Metal Gear Solid - How it was. History of the Metal Gear Solid universe - characters, series events

In 1987 in Japan and Europe. It was one of the first games to avoid direct conflict with the enemy by using stealth. It was the young Hideo Kojima's answer to the shooting games that were in abundance at the time. Many of the gaming aspects inherent in the games of this series were introduced at that time. The game was later released in North America, Europe and Japan on the NES/Famicom, and sold in the millions. However, Hideo Kojima did not take part in the creation of this version, which significantly affected its quality.

In 1998 a series of games metal gear returned in the form Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation, which transferred the game mechanics of the previous parts to three-dimensional graphics. While the first two games metal gear were just successful Metal Gear Solid became a real hit, selling over 6.6 million copies. She paved the way for other games of this genre, and at the same time made a series of games metal gear one of Konami's main ones.

After 3 years, a sequel came out Metal Gear Solid entitled Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for PlayStation 2 in 2001. The game has sold 7 million copies. After Metal Gear Solid 2 came out Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater in 2004. It was a prequel to the original metal gear and sold 3.75 million copies. Both games saw incremental improvements to the gameplay of the series. metal gear, continued the storyline. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops according to the plot events is between Metal Gear Solid 3 and original metal gear. It was released exclusively for PlayStation Portable.

List of additions and remakes:

• Metal Gear Solid: Integral(MGS) (PlayStation/PC, 1999)
• Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions(MGS) (PlayStation, 1999)
• Metal Gear Solid: Special Missions(MGS) (PlayStation, 1999)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance(MGS2) (PlayStation 2/XBox/PC, 2002)
• The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2(MGS2) (PlayStation 2, 2002)
• Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes(MGS) (GameCube, 2004)
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence(MGS3/MG/MG2) (PlayStation 2, 2005)
• Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel(MGS) (PlayStation Portable, 2006)
• Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus(MPO+) (PlayStation Portable, 2007)
• Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel 2(MGS2) (DVD)
• Metal Gear Online (MGS4)(PlayStation 3, 2008)
• Metal Gear Solid Mobile(mobile phones)
• Metal Gear Solid HD Collection(PlayStation 3/Xbox 360-2011; PlayStation Vita - 2012)
• Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection(PlayStation 3, 2013)

Porting and other versions

Shortly after the release of the original metal gear for MSX2, Konami released an adapted version for the Nintendo Entertainment System, known in Russia as Dendy. It was the first game in the series. metal gear which was released in North America. The NES version was developed without input from Hideo Kojima and featured some changes, including reworking some levels and removing the Metal Gear robot itself. The NES version was subsequently the basis for other North American adaptations for personal computers released in 1990 - first for the IBM PC, then for the Commodore 64. Also, an addition to metal gear for the Amiga system, which was made by Ultra Games. But she never saw the light. The Famicom version of the game was also released in emulated form as part of the Japanese The Twin Snakes.

In 2000, Konami released a version Metal Gear Solid for personal computers, ported by Microsoft Game Studios. This version was based on the add-on Integral and contained the original game with the addition VR Missions. An emulator was made bleemcast! which allows you to play Metal Gear Solid on the Sega Dreamcast.

In 2003 Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance was released for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC.

Chapter 2: Platform

2 years after the events on the tanker, on April 29, 2009, the player takes control of Raiden, who works for FOX HOUND. His mission is to free the President of the United States and other hostages from the Big Shell, a treatment facility on the New York coastline (created after the events on the tanker, ostensibly to clean up water from spilled oil), from the anti-terrorist group "Dead Cell". They call themselves the "Sons of Liberty" and proclaim Solid Snake as their leader. Raiden enters the Big Shell via a waterway while SEAL Team 10 lands on the helipad, diverting attention from Raiden to themselves. During the mission, Raiden encounters Navy SEAL Lieutenant Iroquois Pliskin, Sapper Peter Stillman, who arrived on Big Shell with Squad 10, and a cyborg ninja that looks like Gray Fox but calls himself Mr. X (Mr. X.)

Subsequently, the player learns that the head of Dead Cell, who calls himself Solid Snake, is actually Solidus Snake, the first clone of Big Boss, and that the ninja cyborg turns out to be Olga Gurluyukovich, and Iroquois Pliskin is actually the real Solid Snake. At the end, the player learns that Big Shell was a front for the development of "Arsenal Gear", a mobile fortress protected by mass-produced Metal Gear RAYs (which operate without human control) and carrying an impressive supply of missiles. After meeting Emma Emmerich (Otacon's half-sister and creator of the artificial intelligence that controls Arsenal Gear and Metal Gear RAYs), Raiden learns that Arsenal Gear was originally developed by the "Philosophers" to have more control over information. Arsenal Gear carries an artificial neural network controlled by supercomputers, which in turn are combined into several ALS (Automatic Identification System). Two of them have the names "GW" and "JFK" and were created to monitor any Internet transactions, for subsequent totalitarian control by the "Philosophers". Then, during a conversation with the artificial intelligence Arsenal Gear, Raiden learns that the purpose of GW (already destroyed by that time) was also to filter out "unnecessary" information to humanity in order to prevent humanity from "drown" in its excess. By the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, all the members of Dead Cell except Vamp and a few characters were dead and Liquid Snake's personality seems to have finally taken control of Ocelot. Some of the questions raised in Metal Gear Solid have been addressed in Sons of Liberty, while a few new ones have emerged.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Beginning in 2014, five years after the "Manhattan Incident" (the events of the Platform chapter in Metal Gear Solid 2), Metal Gear Solid 4 depicts a world in which military intervention in the territory of other countries is becoming commonplace, showing the need for private military companies ( private military companies, PMCs). The five largest PMCs are owned by a single parent company called "Outer Heaven" led by Liquid Ocelot. His intentions include the creation of Big Boss' dream adapted to modern realities - "Outer Heaven". Assembling a modernized army to rival the US Army, Liquid prepares a massive invasion against the Patriots. And in order to prepare for it, Liquid is trying to steal a revolutionary system that can control nanomachines in every body of PMC soldiers, called "SOP" ("Sons Of the Patriots" system - "Sons of the Patriots"). After the Manhattan Incident, the US government required that every soldier under PMC command be injected with SOP.

Soldier nanomachines are third generation machines that are based on the first generation of nanomachines upon which the FOXDIE virus was based. Liquid subsequently kidnapped the very first nanomachine creator, Naomi Hunter, in order to learn how the SOP system works. The world is once again on the cusp of crisis, with Solid Snake (now codenamed "Old Snake", Old Snake), who is aging catastrophically fast, and with the help of Otacon, Drebin, a mysterious arms dealer who can change signature IDs to soldiers, Foxhound Rat Patrol 01 (under the command of Meryl Silverberg, and operating under the control of the US Army) and Raiden (who is now a cyborg) are sent to Saudi Arabia by their former commander, Roy Campbell (who is now working for the UN), to eliminate Liquid. This will be Snake's last mission.

The player will visit different places during the game. In South America, taking part in a military conflict. On the Fox Archipelago, where the Shadow Moses base, familiar from the first part, is located, as well as on board a floating fortress in the Pacific Ocean.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

The main character is the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Raiden. Four years have passed since the events of MGS 4. The collapse of the Patriot system led to the widespread use of cyber technology, and the Private Military Companies (PMC) split into many small ones, which caused conflicts around the world. Raiden has retired from active combat and is a member of a peacekeeping PMC called Maverick Security Consulting. In the prologue, he is on a mission to protect the prime minister of an African developing country whose convoy and limousine have been attacked by another private military company, Desperado Enforcement. The Prime Minister was killed right in front of Raiden. During a fight with Desperado's mercenary Sam Rodriguez, Raiden manages to stay alive, but the criminals manage to escape the scene. The rest of the game is dedicated to the confrontation between Raiden and Desperado Enforcement, behind which is another more powerful force.

Soundtracks

• Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake Original Soundtrack (1991)
• Metal Gear Solid Original Game Soundtrack (1998)
• Metal Gear / Solid Snake: Music Compilation of Hideo Kojima / Red Disc (1999)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Original Soundtrack (2001)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Soundtrack 2: The Other Side (2002)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance Limited Sorter (Black Edition) (2003)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance Ultimate Sorter (White Edition) (2004)
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - The First Bite (2004)
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Original Soundtrack (2004)
• Metal Gear Ac!d 1 & 2 Original Soundtrack (2005)
• Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Original Soundtrack (2006)
• Metal Gear Solid Music Collection (2007)

It's interesting that main topic from the game "Metal Gear Solid", which later became the main musical theme of the entire series, written by the Japanese composer Tappy Iwase (TAPPY), to put it mildly, resembles the compositions "Troika" and "Winter Road" by the Soviet composer Georgy Sviridov, written by him back in 1964. At a video game exhibition in 2008, Igromania journalist Anton Logvinov met with Hideo Kojima, the creator of the series, and played him one of Sviridov's compositions. Judging by the genuine surprise of Kojima, this was news to him, although he did not say any comments on this matter. However, in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the mentioned main theme is not used at all, and new ones are invented instead.

The rise of a Hero.

Today I would like to talk about one of the most famous and most significant game series. The games in this series created the genre stealth action or, more precisely, Tactical Espionage Action . The games in this series have one of the most intricate plots in the history of the industry. The games in this series were created by one person. His name Hideo Kojima .

