As I sit here thinking about how fucking screwed up my life is because the people at my work are so incompetent that they cannot figure out how to make a schedule and then further lamenting that I will probably be working 46-52 hours this week because they just lost another full time person and have yet to hire anyone new....awesome, right? Well, you shouldn't fucking think so because that means less videos for you...
Every summer I play some new games and a lot of old games, the old games keep me rooted in where I was. They remind me who I was and let me know how much I've changed. One thing that hasn't changed is my hatred of the design of the fucking metal gear series, or if you could call it that. There are 4 games that bear the title of "Metal Gear Solid". However, I would like to point out that there is a difference between creating 4 games that contain a story and 4 games that just contain the title and the promise of the story and giving you something completely different. It's like opening up a cherry pie making shop but only serving doughnuts, both are delicious but you went in to get a cherry pie and if you want a cherry pie you're pretty much fucked...
See that's the thing with the metal gear solid series, in terms of games they are good, but the problem is with the sequels. Metal Gear Solid was a revolutionary game, it was something that was different, it was a game where you had to use stealth to survive, there were a lot of enemies and only one of you so you had to be careful and not get spotted otherwise you'd get your BALLS ROCKED! See the thing is that Metal Gear Solid made you feel like the game was well thought out and planned, it only gave you limited ammo and you needed to rely on your wicked cunning to find solutions to problems quickly to survive. It wasn't about brute strength it was about intelligence. This is consistent throughout the series. But, after it gained its cult like following and they released a sequel I began to lose faith.
See, Metal Gear Solid 1 told a story. It was about Snake and Liquid and how nuclear weapons were threatening the peace of the world. Snake was an agent sent to stop Liquid who had gained a walking tank called metal gear that he was planning to use to launch nuclear weapons. A lot of shit happens and eventually the tank gets activated and you have to destroy it...awesome! It was awesome, there are a lot of really memorable characters here including all of FOX-HOUND, which is the group name of the 5 terrorists that you fight eventually (well, all but one but it was pretty apparent that you weren't gonna fight him, after all his only ability was to disguise himself as people...I mean that would have been a fucking awful boss fight...). But I digress, I'm not here to talk about the fucking storyline of Metal Gear Solid 1, I'm here to talk about how the series is bullshit!
See, the problem is that in Metal Gear Solid 2 you play as Snake for like 20 minutes and that's if you're a fucking retard like Carl!(Note Show reference) Problem is that MGS 2 is exactly like MGS 1 and they even say it in the plot, as if they were trying to be clever about it...bullshit, just because you realize that you were copying off the original and selling us a completely bullshit game doesn't mean that makes it any better. If you knew it, why didn't you fix that shit? While MGS 2 copies the MSG almost exactly it isn't a bad game and it does advance the plot...albeit very little...It gets way too complex and farfetched near the end to ever be real, even by conspiracy standards, and I promise you that most people didn't understand the whole story during the first playthrough...
The second game is NOT a sequel, you don't play as Snake dudes and dudettes. Fact is that you spend most of your time playing as this whiny moron who calls HQ every odd screen and bitches about how tough the mission is...Bro, we've played this game before in MGS 1, Snake didn't bitch like you, we wouldn't bitch like you, shut up and get on with it...
More than that, in order to save your game progress you have to call the guys girlfriend on the codec, because she controls the save feature and then you have to listen to her bitch at him for not remembering the exact hour of the exact day that they both saw the sunrise for the first time together or whatever. Dude's in the middle of a life or death mission, killing people, freaks of nature hunting him, bombs going off and nuclear war, all on his mind and this bitch is all over him...but even as a player, you're sitting there listening to her go on and on and on about NOTHING, ABOUT FUCKING NOTHING and you can't help but say: "...I just wanted to save my fucking game man...jeez".
The game quite simply is a remake of the first, and its a good remake but its not a sequel and it shouldn't be considered as one. If you do consider it as a sequel I would like to openly invite you to come to my house where I will shave your head and cut open your skull to make sure that you don't have a brain, where if upon discovering that you do I will confiscate it and likely give it to someone who will ACTUALLY USE IT.
The third game comes and people who didn't do their research buy it and think its actually what the title says it is MGS 3...yeah! Pardon us for fucking thinking that this would be the third part of the story right? I must have been stupid when I read the big FUCKING 3 on it. I guess now 3 means that you go back 40 years and tell a story there that has little to no relevance to the previous stories we've heard.
On the positives MGS 3 says good bye to the bitching whiny boy and his fucking babbling cocksucking girlfriend and we play as Snake again or rather "Big Boss" but its fucking David Hayter and it sounds and acts like Snake, its Snake again..why? because I say so mother fucker! Its in the jungle which is new and adds a whole new element to the stealth part of it which was interesting.
On the negatives despite is being called MGS 3 it's NOT MGS 3 its more like MGS .5 and even more than that its not at all relevant to the stories told in 1 and 2. This is just Konami wanting to milk the Metal Gear horse for all its worth at this point and they know they have a limited life span because once the final Snake/Liquid/Ocelot thing comes to a head, that's it, its over, done, finito! See the issue I have here is that this game cheated me out of 50 bucks because it had MGS 3 on it. It's not MGS 3, hell, it's not even MGS, Snake isn't REALLY Snake if you want to fucking nitpick and you're trying to blow up something called the Shagohod and NOT Metal Gear, though it is mentioned.
