This is a ramble post. I promise you won't hurt my feelings if you don't read it all.
Spoilers obviously.
So I started playing through the MGS series (skipped Metal Gear 1 and 2 because they're too old for me to get into) and so far I haven't been super blown away by anything but it's been good so far. MGS1 was a pain in the ass to play because the controls felt so bad. The craziness of the story and not wanting to be lost was enough for me to power through it.
I started MGS2 the next day, already a huge improvement in controls, although they're still not perfect, so playing through it was much easier although I suck ass at the game. I already knew about the whole Raiden thing thanks to Metal Gear Rising (my first actual Metal Gear game) and the plot was kinda just more MGS up until the last three hours. If you've played the game then you know what I'm talking about.
Now I'm starting to get hooked, but actually playing the games is still a bit of a slog because I'm bad at them and the controls feel really outdated. But next is MGS3, the one I've heard the most about, the one where half the memes come from, the ladder song, the one I see people say is their favorite. I gotta keep going.
I start MGS3 like a week after I beat MGS2 and I play up until the part where Snake meets Eva for the first time and you fight the GRU guys. I don't know why, but I'm just not feeling it. I thought Volgin is a really stupid villain (particularly his design), Ocelot is kinda dumb, no one has a Russian accent and it takes me out of it, and Snake always seems to be staring at Eva's titties in every scene. Now I know why people say Kojima can't write women. Maybe I'm just getting burnt out at this point but I'm not feeling this game so far.
Like four or fives months later, I just feel like playing again out of nowhere. I really don't knoq what's different this time but it finally just clicks. I blaze through the beginning and I'm actually playing really well and the story is just hitting right (Volgin and the titty pov are still dumb). Outside of the boss fights that require you to run and gun a little like Ocelot or the Pain, I'm having a lot of fun. Way more fun than I had in the last two games.
The story is a little dumber than 2 because Kojima read some Wikipedia articles about the Cold War or something so there's a lot of times where they'll say something about the Soviet Union and I can't help but think like "that makes no sense why would they do that." But I went in knowing there was gonna be dumb radlib stuff because Kojima is a radlib who read two or three books and wants to put it in his game. The Boss' motivations are also EXTREMELY unclear until the very last cutscene in the game so I ended up wondering if things were happening just to happen. But despite all that, I was still invested.
After finally beating at 19 hours, I can say this is one of my favorite games ever, and one of my favorite final bosses in any games ever. I admit I cried at the cemetery cutscene. Also I think the Boss is super hot.
So now I'm gonna take another month long break before I play MGS4. Can't wait to play what many people seem to consider the worst game in the series after the best one!
MGS4 is nowhere near as bad as some people make it out to be. It isn't great because it took the best parts of the previous games, the bosses, and made them actively bad and boring. But on the other hand, the stealth gameplay gets way better and it has some of the best dumb moments in the series.
Uhh Laughing Octopus is one of the best boss fights in the series. And the end game boss fights rules. But 3/4 of the BB corps are totally forgettable.
"Hello Snake, its me the rando arms dealer with the monkey. I've sensed you've just defeated a boss, so let me now spend ten straight minutes telling you this woman's copious Tragic Backstory, which I of course somehow know."
It's interesting because the Laughing Octopus fight was what they wanted to do for Decoy Octopus in MGS1, but the technology wasn't there. I wonder if that's part of why it's such a good fight while the rest of the BBs just kinda suck
MGS4 made me want to pull a Kurt Russell in The Thing and pour my drink in the disc tray, which would've been a bad idea as the PS3 was borrowed from somebody.
The first 3 MGS's felt really sincere and genuine, MGS4 just felt like a hollow cynical hackjob. Altogether it just felt like an awful anime to me, whereas the first three games had a nicer balance with the whole "Western pop culture through a Japanese lens" thing
I will agree that in terms of raw gameplay, what little stealth we got was excellent, it's just a shame that the mission design was also utter doodoo with long stretches of time wasted on stupid gimmicks and setpieces
keeps getting virtuous mission confused with virtual mission
So, about that...
