Nerd Rage: MGS Goes To 360. Who Wins?
By Roger Gaw
I’m going to give the answer right off the bat. Not the consumer. No my friends the All-Mighty Dollar wins again. It’s no secret that I can be considered a Sony fanboy at times but hear me out on this one. Because I will show you why that making MGS multi-platform is going to hurt the franchise. And Hideo Kojima broke my heart today because I thought he was above selling out.
First let’s look back in what in my opinion is the greatest and most epic story ever told in a video game. Metal Gear Solid 4. To this day I have yet to see a game with a better graphical presentation. A colleague of mine said that Killzone 2 had better graphics and I told him nay because I own both games and he doesn’t even own a Playstation 3 therefore having played neither one. Also let’s look at the length and content of the game. MGS4 took up an entire blu-ray disc. Not a single layer blu ray. Oh no, a 50 GB dual layer blu ray disc. If you were to port that to the Xbox 360, it would require 6 dual layered DVD discs. Changing out 6 discs is kind of a hassle to me. But again that’s just me. Not to mention the fact lets face it the Xbox 360 does not at this time have the raw power to pump out the graphics that MGS4 requires. So a game that is one year old has yet to be surpassed in graphical representation and content. It looks to me like Metal Gear Solid 4 set the bar pretty high for its successor.
Okay so let’s look at an argument posed to me by another friend. I can’t quote him exactly but his words were to the effect of when a game is multi-platform it tends to look better on the Xbox 360. Okay let’s just say he’s right. There must be a reason for that. I mean with the Playstation 3 being so much more powerful than the Xbox 360 how can this be? The answer is because when you develop a game for multi-platforms you have to make sure it works on the lesser of the two platforms and then port it to the more powerful one. It’s as simple as that. You can’t make a game that almost breaks the PS3 and then port it to Xbox 360 it wouldn’t work. Killzone 2 pushed my PS3 hard in terms of processing. The Cell Engine had a hard time keeping up with it. Now if the Cell had problems what do you think the Xbox processor would have done? PS3 exclusives look better than any multi-platform or Xbox 360 exclusives. You can’t argue with me on that. If a developer designs a game for the PS3 alone he has more power at his/her finger tips than they can handle.
On to the much anticipated Metal Gear: Rising. We’ve already pointed out that this game has a monumental legacy to follow(MGS4). How can they surpass their predecessor while having to, pardon the crude language please, but dumb down the game to something the 360 can handle and then port it to the PS3. And we all know how well ports work. The 360 version will probably look better because that’s what they have to design it for first. And what about length and content? Am I really going to have a 6 disc Xbox game? I doubt it. They will probably compress it to fit on 2 discs at the most. That’s still a third of what MGS4 had. At least they had the common f**king decency not to put a 5 behind Metal Gear Solid. Because in my opinion the Metal Gear Solid story ended. Big Boss and Solid Snake are dead. That’s what Metal Gear Solid is. To hell with this Raiden crap he was a pussy in Metal Gear Solid 2. And cyborg ninja or not I would take Big Boss or Solid Snake any day in a fight with him. So no Metal Gear: Rising is going to pale in comparison to its predecessor.
No my friends you have seen the last great Metal Gear game and it was Metal Gear Solid 4. And it was all for the money. Hideo Kojima is rich beyond our wildest dreams but it wasn’t enough. A friend of mine said that if given the choice between making a beautiful game aka best product possible or making a lot of money he said that he would take the money. And that’s exactly what Hideo Kojima did. He didn’t need the money. But he did it because the industry I love so much is now driven by greed and the bottom dollar and it makes me sick. I was so sickened when I thought about the concessions that the next Metal Gear will have to make to work on the Xbox I was tempted to drive to Game Crazy and sell the motherf***er.
I am now jaded beyond your imagination because the one man whom I thought would never sell out sold out. Money is now the prime focus of the video game industry. No longer is it let’s put the best product possible in the hands of our consumers. It’s how much money can we make? So there you have it. The All-Mighty Dollar wins because you will not get the best game that Hideo Kojima can produce. And that is sad because after devoting my existence to this franchise because of its continuance to deliver I am left betrayed for money. I’m just shocked that I’m the only who sees this Sony fanboy or not.
These are my views and they do not represent Nerdiest Kids. This is 100% an opinion column.
