Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater

Metal Gear and its successors, Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Rising. These are Konami’s espionage infiltration based games, created by the world famous Hideo Kojima. Debuted on the Japanese computer MSX2, and later entered the West through the NES, Metal Gear was an unusual hit from the 80’s, promising a new way of playing through a game, which was spying around as a secret agent.

Today, I won’t cover the rest of the timeline, instead, I’d like to review the recently re-released port of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, now also for the 3DS. As it is the first story to tell chronologically, new players to the series shouldn’t be afraid of spoilers from other games, because many things are set in place here for future games to talk more about.

You play as Naked Snake, a member of the FOX unit who is tasked with the top secret mission to rescue Sokolov, a military scientist who has created a new type of a nuclear carrier, a large tank called the Shagohod that is set to inspire future designers of the Metal Gears. He has been forced by the Russians to finish his work on this dangerous project, and is heavily guarded by the KGB.

This is the basic story as you begin the game. However, there is much more than meets the eye for every object I just talked about, and thus, I barely gave a briefing of the whole thing. In any case, you can expect dramatized action, suspicious conspiracies, serious emotional conversations and crazy characters.

And the characters stole the show. As you slowly get to feel that Snake Eater plays like a James Bond movie, suddenly Snake must deal with the infamous Cobra unit, a group of 6 legendary superhuman soldiers from World War II. A lot of things has been said about them already. You can expect a long deal of diversity between them, and as their code names suggest, a lot of emotional conflict as well. They are quite possibly Kojima’s most creatively designed bosses in the franchise.

Next to the stars of the game, there is of course tactical espionage action during the mission. And the gameplay was fun, especially the new features implemented such as using camouflage to hide, food to eat and treating wounds to survive. They all added up to the established formula of earlier games, giving you more options to play around with, vital options.

Granted, the way of shooting and the A.I. of the enemies feel outdated, but the emphasis isn’t entirely on taking out the enemies, rather it’s about avoiding and disabling them foremost! It’s also too bad that the game can take hits because of lag appearing. It’s not a problem of the 3DS, but of the game itself, that’s for sure.

Still, don’t get scared of these issues, because they are minor compared to the way of storytelling this game offers, alongside its hectic music, extra content and of course the new controls provided by the 3DS. With the Circle Pad Pro, it’s comfortable to play. 

Meanwhile, the 3D effect gives a feeling of being even more blended in with mother nature than earlier versions of the game, resulting into a richer experience. Speaking of which, the setting is adorable, with its Russian landscapes of forests, jungles, mountains and snow. The backstory relies heavily on the Cold War during the 60’s, but the best thing to endeavor is to be touched by its compelling story as it uses this backstory.

Which I won’t touch furthermore for this game, as it is fun to experience it for yourself, rather than reading about it or someone else explaining it to you. Now that I have beaten the game on Normal Mode, I am sure that I will pick a higher difficulty someday. However, that won’t be the Alert Mode then, because that seems almost impossible for me to beat. If you are seen only once while doing this mode, it is an instant game over for you! No thanks for that amount of stress. But as the ultimate challenge? It’s something worth trying for those looking for it.

Metal Gear Solid 3D is a very solid investment for new time players such as me, but if you happen to be able to obtain the HD collection, then that has most likely the definitive version, although there are some differences between the two.

Rating: 8.4

Mass Effect 3

BioWare's futuristic space trilogy called Mass Effect has been a massive hit around gamers, critics and sci-fi enthusiasts, and recently I have beaten the final part of the trilogy. It takes the cake for bringing closure to a deep space lore full of complex events happening, however, not everyone will like the way the game will most likely end for most of us.

The original game had some serious issues such as crappy vehicle controls, long loading times and empty dull planets, but rewarded players with it's storytelling and a combination of FPS and RPG gameplay. The sequel improved upon pretty much everything, took care of my critique and continued to envelop a strong story, still allowing you, the player, to choose the decision for many important events.

Mass Effect 3's conclusion as it stands is determined by the choices you have made in part 1 and 2, granting for a bigger impact during this, unless you decide to start with a new Commander Shepard and choose the most important decisions which have happened during past events before the game even begins.

The game feels largely the same as 2, offering little new input other than an available multiplayer mode. Naturally, I'm used to ignoring newly implemented multiplayer modes when single player modes take so much time to finish already, so you will have to look elsewhere for how good that aspect is. 