Hideo Kojima is a game designer at Konami. Born in Tokyo on August 24, 1963, then, aged three years, moved to Kobe (by the way, Snatcher takes place there) past Vice President of Konami Computer Entertainment Japan, now head of Kojima Productions. Creator of successful gaming projects such as TV series Metal Gear Solid, Snatcher, Policenauts. Also produced both parts Zone of the Enders and series Boktai.

When Hideo was a child, his favorite game was hide and seek. He often played them with friends and, probably based on childhood experiences, he created the stealth action game genre in the future. From an early age, his parents instilled in him a love of cinema. They made him watch movies. Then he did not understand much, but he went to the cinema all the time. That is why Hideo Kojima's childhood dream was to become a film director. . Now he is the head of the Kojima Productions office. Kojima has written and directed many successful games such as the Metal Gear series, Snatcher, Policenauts. He is also the producer of both Zone of the Enders and the Boktai series. His games can be recognized by their peculiar style, which is to convey aspects of human life in a philosophical form.
Nowadays, game developers are mainly interested in the commercial success of the game. They often make big advertisements for games that aren't really worth watching. Gamers often fall for this promotion and spend a lot of money on "empty" projects. There are also other developers who create such games that for a long time do not let go of gamers a single step. Thus, the players themselves are destroyed. But Hideo Kojima is a completely different person. He creates games not for himself, but, first of all, for the players. He never cheats and never cheats gamers. His games make them think about their lives and the lives of other people. Each of his games is, in its own way, a work of art, not too long, not too complicated, and always leaving a mark on the soul. In 2002, Newsweek magazine lists Hideo Kojima as one of the 10 people who changed the world, and in 2005, according to Famitsu magazine, he was ranked fourth in the Man of the Year category. And this is no coincidence.

As I said, Kojima has always dreamed of making films. But this was not destined to come true. Instead, the young man became very interested in video games. One day, one game changed his whole life. The game has become fateful Shigeru Miamoto Super Mario Bross . He decided that it was possible to combine cinema and video games. Kojima decided to start a career in the video game industry. In his fourth year, he announced this to his friends, colleagues and professor. They all tried to dissuade Hideo from this idea. But, nevertheless, in 1986 he joined the Konami publishing company, specializing in games for the MSX Yamaha platform. At first, the purposeful screenwriter could not fit into the team. Previously, game developers were involved in the entire process of creating a game, and Hideo Kojima was invited as a screenwriter. Prior to this, there was no such position, and it was difficult for Kojima to fit into the team. He was accused of not having any technological skills, that he was not a programmer. The first game he worked on was Penguin Adventure . He was an assistant director.

The first game that Kojima developed independently was the game Lost Warld . The game was Super Mario Bross style. about a girl fighter in a wrestler's mask. Konami gave Kojima a game plan, he worked on it for six months, but the problem was that he did not know anything about programming, did not calculate how long the game should last in time, did not follow the balance. As a result, Lost Warld was closed.

After that, things went downhill. Hideo Kojima was the only person in the Konami company who did not release a single game. Colleagues stopped even saying hello to Hideo. They spoke: “Make at least one game, then we'll talk!” Kojima was given another chance. After Lost Warld was cancelled, Hideo was asked to create a "military shooter". Despite the fact that the game was supposed to be a shooter, Kojima wanted to do something in the style of a movie. “Great Escape” , where the main task was not to kill enemies, but to run away and hide from them. When Hideo presented the plan, his superiors said: “You already failed one project, and now you are trying to come up with a strange concept for another”. By the end 1986, Kojima realized that such a project was too difficult for him, and he decided to leave Konami. He talked about it with the boss, but he dissuaded Kojima and gave some advice. As a result, after a couple of months of work, the game moved off the ground.
The game system was ready: the process took place with a top view, and if the enemy noticed you, then an exclamation mark appeared above his head, and he attacked you. When Kojima showed his colleagues the demo of the game, they said: "Yes! This is a great game!” After that, everything became much easier. Having come a long way, Hideo Kojima created his first game metal gear .

From now on, I will move on to a brief description of the Metal Gear series and other Hideo Kojima games. I intend to omit the plot. Wait for the full analysis the second part.

metal gear (1987)

Soon, Hideo Kojima created his first Metal Gear game. She was released in 1987 and was a resounding success, despite the fact that it was released on the platform MSX , not intended for the mass buyer. The game told us about Solid Snake , a rookie soldier who was sent to a fortified state “Outer Heaven to stop a nuclear-armed walking tank known as metal gear . The game was unique. It was the first stealth action game in history where the player basically had to run away from enemies, not kill them. And in general, this is in principle the first stealth action in the history! Since the MSX system could not display multiple moving objects, the game was divided into many locations, where there were usually no more than two enemies. But it even played into her hands: opponents could be bypassed in many ways.
Since the MSX platform was known only in Japan and Europe, porting the game to other systems was a matter of time. In 1988, Metal Gear was released in the US for the platform Nintendo Entertainment System . Porting Konami was assigned to another team Ultra Games . Over a million copies have been sold in the US alone. But since Kojima wasn't involved with the project, the port had many changes from the MSX original. Firstly, some cards were changed and removed, but new ones were added, secondly, the opponents became more stupid, and thirdly, in this version we weren't allowed to see Metal Gear itself . Of course, the graphics on the NES were worse than on the MSX. There were a couple of other changes to the plot.. In general, the port was good, but still the MSX version was much better. Metal Gear was later ported to C64, PC, Amiga (although the release was canceled) and even on gamecube(was timed to coincide with the Japanese release )
By the way, the American version of the game was translated so badly that it is better not to see it. The original (Japanese) Meta Gear came with a small manual for the game. Instead of adapting a Japanese or European manual, the American branch of Konami ordered the manual to be written from scratch. This style manual was designed for young children and had nothing to do with the game. And according to this terrifying instruction, a book was even written. Worlds of Power: Metal Gear. The verdict of the fans of the game, and even ordinary readers, was simple : "If you see this book (which is unlikely) burn it in the oven or hand it over to waste paper."

snatcher (1988)

In 1988, Hideo Kojima released the game Snatcher, which was heavily criticized but nevertheless successful. Snatcher is a Cyberpunk-inspired graphic novel set in the Cold War. The player tried on the skin Gillian Seed , a man living in the futuristic metropolis of Neo-Kobe, who knows nothing about himself or the world around him. Having settled down to serve in a detachment of a new generation, he had to figure out who he was and why he had lost his memory. The game's plot was heavily based on two Hollywood films: “Blade Runner” And "Terminator". Snatcher for MSX was only released in Japan.

As Metal Gear for the NES sold so well, American retailers began asking Konami to make a sequel. And Ultra Games without the support of Hideo Kojima started working on a sequel.

Snake's Revenge (1990, not part of the series timeline)

So in 1990, the game Snake's Revenge appeared. In the story, the terrorists decided to launch nuclear missiles on New York, Moscow and Tokyo with the help of the new super weapon Metal Gear-2 (original title), so Foxhound sent three of his operatives, one of whom was Solid Snake, to stop the terrorists. The game had nothing to do with the original. Firstly, as you, I think, have already understood, the plot was simply terrible in its primitiveness, and secondly, the game was unrealistically difficult, but the main problem was that it was an ordinary shooter with a view from above (and sometimes from the side ). Those who liked the original Metal Gear didn't understand Snake's Revenge, they said: "What the heck is that? This is not Metal Gear”. Snake's Revenge is no longer part of the official series timeline.

There is a story that after the release of Snake's Revenge, Hideo met a guy on the train who was developing Snake's Revenge. They talked for a long time, and the guy said that he was a fan of the original Metal Gear and would like to see a sequel created by the real author. His words stuck in Hideo Kojima's mind. Hideo began to think about a sequel. When he got off the train and came home, he had the whole story in his head. The next morning, Hideo Kojima came to Konami with a game plan. Everyone agreed, and development began immediately.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990)

In 1990, Kojima released Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. According to the plot of Metal Gear 2, Solid Snake infiltrates Zanzibar Land (not to be confused with the island of Zanzibar, which is part of Tanzania), a heavily defended state, supposedly located somewhere between Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China. Snake's mission is to save the scientist who created the substance that releases artificial oil, as well as to find and destroy the improved Metal Gear. The game has taken a big step forward in many ways. The graphics became more detailed, which caused the game to slow down a bit. Many changes were made to the gameplay: opponents learned to see at an angle of 45 degrees and hear the hero's steps, a radar was added, Snake learned to crawl, new devices and new weapons appeared. Melodies have become deeper and more memorable. By the way, some themes were borrowed from the Hollywood movie Rambo. But most importantly, the game had a very strong storyline. Even now, it is difficult to find a game that would keep the player on such suspense as Metal Gear 2. The game was so loved that many now call it the best on
MSX Yamaha platform.

