Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

Kojima's Xbox debut poses Nick a challenge.

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In the game design world, there are certain competing schools of thought. There’s the school that says games should learn from their sibling media, and adopt the techniques and styles that made film and television successful. Then there’s the school that says that games are developing as a distinct mainstream media form. Proponents of this view contend that games are unique amongst media because they offer interaction – as such, games should offer a different kind of experience from that found in movie theatres.

It’s pretty clear where Hideo Kojima, designer of the Metal Gear series, stands on this debate.

From the moment the opening credits roll it’s obvious that this game wants to be a Hollywood movie, and that we are witnessing the work of a designer yearning for his chosen work tool to be taken seriously by the masses. MGSS is full of arcing camera shots and dramatic set pieces, and the fact that the game had a $10 million budget clearly shows. Kojima is a game designer with an eye for the details – rain hits the screen during a storm, and protagonists Snake and Raiden leave tell-tale drips upon entering shelter until they dry off.

The game play is also the classic Kojima mix of filtered authenticity – if it adds to the play experience, it’s in, but never is realism included for its own sake. Indeed, there are innumerable arcade touches, from the floating ammo and equipment ‘power-ups’ to the ludicrous detection avoidance techniques – my own favourite being Snake’s use of the cardboard box as an impromptu hideout whenever bad guys threaten. Make no mistake, this is no Splinter Cell – it never sets out to achieve realism, and if that’s what you’re looking for, prepare to be disappointed. Xbox owners with no prior experience of a Metal Gear game will perhaps be left slightly confused at the lack of emphasis on realistic stealth – the enemies are criminally myopic, the boss battles are contrived, and Snake and Raiden sometimes seem a little wooden in their interactions with the environment.

Such opinions, however, fail to appreciate the dedication and commitment that Japanese developers give to creating a refined and comprehensive game play experience. Visual cues such as the exclamation marks above enemy heads when they’re alarmed may be highly unrealistic, but they are actually useful, and if the rules of the game world are consistent (as they are in MGSS), then such arcade touches do not necessarily detract from player immersion. Playing MGS Substance offers an apt demonstration of what exactly separates Japanese game designers from their Western counterparts – the Japanese long ago accepted games as a legitimate creative, if perhaps not yet artistic, medium, and their products inevitably offer more characterisation, depth of story and general thoughtfulness than Western equivalents, despite occasionally lacking the realism prevalent in occidental games.