Metal Gear Solid 4: The Breast Game Ever

Wow, I thought I’d try a tortured pun and I realized that I probably should never do that again. Anyway, as I mentioned in the first part of my MGS4 review, there was more I wanted to talk about. Unfortunately, I was so self-indulgent when it came to the discussion of cutscenes it just wasn’t going to happen.

So, what more could I possibly have to write about? Well, the only other obvious issue in the game that hasn’t been done to death by other writers in their reviews – the representation of women. In a previous episode of the Player One Podcast, I believe it was Greg Sewart who made the flip comment that Kojima is a pervert. I don’t think he’s that far off base though, based on what I’ve seen in the game.

Now, I don’t want this to come off as some kind of condemnation... but because the game is so heavily invested in cutscenes, it’s almost unavoidable to draw on elements of film analysis to analyse the game’s representation of women. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that Naomi Hunter is needlessly fetishized and sexualized in the game. Let’s forget the fact that she doesn’t wear a bra or button up her shirt, because that’s just too easy. Just pay attention to the way she’s shot in the game. The slow lingering shots of her legs and her chest bordered on creepy voyeurism and are a textbook example of the concept of the “male gaze” if there ever was one. That’s not to say that the male gaze doesn’t exist in other games. Indeed, because games are interactive and many games feature both control of the character and the camera, many times the player is entirely complicit in objectifying the female body: posing Lara Croft being the most famous example.

The difference is that since these are cutscenes, this is what Kojima wants you to see. For whatever reason, he wants Naomi to be sexualized. I honestly don’t know if there’s a deeper reason behind this or if he just wants to fetishize this imaginary woman. An easy explanation is that by eroticizing Naomi’s anatomy, the player will understand Otacon’s attraction for her. What’s interesting is that there’s an easter egg in the game where the player is given the chance to stare at Naomi’s legs. When Snake drops his cigarette during the cutscene when he first meets her in her lab, the player can press L1 to enter first person mode to look at Naomi from Snake’s perspective. Is Kojima saying that Snake is attracted to her as well? Or should this be categorized with the rest of the “male gaze” shots in the game?

And, honestly, it’s not just Naomi. The Beauty and the Beast Corp is similarly sexualized. When you defeat their “beast” form and first see their “beauty” form, they crawl at Snake suggestively and the camera does its best to show as much as possible. Another easter egg here is that if you have the camera and you do not kill the “beauty” in a few minutes, the game will cut to a scene where you can use the camera on the “beauty” and have her pose like a model. Some of the shots of Laughing Beauty posted on line were obtained this way. Whereas Naomi’s objectification may be explained in terms of the story, these scenes are simply fanservice. What’s extremely disturbing is that after you make the “beauty” pose for you and finish her off, Drebin comes on the Codec and proceeds to tell you her terrible backstory. “So, this girl went around killing children because she couldn’t stand their crying? And then I just made her pose for me while I took pictures of her? Good times!”.

Another easter egg that just defies explanation is the fact that during a Codec
conversation with Rosemary, if you shake your Sixaxis, you can move her breasts around. I suppose this is just Kojima’s unexplainable “wackiness”.

What’s odd is that not all the women are sexualized. Yes, EVA was extremely sexual in MGS3 and even in her current incarnation as “Big Mama” she doesn’t mind wearing an extremely low cut shirt that shows off her bosom, there are no awkward shots that linger on her chest or any other part of her anatomy. Meryl is similarly free of the male gaze of Kojima’s camera. Indeed, while it’s almost impossible to ignore Naomi’s objectification by the directing, the scenes featuring Meryl are almost free of any overt examples of the male gaze (And at the very least, by not overtly sexualizing Meryl, her aggressive no-nonsense attitude isn’t compromised, so it’s not quite a joke that she accessorizes her wedding dress with a holster and a gun). Mei Ling makes an appearance in the final act of the game and during the briefing and Akiba is clearly enthralled by her. But his male gaze and his attempt to grope Mei Ling are chastised by Meryl, indicating to the player not only that sexualizing women is problematic, but that Kojima is aware of that very fact himself. Indeed, the representations of these three women in the game seem to run counter to how the BB Corps and Naomi are represented.

I don’t believe this contradiction is ever resolved. I suppose one could suggest that the “weaker” women are sexualized while the “stronger” women are able to avoid the male gaze, but all of the women have a certain sense of agency in the film. Naomi is the one that brings about the destruction of The Patriots, playing both Liquid Snake/Ocelot and Vamp in order to achieve this goal. The fact that the BB Corps characters are bosses in the game elevates them above all of the other soldiers in the game. So, if there is a reason why Kojima wants the player to sexualize Naomi but not Meryl, I’m not sure what it is.
It’s worth pointing out the fact that for some unknown reason, Liquid’s top soldiers are women. Not just the BB Corps, but the FROG soldiers as well. While the BB Corps’ inception is explained by Drebin as an exploitation of their extreme trauma and this explanation might be applied to the FROGs, it does seem odd that men wouldn’t make it into Liquid’s personal army. Is he suggesting that women suffer more from war trauma and thus more exploitable? Or does Liquid simply get off on having a harem of women who are heavily armed? If there’s an answer, it’s not provided in this game.

