About a year ago, Sony told us that they’d be discontinuing PlayStation 3 and Vita support for their online service PlayStation Plus, which up until now had featured free games each month for their three most current gaming platforms. And the time has finally come. After March 8, the PlayStation 4 will stand alone – at least when it comes to PS Plus.
There hasn’t been a ton of notable Vita content for Plus members in the last year, and predictably, the handheld is ending its Plus tenure with another pair of unremarkable games. However, anyone who’s still rocking their PS3 this month can enjoy one of the console’s greatest exclusives: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
When it came out in 2008, MGS4 showed off the power of
the PlayStation 3 beautifully, giving players an experience that simply wasn’t
possible on the last generation’s hardware. It’s fitting that the final Plus offering
for the PS3 is a title that, for many, was the first truly must-have exclusive
for the system. And more than ten years later, it’s STILL only on the PS3,
baby.
MGS4 introduces players to Old Snake, an aging and ailing
version of the hero from Metal Gear Solid 1. Thanks to his exposure to the
FOXDIE virus (and probably nanomachines somehow), Snake’s body has
deteriorated, leaving him struggling to keep up with younger, more agile
soldiers on the battlefield. On the surface, he’s become a relic. But as the
game shows us, Snake is still capable of downright amazing things. As Dr.
Thomas Oliver might say, “[he] might be old, but [he] can still pull it off.”
PlayStation 3 hit the shelves in November of 2006 and has
survived far longer than anyone might have imagined, overcoming an awkward
launch to outlive its popular rival, the once-mighty Xbox 360. Much like Old
Snake, PS3 just keeps chugging along, despite more powerful gaming machines
having taken over five years ago. Sony stopped churning out PlayStation 3 units
in May 2017 in Japan, the last holdout of PS3 production worldwide. And yet, after
a staggering dozen-plus years on the market, there’s still a trickle of new
content for the system, and many game servers are still running. Wanna play a
few online rounds of Ultra Street Fighter IV, the final version of Capcom’s fighting
masterpiece? Go ahead, it’s still up. What’s more surprising is that original
Street Fighter IV is still kicking too, now ten years after the first of its
Hadokens, Sonic Booms, and Tiger Uppercuts graced our screens.
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| Old syle, "fat" PS3, 80 gigs |
The end of PlayStation Plus support is a big nail in the
PS3’s coffin, but what denotes a console’s death? I can still play lots of the
system’s best games online. I can still walk into a Gamestop and purchase used
PS3 games. The PlayStation Store is still happy to sell me a wealth of PS3
content, and New Rocksmith songs were still being released as of January 29,
2019. (That’s only three days before the publication of this article.)
So how DO we determine when the system is fully in the
past? I don’t really know yet.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was billed as
the final Metal Gear Solid game, the epic conclusion to a series that, in 2008,
had already spanned more than 20 years. It gave us Old Snake, showed us what a
hero was like when his best days were far behind him, and hinted heavily that
the Legendary Hero of Shadow Moses wouldn’t survive to see the credits. But you
know something? At the bitter end of MGS4, Old Snake is still alive, despite
being shot, sickened, and microwaved. With all that behind him, he’s ready to live
whatever life he’s got left, and no longer cares about the whens and hows of
his inevitable passing.
That’s what it’s like right now to be a PS3 owner who
still values his console. We all know the end is coming, sooner than later, but
the PlayStation 3 has surpassed literally every expectation I’ve had for its
lifespan. Now it’s time to re-download the greatest games of the console’s past
and get ready for the PS3’s retirement – starting with Metal Gear Solid 4.
They said MGS4 would be the last, but of course there WAS
another Metal Gear Solid game about eight years later in late 2015. Having
pumped more than 200 hours into Metal Gear Solid V a few years back, I recently
found myself wanting an excuse to play it again. On a whim, I got a new copy
for PS3 on Amazon for about 10 bucks. I guess I could have played my PS4 copy, but
I wanted to experience it all again from the very beginning.
And now on the eve of PlayStation Plus PS3 support fading
away forever, I’m suddenly sitting on one of the system’s first killer apps,
and what might be the console’s last triple A game worth playing. The first and
the last. The Alpha and the Omega. The Liquid and the Solid. How apropos.
I won’t pretend that the PlayStation 3 is my main gaming
system anymore, or that I even turn it on more than a few hours a week. But
it’s always been there for me, always ready for one more Street Fighter match, or
more more trip to the African jungles of Far Cry, or one more look at the rise
and demise of history’s greatest assassin, Ezio Auditore. Up until now, I’ve
been kinda bummed about PS Plus support ending and what that means for the
future of the PS3. But I think it’s time to stop thinking about the end, and
start considering the future. Like Old Snake, there’s not a whole lot of fight
left in the PS3, but there’s still a whole lot of heart.
“I’ll remember
everything you were. And stick with you to the end.”
- Otacon,
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