The dialogue, voice acting, lore and story are still superior towards many modern games, and moral decisions and watching the consequences unfold remained interesting. It may annoy some that everyone is able to speak English and that so many beings look much alike, but it's hard to get angry over anything else covering the interaction with the players. 

Personally, my concern this time is that many of the main missions felt the same, and that there was a scarcity of party members accompanying me towards defeating the villains. Perhaps that is the huge consequence I made during the end of part 2, where I lost all of my party members except for 2 and the protagonist. Perhaps BioWare intended players to recruit most of the members in previous games already, as this presumably wasn’t the focus in here.

The loading times are noteworthy minor, the shootouts are the most chaotic in here and there was plenty of content and things to do, and I am sure that I missed out on a good amount of stuff. Navigation has become more conventional, showing clear signs where to go next, plus being able to locate key people. 

Next to the familiar Paragon and Renegade options, as well as being able to take a neutral line, your Reputation will rise, for better or worse, depending on the definite choices you make. Become tolerant or intolerant, good or evil, virtue or vice, it's your call.

The galactic races are all still present(excluding extinct ones), such as turians, krogans and asari's. My favorite 2 races happen to be salarians and geths though, the former for their tendency of speaking fastpaced and scientific, and the latter for being engrossing synthetics with their own tragic background of abuse and the possible change they can bring towards organisms.

Potential romantic interests can still be developed here, and this time I successfully created one here. I tend to think that it was difficult to achieve this previously, but maybe I was being naïve and too conflicted with myself, maybe I was getting too emotionally involved, hah!

Also, each part of the trilogy doesn't necessarily have to be played in order so that players can understand them better, since major events will shape in the way you want them to be by the use of determined choices at the beginning. However, if you have played and beaten the trilogy in order, you are rewarded with being able to migrate your save file towards the next part and thus, see the major consequences of major events which have already happened. Such as, did you either destroy or "collect" the technology of the Collectors at the end of Mass Effect 2?

It's an interesting distinctive feature unknown to many video games that brings many different experiences from the games separated for tons of gamers. But the Mass Effect games are much more than that. Most of all, they offer a rich experience of interaction, gameplay, cinematic and galactic exploration that is sure to keep anyone intended to invest time and money in them intrigued long enough in order to be satisfied.

Rating: 8.5

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On a rather large sidenote, should you be interested into finding out why there is so much controversy about Mass Effect 3's endings, consider reading this remarkable written article with it's 5 in depth reasons as to why expectations towards a grand finale where shattered for many: 

Five Reasons

Do note that I was content with the ending I acquired either way, and thus, I disagree with the article. The choices you made through each game had a lot of impact already during the games and if BioWare decided as of now that this should not be reserved for the several endings available then I won't complain. 

Here's a hint, most if not all of Mass Effect 3's endings are linear and are not a happy ending, nor the most plot filled(the opposite of plot holes) or affected by the major choices of the players, but once again, I didn't get bothered by them.

Actually, the controversy surrounding them feels like an entertainment show to me, where I would easily be glad to grab up a bowl of popcorn and enjoy the debates.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

From the Swedish director Tomas Alfredson(who directed Let the Right One In(2008), an awful horror movie) comes this British espionage Cold War based story. With an impressive cast to follow up, including John Hurt, Gary Oldman and Tom Hardy amongst others and first impressions of the plot and the movie poster being at the right spots for me, I would think that this would be a quality of a film to remember.

Unfortunately, continuity errors, chronological confusions and identity crisis’s disallow any redemption at retaining my interest back into this world of spies and moles. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s way of directing is at times, even more mysterious and ultimately obnoxious than trying to figure out who the mole is at the top of the Circus, also known as MI6, as I later found out outside of the movie. Not that it would be essential to make this clear to the audience, but it would had helped a bit for this particular case, what with all of the confusion.

It was confounding to keep up with each of the character's identities and their code names, the pace felt slow wrongfully and the direction of the events was unappealingly bland. Whenever the characters would discuss their current problems and the fact that a mole is active, I didn't even care enough by the way it was presented plus how the movie's pace went.

It's too bad, because this looked promising to say the least. I went back and watched it a second time, and yet again, I was unable to keep my interest even after uncovering how the story works with it's bad way of directing the time events and the continuity errors accompanying them.

