a dialogue choice between being a nice guy or a real dickbag, I kind of feel like the dickbag choice is more interesting, precisely because it’s not the choice I would make in real life. And I want to play a game where I tell a planet in distress to go fuck themselves, or where I sacrifice someone I really like in order to save the life of someone who is a tactical asset.
And I can’t do it. I’m completely incapable of playing these games through a series of choices that make me more interested in what’s next. Instead, I always pick what I would pick in real life.
I’m a 31 year-old librarian typing a response to this book at 1:13 AM. I make the choices in a weird space world that a 31 year-old librarian who types book reviews would make. This is not a terrible life, but it would make a terrible video game.
The lack of choice in Metal Gear Solid makes the game a lot more interesting to me. As a careful person who has trouble casting off that sense of safety in real life, a carefulness that translates to video games, I appreciate the game that has a linearity.
I’d like to also talk about a few things that I think Metal Gear Solid did really well that weren’t explored very much in the book.
+This was more movie than it was game+
I’d be hard-pressed to speak of a game that felt more like a movie than this one. There were side effects, such as long cutscenes and a FUCKTON of text. But as far as playing through what felt like a movie, this was it for me. Because not only was it like a movie in general and in its nuances, but it was like a specific kind of movie, the 90’s action blockbuster, of which I’m a huge fan and miss dearly.
+Psycho Mantis+
This is a mind-reading boss, and a lot is made of the gimmicky battle, before which Psycho Mantis can read your Playstation memory card and also analyzes the way you’ve been playing the game (whether you’re cautious of traps, save often, etc.), and which ends by the player removing the controller from the first-person slot and plugging it into the second-person slot.
What people don’t spend a lot of time on is discussing this character and what he says on his deathbed sequence.
After each boss fight, Snake ends up having a chat with the fallen enemy while they bleed out. These moments, though cheesy in a lot of ways, offer a level of sophistication that you did not see in games at this time. As a young guy (15 when this came out), it was odd to battle a boss and then feel kind of guilty for killing him.
Mantis, for example, reveals that his ability to read minds is difficult to limit. He first discovered his powers when he saw into the mind of his own father. He was so sickened and frightened of what he saw that he burned down his whole village and left.
Subsequently, he wore a gas mask because it tended to dampen the things he saw from other peoples’ minds, a necessary step as he saw the same thing over and over: the empty desire to procreate.
And before he dies, Mantis reads Snake’s mind. He tells Snake, the main character who you play as, that he’s truly evil. While Mantis is a bad guy, he’s not so bad when compared to Snake.
Let’s do a quick recap. This is a video game from 1998 addressing the idea of human procreation as being empty and a product of being enslaved by our biology, and also pointing out that the protagonist is not a good dude on any level. And this question does not end here. After another boss fight near the end, the defeated foe tells Snake “The path you walk on has no end. Each step you take is paved with the corpses of your enemies… Their souls will haunt you forever… you shall have no peace…”
And it’s totally true.
This idea, that you’re watching a character who is empty simply act out his emptiness, is far more fascinating than most video game narratives of the time. Hell, this is the kind of thing that James Bond got to FINALLY in the last few years, the idea of what it takes to be a person who kills other people for a living.
This is a very early experience for me that made me question something. Sure, Snake is stopping a nuclear attack. But he’s not a man anymore. He’s a tool. A weapon. And although the ends are good for humanity overall, the means come at the personal cost of his being a person on any level.
This is a tough pill to swallow in a lot of ways. And had it not been in a nice package, I don’t know that I would have gone down that road.
+Rewarding the player for making the “wrong” decision+
Okay, quick explanation.
In MGS there’s a torture sequence. You mash a button as fast as you can to save yourself. If you fail in this task, Meryl, the love interest(?) in the game dies. If you succeed, you ride away into the sunset together at the end of the game.
When you finish MGS you get an item that you can use on subsequent playthroughs. If you save Meryl, you get a bandanna, which gives you infinite ammo for all weapons on your next playthrough. However, if you fail to save Meryl, you get a stealth suit, which renders you invisible.
The stealth suit is, by far, the better item. It makes the game a total breeze, and with a couple exceptions, it makes another playthrough not only easier to complete, but easier to screw around in. The stealth suit changes the whole game, the bandanna does not.
And yet, the stealth suit is the item you’re given if you fail to save Meryl, and fail to go down the “correct” path (proven by the narrative of subsequent games, saving Meryl is canon).
This is, to me, a really strange and interesting choice, and one that games of today still struggle with.
I’ll make it quick. Bioshock forces you to choose whether you want to harvest/kill these spooky little girls, or save them and turn them back into regular girls. In theory, you will go through the game with more powers if you harvest the girls and make the bad choice. So there’s an inventive, a better gameplay possibility that can be achieved by making the “wrong” choice.
However, Bioshock falls short of this promise, because by the end of the game, the player who saves the girls will actually be MORE powerful than the player who doesn’t. The right moral choice and the right gameplay choice are the same, so players who chose to harvest the girls really have to just want to for the hell of it.
MGS gives you a choice. Save someone and complete the narrative properly. Or don’t, your love interest dies, and you get a much cooler, more fun gameplay experience as a result.
I should probably tell my MGS story. I’ll make it quick.
I played a ton of games as a kid. Then very few from ages 14 to 24. But Metal Gear Solid was one of the few games I got behind in a big way. My brother bought a Playstation, and I didn’t finish Final Fantasy, Resident Evil was too confusing and too much finding this key to open that door, and most of the games from that time just didn’t appeal to me.
But Metal Gear Solid, that one I played through at least 4 times. I watched all the cutscenes every time. The story is certainly clunky in a lot of ways. And I hate that I feel obligated to say that. I hate that I feel like I have to say, “I’m smart enough to recognize the weaknesses in the prose and storytelling.”
This game had a complex story. Both in its plot twists and in its characters. This was the first time I would be furious at how frustrating a boss was, and feel pumped when I won a battle, and then immediately have that feeling taken away when the game forces you to confront that the person you killed is real, and is in most cases, more like your protagonist than the people you’re supposed to be saving.
To me, one character, Grey Fox, embodies what the game is like, and what it’s all about.
He’s a terrifying cyborg ninja who turns invisible. And his backstory is heartbreaking, and the real sadness comes when he makes an attempt at redemption. Because you know that, for him, there’s just no way to reach it.
That character is a total mix of being completely fucking bananas, totally working within the world of Metal Gear Solid, and making the player feel something.
That’s the crux of it. It was the first game that made me feel something more than frustration or like I’d achieved something. It made me feel sad. It was the first game where winning felt like defeat.
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