Also released in 1990 SD Snatcher or Super Deform Snatcher . “Super deformation” the whole game was subjected, from the characters to the gameplay. The characters are now big-headed cartoon freaks, and the game itself is a complete RPG. Kojima was only involved with the project by scripting the original Snatcher. Nevertheless, the game turned out to be quite interesting. The graphics were nice, the music was up to the mark, but still, the game lost the atmosphere of a psychological thriller. It was no longer taken as seriously as the original. But the main thing, nevertheless, is that the game has one big plus that covers many shortcomings: a third act was added to SD-Snatcher, which was not in the original game, and which was the denouement of the whole story.
In 1992, Hideo Kojima redesigned the original Snatcher for the PC-Engine platform and named it Snatcher CD-ROMantic. The CD format allowed the developers from Konami to: fully voice the game characters and insert high-quality MIDI music into the game. The graphics have undergone a big change. She became clear and very colorful. But the main difference between the remake and the MSX version was the addition of the third act "Junk", which first appeared in the SD-Snatcher game. In 1994, the game was ported to the Sega-CD platform. This was the only version of Snatcher released in English.

Policenauts (1994)

In 1994, Hideo Kojima releases Policenauts, a fantasy adventure game made in the style of the movie " Deadly weapon", which takes place on a space colony. Sometimes it is called the ideological successor of Snatcher.

In 1996, Snatcher and Policenauts were ported to a 32-bit console. Sony PlayStation . Both games were commercially successful. Therefore, in 1996, Konami decided to release them outside of Japan. In the same year, development began, and in 1997 the games were demonstrated at the E3 computer exhibition. But then for some reason the projects were cancelled. Perhaps Konami wanted to focus all her energy on developing new game of the Metal Gear series. Kojima was also the producer and planner of the dating sim series Tokimeki Memorial made on the Policenauts engine.

While Hideo was developing Policenauts, he first heard about the platform Sony PlayStation . In 1995, Sony opened the door to the 32-bit era with the PlayStation. . The new powerful system interested Kojima. When he saw how much more perfect it was, he began to think about a new action game. Then Kojima decided to return to the Metal Gear universe. . He and his colleagues organized a company called and in 1996 started developing a game in Tokyo called Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation. PS allowed you to do things that Kojima had long dreamed of. He wanted to make the game in 3D, and the developers from KCEJ used every opportunity provided to them for this. The first demonstration of MGS took place at E3 1997 . Everyone was delighted with the video shown. People who were at the exhibition in the morning came there again in the evening to watch this video again.

Metal Gear Solid (1998)

When the game went on sale in September 1998, it turned the video game industry on its head. . Incredible, for those times, graphics, perfected to the ideal gameplay and atmospheric soundtrack produced the effect of an exploding bomb. It sold 350,000 copies on its first weekend. . Later sales reached 6.000.000 copies worldwide . In this part, Snake had to stop a gang of genetically enhanced terrorists who had seized atomic weapons in Alaska. With the help of MGS, Hideo Kojima has taken the stealth action genre to the next level. Since its release, Konami has become a world-famous game developer and Kojima has become a world-famous video game developer..
In 1999, an enhanced version was released for PS and PC. Metal Gear Solid: Integral. It was supplemented with VR missions, missions in virtual reality. Several of these could be completed in the original Metal Gear Solid, like training. In addition, in Integral it was possible to pass several levels for gray fox , one of the key characters in Metal Gear Solid.

In early 2000, Hideo Kojima reveals to us the first details of the Metal Gear Solid sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The game was showcased at E3 2000. After the video shown there, Sons of Liberty has become one of the most anticipated games in history. Everyone was simply shocked by what they saw. The video showed us: Snake neutralizing his enemies while performing incredible stunts. All this was dressed in a perfect graphical shell with previously unseen physics. In addition, the video sounded very beautiful and atmospheric soundtrack. Still, for the role of the composer Kojima invited Gary Gregson-Williams , which I will talk about a little later.

Before the release of MGS2, Kojima produced an anime series and a game in 2001. Zone of the Enders which was quite successful.

(2001)

In 2001, the most commercially successful part of Metal Gear Solid was released. This part of Kojima surprised many. Those who played the second part will immediately understand what I'm talking about. As you progress through the game, the plot presented many unexpected surprises. This game is one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of video games. Its ending is discussed to this day. Gameplay has undergone many changes . Now the game has a new feature: first-person shooting mode. There were many more changes and additions, to tell them all there is not enough time, and it is not necessary - just play it yourself.
In 1998, Hideo Kojima showed that he could make movies out of games with Metal Gear Solid. But thanks to the revolutionary graphics, the second part goes far ahead in this sense. Now gamers were playing a real, very beautiful and well-staged movie. And so, Hideo Kojima again made a breakthrough in the video game industry. It was there that his branded videos appeared, lasting "starting from 20 minutes and more". It wasn't a game - it was a movie . We can say that Kojima realized his dream - to become a filmmaker.
In 2002 he released . It was a PS2 disc containing the game's early work, artwork, and the story behind its creation.

Also in 2002, Hideo Kojima released an expanded version . It included: the original game, a bunch of vr missions, the book “In the Darkness of Shadow Moses” and many, many other features for the fans. The most interesting thing, I think, was the mode Snake Tales. It featured new missions in familiar Sons of Liberty locations, with Solid Snake as the protagonist. Since the developers could not invite actors to voice the game, the story was told using text that appeared during the passage of a particular mission. The game was released for PS2, Xbox and PC.

In addition, Kojima agreed to develop (without his participation) the game , a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid for the platform gamecube with gameplay from Metal Gear Solid 2 and a new director Ryuuhei Kitamura , who directed several fantastic action films. And did not lose! The change in director has given Metal Gear Solid a whole new light. The game has got new super fancy and very beautiful battle scenes. Snake has become much cooler: if in the original game we were haunted by the feeling that we were being controlled like puppets, then in Twin Snakes this feeling has disappeared. Who can manage a super strong, super dexterous and invulnerable soldier. On the other hand, the original was a very realistic game, and what we saw in the remake: Snake dodges a sniper with two-meter somersaults
in the air. In general, the remake turned out to be quite successful.

In 2003, Kojima announced the development of a new game in the Metal Gear universe.. There were a lot of rumors, assumptions and hypotheses about the plot on the Internet. Metal Gear Solid 3 . Hideo was in no hurry to reveal the details of the game to the players. On the contrary, by slowly posting screenshots and videos from the game, he wanted to lead gamers even more astray. However, real fans easily solved all the mysteries of Kojima. Even before the release of the game, they knew exactly who they would play in the third part. The main character was big boss - the person who gave the orders Solid Snake back in the very first Metal Gear, part-time Snake's genetic father. As those familiar with the plot of Metal Gear know, Solid Snake later killed his dad.

(2004)

In 2004, Kojima released not the most successful, but, in his opinion (but not according to the author), the best part of the Metal Gear Solid trilogy, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The game took us to the not very distant past, during the Cold War. The main scene of action was the dense forests of the Soviet Union. For the first time, the gameplay took place in open spaces, and not in the closed complexes of the previous parts. MGS3 has a lot of new features: camouflage , treatment regimen , combat mode CQC etc. I think it's not worth talking to you about graphics and sound. They were, as you probably guessed, top notch. The gameplay, as always, has undergone a bunch of changes for the better. However, the game sold worse than the previous parts. (4.000.000 copies worldwide ). But
this did not stop Konami from starting development on the series' next game.

Let's go back to the past for a while. In 2000 for handheld console Game Boy Color released a game called Metal Gear: Ghost Babel . The game was originally developed as a remake of the first Metal Gear, but then evolved into independent project. Kojima could not follow the creation of the project, as he was developing Metal Gear Solid 2. As a result, the director of the project became Shinta Nojiri , which proved that Metal Gear, made without the direct participation of Kojima, is not necessarily a failure. The plot, which was an alternative to the series, told us about an elite special forces unit used for other purposes. Offended by such impudence, they decided to take revenge on everyone and everything with the help of ... guess what. To neutralize the detachment, the universal soldier Solid Snake, who has not yet come out of the binge after "Outer Heaven", is sent. The game was moderately interesting, not bad graphically designed and quite successful. All these factors made Kojima think: “Shouldn’t Nojiri be given another alternate game in the series?” And he ordered.

Metal Gear Ac!d (2004)


Under the direction of Kojima, Metal Gear Ac!d was released for the platform PlayStation Portable . This is a rather interesting game created by Shinta Nojiri, who established himself as a good developer with the release of Metal Gear: Ghost Babel. Metal Gear Ac!d is a turn-based strategy and the main focus here is on
mission planning. The game has nice looking graphics, and the plot is revealed to us in the form of comic inserts. Ac!d became very successful, and Nojiri set about developing a sequel.

April 1, 2005 , after konami merged several of its branches, the Kojima team Konami Computer Entertainment Japan was renamed to Kojima Productions. Now, Hideo Kojima no longer spends time on the legal business as he did when he was deputy director of KCEJ, and therefore devotes himself to creating games. On this moment Kojima Productions has already released two games.

The first is Metal Gear Ac!d 2 for PSP. It was created on the same basis as the first part. Has changed
only graphics made now on cell shaded technology. The game contains two maps from the first part and many new features.
The second game was for PS2. This is an expanded version of MGS3 that includes two multiplayer modes, a new third person camera and fan features (Duel Mode, Demo Theater) that were exclusive to the European version of the original game. The game also contains the original MSX versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. The latter was first released outside of Japan.

Fall of a Legend?

(2008)

Well, to be honest, talking about MGS 4 is a thankless task. Firstly : The game hasn't been released yet. Secondly : I think that after its release there will be even more mysteries and questions. Well, thirdly : Kojima himself is trying his best to confuse the fans. It is already known for certain that the game will be released on a 50 GB Blu-ray disc.. According to the master, all the characters of the Metal Gear series will appear in the game and, most likely, Snake will die. And also Kojima said that this is his last game from the Metal Gear series. . It is worth noting that this is not the first time he says this, after the release of MGS 3 he said the same thing. In short, some speculation.

