11 things to know before playing the English-friendly real-life version of the hit video game.
Metal Gear
Game’s first preview has fans scratching their heads and rolling their eyes as the innovative series seemingly resorts to a zombie apocalypse scenario.
Boutique figure maker Gecco introduces an ultra-detailed statue of Venom Snake from Metal Gear Solid V that will lighten your wallet and make you weep tears of nerd joy.
Depending on how cynical a gamer you are, this is either the last thing you expected, or the first.
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Newly formed Kojima Productions is looking to hire a few good video game developers, plus find customers for its online store.
He kept us waiting, but the internationally renowned video game director is finally ready to start work on his next project.
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After a vague yet indiscreet falling out with video game publisher Konami, it seems likely that Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear franchise, won’t be working at the company for much longer. As one of the most famous and respected names in the industry, though, we’re sure Kojima will be able to find employment at one of Konami’s many rivals who are licking their lips in anticipation of landing such a prized free agent.
However, we’re not so sure about the future financial well-being of the characters Kojima has created. This video seems to suggest that Metal Gear protagonist Snake has resorted to a life of crime, as multiple burglaries have taken place in Korea with the culprit using Snake’s trademark infiltration technique of disguising himself with a cardboard box.
Thanks to the extensive use of motion capture actors in the modern era, when a video game knight swings a sword to take down a fearsome dragon or a grizzled space marine aims a bazooka at an invading alien army, somewhere out there is a real person who performed the dramatic movements and cool poses. Of course, since the whole point of motion capture is to apply those movements to a totally different-looking frame, the actors themselves tend to live lives of relative obscurity.
At the recent Tokyo Game Show, though, fans got the chance to meet the real Revolver Ocelot, as the actor behind the pistol-loving Metal Gear Solid character showed up in costume and showed off his skills.
For months, there have been rumblings of discord between video game publisher Konami and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain director Hideo Kojima. First Kojima’s name, one of the most respected in the industry, was scrubbed from the game’s packaging, and now the popular opinion seems to be that once The Phantom Pain is a completely done deal, Kojima will pack up and leave the company where he’s worked for decades, meaning someone else would be tasked with carrying on the legacy of Metal Gear, a franchise so ground-breaking and successful it literally changed the industry.
But none of this drama seems to have adversely affected The Phantom Pain’s development, as advance reviews of the title have been glowing. And perhaps even more baffling is that even as this might be the end of an era, the series has in no way lost its sense of humor, as seen in this bizarre yet emotional Metal Gear Solid V TV commercial starring an about-to-be-wed bride and groom, dressed in their finest Metal Gear-style cardboard boxes.
For decades, the Metal Gear franchise has been teaching video game players to be patient. In contrast to other games, where the hero can just load up on firepower and go charging in with guns blazing, Metal Gear is all about staying hidden, carefully infiltrating enemy territory, and only striking when the time is right.
Fans have been putting that patience to use as the most popular branch of the franchise, Metal Gear Solid, keeps inching towards its long-discussed live-action film adaptation. The production seems to have finally hit another checkpoint, though, with reports that the movie now has a scriptwriter.
Instant gratification and quick answers aren’t exactly the hallmarks of the Metal Gear video game franchise. Not only does its stealth-based gameplay reward patience over diving head-first into combat, but the events set in motion in 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, most modern gamers entry point into the series, didn’t get any sort of conclusion until the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, a full 10 years later.
There’s been a similarly slowly paced trickle of information about the series’ newest chapter, the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which has been featured in trade show videos for years, and even had its own commercially released, extended-length preview game, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. Now, the next tidbit seems to be coming soon, as a mysterious countdown clock has appeared on the official Metal Gear V website.
Once upon a time, the North American video game market was incredibly squeamish about gory content. The blood and guts present in Japanese releases were painstakingly removed, most hilariously with the North American version of Neo Geo title Samurai Shodown, which retailed for $200 in 1993. Apparently the game’s producers thought their customer base was old enough to have that kind of cash in their pockets, but still too young to handle the sight of a little crimson hemoglobin, so they replaced the fountains of blood that occurred in the game’s swordfights with geysers of what appeared to be highly pressurized milk.
Eventually, everyone saw how silly this was. Gamers as a whole were getting older and more mature, and the youth of Japan, where this kind of content had been allowed for years, weren’t turning into crazed remorseless killing machines. So restrictions were loosened, allowing games like Grand Theft Auto to top North American sales charts.
Now, things have come full circle, as a side by side video comparison of publisher Konami’s Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes shows less graphic content in its Japanese version.
Once upon a time, video games were hard, and I mean really hard. Not only did gamers of the ‘80s and early ‘90s not have the luxury of looking up FAQs and walk-throughs online, titles were simply designed with the idea that not everyone would be able to beat them.
Eventually, studios saw the inefficiencies in this. Why go to the trouble of designing a great game and saving the most technologically impressive bits for the finale, when only a fraction of your paying customers would be able to see it? So games got easier, and as people outside the then-small circle of hard-core gamers got to experience all of the content each title had to offer, the market grew, and designers never looked back.
Well, most of them didn’t. It turns out there’s still a small band of players who find anything less than an unforgiving game to be completely unforgivable. Recently, borderline masochistic Japanese gamers shared some of their picks for the toughest yet most rewarding games they’d played.
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