This is going to be a bit of an unusual review because this obviously isn’t an actual game. This is a database companion app for MGS4 that attempts to compile and organize all the Metal Gear lore up to and including that game. To that end, this app does a pretty good job. It features detailed entries on every character, organization, and event from the Metal Gear series. You can organize these entries in quite a few ways, and the app features a handy series of graphs that show how different characters and factions relate to each other throughout the timeline. These features can be invaluable in parsing the lore of the series and gives utilizing the app a huge advantage over simply reading a wiki for instance.

This is a truly comprehensive collection of information. There are quite a few entries I really didn’t expect - chief among them being the inclusion of every boss from the original two Metal Gear games as well as the presence of Portable Ops in general. Portable Ops is widely considered to not be canon by MG fans, so it’s inclusion here is a bit of an oddity. It’s honestly really charming and kind of hilarious to see the somewhat unhinged plot and characters of Portable Ops being treated with the same respect as everything else from the series. Seeing this largely forgotten and mediocre game, one that has seemingly been discarded by both the fans as well as Konami, being preserved here makes me smile. Being able to see the creators of the database attempt to tie Portable Ops in with the rest of the series is honestly one of the most entertaining things about the app.

The biggest failure of the database - and what makes it so interesting to me - is it’s ultimate inability to fully contain and untangle the Gordian Knot that is the plot of the Metal Gear series. The database, at quite a few points, seems to either contradict itself or fly in the face of story elements from the actual games. This doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does happen it can be quite noticeable. One can spend hours reading and re-reading the database entries, studying the charts, and sorting the information in every way the app will allow, and after all that they still won’t have a comprehensive understanding of Metal Gear lore… and I can’t tell you how much I love that.

It’s no secret that the Metal Gear games have some of the most convoluted and at times incomprehensible plots in gaming. Fans have tried to parse the exact details Revolver Ocelot’s arc for years and still haven’t come to an agreement about it. This sort of thing might seem like a huge flaw of the games first glance, and I’m sure there are a lot of really smart people that don’t like the Metal Gear games for this exact reason. It is my opinion, however, that convoluted nature of the Metal Gear storyline not only isn’t important in the grand scheme of things but is actually one of its major strengths.

The most obvious example of this is MGS2, which uses a convoluted plot to support its core thesis and give the player a gameplay experience that almost perfectly mirrors the narrative experience of its protagonist. In the other games, the confusion the narrative can inspire in the player serves to refocus their attention away from the finer details of the plot and towards the deeper themes invoked by the narrative and the emotional experience created by the game as a whole. Fans can sometimes be a bit too preoccupied with canon consistency and plot holes and end up missing the point of a narrative because of it. The way the Metal Gear games actively thwart the players attempt to engage with them in this way is brilliant. The MGS4 database serves as an almost certainly unintentional testament to this. The writing of the Metal Gear games essentially thwarted an attempt by the series’ official database to pin down all the particulars of its plot.

The MGS4 database only fully unlocks after you have a completed save file for MGS4. If you’re like me and think that the core of the Metal Gear series ends with 4, this database serves as it’s unintentional epilogue. What a better way to send off the series and give players a final suggestion of it’s artistic mission than to tell them a database is going to finally explain everything and then have it ultimately and inevitably fail to do so.