Here are all the games films (no wonder he put Kitamura as director Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, not in vain...) created by Hideo Kojima.

Metal Gear series

Metal Gear Online (2008)
Metal Gear Acid Mobile (TBA)
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008) - writer/producer/director
Metal Gear Solid Mobile (2008)
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus (2007) - writer/original concept/executive producer
Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel 2 (2007) - producer/director
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (2006) - writer/original concept/executive producer
Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel (2006) - producer/director
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (2005) - writer/producer/director
Metal Gear Acid 2 (2005) - producer
Metal Gear Acid (2004) - producer
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004) - writer/producer/director
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (2004) - writer/producer/original director
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (2002) - writer/producer/director
The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 (2002) - producer/director
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) - writer/producer/director
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel (2000) - producer/supervising director
Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions (1999) - producer/director
Metal Gear Solid: Integral (1999) - writer/producer/director
Metal Gear Solid (1998) - writer/producer/director
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990) - writer/director
metal gear (1987) - writer/director ("game design")

Boktai series

Lunar Knights (2006) - producer
Boktai: Sabata's Counterattack (2005) - producer
Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django (2004) - producer
Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand (2003) - producer

Zone of the Enders series

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (2003) - producer
Zone of the Enders (2001) - producer

Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series

Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series Vol. 3: Tabidachi no Uta (1999) - executive director
Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series Vol. 2: Irodori no Love Song (1998) - planner/producer
Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series Vol. 1: Nijiiro no Seishun (1997) - planner/producer/drama director

Snatcher series

Project 'S' (unknown) - co-design with Suda 51
Snatcher CD-ROMantic (1992) - writer/director
SD Snatcher (1990) - original writer
snatcher (1988) - writer/director

Other Games

Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) - designer of Shadow Moses Island stage.
Kabushiki Baibai Trainer Kabutore! Next (2007)
Stock Trading Trainer: Kabutore (2006)
Policenauts (1994) - writer/director
Lost Warld (sic) (1986, cancelled) - writer/director
Penguin Adventure (1986) - assistant director

Movies

Versus (2000) - cameo (extra) - Worked with Kitamura. An hour and a half of shootings, violence and massacre.
Azumi (2003) - cameo (extra) - Also collaboration with Kitamura. First-class samurai action.
Metal Gear Solid (possibly 2008, most likely 2009-2010) - executive producer/writer

It seems that this is where my story about the Metal Gear series and Hideo Kojima should end. No matter how. Kojima is not the only person who created Metal Gear.
A little lower I will try to collect Interesting Facts for this game series.

Yohji Shinkawa.
Yohji Shinkawa, illustrator for the Metal Gear series, joined Konami in 1994, and showed what he was capable of in the first Metal Gear Solid. Thirty-three-year-old artist, designer Zone of the Enders and Metal Gears Solid 3: Snake Eater, taciturn and tries to avoid the press - which is unbelievable for a star of this magnitude. It is known that Shinkawa prefers to work with a brush rather than on a computer, and often leaves polygonal models at the mercy of assistants. His artistic taste is influenced by comics and manga (favorites are Gundam, Five Star Story and Hellboy) but his personal preferences are almost invisible in Metal Gear Solid , where menacing characters like Mantis and Ocelot dominate, and instead of girls with big eyes, walking robots. Shinkawa has worked with Kojima several times (on the MGS and ZotE series), but their relationship is not as close as it seems. Shinkawa said that kojima doesn't like to talk about his characters and gives him enough freedom.
"If we're given a character's full biography, we'll get the job done faster, but the fun won't be the same."

Harry Gregson Williams (Harry Gregson-Williams)
One of the most famous Hollywood composers. Composer 65 (!) Hollywood films such as "The Rock", "Armaggedon" and "Enemy of the State". Wrote soundtracks for 17 films. Composer for MGS 2 and MGS 3.

Snake prototype.

Kojima himself admitted that the prototype of Snake is the protagonist of the film "Escape from New York" Serpent Plisskin (1981, played by Kurt Russell) And "Escape from Los Angeles"(1996). By the way, in the second part of MGS, Snake also appears as Plisskin. And in the third part, Snake loses an eye and gets an arrow in the leg, just like in the movie.

Prototype Ocelot.

Is it necessary to say that Revolver Ocelot , the well-known villain of the MGS series, is also "based" on the popular movie character. Or rather, on the collective image of the heroes of Westerns, embodied on the screen Lee Van Cliff . His role bad in "Good bad evil" made a huge impression on the audience, including Kojima. He came to Yohji Shinkawa and demanded a villain who looked like Lee Van Cliff. And received. This is how the Ocelot Revolver was born. Rumor has it that Cliff also influenced the image of the old Snake from MGS4.

Scott Dolph.
Scott Dolph - commander of the Marine Corps at the start of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty . This is another MGS hero that has a prototype in the real world. The real Scott Dolph was "the only person at Konami who could speak English", simultaneously - companion, bodyguard and interpreter for Kojima. Scott writes music and lyrics, and also raps for Dance Dance Revolution - the popular music game from Konami. In the jukebox credits, he is often listed as "Scotty D".

Evil Kojima.

Of course, the creation of such an advanced game as Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots requires huge budgets and hard work. On the Tokyo Game Show 2006 Hideo Kojima talked about how difficult it is to work at Kojima Productions. For example, before starting to create levels, they had to travel around all the regions of the planet in which Snake would be, and collect material for artists and designers. And in Japan, military consultant Motosada Mori regularly takes them out of town, dresses them in camouflage, divides them into two teams, distributes weapons and makes them play counter-terrorism operations. For example, today the programmers took the accountant hostage and fortified themselves in an abandoned factory! The programmers leave to take up defense, and in the meantime everyone else develops an assault plan. Kojima himself, who constantly travels to such events, talked about “training” in a network diary. Like, just knowing that when storming a room, the first person who enters gets a bullet in 80% of cases is one thing. It's quite another thing to be that first, to stand with a weapon behind a doorway, to feel the weight of a bulletproof vest on your shoulders and pray that it was empty inside. Although their bullets were not real, their feelings and invaluable experience turned out to be genuine.

And finally: the voice actors of the main characters of the series.

Solid Snake

Akio Otsuka
David Hayter

Otacon

Hideyuki Tanaka

Christopher Randolph (photo not found)

Liquid Snake

Bandze Ginga

Cam Clark (photo not found)

Revolver Ocelot

Koji Totani

Patrick Zimmerman . (photo not found)

Raiden

Kenyu Horiuchi (photo not found)
Quinton Flynn (photo not found)

Meryl

Keko Terase(photo not found)
Debi May West (photo not found)

This is the end of my article about the history of Metal Gear and Hideo Kojima. Perhaps many of you are wondering why the article is called "Part 1"?. I will answer you : soon, literally tomorrow there will be a continuation of the article from my friend and colleague L.A. This article will fully devoted to the analysis of the plot and series.

The chronology reveals the history of the games to a certain extent, although it only indicates key events and characters.

Metal Gear Solid 3: The Snake Eater (2004)
1964

Although Snake received gratitude and the title of Big Boss for the "Eater of Snakes", he left the civil service and created his own military company Militaires Sans Frontières ("Military Without Borders").

One day, his assistant Kazuhira Miller reported that some Ramon and Paz wanted to hire MSF in order to clear their native Costa Rica from the troops of an unknown aggressor that had flooded it. Although the customers look extremely suspicious and Snake even “splits” one of them, he agrees to the offer when he is shown evidence that the Boss is alive and in Costa Rica.

As we find out along the way...

The hero goes to save her and Chico, and in his absence...

The platform is attacked by XOF forces who have infiltrated it under the guise of inspection. The MSF forces are overwhelmed, Paz, who has been planted with explosives by the enemy, jumps out of the helicopter where Snake, Miller and the MSF medic are, but too late - the whole trio ends up in intensive care. Snake falls into a coma.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)
1984

The hospital where the Big Boss is lying is attacked. With the help of Ocelot, Snake (now Venom) escapes from there and goes to the Seychelles, where Miller founded the Diamond Dogs organization. Fulfilling military orders in Afghanistan and on the Angolan-Zairean border, the "dogs" are on the trail of XOF and its leader Skull.

Snake rips off his masks

It turns out that the XOF was once created as a support unit for FOX, including for Operation Snake Eater, but later got out of Cipher's control. Having asked Paz for the location of Zero, the Skull was able to seriously undermine the health of his boss (he miraculously survived). Zero, in turn, went to great lengths to save Big Boss. He even helped Miller put the "dogs" on their feet. And it was he who asked Ocelot to take care of the Big Boss and Venom Snake.

Venom Snake met in Africa a boy named Eli - one of the results of Les Enfants Terribles, a project of the US government under the patronage of Zero to clone the "ideal soldier" Big Boss. In the future, he would become known as Liquid Snake. In the same game, it turns out that Volgin did not die in 1964, but became (due to his hatred of Snake and the "boy in a gas mask" - Psycho Mantis, one of the "bosses" of the first one) "a fiery man."

