Friday, February 1, 2019

Metal Gear Solid and the Twilight of the PlayStation 3



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.

Old syle, "fat" PS3, 80 gigs
 But also like Old Snake, the writing’s on the wall for Sony’s first Blu-Ray console. As times goes on, game servers are being shut down, blocking the multiplayer functionality of some PS3 games and making others entirely unplayable. The loss of PlayStation Home, Tekken Revolution, and the Resistance trilogy come to mind, and Warhawk, an online only game from 2007, finally called it quits on January 31, 2019. (That’s yesterday, if you’re reading this the day I post it.) More heartbreaks are inevitably on the way.

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