Warning: MGSV spoilers
Warning: Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/MGSV/comments/fjb0ae/z/flb19a7
Basically my exact reaction lol. The Boss is so pretty. But yeah, Kojima has major anxieties about women trying to trick him by making him horny. The one thing I will say he's capable of writing about maturely is motherhood, and you see a little more of it in 4. I'm not saying his takes or characters concerning motherhood are amazingly insightful, but he can at least keep it in his pants long enough to make a coherent character moment.
Kojima is a huge pervert. Meryl's ass in MGS1, pee shots of Emma/Otacon in 2/1, Raiden/Volgin scene-hint (because people hated Raiden and Raiden had the president's crotch-grab "YOU'RE A MAN!?". It's a Japan thing, they're big perverts like that.
There's not a bad game in the series. MGS4 is awesome in its own strange way. When you get to it, think of everything from Snake's perspective: an old man who's absolutely sick of this shit but knows he's gotta do it. That's Snake, that's Kojima, that's you.
Peace Walker is the all-around best game in the series.
MGSV is the most fun game in the series by far, and you should embrace the sandbox. The story has some interesting themes and a few great moments, but is clearly unfinished. Still worth it though.
And then you gotta play Death Stranding, which isn't really like MGS at all, but is extremely Kojima and I absolutely adore it. Like MGS, it requires a very particular headspace. If you can get into the slow pace, it's an experience like no other.
Peace Walker is the all-around best game in the series
This is actually the first time I've heard someone express this opinion. Peace Walker usually gets shit on from what I've seen. I was gonna play it after MGS4 regardless because it's included in the HD collection.
And then you gotta play Death Stranding
I played about three hours of Death Stranding before I played any of the MGS games and I couldn't really get into it but after playing these games and hearing people talk about all the ways traversal becomes much easier later on, I think I'll give it another shot when I'm through with this series.
IMO, Peace Walker has the best classic MGS gameplay (MGSV is a whole different beast), the most interesting personal story, and the best politics.
Death Stranding is very much a not-for-everyone sort of game. Traversal becomes easier because you make it easier, but if you didn't like the challenge of climbing over rocks and wading through streams I'm not sure DS is the game for you.
I played about three hours of Death Stranding before I played any of the MGS games and I couldn’t really get into it but after playing these games and hearing people talk about all the ways traversal becomes much easier later on, I think I’ll give it another shot when I’m through with this series.
That really depends on if people are still playing, if not you should expect to have to grind materials/farm materials to build roads (the second "Act"/area is the biggest in the game) to make travel easier. Otherwise you'll be hoofing it or motorcycling it across the land by yourself. The whole "gimmick" of Death Stranding and Kojima's point was that people need to work together (hence the "strand system" he made where things YOU [or others build] is put into YOUR [or THEIR] game on logging into the servers for you to help upgrade/manage or use with the "likes" system giving likes if you sue someones stuff).
It's very divisive, so it's not for everyone. But if you've played Euro Truck Simulator 2/American Truck Simulator and like delivering things while zoning out, it'll be good with Kojima's typical batshit storyness for you.
I just beat it, people are definitely still playing. I will say that it's not gonna appeal to everyone. Personally I loved slowly exploring a pretty, empty landscape and trying not to fracture sam's tailbone getting up a mountain and looking at BB swim around the hot spring and reading rambling emails making dubious claims about ancient egypt.
Yeah, there was a lot of backlash from PS4 players on release because it wasn't MGS-2:Spiritual Sequelaloo. But PC players have played ETS2/ATS to where they know if that style of gameplay is for them.
I enjoyed it in a slow-burn way, but there is a LOT of extraneous deliveries that you don't really need to do if you just want to go through for Kojima's filmic batshittery story.
I could never get past the button mashing torture qte as a kid, so I just replayed missions over and over to fulton people and make my base as good as possible.
The American part didn't bother me so much just because Big Boss and FOX are the CIA and everyone on this site should know why America would want to sabotage the USSR's nuclear capabilities. And then it's revealed after the credits that Ocelot is working for the American faction of the Philosophers to get the Legacy so I never had an issue with that. It just seemed like Khruschev just didn't want to get couped and Volgin wanted to blow up the West because. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention when they explained it.
The lack of Russian accents is actually explained. Sokolov says Snake's Russian is superb. They're all speaking Russian for the most part, Gramin has the accent because he and Snake are speaking English in that scene. It's just translated for the audience.
