I really enjoyed Metal Gear 2. Inheriting my friend’s PS2 back in the day led me to many treasures, but this was a game that was really on my level. It forced you to think about your approach. It challenged you to cover your tracks in ways that games really hadn't done for me before. Most other games allow you to forget what chaos you laid in your wake, but this game was different—stuffing an unconscious enemy into a locker turned out to be quite fun.

I'm coming for you...

Flash forward to today and now I have my own PS3. Proud. Oh yeah, and right now it’s got a crippled network. During a recent visit to the game store while stuck in the imaginative, immersive realms of the single player campaign, my eyes drifted over a used copy of the Greatest Hits edition of Metal Gear Solid 4.

The game is quite good.

It is also quite long. Much like you probably shouldn’t sit down and watch an entire season of ROME in one week (despite how good the show is, you will end up saying “For the 13^th!” without realizing it), MGS4 should be taken in like treasured prose.

The game actually has a story to share about the military industrial complex that is quite telling today. In it, Snake is pitted not only against Liquid, but the entire war economy. In the days of Blackwater—excuse me, “Xe Services”—the idea of “Private Military Companies” trumping government resolve and technology is not terribly implausible.

Will we start to see commercials like this during "Two and a Half Men?"

With the new focus on the occupation of Afghanistan, the US government is becoming more and more reliant on, what they’re called in real life, private security contractors. Since Obama took office their use has increased 236% in that country to a total of 30% of all operating armed forces. The surprising thing? Most of them aren’t American, but Afghan nationals, in fact, upwards of 90%.

We are clearly a long way off from the world that is painted in the game. However, I can imagine that it's quite the lucrative enterprise: an international company, backed by bloated government contracts, hires Afghan nationals to fight (in a country with 40% unemployment this cannot be that difficult or expensive, especially relative to their employers' wealth and risk level of the job). Will this trend continue and expand in today’s world of free trade and increasing internal conflicts, the game’s proxy wars? I have to say it doesn’t look unlikely.

Old Snake is crafty...and wise

Snake is placed in the middle of one of these battles at the beginning of the game, and does his best throughout to expose their uselessness. MGS4 is full of these wonderful, if sometimes heavy handed, little metaphors regarding the issues of social control and modern conflict. Enjoy them, and do give it some thought. Just take your time with it.

Note:

Stats were taken from the Congressional report linked to below. Would you like to know more?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25533429/DOD-s-Use-of-PSCs-is-Iraq-and-Afghanistan-012010-R40835