Metal Gear Retrospective: Introduction

Metal Gear. Since the original game landed on the MSX2 in 1987, the franchise has become one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful franchises in the medium. With an incredibly complex, gripping and emotionally engaging story, complex and flawed characters, in-depth social commentary, outstanding gameplay, and some of the best damn boss fights ever made, it has easily earned that honor.

Complex storytelling and excellent gameplay have made Metal Gear one of the critically and commercially successful franchises on the market.

Since I started this blog, I have made it no secret that I am a huge fan of the series. I have consistently listed it as one of my Top 3 Franchises along with Metroid and Mass Effect. I've labeled Solid Snake and Big Boss two of the most engaging and complex protagonists in the medium and even made a Top 20 list of the best boss fights in the series (they are that good).

Now, it is time for me to pay full tribute to this remarkable series with my first retrospective. For this retrospective, we will only be looking at the games that are canon to the main story (with one exception which I'll explain when I get to it). For those not knowledgeable on the series, here is the list of the canon games and the order I'll be doing them in.

• Metal Gear
• Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
• Metal Gear Solid
• Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
• Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Full story summaries, analysis, gameplay overviews, boss fights, a look at the history of the making of the series, etc. I will also be going over the impact it has had on the industry, as well as giving my own thoughts for each game as I go through them.

Some games will only have one blog entry on them, whereas some will have multiple, depending on how complex each one is and if I feel that it's becoming unwieldy in one blog entry. There will also be spoilers to the max. I will give spoiler warnings before anything major and also let you know when they are done. At the end I will also be posting a massive story overview in chronological order with all the revelations from the series placed in context.

I hope to post the first part sometime later this week. If a post comes up later than I said, just keep in mind that this is a very complex series and I'm attempting to structure things to make them as clean and organized as possible.

I can't wait to begin writing it and I hope you all enjoy my look at one of the finest series of games in existence.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

For those of you wondering about the Metroid and Silent Hill retrospectives, they will come. I eventually realized that I had to do my two favorite franchises, Metroid and Metal Gear before any others (Mass Effect wasn't considered given how new it is). I left it up to friends of mine to vote for it and the majority voted Metal Gear. I hope that clears up any confusion.

END NOTE

Mass Effect 3 - Retaliation Multiplayer DLC

On Tuesday, Mass Effect 3's co-op is getting a massive update. A new DLC pack titled Retaliation will be released and it will be completely free like all of the multiplayer packs before it. Retaliation will add a new enemy faction to the three already there: Reapers, Cerberus, and Geth. With this DLC, the Collectors from Mass Effect 2 will become an enemy faction, though I guess you could say they still fall under the Reapers.

But that's not all. New weapons and characters will be added of course, including what looks like a JETPACK TURIAN AND THAT IS AWESOME!

Turian with a jetpack = the coolest thing I've seen all week.

Whether there are all new maps, I don't know, but I do know that certain old maps will also be given a hazard treatment. What the hell is a hazard treatment you ask? Well, they'll be putting environmental hazards into the stage which will give even more obstacles to have fun with.

On top of this, if you played Mass Effect 3's multiplayer after last night's patch, you might have noticed challenge boxes come up but with no explanation for what they are. Well, BioWare is adding challenges to the multiplayer, similar to Call of Duty's. These will be used to unlock items, and what exactly those items will be, I don't know and they might even be simply cosmetic but I would like it anyway simply because of the perfectionist in me that would like to complete stuff like that.

And again, it is free. After the Leviathan DLC, I was expecting the free DLC to stop but apparently some is still coming, so get your games set for Tuesday and I'll see you on the warfront.

Now if we could just get information on the Omega DLC. I hope that means Aria will have a big part in it. Damn I love that character.

Assassin's Creed III - Connor's Story

Yes I'm finally posting again. Well Assassin's Creed III is less than a month away and it looks amazing. The new trailer released today gives a greater look at the character of Connor Kenway, the protagonist of ACIII, and his motivations.

One of the things that I'm very excited about is simply seeing a new character in the first place. While Ezio was an excellent protagonist, by the time of Revelations, I felt that he overstayed his welcome and I got tired of seeing him. The Animus is a story device with so many different possibilities and it's great to see a new scenario with it. Connor is looking like a strong protagonist and I'm really anticipating seeing his story play out.

Note: A Metroid retrospective will be beginning sometime next week.

E3 2012 - South Park: The Stick of Truth

I've been unexpectedly excited about the new South Park RPG since it was announced. Given how crappy most television tie-in games have been and how crappy of a track record South Park has with video games (one or two downloadable games aside), what made me excited about this?

