I just want to be there. Back at the start: I know the dock at the beginning of Metal Gear Solid so well. I can complete it effortlessly, zone out and daydream as I send Solid Snake trudging through freezing water, snaking under pipes with pleasant automaticity. We acquire items and avoid guards and slip into the elevator undetected. After an elevator ride--look at Snake's bulging abs--the game opens up. A large, complicated second stage: side rooms, the Hind-D, a variety of paths leading into the main complex of Shadow Moses, which looms large. There are important things here already. A gun, somewhere, and some grenades... Playing these games is partly a recitation of weird facts: cigarettes allow you to perceive lasers, trucks often contain pistols, if there's a ninja you should probably fist fight. I sort through my weird facts, kind of look at the map, and do my best to avoid the guards. I don't play Metal Gear like a boy scout, drawing maps and keeping lists, so this is where I start to lose hope immediately. I do none of this perfectly and maybe die. I could beat the level perfectly if I were really trying, but I don't want to. I give item-hunting my best shot and move on. Imperfection spreads from the foundation of my playthrough.
Near the midpoint of Metal Gear Solid 4,we play as Old Snake dreaming that he is Solid Snake. The PS3 spins up a tiny emulation of the opening of Metal Gear Solid and we are playing through a nightmare from which Old Snake will awake, afraid. You have a therapist in this game, if you want to call her: in one of your first conversations, Snake describes recurring dreams where he is discovered, shot, killed.
There are so many metatextual layers here that it's easy to lose sight of the straightforward narrative. Snake is returning to a place where he was tortured, nearly killed many times over, and had a duel with a bipedal nuclear-armed mech. He is old and scared of death and going back. All of this is happening because of a sprawling, contrived video game plot that designates him the Protagonist at the center of the universe--the clone son of history's greatest soldier, locked in a titanic struggle with neoliberal fascism. He spends a lot of time looking for food and his stress level goes down if you let him look at smut magazines or listen to surf rock and he is absolutely going to flirt with the cute military analyst(s). Near the end of his career his brother lodges a knife in his shoulder and electrocutes him with it several times.
Snake is basically defined by the fact that he is a video game character--literally conceived, artificially, out of narrative necessity: we need a super soldier to defeat Big Boss. We hear a lot about Solid Snake's legend, witness it a bit in Metal Gear Solid 2, but mostly we are present exclusively for his life--his video game narratives, which are the realest thing about him. So let's think about his early life: Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid. These operations establish Snake's legend, and each one is basically: we are giving you nothing, sending you to infiltrate a military base on false pretenses, and lying to you about every aspect of your life and experience.
On each of these missions history's greatest soldier has some top-down 2D brawler battles and some top-down 3D shooting battles. Mostly he sneaks around, keeps complicated maps in his head, knows which keys open which doors, knows that you need a guided missile to get past an electrocuted floor, knows that there's a gun in the back of that truck, unlimited rations in the other truck, knows that you can sneak in a cardboard box. If he struggles, he struggles because he got sloppy, forgot something, didn't get a key item and is paying for it. His main sin is inventory mismanagement. In later games he will have to get really good at maiming and killing but not yet, not really.
These are Snake's Metal Gear Solid nightmares: someone is going to see me, I will forget something, I will not be prepared for something I knew was coming, I am at the big fight and I forgot to pick up the missile launcher, I am low on bullets and there is a tank here. I should have gone back to the armory once I got a keycard. I can't believe I forgot and now I am going to die.