Metal Gear Solid 4: The Struggle Supremacy

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Snake seems to be worn out by “gears of war”, since this is his final mission the community is going to back him with all the force they can manage to muster, but it seems a lot of people have other intentions in mind. They rather see Snake complete his mission twice or even thrice before they forge ahead and accomplish other pending conquests.

I present here a case which I find quite unique to study. Metal Gear as a game has been sidelined in favor for which platform it appears on. I mean does it really matter whether it’s on the PS3 or the 360, shouldn’t the game be “solid” as a snake to thwart its competition away. These mindless discussions spread across communities/forum boards/websites seem to be relentless, their quest is to persuade Microsoft to steal Sony’s thunder and bring it across to their world, which again seems as redundant as me digging my nose while talking about gaming.

The entire aspect of fanboyism seems to have grown totally out of proportions, whenever a new gameplay trailer comes out for Metal Gear; boards instantly fill up with the lines filled with hate aggression from all loyalists of both camps.

Here are a few extracts:

“Go snake…teach the chief a thing or two”,
“Ha Snake can pwn the 360 anyday”,
“Now tell me which console has the best graphics”,
“Hey 360 fanboys…here’s a snake up your drive”
“360+snake=the game of death”
“Kojima…our father in heaven…360 be your name may your kingdom come and your biddings done”
“ M$ owns Sony”

Websites are no better, for their 20 seconds of fame on the internet they love to post all sorts of conspiracy theories regarding the platform jump, be it analysis of various game show trailers, or just plain rumors from so called “reliable sources”, they pull no plugs in starting endless bouts of speculations, and there are these so called bunch of experts who sit and analyze this impact of transitions.

I would like everyone to pause and wonder where all this goes to, few say this keeps the game in limelight. I fire a question back at them does a Metal Gear even need such speculations to be in limelight. The question of a game being confined to a platform or not solely rests on the developers, publishers and the hardware manufacturers. Such speculations add to chaos and put undue pressure on the craftsman working on the game rather than anything productive. How many have actually noticed the gameplay of Metal Gear and have been quite appreciative or critical about it. The game does have its fair share of highs and lows like every game does. But is anyone out there actually bothered to know that the most crucial question that it has answered is the fact that it is a part of games that will bring about an evolution in the industry, but is this evolution revolutionary in nature is what needs to be probed into.

Looking at the previous generation of consoles one can see that the original Xbox was a FPS paradise. A person who was buried in that particular genre of games would have loved to own the console, unlike a PS2 owner who had a much more balanced outlook in most genres except the genre of FPS. I picked up a PS2 for Devil May Cry and an Xbox after playing through a brief level of Halo at a friend’s place. People argue that the price point makes it easier for them if the game goes multi-platform but they do need to realize that this is the most basic strategy of pushing consumer fetishism to its extreme forms. The point I am trying to put across is the fact that guys great games stay great forever no matter whether a new phase begins in a short while before the previous one ends, Super Mario, MGS (They remade it once, thus showing how powerful the original game was), the original Halo, KOTOR, FF-X, GTA III remain great games even to this point of the day, this does not imply that people should overlook games of the current generation but they should not forget them either because these games have defined a genre in a way that no one has prior to them.

If price point is a major factor then players should single out games they actually want to play and save up their pennies to play the perfect game of the season, who would have thought that Kratos would be able to bring a legion of gamers to shelve dust off their old PS2’s and keeping churning the wheels of chaos.

Case study-FF-VII is still etched somewhere in the minds of gamers and they want it envisioned it in the full high definition along with FF-XIII, so guys focus on the games first and then the platforms, try not to get carried away with the spoils of war to have the best experience for ages to come.

-Neelesh Mukherjee