Perhaps the original television series or even the novel are better products than this, but I am not in the mood for any of that at the moment. TTSS's premise felt promising, the cast is impressive and the setting plus the story should sound good on paper, but the execution, performances and flow of it all was pretty much missing for me, resulting into a quite dissapointing movie.

Rating: 5.5

SOPA. PIPA. ACTA.

The Stop Online Piracy Act, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement are recent lawful attempts to strike back hard against piracy mainly. I'd like to think that the 3 represent the virtual versions of the Axis powers, because there is much more involved than meets the eye here, namely the freedom of the internet.

While copyrights and trademarks remain the de facto argument against stopping piracy online, some of these profits obtained from these sources seem to have shifted from consuming the actual products at retail stores towards more recent ways of acquiring them, such as concerts, theaters and exhibitions over the recent years.

I have opposed as well as supported these illegal ways of getting these kinds of products in the past, and even now, especially during these changing times, I wonder what would be the right thing. Of course, getting the latest songs, movies, games, software and more through different ways other than purchasing is wonderful for yourself and your relatives, but at the same time, I definitely understand some of those companies' complaints. Money talks.

That's why there are proponents and opponents coming up with their issues and arguments. And although it's an expensive life to live out in the rich countries for the middle and lower classes, it's really tempting to lower the budgets as much as possible and scout the internet for free content.

Although I do not know the exact differences between these three proposing laws, they do have a mutual act of punishing suspected illegal websites, protect copyright holders and next to that, the U.S. property. They have the potential power to shut down whole sites, even as gigantic as YouTube or Facebook, simply because of users generating content, and then intentional or not linking towards infringements. I know it sounds crazy, but based of what I have seen and heard about, this seems to be the case.

To me, that drastic, extreme way of combating piracy and theft is a scary thought. Thankfully, at least the White House had something relieving to say: "Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the internet."

But right now, none of them have been effective so far. And discussions will continue on this huge topic. Let's hope that the proposers will adjust to these concerns of opposing people and that the collateral damage won't be severe.

Travel Locations

Not much talking this time around, pretty much only pictures will fill in this post instead. These are some of the places I would like to visit someday:

 

La Paz, Bolivia

Easter Island, Chile

 Tierra del Fuego, AKA Fireland

 Machu Picchu, Peru

 Heaven Lake, China/North Korea

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 Potala Palace, Tibet

Kyoto, Japan

For me, they are all beautiful spots on Earth, and I hope to have visited and thoroughly seen them in my lifetime.

Resident Evil Revelations

The horror has truthfully returned.

My single wish has been granted by the gaming gods of Capcom(okay, that's overdoing it) while the gameplay of the recent main entries is intact and ported to mobile use. Resident Evil Revelations is the first major third party game to own for real on the Nintendo 3DS. Not a port, not a remake, NOT a quick cash-in.

It presents itself as a videogame first of all, but during the end of chapters, a reminder scene, akin to television series is shown to the player, explaining what happened before this new chapter as a synopsis. This is mainly used because it is convenient to play the game once in a while for small segments of gameplay, and effectively reminds us of it's portable status.

There are many new ideas being designed for this latest entry in the main series. For instance, a new subweapon called the B.O.W. Decoy is introduced to be akin to Left 4 Dead's similar weapon being put to use. You throw it, and the enemies will swarm around it like the mindless infected they are.

A new tool being used here is the Genesis, a radiant scanner that can locate hidden items, analyze monsters and a few other things. Metroid Prime's Scan Mode instantly came to mind. Weapon Boxes are also kind of new, as they allow weapons to be upgraded and their contents travel with each box found. Two old features basically got merged together.

Underwater gameplay is for the first time used, which is fitting considering the marine theme that Revelations is playing nicely. It's easy to manoeuvre around in those sections thankfully. Speaking of the controls, so far, I have used the Circle Pad Pro with great joy. It's almost like holding an Xbox 360 controller for me, except the 3DS is otherwise quite different.

The story features main characters Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine being accompanied by 4 new playable ones, but the most memorable of them happens to be Parker Luciani. It does not involve the Umbrella Corporation, and successfully creates a well done enigmatic interquel storyline featuring the early establishment of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, the international Federal Bioterrorism Commission, and the bioterrorist organization known as Il Veltro.