Weird ramble that you hated it until:
After finally beating at 19 hours, I can say this is one of my favorite games ever, and one of my favorite final bosses in any games ever. I admit I cried at the cemetery cutscene. Also I think the Boss is super hot.
Congrats on finding the best one in the series good. The 1960's Bond Spoof elevated it past 1 (which was THE BEST until 3). It's no where but down now in terms of story because after a lot of fans liked 3 enough, Kojima felt the need to tie EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING) to the Boss, the Patriots, etc.
4 is a slog, because Kojima (at that point) was depressed because he was chained to the series and Konami wanted a sequel. Peace Walker (which is canon "5", so play that after 4) is alright, but it's clear it was a PSP limited Monster Hunter co-op clone, so solo-wise, it'll be a slog (too many same-y missions) but story-wise it was ok but not great.
Ground Zeroes is probably third on my series ranking, despite being a "demo" for The Phantom Pain simply because it was very tightly paced and edited (the opening is still great).
The Phantom Pain is alright and if you hated the controls for the first 4 (well 5, with Peace Walker) you'll probably enjoy this one the most in terms of controls and gameplay, but the rushed/development hell and Konami-Kojima fiasco-drama ruins the story, especially right after the really good Ground Zeroes.
GZ should have set the tone for Phantom Pain.
It sort of did. Then the Konami drama happened. :( The one regret I have from that is that Kojima didn't put the base in single-player (you can explore it in MGO, but given hackers/etc. in that, it's probably not worth playing that), because seeing it in Daytime was neat.
I do wish Konami would release the engine to fans (especially since after this year, they're finally dropping the Fox Engine for PES, so I guess they finally made their money back from Kojima's investment in trying to make a middleware engine? He wanted to license it before Konami got pissed about the amount of money being dumped into making it) because seeing the terrain editor/etc. shown in previews was neat and having that to "fix" the game (mission 51 especially) would be nice to have.
Yes, yes it does. Kojima liked Monster Hunter (and Assassin's Creed) so they featured in. If you do a leap of faith from a certain point on one of the maps (or maybe this is Portable Ops) you'll get a new box stealth grab.
Have a look thru this series if you want to spend a few hours on a deep dive into the events.
https://youtu.be/kOMaFzPVXpY
https://youtu.be/IaoBkAtrkJI
https://youtu.be/IaoBkAtrkJI
That dude has a lot of MGS content.
MGS3 is where the story and characters start to get a bit goofy, and MGS4 is over-the-top schlock. The gameplay is good, but this is where I lost interest.
Oh shit people consider 4 the worst of the series? It’s the only one I haven’t played lol. I’ve been meaning to get around to it but I’ll have to buy a copy and dust off my ps3 because it’s not available on ANY OTHER PLATFORM AT ALL
If you have a PS4, you can play it on PSNow.
Streaming the game is nowhere near ideal, but just know that's an option
MGS4 is my favorite because I don't rly like stealth games lol
also the story is pure fanservice/payoff for 1-3, how have you not played it yet it wraps up all the loose ends from the series go do it now so good!!!1!
All of the complaints I hear about MGS4 is that the story is really dumb and that it has 2008 ps3 graphics and art style that makes everything brown and gray and shiny like it's covered in oil
That's gamers being gamers honestly. The story is dumb. It also made me cry. So yeah, it's an MGS game.
If you have a good enough PC, you can probably emulate it. But yeah, 4 is a slog because it's Depressed Kojima. Act 3, especially is awful because it's a tailing mission.
It's not HORRIBLE, but it's just... painful to play after the other 3 before it.
If you don't emulate it though and get it on PS3, look into the downgrade patch (unless you want the achievements/trophies for playing) to play MGO. I dunno if there is a playerbase still playing it, but someone reverse engineered it to where you can play it, compared to MGS3's which was shut down and not revived like Biohazard: Outbreak File #1-2's was.
Note she means Metal Gear for the original MSX back in the 1980's, not Metal Gear SOLID which was PSX 1999. The MSX MG's have aged pretty poorly. Not because of graphics or controls, but just because the core gameplay loop isn't strong enough. MGS perfected that loop.