Metal Gear (1987)
1995

It's all in the hand

After the events of MGS, Ocelot attached Liquid Snake's hand to himself, and now Liquid's personality is gradually taking over him. After betraying the mercenaries and tricking Solid Snake, Ocelot sinks the tanker and hides on Metal Gear.

year 2009

Villains closely study the enemy

Young FOXHOUND operative Raiden, led by Campbell, must infiltrate the Big Shell plant, built on the site of a tanker crash, taken over by the Sons of Liberty, in order to rescue the hostages, among whom is the President of the United States. The terrorists are led by Solid Snake.

In addition to Raiden, a special forces detachment penetrates the facility, but only one fighter named Iroquois Pliskin survives. In all other respects, what is happening strongly resembles the events of four years ago.

It turns out that...

Iroquois is Solid Snake, who was declared a terrorist after the events on the tanker, although this, of course, is not the case. The real leader of the "sons" Solidus Snake is the third clone of the Big Boss, previously the former President of the United States himself. His goal is to destroy the Patriots.

However, in reality...

Liquid didn't take over Ocelot's body. The gray eminence of the entire series, by and large, just pretended to be Liquid, continuing to work for the Big Boss. In the finale, Snake comes to the grave of the Big Boss and is about to commit suicide, but the Big Boss himself and the barely alive Zero suddenly appear. Big Boss reveals to Snake the background of the whole saga: it was he, Zero, Ocelot, EVE and a couple of people who once founded the Patriots, but then they parted ways. Big Boss Demonstrates Amazing Event Awareness recent years, kills Zero, and then dies in Snake's arms, having reconciled with the best of his clones before dying.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013)
2018

Ocelot

Ocelot is a secret agent who works for everyone, but in fact he pursues only his own goals, which he partially voices at the very end of each MGS. Strives to help the Big Boss (although sometimes you can’t say so directly). Appears in the vast majority of games in the series as one of the "bosses", in an unusual role as an ally.

MGS 3 MGS V MGS 4

However, so that you do not load your desk with textbooks, but your head with kilograms of unnecessary knowledge about the history of video games, we did it instead of you and now we will take a brief digression into the development of the gaming industry using the example of the progress of one great game.

1987

The birth of non-trivial gameplay

metal gear

27 years ago, when the vast majority of MAXIM Online readers were born and the phrase “What cool graphics!” was first heard, one of the first representatives of the stealth action genre appeared on the consoles of our great-grandfathers MSX2. This seemingly insignificant event against the backdrop of Gorbachev's reforms and the improvement of relations between the USSR and the USA at one moment expanded the horizons of the gameplay. At that distant time of inserts and leather goods, platformers with dragons and dancing potatoes were considered the top of the gaming idea. But that wasn't the case with Metal Gear. The protagonist Solid Snake did not pour lead on crowds of talking mushrooms and did not jump on platforms with spikes - instead, we were given the freedom to leisurely run around locations drawn in isometric projection, stun enemies on the sly and stealthily pull off the necessary things. And the hero himself, unlike the stumps with eyes familiar to that time, was almost like a real one, and even with a well-researched biography. I wanted to be friends with him, his respect had to be won - he did not run thoughtlessly from point A to point B, but demanded that you turn on your head and look for alternative ways and solutions. At the same time, the game had a plot with an important message for its time about the dangers of war and the responsibility for storing atomic weapons. So the usual arcade platformers, which then all your classmates fought on the "Dandy", turned into deeper and more important products of media culture.

1990

The emergence of a serious plot

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

The next part did not greatly expand the scope of the perception of the game world and did not become visually indistinguishable from films and your action-packed life. But on the other hand, the plot of this game was unanimously recognized by all freaks and geeks as one of the best sayings era of 8-bit games. Thanks to this, game developers and the public thought that in order to fully immerse themselves in the gameplay, their products should have a more serious motive than or the ability to skip classes. Although nothing can compete with the latter even now.

1998

The advent of 3D

Metal Gear Solid

This part of the series has fundamentally changed the perception of games and the approach to their creation. Firstly, 3D appeared here for the first time in the entire history of the franchise (and it is still used in all modern games!), And secondly, a strong cinematic plot with a large number of prominent characters, movie quotes, allusions to ancient Japanese myths and real events of the modern world. In general, if Ridley Scott knew how to make games, they would be just that. Among other things, from this part, the series made it a rule to amaze you with a lot of details, which was not typical for games of that time, with their deserted corridors, barrels and boxes. Every detail, every location in the game was carefully drawn by the hands of Japanese designers, and the behavior of the enemies who scoured the levels in search of the main character was almost indistinguishable from the habits of your parents, who were constantly trying to find you under the covers in an embrace with a prefix. That is why even now playing MGS is no less interesting than any AAA-class title, despite the square faces of the characters.

2001

Artificial intelligence of enemies

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

When looking at this game now, 13 years later, the eyes still shudder with delight. MGS2 is literally overflowing with details and innovative solutions. The chief designer of the entire series, Hideo Kojima, specifically asked all employees to offer their ideas to improve the game, even if they were a priori unrealizable. As a result, a bunch of solutions appeared here that seemed at that time an optical illusion. The fact is that when in contact with most games, you often want to do something everyday and everyday, but it turns out that such an opportunity is not provided. Instead of just jumping over the fence, you go around half the level, or instead of hiding from the enemy under the bed, you are forced to fight with him, etc. So, in MGS2, a lot of such wishes were taken into account: you find yourself in a bar and want to shoot all the bottles - yes, please; you need to hide in the closet - and this is possible; I thought about peeking around the corner to watch for the victim - no problem; decided to use the enemy as a human shield - easily. From the abundance of such opportunities in 2001, the head was spinning - what’s really there, most of these actions could not be performed even in real life. But even now, even a tenth of them is not implemented in modern games. However, despite all these gifts from the developers, the main advantage of the game was officially recognized as the artificial intelligence of the enemies, who behaved in a completely outrageous way: they worked in groups, watched you from around the corner and gave up, being alone with your gun.

2004

Deep interaction with the environment

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

In fact, Kojima has never been a pioneer and in the entire history of its existence has not made a single major breakthrough, as, for example, did John Carmack with or Gabe Newell with Half-Life. But he always successfully groped for the most important features and features of modern games and skillfully combined them, getting a completely new product. The same happened with MGS3 - it absorbed all the finds of video games of its time and became, in fact, an ideal survival simulator in the wild. Despite the fact that, by modern standards, all the action of the game takes place in fairly cramped locations of the rainforest, a huge number of opportunities are available here. For example, to avoid the enemy, you can climb a tree or put on a striped camouflage and blend into the grass, etc. Also, the system of body damage and treatment is quite realistically implemented here, and if you eat poorly, you will not be able to accurately aim when shooting. In fact, apart from indie games, there is still no survival game in the world where so many options and possibilities are available.

2008

The appearance of very serious plots

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

This game sold the PlayStation 3 and showed all developers how to properly connect storytelling with gameplay. Unlike everyone's favorite, here the plot twists and turns are revealed in many hours of story cutscenes throughout the game, and are not given out in fragments at the end of levels. Actually, this was at the same time the biggest problem of MGS4 - gamers not spoiled by literature and complex plots simply drowned in a huge flow of information and an abundance of characters. However, the obligatory presence of a complex narrative load about string theory or quantum gravity now does not bother anyone.

2014

Episodic structure and high realism

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

This is not a full-fledged fifth part, but a small prequel developed by Kojima for impatient fans and a quick fundraising for the development of a full-length fifth part. It is this approach that is one of the main engines of the new gaming industry - splitting games into parts that can be sold independently of each other. But Kojima went one step further by selling us a short one-level demo for the price of a summer blockbuster. At the same time, the most interesting thing is that he absolutely does not want to scold him for it. Because he kindly gave us the opportunity to take a look at the approximate future of the gaming industry, at the real next-gen. Therefore, get ready to make notches and knots in real life, so as not to accidentally confuse it with the 3D world.

A little boy after school comes to his yard friends to exchange cartridges for Dendy - he manages to exchange " black cloak”(as they would say now“ AAA hit ”) for a couple of cartridges of a worse class: for a disgusting collection of 9999-in-1 with different variations Galaxian, Mario Bros.(without the Super prefix) and on a 4-in-1 collection of action games Jackal, Rambo 2, Twin Bee And metal gear.

Thus began an acquaintance with the legendary series. (Remembered Dmitry Zombak and Maxim Zaretsky before the release)

Metal Gear (1987-1990)

Arriving home from frost, you should rather put the cartridge on the battery - so that it is at room temperature, otherwise the prefix will “break”. The boy did not know if this was true, but he strictly observed the ritual. Then, of course, the lessons - tomorrow the math test, and Svetlana Nikolaevna, oh, how she doesn’t like it when she is handed over a notebook with examples with unfinished tasks. Then, perhaps, lunch, and then - stick to the TV near the set-top box. New games don't play themselves, you know.

Needless to say, the little boy then did not understand at all what the joke of the game was metal gear, since the green paratrooper in the jungle could do nothing but punch the guards, and catch their eye with exciting music. There were also talks on the radio with the Higher Leadership (as it was written big boss), but the boy did not understand anything, because from English he could only who is on duty today? yes different variations London is the capital of Great Britain, and the yard boys read in some magazine that the plot in the game is not important, but you need to get to some kind of robot and the game will end. Bullshit, in short, a passerby. There were codes in the same magazine, from the same place they learned about the chip with a seat inside a cardboard box (enemies didn’t notice you if you didn’t move) and about trips in the back of a truck: different trucks were sent to different places of the enemy base. In general, the action movie (proudly called "Metal Chassis" in the magazine) was incredibly losing to the same Jackal, where you could play together, and soon forgot, although in his notebook with codes and secrets the boy even sketched with a blue ballpoint pen rough plan level with the location of all items.

