Entertainment Geekly: In praise of the end of an era.
We used to talk about theCitizen Kaneof videogames.
Or, some of us did.
This is a good thing, for a lot of reasons.
Everyone is a gamer now: A smartphone is just a Game Boy with more social utility.
(How much did you pay forStar Wars Battlefront?
How much will you pay for the DLC?
How much will you pay to fill the hole in your heart that can never be filled?)
Maybe well see theCitizen Kaneof videogames someday.
Maybe it already happened, and we didnt notice.
Maybe it wasShadow of the Colossus.
Maybe it wasSuper Mario 64.
Maybe it was Horde Mode inGears of War 2.
One things for sure: In 2015, we finally saw theApocalypse Nowof videogames.
Director Hideo Kojima spent three decades makingMetal Geargames.
Does this make me an expert inMetal Gear Solid?
Or even a knowledgeable amateur?
I never played Kojimas earlier, 2DMetal Gears, couldnt get through an hour ofMetal Gear Solid 4.
I barely knewPeace Walkerwas a game, andit sounds awesome.
The Phantom Painis generally described as an open-world game.
It sets you down in two large landscapes rock-desert Afghanistan and swamp-jungle Africa and lets you run rampant.
With a few noteworthy exceptions, the war zones remove any notion of innocent bystanders.
Its a tactical toybox, with infinite variations.
I just described a lot of games, but theres something special aboutPhantom Pain.
Kojima is a rarity in videogames: A prankster auteur.
The technical perfection of his games should feel bland somehow, but he lives for madcap flourishes.
you might pick up Joy Divisions Love Will Tear Us Apart.
For a long time, I had that set as my official helicopter music.
That might be my favorite thing that has ever happened to me, in a videogame.
Phantom Painstarts with you as Snake, waking up from a nine-year coma.
I did my best not to kill too many people playingPhantom Pain.
This go-round, I loved the opportunity for slowness.
Its a gameplay method that encourages OCD.
Phantom Painhas a story.
That story is absolute bongo drums.
And maybe not that important.
I could quoteMetal Gear Solidto you: Snake, do you think love can bloom even in the battlefield?
Snake, what happened?
I dont think Ill ever be able to do that withPhantom Pain.
I onlybarelyunderstand what its all about.
Also, war is hell; also, war is fun.
Coincidentally the whole point ofPhantom Painis building your own hippie-military utopian fortress into a floating stateless wonderland.
Its hard to tell, and any reading of themes inPhantom Painultimately run up against two facts.
First: The soul ofMetal Gear Solidis fundamentally soap operatic.
Second:Phantom Painis maybe less coherent than the earlier games, but its much more fun.
And morefinished, somehow.
It should have been weird, bringingMetal Gear Solidto the open-world.
But the sprawl ofPhantom Painfeels purposeful.
(There is, we learn, aHalostory bible which runs 1000 pages.)
Kojima said thatMetal Gear Solid 3was his lastMetal Geargame, and said the same aboutMetal Gear Solid 4.
And yet,Metal Gear Solidalways felt personal to Kojima.
He brought inPhantom Painyears late, miles over budget.
Last week,Konami wouldnt let Kojima attend the Game Awards.
AfterApocalypse NowandHeavens Gate, movie studios got suspicious of auteurs, and they learned to love blockbuster franchises.
We live in that movie world now; most of us are too young to remember a different time.
A fairy tale thats also a mathematical proof.
Phantom Paintries to graft a kind of online multiplayer onto the game.
Thats the one part of the game that doesnt really work for me.
The first thing I ever wrote forEntertainment Weeklywas about videogames.
It wasa blog post about a commercial forBatman: Arkham Asylum.
In late 2009, I got an Xbox 360 and playedAssassins Creed II another religious experience.
Its frustrating, writing about videogames.
There are a lot of different things I could say aboutAssassins Creed II.
The games graphics are BLANK, the games story is BLANK, the combat mechanics are BLANK.
To feel, most of all, like I wanted to spend all of my time in that world.
I didnt sleep much in 2010.
Ive been fortunate to cover the videogame industry for the last half-decade.
Its been an interesting time.
A generation ended, a new one began.
WasGrand Theft Auto Vthe most expensive game ever?
Or was itBioShock Infinite?The New York TimesclaimedKen Levine spent over $200 million on that game.
That number is disputed, but all numbers in the videogame industry get disputed.
Just a couple years after its release, I already cant believeInfiniteever got made.
Its a sequel to a popular game that has nothing to do with that popular game.
Will anyone ever get to do that again?
Kojima has parted ways with Konami; Levine is working on something smaller.
Gameskeep on getting bigger, but the actual ambition behind those big games has never felt smaller.
Fan rage you experience that a lot now.
Bissells an interesting figure.
Cocaine isdefinitelybad, he decides.
Videogames are… frustrating.
He writes:
Once I wanted games to show me things I could not see in any other medium.
Then I wanted games to tell me a story in a way no other medium can.
Then I wanted games to redeem something absent in myself.
Then I wanted a game experience that pointed not toward but at something.
Bissells work had a big effect on me.
This was for a few different reasons.
Professional and creatively, his interests had shifted.
Bissell crossed over from writing about videogames towritingvideogames aGears of Warprequel here, asomewhat-enjoyed horrorcurio there.
(Far Cry 4is way less offensive, and much bigger, but also emptier.
Offending people is bad, but struggling to make something completely inoffensive isnt exactly good.)
This is interesting, and the conversation that follows is interesting.
(Reminder: Bissell subtitled his book Why Video Games Matter.)
Speaking of heads up asses: I wrote 11,000 words aboutThe Legend of Zeldaonce.
I also wrote, maybe a little too much, about the idea ofvideogames as art.
Is that me, trying to somehow justify the medium of videogames?
Conversely,I replayJourneyonce a year, and every time I feel like I see the face of God.
Im taking a step back from videogame coverage now.
Mainly because my colleaguesAaron MoralesandJonathon Dornbrushare much better at it than I ever was.
Partially because videogames have been demoted in my own life from insane passion to occasionally fervent hobby.
The world of videogames has gotten bigger, crazier, less easy to readily understand.
Lots of people are afraid of that change.
(Lots of people are dumb.)
But its a good change.
