Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

It’s been a long ride, but the time has finally come to wrap up our Game Over 2K8 series. In the past nine editions, we highlighted the most significant events of the year passed. From the DRM controversy to the end of Ensemble, from Final Fantasy XIII going multi-platform, to the winners and losers of November’s deluge; it’s been one hell of a year for gaming. The time has finally come to unveil our defining event of 2008. We figure a lot of people will shaft us over this, but we have the details to back our claims. So, without further ado, we present…

Commemorating 10 years of a predominantly Sony-exclusive franchise, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots wasn’t just a new update for the franchise. Not that an MGS game wasn’t hyped or hadn’t excelled critically and commercially, however, in terms of advertising, content and production values, MGS4 tops them all.

Konami went all out in terms of promotions and features. The company gave in to fan requests (read: death threats on a mass-scale) to have Hideo Kojima return as director, and spent more than three years developing the new open-world game play and stealth elements. In a way, MGS4 felt like an end to the evolution the series underwent ever since Metal Gear graduated to Solid. The first Metal Gear Solid was constrained, a more direct adaptation of the 8-bit games with elements reworked into the 3D perspective. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty expanded on the tactics and AI, while super-sizing the cinematic presentation to astronomic proportions (ably assisted by the powerful Playstation 2). The game was still constrictive in its view and levels.

It was Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater that took the series to an open-world setting, even forgoing the much-lauded radar. MGS3 featured more varied view-points, with Subsistence allowing the game to be played permanently from a third-person perspective (a feature that Silicon Knights’ Twin Snakes also used). In MGS4, the combat elements took centre-stage with the game heavily emphasizing third person shooting. The environment was also suitably more sand-box in nature, encouraging multiple allegiances and side-missions.

And boy what a huge amount of game play was crammed into the package. The original MGS titles were excessive in cinematics, but short in overall length. MGS4 not only increased the length of the game, but of the cut-scenes as well, some clocking in at 30 minutes or more. Four real-life models – Yumi Kikuichi, Scarlett Chorvat, Mieko Rye and Lyndall Jarvis – made in-game appearances and went through extensive motion capturing sequences for the Beauty and the Beast unit, a collection of four bosses, who pay homage to past MGS bosses. Hideo Kojima actually toured with one of them, Yumi Kikuchi, across Japan and the States to promote the game. Harry Gregson-Williams, acclaimed Hollywood and video game composer, returned and was accompanied by Nobuko Toda, composer of Metal Gear Acid 1 and 2, as they created the 47 songs in the game’s official soundtrack. But that wasn’t enough for Konami.

The goal was to tie up as many explicit loose-ends as possible with MGS4, and as anyone who’s followed the series twists and turns since Solid Snake first infiltrated Shadow Moses, knows, it would be a Herculean task. And to tie it up with the original Metal Gear series? Madness, pure and simple. Nonetheless, the team pulled it off. The return of Meryl and the New Foxhound (named “Rat Patrol”), Raiden in cybernetic ninja armour, the revealing of the Patriots (and their true creator, which is still too good to spoil), Old Snake’s escapades across three different continents, the battle royale of the Metal Gears, from Rex and Ray to Gekko in Shadow Moses…you could write a bible on the entire saga.

MGS4 has sold more than 4.5 million units since its July release. More importantly, due to its exclusivity, it helped up the number of Playstation 3 units sold. The PS3 went about selling 10,000 units a week; this shot to 77,000 in MGS4′s first week. The title has a 94% Metacritic rating, and numerous full-score ratings from sites and publications.

In the end, we never really doubted the mania MGS4 pandered to. Rather, we were surprised at it’s own identity, and the extreme hype riding on that identity of, “more than just the end of Metal Gear Solid“. Kojima has already begun hinting at a new MGS title, and announced Metal Gear Solid Touch for the iPhone in a direct bid to other handheld competitors. Will it move as many units as MGS4 did (it contains many of the same characters and environments)? We don’t make many hard predictions but for this, we say yes.

You may disagree with this being labeled the defining event of 2008, but there is simply too much significance attached to the game’s release. Ten years of Metal Gear Solid coming full circle. One of the few exclusives to PS3. The game that sold more PS3s than even Grand Theft Auto IV. Game Over 2K8 offers one last salute to the legend of Solid Snake – and to Kojima Productions/Konami, for sticking with it and shocking us till the very end.