But special love did not work out the first time, alas.

Later we found out that it was actually the third metal gear- first out on the computer MSX2 back in 1989, the second - on the same MSX2 in 1990 and only for Japan, and that version for NES/Dendy, which we played, turned out to be a simplified version of the first part.

The same "preview". Great Dragon #37

Metal Gear Solid (1998)

But time passed, and the second coming of Metal Gear to us took place at the end of the 90s, when democracy was brought to Russia with a default, and the magazine "Video-Ass Dendy" changed its name to "Great Dragon". By Metal Gear Solid in this magazine came out, as they would now say "a chic preview." A yard friend, having saved up money on the excavation of artifacts from the Second World War, boasted for a long time of the position of "archaeologist's assistant", and then bought a new prefix for this occasion Playstation. Unlike "Dandy", "Seg" and "Supernintend" games, there were only one or two and counted, but the console came with two demo discs with short pieces of different games. On one of them lay screensavers like a stingray or a dinosaur, which could be rotated in different ways, and enjoy potentially breakthrough 3D animation - the stingray was not very good, but the dinosaur looked exactly like it was alive - as if he had left the filming " Jurassic Park". And on the second demo disc, among other things, there was just the first level Metal Gear Solid. By the way, this was the only licensed disc in the collection of a friend - in a couple of months the first Playstation hacked, and we will plunge into the vicious world of pirated products, the world of profit and cleanliness, the world of bad Russian translation and crooked blanks with polygraphy printed on an inkjet printer.

To the point: the demo version was diverse - here main character The kite came out of the water and took off his fins, so he laid out opponents in disposal facility, here I was riding in an elevator. All this was stylized as a film: credits were shown on the screen, where it was indicated who the director was (some Kyrgyz named Khilyas Kozamov or something like that), who wrote the script, who voiced the main characters and almost who set the light with a camera and who shouted "motor!". We have never seen such a “movie-like” stylization in games before. The guys who were watching movies about Rambo and Kickboxer on their dad's VHS VCR with might and main had their own action films, and Metal Gear Solid became our favorite, no matter what.

Having got out, the main character Solid Snake (we appreciated all the humor of the Solid Serpent translation only in the “Russified version”) received a call on his walkie-talkie, built in an incomprehensible place - the word “nanomachines” was not familiar to us then and we understood the plot very vaguely. Needless to say, half of the negotiations on the codec simply passed us by - Metal Gear was then played purely for the sake of gameplay. And they were allowed to turn around in it - it was only possible to mock the guards in this game, the rest of the console fighters did not allow this.

Let's say the guards reacted to footprints in the snow; one could catch a cold in the cold and sneeze at the wrong moment; a local wolf cub, who accidentally peed on a cardboard box where an unlucky super spy sat curled up in three deaths, made a passable cave with large and vicious wolves, and the number of secrets hidden at the base was beyond any calculation.

Needless to say, as soon as the game appeared on the blessed “Gorbushka” (or the Mitinsky radio market, where from time immemorial people have been stocking up on games, legally and not), the hero of our story immediately bought it, a new, just released game about Solid Snake, although it was not cheap - as many as two discs (for those who do not know, we will explain that then the cost of the game depended on the number of discs, and some Phantasmagoria on the PC it was not very quoted, because it occupied as many as five CDs).

The plot revolved around the spy Solid Snake (what is the name of the "Hard Snake" in fact - we will find out only at the very end), who, after the events of the last part of the game (it is important to mention here that these events are not so important until the very end) moved away from espionage affairs, abandoned the top-secret Foxhound unit and lived quietly in Alaska in the company of husky dogs. However, after several years of vacation, he is urgently summoned by his superiors and informed that the employees of his former unit are now terrorists: they have captured a bunker with nuclear missiles on the island of Shadow Moses and threaten to smash half the world.

This, of course, is just a start, and in the end, things will not unfold as expected. Nuclear missiles will turn out to be not so important, and because of the death of some "terrorists" one can naturally burst into tears of grief. The problematics of the plot will raise such issues as cloning, genetic engineering, “I have a creature or the right” and others, others, from which the immature children's brain naturally exploded in delight.

However, we bought Metal Gear Solid was with a bug - at a certain point, the passage was stopped - it was just not clear what to do. In order not to spoil too much, let's just say that it was necessary to drive a certain frequency into your codec(it was tuned in the manner of a Japanese portable radio), but what kind of frequency it was seemed to be known only to the main developer - the same Uzbek Kholbek Kodzoev (the joke about the "cunning Uzbek" was fixed for a long time). However, Western gamers passed the game, which led to some suspicions.

As it turned out, far from digital distribution, the 90s developers invented a very sophisticated type of DRM - printer. The required numbers were located on the original box with the game, on one of the screenshots. A pirate with a different knurling? Blank? Farewell, I'm sorry. As a result, in the CIS, the cherished figures were recognized as best they could. Many, one might say, the vast majority, were waiting for the release of a gaming magazine with a passage (and waited!), And someone elicited the frequency from friends from Europe or used the wonders of telephone technology, their own resourcefulness and knowledge of English. Well, that is, he used the Internet at an impressive speed of 22 kilobits. Since there were no search engines in their classical form then, such unique ones could be counted on the fingers of one hand of a careless spy.

Typical pirate hack. Feel the difference.

The battle with the Psycho Mantis boss brought no less problems to players around the world. This bastard took control not only of Meryl, but in the most direct sense of your console! A brat in a gas mask read the contents of your saves and constantly teased both your successes and failures (for example, how many soldiers you killed). In addition, he was able to predict your every move and deftly evade attacks. The solution to a seemingly impassable task was once again hiding on our gaming side of reality. It was enough to switch the gamepad to another slot, as Mantis's forces completely dried up and such an annoying boss could be filled up in just minutes. A legendary feature, which, alas, was cut out in the PC port.

Metal Gear Solid was famous not only for gameplay innovations and unexpected moves that went beyond the boundaries of the standard video game world, but also for an outstanding scenario by the standards of 1998. Not one, but two discs provided full multi-voiced voice acting for all characters, many videos and even subtitles (which was not in every game, unfortunately). All this, plus Hideo Kojima's previous experience of working on visual novels, in which there is practically nothing besides the plot, gave the world no less set of action-packed twists than the venerable Final Fantasy VII.

Who is Liquid Snake? WOW! What is Naomi Hunter up to? WOW! Who is the Cyber ​​Ninja? WHAT! The game sparked with such things. And, perhaps, now the presentation of sharp plot moves looks clumsy, believe me, for one thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight, it was something completely outrageous.

The game ended with a branded “this is a turn” and explained why the main villain of the game - Liquid Snake managed to call the main character - Solid Snake - brother, and, provided that you knew English, forced yourself to go through again - in MGS there were two endings, according to the number of characters being saved - either you stayed with the scientist Otacon, or with your fighting friend Meryl. Fortunately, in the sequel, which came out after a long three years, these two endings were quickly forgotten and Metal Gear turned a little wrong.

However, before we jump ahead a few years, it would be unfair to forget about a couple of products that are directly related to MGS. Firstly, it is a curve-oblique, but for some players the very first Metal Gear Solid, namely its port for PC, which was published by Microsoft. This version, as mentioned above, did not have some game tricks, but it came with a full set of add-ons, including VR Missions.

These very VR missions were a collection of levels that were quite simple in geometry, but complex in terms of game design, where the main character Snake had to get from one end of the map to the other or perform simple tasks. No plot, pure gameplay. Something similar can now be observed in Volume (on PC and PS4).

Secondly, let's not forget about the remaster of the first game on the sequel's engine, exclusively for gamecube who bore the poetic name Twin Snakes. Since it was not Kojima himself who directed, but a real film director Ryuuhei Kitamura, this work in the fan environment is the most controversial. Kojima begged Kitamura to use the most stupid camera angles and the most implausible jumps: in one of the cutscenes, Snake jumps on a Stinger missile fired at him from a helicopter, pushes off from it, does a backflip, and all this in half a second before the rocket explodes. From MGS 2 along with the engine, some gameplay features have also moved, for example, the ability to shoot from the first person or improved artificial intelligence of enemies. Some zealous fans didn't like the change in spirit and style of play that the new director brought with him, but to tell you the truth, if you want to feel out the first part, then it's better to do it with Twin Snakes through the emulator.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)

But back to the sequel. If the first part could conditionally be mistaken for such an “action movie from the 90s” with cardboard heroes, and characters stolen from films (Snake is a hero Kurt Russell Snake Pliskin in film " Escape from New York", Revolver Ocelot- typical Lee Van Cliff from westerns, robot metal gear- from any anime with fighting robots, so beloved in the homeland of a game designer Hideo Kojima, and concurrently, also the hero of his old games - Snatcher/Policenauts, and Meryl is actually taken from another Kojima visual novel Policenauts directly), then the second part of Metalgear is already an “action movie from the 2000s”, where everything is not as it really is, the boundaries of the genre are blurred, and the fourth wall between the characters and the player breaks through much more often.