Veltro happens to have issued a raid onto the solar powered artificial aquapolis city called Terragrigia during the background, and the FBC is able to overcome the attack using a devastating satellite, killing off the B.O.W.'s, Veltro's unit and the city is destroyed. One year later however, Veltro seems to have survived and their leader, Jack Norman, demonstrates how their deadly new virus called T-Abyss, rapidly mutates fish in an aquarium, making them blood lusted, aggressive and empowered.

Ooze, the new regular enemies, are former humans who got affected by T-Abyss, and their body seems to have hardened up with a white pale skin, while their limbs and face are completely mutated in a grotesque manner. Simultaneously, any parasites being present in hosts mutate at the same time, allowing for accelerated metamorphoses to happen. Incidentally, T-Abyss seems to be the fastest and most aggressive marine based virus introduced into the virology of the series yet.

Interestingly, Revelations uses Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy(which I happen to have read) almost as a lexicon and it's a running theme for the mysterious events which are happening. Several enemies have been named after characters appearing in that old book, and the parts before a new segment of the story, which show us sentences from it, reflect a bit back on the current situation of the story of Revelations. Perhaps another read would reform my opinion about it, and perhaps my imagination must be boosted up in order to comprehend it better.

And you are wondering, does this deliver on the scare factor? And for that, I must say, yes indeed! Not only has Capcom used an excellent location of an abandoned, dark cruise ship as the general area, they have also returned Resident Evil to its roots of horror, with suspense moments, jump scares, hideous new enemies, creepy logs and some genuine effective scares, including an abonimation of a lumbering monster repeatedly reporting in "MaaayyyyyyyDAAAAAY" and a creepy, giggling freak.

Just when I thought the game was over, it continued to go on, which was exhilarating to experience. The length is roughly around the same as Code Veronica, and the main locations are the Mediterranian Sea and Finland. There is intensive music as well as immersive ambient music playing, and the voice acting is the same of what you can expect.

Raid Mode is the online co-operative unlockable that lets you play on many stages, using different characters and weapons. Basically, from what I have played so far, these are extra challenge stages for testing the player's skills. I cannot conclude on this yet, but it seems to be a cool bonus, and might rival the popular Mercenaries Mode.

Aside from some sloppy bad translation errors and a few slow downs(during some elevator rides, the shipwheel doors and whenever there are too many enemies or explosions) as well as the lip synchronization being sometimes just off, the franchise has successfully been put to great use on a portable, and while earlier attempts have been made(Gaiden and Deadly Silence), they do not compare, at all, to the execution this offers.

Resident Evil Revelations is one of the best in the huge franchise, third in place only below the classic RE Remake and the revolutionary Resident Evil 4. It allows for more interesting story events to emerge, handles very responsively with the controls the Circle Pad Pro provides, is scary, fun and a much more faithful survival horror than others of recent memory claim to be.

Rating: 8.8

On the Origin of Species

An astounding written piece of a large natural fact involving how the origin of species were formed. It does not explain the origins of life, but thoroughly shows the reader countless of evidence and testings around the word, conducted by other researchers such as botanists, geologicals and breeders.

Natural Selection, the natural law around evolving species and their variants, are profoundly and in depth explained by the great Charles Darwin, the first of the naturalists to back up the evolution theory with years of experience, experiments and evidence.

He carefully goes briefly on his foundings, while providing counter arguments against potential objections, even depicting that a massive controversity would follow after the release of his work. The diversity of life is detailed on vast amounts of aspects, going through various reasons as to why this intricate natural law is happening.

Next to that, other concepts such as the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest are told about in here, that all manifest into the evolution theory as we know it today. The environment plays a very important role wherever species are situated and however their behaviour changes over time. It takes a very long time as well for change to come towards these species, but it happens, gradually.

Domestication, heredity, geology and offsprings are other factors playing a part in the process of evolution. It varies on how this is all working, but it seems to be interconnected, as it is beautifully explained by "The Tree of Life" biology concept metaphorically, or as it is called in modern times, the Phylogenetic tree.

On top of this all, Darwin writes in such ways that it would be easy for me to know him as an intellectual scientist, knowing exactly what he is talking about. However, he does take his time in his book, explaining his foundations. Even though he stated to go over the subjects as brief as possible.

The information written inside seems to have become outdated, and I cannot point at the exact parts for this claim, but nevertheless, On the Origin of Species remained intriguing for me to read. Only a genius like him could come up with one of the most important books ever written.

Rating: ***(out of 4)