The Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 has arrived. Am I excited? No, not really. I very much don’t love the Metal Gear series, which is extremely strange to me, considering it’s popularly held in high regard. I feel like I should like them, I just don’t (aside from the excellent Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake). Mostly, I think it’s my distaste for Hideo Kojima’s exposition-heavy writing style. I think it’s cool how he creates games that don’t strictly follow industry trends, I just think someone should take his pen away.
Speaking of which, it doesn’t feel like that long ago that I played through the entire (most of the) series in one sweep. Except it was 2015 in anticipation of the then-upcoming Metal Gear Solid V. That’s a pretty long time, but my mind is a steel trap when it comes to video games. Some of my earliest memories are about playing games, and I often use them to contextualize events in my life. But it’s not perfect.
So, let’s pit that memory against the Metal Gear chronology. I am going to write up my recollection of the series’ plot completely from memory. I am not going to fact-check or look up anything that follows. I’m going to rely just on what I have stored in my brain. And it will probably also get passed through my brain’s sarcasm filter. For added difficulty, I’ll try and date each of the titles. If it’s wrong, I’m not fixing it, so you are welcome to laugh at me. That’s the point.
This probably includes spoilers. There’s an equally good chance that it doesn’t.
Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004)
The Cold War has begun, and everyone is really into collecting nuclear arms. Snake (at the time Naked Snake because no one in this universe understands euphemisms) is sent to the untamed jungles of Russia to prevent this. However, he discovers his old mentor has betrayed the good old US of A and gets his ass beaten. While he’s nursing a broken arm, nukes happen.
Because he sucked so hard the first time, Snake is sent back to the same untamed jungle. A nuclear explosion has done little to tame it further. He fights a colorful cast of characters, then gets his eye shot out. Now sporting a cool eyepatch, he decides that the third time’s a charm, and he confronts the big bad guy named, uh, Voltron. He beats Voltron, but then has to fight his old mentor again. This time, wearing geisha make-up, he wins and gets told he’s now a Big Boss.
There’s a cutscene of ungodly length that tells how everyone triple-crossed each other. Eve (Eva?) walks off with something important, and Snake feels bad about everything.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (2006)
I still don’t know if this is even still part of the series’ canon. If it is, I don’t remember much about it aside from the fact that Big Boss traipsed around recruiting a bunch of people. It was also very brown.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2008)
I don’t think I played more than a couple of missions of this. If I recall correctly, it was an eight-hour apology for Portable Ops.
Metal Gear Solid V: Demo (2013)
Snake assumes I played Peace Walker and infiltrates a military compound to save someone from that game. Things are going fine, and a bomb is removed from this person’s gut. She wakes up and is like “Surprise! I have another bomb in me.” The bomb explodes, and everyone feels bad about it.
Metal Gear Solid V: For Real this Time (2015)
Snake, or Big Boss, or Punished Snake flies around in a helicopter blaring The Cure. He builds a zoo out in the middle of the ocean and hires people to take care of it. There’s a naked lady who breathes from her skin. It’s about 60 hours long, and it’s mostly just a blur to me. I remember them beating up a nerd for a while, and I think the bad guy was the Red Skull from Captain America. I’m fairly confident that, in the end, Punished Snake wasn’t really Big Boss. He was actually the medic who removed the bomb from the person in the fake Metal Gear Solid V. It’s mostly the fans who feel bad about everything.
Metal Gear (1988)
Solid Snake infiltrates a military compound to save a bunch of people and destroy an experimental weapon that launches nukes. On the way, he gathers a bunch of key cards, and every time he finds a locked door, he goes through his keychain, trying every key until it opens. He discovers that his mentor, Big Boss, is behind it all, and he has to kill him. It might have been fake Big Boss, but that guy didn’t exist when this game first came out. He then destroys the Metal Gear, but if you’re playing the NES version, it’s just a computer console.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990)
Solid Snake infiltrates a military compound to destroy an experimental weapon that launches nukes. This is my favorite game in the series, and its narrative is completely a blur. I remember having Snake warm a key, possibly between his buttcheeks. However, I do know that at the end, it turns out that Big Boss is alive and he has a new Metal Gear. Solid Snake destroys both of these things.
Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Solid Snake infiltrates a military compound to stop a bunch of bad guys who will launch nukes if the government doesn’t hand over the corpse of Big Boss. Also, he should probably save some people. Uh, the DARPA chief and… Nope I don’t remember. Maybe it was Otacon. Along the way, he discovers everyone is crazy and won’t shut up. 50% of this game is watching two heads read the script of a soap opera.
Every time that Snake tries to save someone, they die of heart failure. This is really suspicious, but he later learns that he’s carrying some sort of virus that is transmissible via long discussions. He eventually learns that he is a clone of Big Boss and he has an evil brother. That brother has a Metal Gear that the government built to roar. Snake beats up his brother, destroys the Metal Gear, and escapes into the wilderness on a convenient snowmobile to have an absolutely nauseating talk about life or something.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2002)
Solid Snake infiltrates a tanker that has been taken over by terrorists. The mission goes wrong and Snake goes MIA, forcing you to play as someone prettier.
Raiden infiltrates a big weapon platform. Or is it an oil platform? It’s in the middle of the ocean, anyway. A weird cast of evil dudes has taken it over, including a vampire. That’s bad, but Raiden’s biggest problem is that his girlfriend somehow got put on the mission as his handler. Throughout the entire story, we learn way too much about what a deeply toxic relationship they have. Because of past trauma, I fixated on Raiden’s relationship and completely lost track of the plot.
Solid Snake is undercover, so he shows up to help Raiden. There’s this really awesome part toward the end where it turns out that everything is a simulation or something. I don’t remember the context, I just remember it was cool. Yet another clone of Snake shows up, but this one is an older guy. There’s something about the government being bad, and I’m not sure Raiden learned anything about his relationship. I feel really bad about it.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot (2008)
Solid Snake is old now. Not because of the progression of age, but either because of the virus he’s still carrying or because clones degenerate faster. It’s the future (probably the past by now), and PMCs and proxy wars are the order of business. Uh, crap… What the hell happens in this?
Um, Metal Gear Solid 4 tells the story of how Solid Snake really pines for the days of Metal Gear Solid 1. The game introduces a bunch of awesome features, then tells you to fuck yourself; you’re going to ride on a motorcycle now. No, you can’t drive it. Get in the side car. Snake goes back to Metal Gear Solid 1 to remind you of how great the PlayStation was. He then fights Revolver Ocelot, who is now fused with Snake’s evil brother via a handful of nanites.
I think that’s basically the end of it. There’s an unglodly long cutscene where every character who survived the series gets a nauseatingly happy ending. Raiden, who is now mostly a robot, is reunited with his abusive girlfriend. Big Boss is alive but, oop, no wait, he’s dead. Snake goes on to live out the rest of his days with his husband Otacon and their adoptive daughter. I can’t remember who else lived, but you can bet that they got 15 minutes devoted to how they’ve rediscovered the joy of living.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2010)
This is a spin-off, and I think I only made it through half of it. It’s about robot Raiden, but I’m pretty sure his girlfriend is nowhere to be seen. If she was, I’m confident I would have remembered.
What really sticks in my mind is that you could slice a boss into a kajillion small pieces, and they would still give a death monologue. Hideo Kojima didn’t even write this game, and that’s the most Hideo Kojima thing I’ve ever heard.