Unfortunately, the heroes of our story could not play MGS2: Sons of Liberty on the then newfangled console Playstation 2- but, only a year later, the game came out on His Majesty's blessed COMPUTER, where clever pirates cut as many as five discs (the game was one of the first to occupy the ENTIRE TWO-LAYER DVD, otherwise it was a gigantic volume at that time, so people got into the habit of sharing this is on the usual "five CDs of 650 MB each"). It turned out frankly badly for the pirates: there were single points that wanted to spend five disks at once on one game, and therefore many residents of the castle got a chance to get acquainted with the series only when Softlab deigned to publish MGS 2 officially. Again, without translation into the Great and Mighty, but with a beautiful book-guide.

The second part was… strange, but also very compelling in terms of plot. In fact, she collected all possible conspiracy theories about what “the authorities are hiding”, “the government does not exist”, “how many fighters were there” and the like, and all the plot holes in it were carefully closed by “nanomachines”. To an unprepared spectator and player, the game seemed like a very chaotic circus-tent. This time a great game designer Hideo Kojima decided to make the main character not loved by the fans Solid Snake but an unknown young boy Raiden, who looked like a typical Japanese J-POP singer with long hair and a "kawaii" appearance that didn't make it clear the character's gender.

Moreover, the game started quite cheerfully with the main character Snake, only this prologue on a tanker that is captured by the Russian military (long story, we drove) took about 40 minutes and then you played as Raiden at a completely different location - the Big Shell oil refining platform. The whole development was carefully concealed, and after the release of the game, the change of one main character to another (plus a small change in the setting) seemed to many to be a mockery.

Therefore, in the fourth part, Raiden was pushed to hell, and then they were completely sent to their own game from even crazier than Kojima, the Japanese from Platinum Games(talking about Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance).

Metal Gear Solid 2 will forever be remembered not only for the stunning graphics and plot at the time of release, for the interpretation of which it took the final set of cutscenes and negotiations, amounting to TENS of minutes. For the authors of this article MGS2- this is a kind of standard of how, the right word, you should not port console games to a personal computer. The game was correctly displayed on single video cards, for everything else there were dances with a tambourine and Internet tips at a speed of 56 kilobits. Management also gave heat. Mouse? Logical layout? Ha ha ha. Very funny. If you want to aim from the first person, do it with the arrows on the keyboard. What, the pain became unbearable? Take the risk of connecting a gamepad, but there is no guarantee that the game will not mix up the analog sticks and you will not fly into the abyss, slipping on pigeon shit from what at some point MGS2 for PC without notice changed the sensitivity of the sticks. But MGS2 was too good as a game to pay attention to such trifles. Yes, MGS2 was SO good.

Compared to the first part, the mechanics were overgrown with even more little things that seemed insane, since the incredible technological leap was primarily aimed at improving the gameplay. You could determine where the enemy was by the shadow on the floor (this worked both ways); getting wet, the hero left traces behind him, which could also potentially give you away. The action part has also grown significantly. It became noticeably more convenient to shoot, and some pieces were directly designed not for crawling in ventilation, but for a hurricane action movie. At the same time, structurally, the game painfully resembled MGS1, to the point that the characters wondered why everything was happening exactly as it had before, which, closer to the final credits, found an extremely ingenious and at the same time very simple explanation.

The shadow on the floor and the reflections could well lead the enemies on your trail.

Like the predecessor game, the sequel brought up a lot of "adult" and philosophical themes that were unusual for games of that time. What is democracy and how illusory is it, the problems of child soldiers, whether our fate is predetermined or we ourselves are its creators. But Kojima would not have been a Buryat (Uzbek, Kyrgyz) if the game had not been replete with sometimes extremely grotesque characters a la Fat Man (a fat roller-skating bomber) and story arcs that would be more suitable for a series like Santa Barbara. The cherry on top of this post-modern cake was a sharp cliffhanger in the spirit of "well, now you will definitely buy a new Metal Gear."

And this was done solely in order to jump back decades, during the Cold War, and hang all the vicissitudes of Solid Snake, Raiden and Otacon in the air right up to 2008. However, as it turned out later, such a peculiar turn of Kojima's thoughts gave us almost the best game about classic spies, which would easily outdo most of the works of the legendary "James Bond".

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004)

The third part Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was supposed to be the final - there were numerous rumors about this. In the "director's chair" they planned John Woo, then almost Steven Spielberg, then the game designer Konami Shuyo Muratu. The main character was supposed to be either Meryl or the matured Raiden. However, Kojima would not be Kojima if not for all long years development successfully trolled the gaming press and us, the players.

The apotheosis happened at E3 in 2004, where everything became clear - the main character, Snake again (and not Raiden), the scene is Tselinoyarsk, USSR (of course, the city is fictional). The time of action is the 1960s, the height of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR. Well, the director and chief game designer - of course, our favorite Turkmen - Khingzhal Kodzharlyev.

The game designer did not disappoint and gave out the best game of the entire series - fans don’t even argue about this. First part MGS was a “thriller from the 90s”, the second was “a postmodern action movie from the 2000s”, but the third returned a little to the roots and parodied with might and main, somewhere even mocked, but somewhere, on the contrary, paid tribute to such a genre as “ bondian". The plot told about the adventures of a young operative John with the call sign Naked snake, who made his way to the territory of the Soviet Union to meet with a Russian scientist Nikolai Sokolov, ready to sell America the secret of creating a battle tank with a nuclear reserve on board called " walker«.

IN MGS3 the plot of the game has moved away from the extremely complex problems of the universe and life order, and the pace of the story itself has changed to match the 60th to an easier one. This does not mean at all that Kojima pushed his unexpected semantic pirouettes away (what is the final monologue of The Boss worth), nevertheless MGS3 was more frivolous in a good way. There was enough banter about the prejudices of the Cold War (Baba Yaga armored shoes, the jungle in the heart of Siberia, Comrade Khrushchev on the line), and friendly jokes in the direction of Bond and its stamps. Globally MGS3 became the beginning of an alternative saga - a story about the formation of the main antagonist of the series - Big Boss. Tried to check about the same George Lucas from Darth Vader in " Star Wars“, only Kojima, as history has shown, turned out to be somehow more even and without Jar Jar Binks.

The gameplay has changed the most compared to its predecessors, taking the first bold steps towards survival and the open world, which are now praised for MGS5. After each shootout, Snake had to heal wounds, cauterize bullet wounds, and clamp knife wounds with a tourniquet. Stocks, of course, were short, and treatment with the help of local flora and fauna, which had to be often hunted, was not a panacea. With rapture, I recall the moment when, on the last millimeters of the health strip, having eaten an unknown fruit, Snake was safely dying from poisoning.

The combat system has also changed CQC (Close Quarters Combat), where blows to enemies were not delivered by simply pressing a button, but were made with complex combinations that allowed them to do anything with enemies: for example, knock a gun out of their hands or throw it over their hips.

Hide and seek in the game has also become more difficult, since such a concept as camouflage has been introduced into the mechanics. In the woods? Dress up in green. At a military base? Change into grey. In the mountains? Pretend to be a stone. A not very well-thought-out interface and the constant need to change “skins” annoyed many journalists and players, so this mechanic hardly became a favorite. The vast Siberian jungle was as free to explore as possible at any time, contained a lot of secrets, and the penetration of certain objects in the game was, by the standards of 2004, as non-linear as possible. Interestingly, even Fast Travel was designed here, when Naked Snake could climb onto the conveyor and, pretending to be the right box, go to the other end of the game world (which has not happened since the first part on MSX2/NES).

Bosses deserve special mention. citizens The end And The Sorrow imprinted in memory as one of the most non-trivial and outstanding intermediate reptiles in the history of video games. Sniper duel with The end could not have taken place at all if you had pulled the trigger in one of the cutscenes earlier in the game (which the game does not talk about at all) or left the console to lie down for a week after saving in front of the boss. Then The end would just die of old age. Discussing The Sorrow It's hard to resist spoilers. We only hint that it is possible to defeat him only by turning on reflexes on Psycho Mantis from MGS1 and thinking about what is in your inventory.

All this, together with incredibly stylish action/cut-scenes, zeitgeist reference music, and outstanding PS2-standard graphics, made us forgive Hideo, who blatantly lied to us with a direct sequel. MGS2.

And he had to wait much longer than everyone expected.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008)

In addition to dozens of profile press and incredibly long cutscenes (during which the console could easily go to sleep - say the longest cutscene in the game lasted almost 27 minutes, and the longest cutscene sequence was 71 minutes, than MGS4 even deserved an entry in Guinness Book of Records), is famous for its almost endless development cycle.

Let's say we made a video like this Konami And Kojima Productions long before the announcement of the fourth Metal Gear. It smartly trolled everyone, even a series of stealth games from Ubisoft — Splinter Cell, who stole a lot of gameplay from the series metal gear:

Quite satisfied with the exclusive status PlayStation developers almost without thinking jumped on the hype train PlayStation 3, and MGS4 was declared a powerful trump card of the platform almost from its very announcement.

Not without reason, it should be noted. Let them suffer with the PS3 architecture very, very decently (even in the release version, the FPS counter often fell behind 30 frames). From a plot point of view, we were waiting for the finale of the adventures of Solid Snake, here nicknamed old snake. Poisoned in previous games by a virus FOXDIE, Snake was aging rapidly and in his 40s looked like a gray-haired old man, which many game journalists who are not familiar with the series did not understand, writing about "an elderly operative Solid Snake."