Again, I’m not trying to condemn the game. In fact, I think Meryl may be one of the strongest and most developed female characters in games today. I admire the fact that the game is deep enough to allow for the opportunity of analysis, which is more than can be said for a lot of narrative based games. The representation of women is just an issue I wanted to address, since it’s an issue that has been largely ignored in other reviews and analysis.

Battlefield: Bad Company

I’m going to put off further MGS4 ramblings for a while to talk about Battlefield: Bad Company. Bad Company is DICE’s first game with a true single player story-based campaign, relating the events of the player controlled Preston Marlowe and the other members of the eponymous Bad Company. Based on films such as Kelly’s Heroes and Three Kings, the misfits that make up Bad Company decide to take a side trip away from the war in search of gold. There really isn’t much to say about the story as presented in the game itself. It’s a story that’s relatively safe, taking place in fictional locales and featuring completely generic characters. Like the soldiers in Kelly’s Heroes or Three Kings, Bad Company is disenfranchised by the US Army, but any true anti-war or even anti-bureaucracy commentary is limited to glib one-liners. Oddly, character development itself is limited to promotion videos released before the game in the form of video diaries in which the characters explain their motivations. In the game itself, the characters are limited to their archetypes. Sweetwater is the overeducated big city college boy, Haggard is the simpleton from the south and Redford is the gruff veteran Sergeant who is days away from home. Marlowe, standing in for the player, remains as blank and generic as possible – like many other player characters in FPS games – in order to avoid imposing a character onto the player. With fictional settings and standard war film characters, needless to say that plot itself is fairly safe as well. Our heroes eventually disappear from the US Army’s radar and manage to make off with the gold.

That’s not to say that the game doesn’t offer the comedy of those films. Haggard’s obsession with violence and demolitions certainly offers a few laughs, as does the introduction of Serdar, the eccentric dictator of Serdaristan. Indeed, the absurdity of flying a gold plated helicopter was enough to get me to laugh out loud, a response that not many games can illicit from me. But, the comedy is far from biting. As David Ellis said on a segment for the 1up Show, it’s the type of comedy found in Dumb and Dumber. I don’t want to hold that against the game though. The fact that DICE chose to make a war comedy game in itself is worth praising. In a genre where most developers are trying to emphasize how realistically they can depict the worst aspects of war (the upcoming Brothers in Arms and Call of Duty games promise to be extremely “gritty” in their “dark” depiction of war), it is refreshing to see someone try something different. At the very least, it broadens the genre and perhaps opens the door for other developers to try to provide alternative depictions of war. It’s also worth noting that the video game parodies that were released a week before the game came out were amusing and a good indicator of the humour the developers deployed in the game itself.

I guess I should say something about how the story is actually told in the game. Perhaps coming off of the overly verbose cutscenes in MGS4, I didn’t mind that most of the story here is told through cutscenes either. That said, the final boss battle where you have to shoot down a helicopter with a rocket launcher (or, if you’re a bit crazy, with a laser designator) made me pine for a boss battle with an unnaturally attractive mercenary supermodel in a skin tight animal costume. I do appreciate that they managed to incorporate comedy into their level design and gameplay. I did mention the gold plated helicopter, but there is also a level which takes place on a golf course... and of course, on a golf course, there are golf carts. I will say that being chased by a Russian tank while driving a golf cart through a sand trap is a moment that I would have never imagined playing in a game. It was a ludic moment that made me appreciate how level design and open ended gameplay could create an interesting, but strictly optional, narrative.

One bit of miscellany that I’d like to bring up is the fact that the characters are supported by a faceless woman somewhere away from the fighting. I don’t know if there’s something I want to say about this specifically... certainly there are games that feature female soldiers, but I think it’s an interesting trope that’s used in games. What I like in particular is that in the game the characters sexualize and fetishize her voice. Her call sign, “Mike One Juliet”, becomes “Miss July” among the men in Bad Company, referring of course to the depiction of women in a certain adult magazine. I really don’t want to read into this too much, but needless to say, I found it interesting that it was actually addressed in the game. In Gears of War for example, it’s taken for granted that an attractive woman is giving support to the main characters in the game. I’m sure the developers at Epic Games wanted the player to know that she was attractive, since they took the time to include her in one of the opening cutscenes, but to what end? The female support voice was also found in both Rainbow Six: Vegas games, a few of the Splinter Cell games, and probably in several other games that I am forgetting.

I also feel that I should briefly touch on the gameplay. I want to leave most of that stuff to the other reviews you find out there, because having me tell you about a game’s “tight controls” is probably meaningless in a sea of reviews that write about how a game controls. I just want to point out that this game is perhaps as close as DICE will get to putting a game like Battlefield 2 onto a console. I am frustrated sometimes by the lack of buttons (weapon switching and position switching in a vehicle can be aggravating), but it’s just as fun as BF2. The only major limitation is the lack of team communication (according to DICE, this is due to latency issues) and a console player base that approaches online shooters mostly as team deathmatch who worry only about their scores. But if you’re looking for a new BF2 experience, BF:BC is definitely worth playing... at least until BF3 is released. God, I feel like I just stole that from one of an infinite number of reviews out there. At least I didn’t call the Gold Rush mode compelling.