The Metal Gear Solid series is all wrong. It’s been wrong from the start and anyone that praises Kojima as a game design god is unfortunately mistaken. MGS is entirely pretentious and ultimately stubborn, convoluting over the years into a unintentional parody of its self.
I can hear the screams of a million playstation owners already. In fact I think I can smell the burning torches outside of the window, all accompanied by pitchforks and shouts of heresy. They are all wrong though, they just don’t realise it – or probably they don’t want to realise it. Since the PS1, MGS has been Sonys poster boy; held aloft by the adorning fans as the reason to own a playstation. The gorgeous graphics and twisting plot all entwined with that unique blend of ‘tactical espionage action’ is what makes the console so much better than it’s counterparts. Isn’t it? No.
Firstly let’s take a look at that tagline – ‘tactical espionage action’. Who decided to slap that on there? Does splinter cell carry “strategic spying and shooting” under it, or hitman “planned stealth murdering”? While I know neither are as catchy, and would get laughed out of any marketing meeting – so should anything so utterly redundant and pretentious. ‘tactical espionage action’, stealth game, you are a fucking stealth game and that’s all there is to it.
In fact, I’d say metal gear was less about stealth and more about blind luck. Stealth to me is planning and being clever. Putting yourself in a situation where you can formulate a plan and execute it, but be able to do something about it when it all goes wrong. What this ultimately means is that you need to be able to see what you are doing and limiting my view to 10 meters each side of me doesn’t allow this. I can semi excuse such a view in the first game because you could slam the ‘technical limitations’ badge on it, and that’s fair enough, but keeping it because it’s “the best way”, well I don’t know if I buy that. I think it’s done this way out of stubbornness, because the old Metal Gear was top down Kojima is adamant that it’s the best way to carry on – when it clearly isn’t. Technology moves on, so should the way we interact with it. If there is a better was of doing something, for god sake adopt it – 3d cameras is such a thing.
I challenge anyone that has played Metal Gear to honestly tell me that the camera hasn’t constantly got in the way. You can’t be stealthy when blundering around effectively blind. When you can’t see what you’re doing bumping into guards, cameras and whatever other obstacles are in your way is inevitable and frustrating – the only way you can know what’s coming is to drop into First person and battle with the stupid ‘we so want to be different’ controls, and god help you if you actually want to shoot anything.
To go along with all this nonsense is the plot. Now, the story probably isn’t all that bad but because of the insanely tedious radio chats and lengthy cutscenes (which only got worse as the series continued) I couldn’t care less. You can’t make people sit and listen to 15 minutes of dialogue going through some half arsed radio communication screen. This is only topped by cutscenes exceeding an hour – and I’m all for story in games but that is not the way to do it – it defeats the point of doing a game at all. They are meant to be interactive, and with the cutscenes driving the action, not the other way around. Oh no, sorry, they were interactive weren’t they: you could switch the camera around.
Lastly, I hate how it tries to be clever but ends up being nothing more than ridiculous. Putting a number that you need to continue with the game on the back of the box is out right ridiculous. You might think it’s clever, but it’s not. I would love to know how many people figured it out for themselves, I would guess that it’s less than 1%. Also, it’s tearing down the fourth wall and instantly breaking down any sort of immersion it may have built up. I don’t want to dig around my drawers and piles of tat I have lying around, trying to find the fucking box when I’m trying to just play the god dam game – or rather sit through more endless dialogue that is only relevant to the proceedings 50% of the time.
Agh! I hate MGS. I hate the characters, the bland art style, the dull conversations, the cut scenes, the camera, the controls. It’s an instruction book on how not to make a game for me. Why do all you people like it? What is it that appeals? I think it’s because you think you should like it, because everyone says you should. In actual fact it’s some grotesque mish-mash of old and new dragged from the 80’s where there was actual limitations on what you could do to get a story across and have action play out – now still unchanged and clinging on.
Metal Gear needs to be let out to die – it’s had it’s day and times have moved on. There are better narrative devices than epic cutscenes and better ways of doing combat that top down wankery. It’s a bad set of games – fact.