See, the thing is, because of this, I decided that I would never play MSG 4, even though it finally continues the fucking story, this should have been MGS 2! MGS 2 was a story that didn't need to be told, much like the fucking star wars prequels. What they should have REALLY done was combine MGS 2 and MGS 4 into one game and called it MGS 2. Oh, and leave Raiden out...he's a fuck off anyway. See, the reason why I refuse to play the next game is because they have already made me pay 50+ dollars for each of the metal gear games that promised to be sequels but never were. I can't stand for that bullshit, and it sets a dangerous precedent if we let them fuck us like this. They're already overcharging us for games, why let them overcharge you for a game that you fucking don't want in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, these games are good, in fact in some cases they're great, but they're not sequels, they're time killers that are only loosely related to the actual storyline. Its a lot like going on a blind date, you could still have a pleasant experience but it might not be the one you were expecting or that you necessarily wanted...and there is a higher chance of getting an STD...its in the research...
-Neal
I disagree completely. Without 2 and 3, the plotlines from the 1st and 4th one would make absolutely no sense because it's all tying things together between the games. Without knowledge of Big Boss or Raiden, major story elements of the 4th game would not make any sense.
ReplyDeleteI didn't mind playing as Raiden, I knew when a conversation was going nowhere and I had free reign to just skip through it.
No, you're taking 4 as a game that was made after 2 and 3 you could have EASILY taken some exposition elements from 2 and 3 and made them into a much better MSG 2 that continued the game and left Radien out. You're sort of lost in what I'm saying. I'm saying if Konami COMPLETELY re-wrote 2 to include 4's main points meaning the conclusion and used 2's story points which were few to say the least then you could have a completely cohesive game. The BOTTOM LINE is that there was really no need to drag it into 4 games sir.
ReplyDelete-Neal
But that's where I disagree. Without the story of Solidus and the Big Shell then 90% of 4 would have absolutely no purpose. Raiden turned out to be an incredibly cool character, cooler than Gray Fox even.
ReplyDeleteAgain, you're not seeing it, see, with how much BS they stuck in 2 and 3 you could have made a very good MGS 2 and maybe moved it into three games. My major problem isn't with 2 except for the part that its not really a sequel, its a story but you don't really play as the main character and just because YOU don't mind playing as Raiden that doesn't change the fact that Raiden isn't the main character of the series and Snake takes a total backburner, he isn't developed at all anymore and we spend time getting to know Raiden...more shit we don't need.
ReplyDeleteSee the thing is you're still looking at it as a defined story, but its much less than that. I'm saying the story is stronger if you told the whole thing from Snakes eyes and didn't even bother going back in time for the 1960's. Even though you might think my main issue is with MGS 2 it clearly isn't, the fact is that MGS 3 is NOT MGS 3 and that was the back breaker, it wasn't a third game it was a prequel, they lied to tell a story that didn't really need to be told for money they wanted. While you aren't wrong in saying that the story about Big Boss is important, this isn't something that couldn't have been glossed over lightly in a second game. See that's the problem, in the first game there is a lot of backstory, explaining, interviews, videos and that's before you even start the game. That could have easily been done in MGS 2 to eliminate 3 completely, why didn't they do it? Money! MGS should have been 2 games maybe 3.
-Neal
Neal! Turn the game console off right now!
ReplyDeleteAin't gonna happen bro! ;)
ReplyDelete-Neal
HEY! I want to kick the MGS series in the nuts as well!
ReplyDeleteI largely agree with this blog post.
The plotlines aren't well connected and especially 4 does a lot of retconning. Saying that 2 and 3 are needed in order to explain 4's plot is an insane lie, and not just because 4 has no plot to explain.
WARNING: I'll force some spoilers for MGS4 down your throat now!
Knowing who Raiden was was not necessary in the least, as Raiden had nothing to do with the plot of MGS4. He was fan-service for those who wanted yet another cyborg ninja, and had less to do with the story than Grey Fox in the first MGS.
What if Raiden had never appeared from nowhere in MGS4? Nothing major would've changed, Snake would've just ran past Vamp early on, killed Vamp by himself later and the game would've had 30 less minutes of cutscenes with Raiden gone. The ONLY plot-related event Raiden ever had part in was him muttering the words "Big Mama" to send Snake to find her, and that could've been handled in several other ways.
His deal with Rose and Campbell in MGS4 is also strange, because in MGS2 it's revealed that they weren't actually really part of the mission.
Campbell is in MGS4 as a throwback to MGS1 only.
Rose exists solely to offer the player a chance to play around with her breasts in the codec calls. And by the way, the psyche mechanic is absolutely useless and doesn't make sense.
Regarding what Neal said about the plot being a remake, couldn't be more true and in fact Hideo Kojima admits to it himself. Twice. It's said in MGS2 that the reason Dead Cell was hired for Big Shell was to simulate the events of Shadow Moses as some sort of training for Raiden.
In MGS4 it's revealed that B&B Corps were hired to simulate the events of Shadow Moses so that the Patriots AI would send Snake to do the job.
And, in the end of MGS4 it's revealed that allowing Snake to infect the Patriot AI was Ocelot's plan all along. He says that for the past three decades all he ever set out to do was to destroy the Patriots. Everything he's done since the original MGS was all just the most complex, long-ass plan ever to allow Snake to enter Ocelot's private craft to insert a virus coded by a seven-year-old in to the Patriot AI.
Absolutely stupid once you start thinking about it.
The more you think about ANY of the plots, the more confused you should get. If you see a clear storyline throughout the series, you must be glancing over A LOT of plot-points. I wouldn't blame you.
The first three MGS games are great games, but none of the plots truly tie into each another in any meaningful way. They're just some hack writer's attempts at selling epic storylines with awesome cliffhangers. Hideo Kojima NEVER had any idea where the plot of each game would lead to in the long run, and so in the end they lead to nowhere.
MGS3 story is great on it's own, though.
I don't recommend MGS4 to anyone.
I would like to point out that I did not send Johnny a massive stack of 20's in the mail for him to agree with me :)
ReplyDelete-Neal