Primarily, it's developer: Obsidian Entertainment. Obsidian is very much a "love it or hate it" developer and for understandable reasons. The RPGs they develop usually have a great amount of depth and great writing, but they're also known for being bugged up the ass and for feeling unfinished. I might talk more about Obsidian as the game comes closer to release but my overall opinion is that they're a developer that makes great titles that unfortunately don't meet their full potential.

Hopefully that will be broken here, but no matter what I'm thinking that we can expect a quality RPG with a good amount of depth to it.

Another reason I'm excited is that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are getting a lot of creative control. This really didn't happen with South Park games in the past which were probably a factor in their poor quality.

I'm posting two videos here. The first is Matt and Trey talking about the game briefly at the Microsoft press conference. The second is the trailer itself.

And now for the trailer.

WARNING: The trailer below has anti-semitic remarks and foul language...but if those trouble you then why the hell are you watching a trailer for a South Park game.

As has been stated before, the game will be a turn-based RPG. I don't know exactly why they went this route instead of real-time so don't ask me. Not that I'm complaining, I'm just curious why they took that style.

You'll also be able to choose between five opening classes: Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric and...Jew. The offensive humor is definitely there as seen by the trailer and the classes themselves. Definitely a plus.

I also laughed my ass off when I saw Professor Chaos. No not the small one, but the freakishly huge one with the anime art-style from the excellent episode, Good Times with Weapons.

Overall, I'm quite excited about this and can't wait for March 5 which will see the release of both this and Tomb Raider.

E3 2012: Gears of War Judgment Teaser

Hopefully, all of you know by now that I am not the biggest Gears of War fan. I've played the first two and enjoyed them but they just never grabbed. I still haven't played 3 (it's still on my list) so I didn't really care when a new Gears of War was announced.

But I got the teaser anyway and a bit of news caught my attention which I'll get into after the teaser.

Okay, not a bad teaser. But what really caught my attention that I didn't see in the teaser: the developer.

Gears of War Judgment is being developed by People Can Fly, the developers of Painkiller and the criminally underrated and overlooked Bulletstorm. While I'd rather they be developing a Bulletstorm sequel, especially given the cliffhanger that it ended on, I'll still look into what they do with the franchise. But after this, please make another Bulletstorm.

E3 2012: Tomb Raider - My Faith Restored

I feel like I was one of the few people who was unimpressed by Tomb Raider's showing at E3 last year. The cinematic trailer was great showing that it would primarily be more like a survival story than just a treasure hunt which, let's be honest, Uncharted has pretty much hijacked at this point.

However, the gameplay trailer did not impress me. All I saw were a bunch of quicktime events. Now I'm not one of those who hates all quicktime events but an enormous amount are not good. I should also clarify that it depends on the game and I don't like a lot of them in a game like Tomb Raider.

This recent trailer has restored my faith in this being the potentially strong reboot that this franchise really needs.

The emphasis on the survival continues showing brutal attempts by Lara to do so on a seemingly deserted island. I'm hoping there's a bigger emphasis on platforming in order to separate it from Uncharted. I know that Tomb Raider was first but at this point, Uncharted has such a foothold that Tomb Raider needs to distinguish itself from it.

From what I can hear, the voice acting is iffy in places and definitely needs some work, but giving Lara Croft a vulnerability looks like it might work great.

Some have stated that they're worried about this turning into Other M, but there are key differences between this and Other M which I know of even before the game is out. If I see any comparisons continue I might make a post about that but I really hope people can see the differences themselves so that won't be necessary.

Overall, still some worries, but this left a much better impression on me than last year's showing.

E3 2012: Dishonored Gameplay is Good and Bloody

Being described as a combination of Bioshock, Elder Scrolls, Thief, Assassin's Creed, and Deus Ex, all of those games' influences can be seen in the new gameplay trailer for Dishonored. Well, except Deus Ex but apparently that's supposed to be more in terms of the story.

The three minute trailer shows us a good amount of the first-person stealth-melee gameplay involved and shows the influences of the games mentioned above with atmosphere similar to Bioshock and Thief, a second hand using powers similar to Bioshock and Elder Scrolls, the kill animations look similar to Elder Scrolls and much of the scenery and art style look similar to the renaissance as used in Assassin's Creed II. And it looks bloody. Really, really bloody.

It does have me intrigued and looks like a really fun time. The sites that I go to, or the forums at least, have a lot of people hyping this game. Hopefully it lives up to it.