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Lights, Camera, Metal Gear
By Kinketsu | June 19, 2008
Like many of you, I’m now on my second play through of Metal Gear Solid 4 and finally have the opportunity to stretch my legs a bit and explore. This is the time when you find all those little extras and try to get to grips with all those little features you may have questioned the point of. Each Metal Gear game is packed with these things, and Metal Gear Solid 4 is probably the most dense to date, not to mention growing in this area thanks to the implementation of DLC. Today I’d like to focus on just one small item that has totally stolen my heart, the digital camera.
The Metal Gear Solid series has always included a camera in the games as a matter of course, and I’ve always thought it was completely useless. Of course, I’ve seen some great elaborate set ups from the previous games, like in that hilarious video of MGS3 that was doing the rounds a few months ago, but I personally didn’t have the patience for something like that. And even if I did, why put the time in if I can’t show it off? I’ve no technical know-how when it comes to video capture and mailing a memory card around to people isn’t much of a solution.
So when the camera appeared in MGS4, I wasn’t overly enthused. It was more the comforting feeling of an old familiar standby reappearing than the excitement of getting a new gadget. It never made my shoulder button item list, and whiled away the single player game living in it’s little box on the start menu, untouched. It wasn’t until I came to replay that we met again, when I wanted to show off the graphics in the game to my brother. While I searched for my own real life digital camera to take a picture of the TV screen, I read a post talking about how photos taken with the game camera can be uploaded or emailed to people from your PS3. Of course!
The news has totally transformed my second play through. I’m now absolutely, irretrievably obsessed with the digital camera. I play and replay sections to scout out shooting locations. If a Gekko leaps over a wall in front of me, I blow myself up with a grenade, so that in the next life I can have my finger on the shutter, lying in wait on the ground, crawling about to capture it from the best angle. I have to take bullets to the face so that I can get nice images of the enemies blasting at me, their gunfire creating impact puffs of dust and debris. I can’t help my partners in the Rat Patrol too much, because I need them in shot, covering each other and firing back.
I love the fact that you can play about with the contrast and colour balance. I love being the PR man of my own experience with the game, trying to catch the images and events which impressed me the most, complete with a nifty branded MGS4 watermark stuck on like the real deal. My pictures don’t really show how gorgeous the game is in motion, but I’m getting closer and more subjective with each shot, fiddling with zoom, trying to make camera blur by running around. This item, which I previously ignored for so long, has created a whole new game for me. I’m not a silent soldier this time, I’m a heavily armed war correspondent. Sneaking around isn’t about trying to avoid conflict on the battlefield, it’s about trying to get as close to the conflict as possible to get a great picture without being spotted.
Again, the camera is not new, but without the ability to irritate my brother by emailing him the pictures I take, it would be just the same old novelty for my own amusement. The idea that someone else can see the images makes me much more picky about what I take and changes the gimmick into an occupation. It’s the quiet genius of the game design that it gives you much more than you really need. There are too many items and too many guns. They seem extraneous as Snake doesn’t need to use most of them in the first play through, when you are barrelling through the narrative, sticking to whatever works best rather than trying to learn something else. But on the replay, all these extra elements come alive. Solid Snake would not wear a suit on the battlefield, or listen to his iPod under fire, but Solid Snap the embedded photojournalist does, and will continue to do so for many times the length of the main adventure.
Topics: Blog, PlayStation 3 |
June 19th, 2008 at 3:13 am
That’s an awesome feature that I hadn’t heard about until now. I can definitely see how a feature like this could extend the life of the game far beyond the narrative. I wish GTA IV had this with the camera phone…or even better yet…a video phone. Maybe GTA V? In the meantime this feature makes me want to play this one even more.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Damn, I want MGS4 SO BAD now. I’ve committed to playing and completing MGS1 (it’s the only one of the first three that I haven’t played) which I’m really looking forward to but I’m JUST SO EXCITED!!!
June 19th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
This makes me think. Would you guys play a ‘war correspondent’ type game, where your job was to sneak in, take photos, and get out alive? Taking the concept from MGS4 and making it a core mechanic of another game could be great. Definitely a new take on the first person war shooter…
June 19th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
The mechanic is definitely there. Stealth from MGS/Splinter Cell and the photography elements from GTA/Bioshock. Might be quite good actually.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Pokemon Snap meets Call of Duty 4? I think we’re onto something here. It would also be a better way to examine the morality of modern warfare, as you’d be a neutral observer. They could portray the hypocrisy of both warring factions of the warfare, without making you feel bad for being affiliated to either of them. Levels could be set in villages before and then after the warfare, so you can document how it has effected the innocent people living there. This is a really interesting idea I think!