The whole game of the Bashkirs Hikmet Kodziev closed the plot holes of the previous parts. For example, the immortal "vampire" from the second part was explained by nanomachines that quickly restore the cellular structure of the one to whom such nanomachines were injected into the blood, rapid aging is also the result of nanomachines, as well as diarrhea in the poor Johnny Sasaki(that same "shitting soldier" from MGS1) - he has an intolerance to these nanomachines. Almost every thing was explained by nanomachines or their absence, which gave rise to a kind of “Nanomachines, son!” meme, when any stupidity is explained by secret microtechnologies that look almost no different from magic.

Almost the entire game is fanservice. They will show us all, even not the most necessary characters, they will remember everything that was not closed in the original games and required clarification. At some point, you will even return to the first part - literally and figuratively moving to the island Shadow Moses. Do you have any questions about the series? Everything will have an answer. The only question is whether you like these answers.

The game was memorable and product placement - Konami then collaborated with Apple, so Snake has iPod, on which you can listen to music, and Otacon enjoys macbook. Some characters walked around with the then flagship phone from Sony Ericsson, and in the game they joked that “no need to change disks - we are now on Playstation 3 and here is a Blu-ray drive, and there is 40 gigabytes, and that’s enough for us.” Yes, yes, breaking the "fourth wall" continued here - at the very beginning MGS4 there were commercials for non-existent companies (say, the Ocelot Grip PSC) and interviews with David Hayter (Snake's voice actor) who was interviewed by Eve's voice actress. By the way, these video inserts were filmed by a native of Russia Alexei Tyulevich, who later was noted for the creation of computer graphics for the film adaptation of Pelevin's " Generation P«.

From such nonsense, the player’s brain naturally exploded and for MGS4 the impression of a “very Japanese game not for everyone” was entrenched, although in fact it was, is and will be an excellent stealth action movie.

From the previous part, coloring pages and camouflage returned here, however, unlike MGS3, where the paint had to be chosen for a long time in the menu, here Snake's special suit OctoCamo he himself adjusted to the environment - you just had to freeze for a few seconds on the desired surface, and the suit changed its color like a chameleon (let's say you lie on the carpet and Snake is also the color of the carpet, lie on the tiled floor - and Snake also became the color of the floor) .

OctoCamo in, ahem, action.

But not stealth alone - at will, the game quickly turned from a stealth action movie into an action game. Moreover, it is so balanced and exciting that many players preferred to play MGS4 right through. The ecosystem also served as a help in this: in the game there was a merchant Drebin from whom you could buy weapons and arrange a total Armageddon for everyone you meet and cross. The weapons themselves were simply heaps, from ordinary "Kalash" to outlandish Japanese arquebus. Some barrels even had customization, which made it possible to fit even a simple M4 carbine. In this regard, the fourth part is probably the most action-oriented metal gear.

Around us constantly (except for the spy third act) there was a war of other groups, and we were neither for one nor for the other, but we could arrange a sweet life for both. And sometimes it helped a lot. For example, Snake could either take the side of the rebels and clear the entire location of the reptiles in order to calmly collect secrets. And he could play off both sides and, while they were exchanging shots of various calibers to their heart's content, secretly crawl into the right place. However, true stealth fans still went through the game honestly, unnoticed, using only a pistol with sleeping cartridges, and CQC, which also remained here, but has undergone changes - many players complained about the difficulty of striking in the third part of the game, they were immediately greatly simplified for newbies. The game is full of new features Playstation 3: built-in gyroscopes in the gamepad, analog buttons (the harder you press the button, the stronger the blow) and vibration. MGS4 was the first game to support dualshock 3, which replaced the gamepad SixAxis without motors. The fourth part brought the series to an unattainable technical height - in 2008 it was the most "graphic" and amazing game on the PS3, and even now it looks very good. Thanks to the beautiful animation, powerful direction and incredible attention to detail from some of the battles and cutscenes, the jaw falls off even 7 years later. Well, and the reference work of sound engineers MGS4 not interrupted, probably no one. Most of the dual-layer Blu-ray disc (over 30 GB, which was monstrous in those years) was occupied by honest uncompressed 5.1. Literally everything sounded in the game, from the squeezing skin on Ocelot's gloves, to extra shells ejected from weapons when reloading in the middle of the magazine.

plot Metal Gear Solid 4 gave a light to all the previous ones - the theme of "clones" from the first part was mentioned here quite casually, the theme of "artificial intelligence" from the second was present in so far as, and almost the whole game was about Power and Control against the background of Aging Characters. The obvious jokes about the retirement of an old soldier are the very attitude of Kojima towards this game. MGS4 was supposed to be the final point, a huge fat exclamation mark, Hideo's magnum opus.

But she didn't. Unfortunately and fortunately at the same time.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops / Metal Gear Ac!d

Further fans until the announcement MGS5 waiting for a succession of handheld games, the quality of which ranged from "fine" before "HIDEO WHY?!!11". It falls into the last category Portable Ops for PSP. Hype around the first MGS for a powerful (at that time) portable PSP was justified in almost no way. The basic mechanics that revolved around the team management were annoying, the graphics, even by PSP standards, lacked stars from the sky, and the plot Portable Ops the story of Big Boss moved about in any way. It's no surprise that even ardent fans of the series rarely think about this part without going to Wikipedia.

The series deserves special mention. Metal Gear Ac!d, both parts of which can be described as "Edmiurges about MGS". Ac!d was a very good tactical card game, but the entourage of the great series was required here only in order to Konami was able to sell it to at least someone, and it did not enter the canon (here is the place for a joke about a pachinko machine).

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010)

The only portable game that deserves an extended mention is Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. It is her direct sequel and ideological successor that is MGS5. Peace Walker was a complete game in the series, with little to no handheld or marketing compromises. That partly killed her. classical mechanics MGS3 did not work well on a console with one analog stick, the draw distance was reduced as much as possible, and the enemies could not see Snake at five meters. Closer to the end, the game session time grew to an unacceptable level for a portable game and resembled games on large consoles. Besides MGS: PW strongly hinted at a cooperative passage, which was quite difficult to organize on a portable platform created in 2005. And the HD port as part of the collection for older consoles was too easy to pass. This is quite ironic, given that we are talking about a very important to understand MGS 5 part.

MGS: PW presented a pack of new characters that will definitely look into the top five (Chiko, Paz, and the same Kazuhira Miller in the previous parts, in fact, were mentioned in passing). Here, for the first time, the mechanics of the "Mother Base" appeared, which was significantly expanded in MGS5. To match the top five, the game is divided into operations, most of which are optional. We will not hide, the author of these lines could not overcome the control and master Peace Walker to the end on the PSP, so I watched the game on one popular video hosting. And this is highly recommended for understanding what the hell is going on in the last chapters of the legendary series: Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes And Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.

And a lot is happening. Firstly, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes was not supposed to become a separate game - it was supposed to be the prologue of the next part of Metal Gear, which would have been released on the same PSP and would have been a sequel peacewalker. However, after experiencing problems developing on PS3 and hearing that "nextgen is coming soon", the team Kojima Productions decided to make a game for modern consoles.

Time passed, money was spent, the team developed a completely unimaginable engine (they even hired a special person to properly display the light in it, who monitored the lighting on the set of the movie), but no release date was reported from Kojima. Apparently, Konami's management was tired of this, and they opaquely hinted to Hideo that it would be time to release something already. The engine was given to the football simulator PES (Pro Evolution Soccer), but this was not enough.

Then Kojima took an unprecedented step for the series. He pulled away from MGS5 prologue and, adding a couple of missions, released as a separate game at a reduced price. Since in MGS5 the theme of “duality” is in the background, the step worked with a bang for lovers of the search for hidden meaning - from Fox, two phantoms was born write in the trailer.

Ground Zeroes almost continues the story Peace Walker and tells us about how the guy Chico goes to save the traitorous double agent Groove(assuming you've played the previous game, or at least listened to the secret cassettes that explicitly say so) at a military base in Cuba. Actually, there is essentially nothing in the game - one base, several tasks in different time days and a sea of ​​fanservice for their own. The game turned out to be more of an advertisement for the engine fox engine, yes, a sop thrown to the fans so that people do not get tired of waiting for a new part.

However, Kojima would not be Kojima if he didn’t want to troll people here too - and on Video Games Award 2012 a guy named Joakim Mogren (where Joakim is an anagram of Kojima) came on stage with a bandaged head to present the game The Phantom Pain from some Moby Dick Studios. And although fans almost immediately guessed that this was the new Metal Gear (the character from the back looks very much like Snake), jokes about a bandaged head and even a whole conspiracy theory that a certain Dr. Sergio Canavera (who declared that he was ready to transplant people's heads now) - this is actually an actor hired by Kojima to publicize the new part of Metal Gear, appear on the Internet so far.

But everything turns out to be easier, new Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain came out, and so far there is only one conspiracy theory - what happened in Konami, since they decided to fire their beloved Uighur and disband his studio. Will we know the answer? Who knows who knows.

Instead of ending:

We live in Yandex.Zen, try it. There is a channel in Telegram. Subscribe, we will be pleased, and it will be convenient for you 👍 Meow!