What a masterpiece.

The amount of themes it tackles and how much it still relates to today. From personal themes to society themes. How digitized information from one person carry a tremendous amount of power. Also how censorship is (maybe) not all bad. Because of how many there are false information, half truths, brainrot information and content and how it regresses us. Individual has so much power to control the masses because the information is not validated. People dont want to find the truth, they stick with the 'truth' they want to hear. and because of that they fell into their little ponds. The digitized world is a doubled edged sword.

Raiden as a character is also well fleshed out with his problems and all. It talks about facing your past, and stop hiding behind 'false truths' that we use to not face the real problem ourselves.

Kojima is a fucking genius. He really is a visionary. The game is weird, controversial, funny, and profound at the same time.

Mais um metal gear que mostra porque essa franquia é tão especial

O jogo começa com você controlando o Solid Snake (o que achava que ia ser o padrão ate o fim do jogo) e ja nessa missão inicial que eu demorei umas 5 horas só nela ja temos diversos momentos que mostram o charme e a magia de um metal gear, apesar de que mais do que o primeiro jogo, é dificil de ter noção espacial de onde você esta e varias vezes ser visto e atingido por inimigos fora do seu campo de visão e eu como sou burro me perdi muito, fiquei um puta tempo andando e refazendo o mesmo caminho sem encontrar a Olga, que me daria o item necessário para avançar, que aliás, eu fiquei muito tempo caçando a ultima luz verde para atirar e tive que olhar na net para descobrir.

Depois disso tem uma momento legal mas que é meio confuso que é o discurso, você tem que avançar por salas sem ser pego antes do discurso acabar e tirar fotos do Metal gear Ray,um detalhe legal é que no computador o Otacon interage com todas as fotos que você tirou, a primeira foto dos marines foi facil mas principalmente a foto da frente esquerda é uma merda de tirar pois deve ser tirada de um angulo muito especifico que tem uma plataforma na frente que me confundia e eu achava que tinha que subir nela para tirar a foto, oque não é necessário.

Depois que vocé encerra essa missão você encarna outro personagem, o Raiden (protagonista do meu primeiro Metal Gear, o Rising) e é dito que Solid Snake esta morto, aqui começa a discussão do jogo sobre I.A e realidade virtual pois pelo que sabemos o Raiden é um soldado inteiramente treinado em uma realidade virtual (bruno rataque GAME) e essa é sua primeira missão de campo, esse também é o lugar que o resto do jogo vai se passar e em termos de gameplay e game design essa é bem melhor de ser esplorada do que o navio do inicio do jogo, já que a camera é um pouco mais distante, mesmo assim ainda rola de tomar uns tiros de inimigos que não estão na tela de vez em quando, tem uma parte similar daquela do navio que você tem que atirar em luzes verdes envoltos em c4, so que agora tem muitas e eu demorei seculos para passar disso.

O Codec ta mais encorpado que no primeiro jogo em que já era muito impressionante pela quantidade de dialogo opcional e obrigatório diferente mas uma coisa que eu gostava mais do codec do primeiro jogo era que era mais facil de receber dicas dos personagens quando se estava perdido e agora quando você checa o codec em busca de ajuda,tem grandes chances deles falarem sobre coisas nada a ver com o seu problema, como do que é feito a sua pistola por exemplo, detalhe bobo mas enfim.

O personagem que salva o jogo para o Raiden é a Rose, e uma das coisas maneiras do jogo era ir salvar e saber um pouco mais da relação dela com o Raiden,que vai ser importante para o final do jogo.

As boss batles e o combate em si desse jogos são bem parecidas com a do primeiro so que mais tranquilas, uma das coisas de gameplay que adicionaram nesse jogo foi o roll que é legal mas ele ser no mesmo botão que agacha é paia pois as vezes eu quero rolar e ele agacha e eu quero agachar e ele rola.

Depois você encontra Plisclin, que claramente é o Solid Snake e o Otacon
e o arco do Otacon nesse jogo é bem parecido com o do primeiro só que ao invés de ser a sniperwolf é a Emma, irmão dele e apersar de ser bem feito e legal ate esse momento do jogo me incomodava terem terem tantos repetecos do primeiro mas isso é justificado no final de uma maneira muito boa e o Otacon é um dos personagens mais legais de Metal Gear

Agora vou falar sobre o final fo jogo a conclusão da discussão sobre os Patriots que comtrolamo mundo na encolha e querem conter o excesso de informação na internet já que consideram isso uma ameaça ao poder deles, a forma como isso é trabalhado dentro do jogo é muito atual, falando sobre bolhas comunidades e a quantidades de lixo e informações falsas que existem nessas bolhas e o jeito que isso se liga a trama fo Raiden é muito bem feito e mostrado na imensa cutscene final do jogo e na conversa gigante no codec, a justificativa para terem tantos paralelos com a missão do primeiro jogo é justificado tanto pelo Revolver Ocelot quanto pelo Coronel e a Rose que você descobre que eram I.As o tempo todo e que essa missão foi orquestrada desde o inicio para treinar a I.A que vai controlar tudo, a justifativa do Oceleot é um pouco diferente pois ele fala que essa missão foi orquestrada com base em Shadow Moses para criar o proximo Solid Snake,
Essa discussão se liga muito bem com a do primeiro jogo quando é falado dos genes e sobre passar para frente oque não esta no D.N.A, a cultura, a poesia,a etica e etc.