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Amen brother. Although I think you have been enjoying Blood Money a tad too much. Silent Assassin and Contracts are waaaay better
WHAT? I have never heard anyone be so wrong in the history of communication.
Oh come on man. The conveniently placed dumpsters and freezers for you to hide bodies? The invisible guiding hand nudging you along to where you should be going was just annoying, not to mention the half-baked notoriety thing. I mean they may as well have put ’suitable for ages 8+’ on the front. It’s a great game, but the previous 2 didn’t have any of that rubbish- you got put in the mission and were just told to get on with it. They had their flaws and they were probably too hard at times. But with a stealth game like this, better too hard than too easy. Getting a silent assassin rating on every mission on blood money was an absolute doddle compared to the others.
Maybe you will sell me your copy of Twin Snakes as you ‘Hate’ it so much?
The previous two (three actually) didn’t work. The missions boiled down to either following the strictly set puzzle layout for each level or blasting everyone. Blood Money was more freeform – allowing you to get your own style of hits.
Yeah, there are conveniently placed containers but I’d argue thet it’s for the better. It’s not fun to have a body discovered 20 minutes after you’ve taken someone down and hidden the body but forgot about a random guard with a long patrol route.
Basically, I could gush over Blood Money for ages – It’s in my top 5 of all time, but a thread knocking MGS isn’t the place to do it. HOWEVER I am going to try and track down a copy of Contracts and replay it, just to prove to myself that I’m right. Bit short of cash at the mo though :(
@Paul – we can discuss that. Maybe a trade? Depends what you’ve got on offer really.
I don’t consider the first game to be a Hitman game, since it’s probably the biggest pile of tosh I have ever played.
There are only three Hitman games…three!
Well that’s typical. Contracts is the only one not on steam.
I think there’s an issue being raised here: if something doesn’t make sense realistically in a game, can it still be a constructive part of the game? The dumpsters aren’t realistic, but they’re perhaps a shorthand for the myriad ways a real hitman could dispose of or hide a body.
I liked Silent Assassin but I’ve never played Blood Money.
A real hitman wouldn’t have it that easy though. I like the fact that the difficulty of hiding the body is simulated in SA and C.
My thoughts exactly. I fucking hate this game. While part 1 was something that could be very promising, part 4 turns out as the most dissapointing game ever. I bought this game on day 1 and last week found myself with too much time and boredom to drag myself through this game, finish it and put it away to rest for ever. It’s fucking stupid, 4 hours playtime maybe and 18 hours cutscenes with a fucking horrible, bullshit complicated storyline, illogical japanese acting, horny look-at-the-pussy peeks, shitty gameplay and a gay ass main character. I ran like rambo through this game just to finish my misery as quickly as possible. Ok, ok, the one thing I can credit this game for are the graphics, but Kojima forgot the first and most important thing a game should be: fun.
Besides that, the gameplay is weak and the reply value is zero. He should have his game tested by some real gamers and not some groupies that suck his dick and accept any shit he throws at them.
Forget it, I’m never gonna buy a MGS title again.
Hehe, so much hate. Surprised no one has gone on the defence yet.
In its defence then: You get to smoke Cigarettes (something you can’t even do in GTA). And that’s, urm, about all I can think of.
But honestly, if there was a button in a game to let my avatar smoke a cigar it’d add +5% to my review score. I’m simple like that.
Facepalm
I’d respond to this, but quite frankly, I don’t know where to begin. Have you played through all of the games, or just select titles, because I honestly can’t tell enough to make a proper response.
Wow, I’m not a fan of MGS nearly at all, and I was expecting to read an article from someone who felt the same. Unfortunately what I read was some seriously uninformed vitriol. Even with my limited knowledge, I am aware that the PSP games all have a 3D camera, the 4th game had a 3D camera, and the 3rd game had a 3D camera retroactively implemented. As soon as it became apparent that you hated it because it exists(and is successful?), and *not* because it was a legitimately bad series(which you would then support with *informed* observations), I stopped taking this article seriously.