Today's Weird Storyline Showcase will discuss the stories of the Parappa the Rapper and Metal Gear Solid series. As I did last time, I'll start with the zany one and end with the good but odd one.
Parappa the Rapper and Metal Gear Solid 1-3 spoiler alert
However, I'm not going to talk about the story of Metal Gear Solid 4. It won't be out until apparently next summer, and I'm not going to spoil anything I know, so we'll just talk about Metal Gear Solid 1-3 (maybe something from Portable Ops thrown in). But, for now it's-
Parappa the Rapper! Like Katamari Damacy, it's weird, heavily Japanese, and extremely fun. Now, I'm just going to take the short plot synopsis from Wikipedia here, because it really works plenty well enough, and is funnier than I would likely present it.
"The player takes on the role of PaRappa, a paper-thin rapping dog. He is trying to win the heart of a flower-like girl named Sunny Funny. He is aided by his friends Katy Kat (an enthusiastic cat) and PJ Berri (a fat teddy bear DJ with a huge appetite). Also vying for Sunny Funny's attention is PaRappa's arch rival Joe Chin, a rich, narcissistic dog.
To impress Sunny Funny, PaRappa learns to fight at a kung-fu dojo, takes a driver's education course to get his license, learns the art of flea-market training to raise money for a new car, bakes a seafood cake, uses the bathroom, and finally, performs a hip hop song on stage at a party."
See? Isn't that terrific? The second Parappa game is perhaps crazier with a story about all the world's food being turned to noodles, involving levels such as burger making, romantic karate, a soul ant who gets transformed larger and smaller between music phrases, a crazy octopus barber, boot camp with roller skates, and then a faceoff with the noodle guy. That's about all there is to say about Parappa's story.
Metal Gear Solid has a great story in my opinion, but it is no doubt at least a little bit weird. I can't summarize the plot for all three games here, but I'll give little snippets. Basically, the games are set in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and they involve espionage battles between various groups, like Russians vs. Americans or Terrorists vs. Americans, but typically a lot more complicated than that. To give an example of the complex nature of the plot, Here is a terrible summary that's framed to make the story sound more confusing:
Okay, the first Metal Gear Solid begins with you, Solid Snake, investigating a FOXHOUND rebellion at Shadow Moses. FOXHOUND demands the remains of Big Boss (your character in Metal Gear Solid 3 who looks just like Solid Snake and a boss in some Metal Gear game, I believe) In their rebellion, they've gained control of a secret Army robot walker thing called Metal Gear REX. Most of the bosses you have to neutralize are genetically enhanced somehow. In Metal Gear Solid 2, you're Raiden, some random rookie agent guy who everyone in the real world hates. Snake, as Pliskin, helps you via radio along with the Major and you girlfriend, who's really prying and whiny about some previous conflict between the two of you. The Big Shell Disposal Facility has been taken by the Sons of Liberty, another group of genetically enhanced bosses basically, including a fat guy who plants a lot of bombs and an invincible lady named Fortune. The game sort of ends with a Solid, Liquid, and Solidus Snake all in basically the same place, and the Major starts going crazy because he's not Roy Campbell but just a computer simulation of him to fool Raiden to make him the perfect soldier. Plus, Metal Gear RAY, another Metal Gear thing is there, controlled by Liquid Snake/Revolver Ocelot. Metal Gear Solid 3 is actually a prequel, going back to the 60s with you playing as Big Boss, and you deal with another form of Metal Gear and see that Revolver Ocelot has a big role in screwing around with everybody. Then Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops actually has you founding FOXHOUND, which seems like totally a good thing, even though they're the bad guys in Metal Gear Solid.
Now that was intentionally cut short to make it seem more confusing, but the story's still pretty weird, and will need a lot more loose ends to be fixed by Metal Gear Solid 4 to make any sense. But I still love the storyline, partly because it's cryptic and confusing, so you actually have to think about what's going on. If you haven't played either of these games, it's a bit late to start but surely enough people will just enter the Metal Gear Solid storyline at number 4, so you can start studying up on the earlier story with any of the other Metal Gear Solid games. It doesn't especially matter which one you start with, given that they're not in narrative order anyway, so just play one of the games. You'll like it. Metal Gear Solid games are available for the Playstation 1 and 2, depending on which one you want, and the Gamecube actually has a remake of the first game on it. For the Xbox, you're screwed unless Metal Gear Solid 4 comes for the 360, which is apparently now not true even though there was a rumor for a while. And Portable Ops is for the PSP. That was an awfully wordy post.
0 comments:
Post a Comment