Metal Gear Solid by Raymond Benson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Metal Gear Solid
Book Review: The greatest video game to book adaptation as of yet
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a long time fan of the Metal Gear Solid series. When I found out a novelization was being released, I was somewhat skeptical. After having read it, I realized that it's possibly the best adaptation I've read. The only thing different in the book are some minor differences that arise out of a lack of a video game console. (For those of you that know what I'm talking about, I mean the scene with Psycho Mantis and others.)Book Review: The sustained interest in a video game does not transfer well to a book
Summary: 3 Stars
By design, the shoot-em-up video game has the hero going through difficult terrain, engaging the enemy emerging from multiple places and always having a good chance to shoot them down. To keep the interest of the players, it must have a lengthy run with enemies that somehow come back from major injury. Furthermore, new weapons often appear or are available when most desperately needed. However, while this makes for an entertaining video game, it does not transfer well to a book.
This book, "The Official Novel of the thrilling Konami video game created by Hideo Kojima", is an adventure of the super soldier Solid Snake. He is called out of retirement and his mission is to infiltrate a fortress where renegade super soldiers have taken control of a super weapon called Metal Gear. The renegades have also taken control of nuclear weapons and have a mass driver that can be used to launch them. Because the mass driver uses no rocket, the launch and trajectory of the warhead cannot be tracked using conventional techniques. It would be the ultimate stealth attack.
The mission is further complicated by the use of biological weapons, turncoat officials and communication devices that allow multiple people to communicate with Solid Snake as he progresses through the fortress. Finally, there is a cyborg ninja who first battles snake and then comes to his aid when he is locked in a duel with Metal Gear.
With all this repetitive action and the presence of powerful weapons when Solid Snake needs them, this book just continues on too long. When he is in trouble, you know that he will be directed to another Stinger missile before it happens. The soldiers opposing Solid Snake are supposed to be enhanced elite forces and yet he deals with them as if they were mere untrained conscripts. The point was reached where the action was just so repetitive that I found it difficult to complete the book.
Book Review: Unremarkable, but entertaining
Summary: 3 Stars
A huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid series, I was curious when I heard that they were releasing a novelization. What further got my curiousity was that Raymond Benson would be writing it - I'm also a huge James Bond fan, and starting in 1997, Benson wrote novelizations to several of the Bond films, as well as six of his own Bond novels. Though his original novels felt much like the Bond films themselves, Benson has made it clear that the Ian Fleming Foundation (who hold the literary Bond rights) wanted him to basically make his novels the films in print, in terms of style - plenty of sex, gadgets, and silly one-liners. However, Benson took some chances with his original novels that paid off, so I had some hope for his Metal Gear Solid novelization.
The finished product, however, is quite unremarkable. As others have surely pointed out, the vast majority of the dialogue is basically taken word-for-word from the game, as if Benson was given a transcript of the game and told to work from that. Benson does offer some new touches, partially in the way of awful "jokes", if you can call them that. When asked by one of the villains if he is as good a soldier as his legendary father, hero Solid Snake responds, "I don't know. I didn't bring my RULER." And yes, in the novel, Benson actually italicized the "ruler" bit. So having read a few negative reactions and having flipped through and reading some of these atrocious lines myself, I thought I'd give the book a pass. But with the new game, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, only a few days away, I thought I'd rip through the book if nothing else but to get even more psyched up for it.
In the end, the novel was quick and entertaining. It basically took me a day to read, and I enjoyed it. Yeah, some of those moments were cringe-worthy, but it was a good way to brush up on the story in a day (that's all it should really take you).
If you're a fan of the games, then it's worth checking out if you ever find it on sale, but it's not really worth the full price, unless you're a collector like I am. Otherwise, I'd recommend playing the game instead.
Book Review: What a solid novel.
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a huge fan of the games, but I'm not much of a reader. I would highly recommend it to anybody that has played MGS for PS1, it is a great purchase and worth a read!Book Review: Worthy of owning!
Summary: 5 Stars
Once upon a time, there was a man named Raymond Benson who was commissioned by Hideo Kojima himself to novelize the epic, beautiful, yet convoluted story laid out somewhere in the frames of the Metal Gear Solid games. Kojima read the finished product and saw that it was good. Metal Gear Solid came out in 2008 for the masses where I discovered its existence, bought it, read it, and also saw that it was good. But then, a million picky, insatiable, overprotective MGS fans flooded Amazon's review columns and tried to convince other MGS fans that it was NOT good.
I'm actually a part of that pack. When it comes to Solid Snake and crew, I'm overprotective, I'm picky, I'm insatiable. The series has been in my life since I was 12 years old and that makes me feel personally responsible for its well-being and preservation through out the mediums of entertainment it has and will travel through (MGS movie, anyone?). Thankfully, this book is a solid adaptation with some reasonable liberties taken by Mr. Benson and, more importantly, approved by Mr. Kojima. Until YOU have taken on the challenge of condensing a storyline that easily goes for 900 pages in dialog alone into a publishable 300, you have no idea the tiny miracle this book actually is.
Now, would I have personally added all the extras Raymond did to the story? No. There are a few lines of dialog from Snake that I remember physically cringing at while I was reading. But, there's a few lines in Guns of the Patriots (a script penned by Kojima himself) that Snake said that I physically cringed at while hearing them. And to this day, I'm sure that Solid Snake's English voice actor David Hayter still believes Snake would have just pulled that damn trigger in the graveyard at the end of Guns of the Patriots instead of pussyfooting around long enough to let Big Boss show up and "talk him out of it". The point is, everyone and their grandma have their own views, opinions, and analysis about Solid Snake and that's wonderful, actually! It says volumes about the character--that there's enough substance in his presented personality and ideals to be interpreted differently by people. Trust me, there is not enough Internet to tell about the many games there are with stiff, linear stereotypes for main protagonists.
At no point in Benson's novelization did Snake break out into show tunes, shoot fireballs out of his hands, or suddenly realize he was in love with Otacon so I can't get behind some of the complaints from other fans. I read the same book everyone else did and I didn't come away feeling as if Snake had done or said anything unspeakably out of character but I guess that's just me.
Totally recommended for the casual or the hardcore MGS fan.