.....a bunda do Raiden é imensa

this is a silent hill 2 type game where it's become so thoroughly analyzed, so heavily entrenched in video games discussion and culture, so deeply "canonized", that it feels trite to write anything new about it. the bar for entry for a worthwhile piece on this is so high, that it just feels like a pointless exercise, i presume outside of just serving as a stream of conscious diary as a means to unravel my own thoughts. because outside of that, what is there to say that hasn't already been said a million times in a million ways?

it's good! very good! probably not perfect, the stealth gameplay doesn't have enough differences from mgs1 to not make keeping your eye locked to the top right of the screen for 80% of the game the optimal way to play it, and the constant backtracking in the first half is annoying as hell. i'm still not particularly convinced on "stealth games" as a concept (the most i have been convinced was hitman 3, which is maybe just because there's so many systems and ways to approach anything that you can direct it the way you want and ignore everything you don't want to do). in some ways this gets closer to what I want with mechanisms like tranq darts you actually want to use and first person aiming (both very welcome additions), but then it undoes that with the very aggressive search parties and their generally ridiculous cooldown times. like, i know this is to discourage being found, but i think it goes too far, and i often found myself just running into enemies trying to die & respawn the second i was spotted. spending 20 seconds getting shot at and respawning is often a more preferable outcome than sitting in some corner or vent or cabinet for over a minute, wasting ammo and health if you get caught, all of which feels like a misstep in player direction. maybe this is because i played it on too hard of a difficulty for my own personal enjoyment, but I played on normal, so, like, whatever. i am realizing though that although i'm deeply fascinated by how kojima writes, i'm not generally enthralled by his gameplay systems, so i'm probably going to have to get over my inner "normal is the intended experience and either direction is a compromise" and just play future MGS games on easier modes where they exist.

as far as narrative, yep, it's good, but you don't need me to tell you that. being light with specifics here since it's probably experienced best without knowing in advance everything it's planning to do (and as previously stated, i dont think i could give a read on this that wouldn't be better expressed by a million other essays), but obviously pretty much everything from the back half is stellar and really retroactively makes the first half much better than just being ok. the story goofiness seems to be remarked on a lot, but even if i prefer the more all-out flavors of something like killer7 or southland tales more, i think it's fine that it's in here. if you know anything about my preferences i'm a huge fan of wild tonal shifts, so even though i'm not huge on the parts here that resemble a schlocky action movie, i can appreciate their existence causing the more heart-to-heart moments to stand out more. one thing i didnt expect though is the complete absence of a desire to play metal gear rising lol, why do we need more raiden and why does it need to be more epic funny flashy action. i'm sure theres more, but the way that game gets sold makes it seem like its gotta be built off of a complete misreading of the text here lol, but whatever, that's a side tangent.

it does suck how much of this game has leaked out into the internet, making it one of the first games to join the ranks of "lots of the best scenes have been spoiled by default by memes" where itd later be joined by stuff like undertale, just a shame when that happens really. so many audio clips that are heard best in the context of this game, regurgitated through "top 10 craziest video game moments" videos and videos titled things like "this game PREDICTED the internet..." maybe there's something to be said about the internet itself preserving all the minutia of this game, and constantly bombarding anyone remotely interested in video games with it, but i'm not smart enough to do more than a vague gesture towards it and go "wow just like some of the themes that are explored in this game!"

looking forward, i'm still definitely going to play mgs3, excited since i know a lot less about it, and my further figuring out that i like kojima's stories but not so much his gameplay has made me even more curious to try his 90s ADVs snatcher and policenauts. i first touched the metal gear series by playing like 15 hours of mgsv when i was like 14 and tapping out not even that far in when i got to some tank mission that was too hard or something, so i feel like im gonna be happy to finally loop back around with that one eventually probably in quite a while, even if i have noticed that people do kinda put the first 3 mgs games on a pedastal above the rest of the series. its been said a million times before but kojima really did change how video game narratives get done, and its funny to see criticisms that they're too much like movies when it seems like one of his main hallmarks is weird robust & innovative gameplay systems lol, and still being one of the only game storytellers that can actually tie those two halves together with any degree of competency or originality

Despite hating stealth gameplay, I look back on MGS2 with nothing but fondness for every element of it, simply because I got incredibly invested in the narrative. That to me demonstrates the potential of video games as an interactive storytelling medium; I could appreciate how the gameplay and narrative fed into one another even without appreciating the former in isolation.

People will deride Kojima's games for being cutscene-heavy, saying that he just wants to make movies or whatever, but I think that the MGS series at least is exploring avenues of expression unique to video games. There's a texture and richness to the world brought about by the codec calls and simulated environments, a verisimilitude that makes the player that much more invested. I don't enjoy stealth gameplay at all, but at the same time, I feel a cutscene compilation would not serve as a replacement for actually playing MGS2.

Of course, maybe this is all just rationalization on my part -- maybe I'm just shallow and willing to power through gameplay I hate if I enjoy the writing in a game. Perhaps I'm the one failing to understand the synergy between mechanics and narrative. Either way, though, I loved Metal Gear Solid 2.