Not a complex shooter, but definitely the most visceral I've ever played. Very inspired by John Woo and Max Payne, resulting in a spectacle of slow-mo explosions and excessive dust clouds. But for some reason, Monolith decided to also take inspiration from The Ring, so this is also a horror game. It's not a very scary one though, meaning the player has to suffer through a bunch of down time designed to "build tension" instead of exploding clone soldiers into red mist with a shotgun. Still, the series never got better than this one.

It's unfortunate that every other developer, including Monolith, forgot the lessons this game taught. Every FPS should have the particle effects and clever AI of F.E.A.R, but apparently games aren't allowed to be fun anymore.

So insightful… so relevant… so boring…

Sorry, I’m not a fan of excessive exposition, especially when most of it occurs in the codec zone. Half these cutscenes can be removed, specifically the ones that reiterate info that we already know. Kojima assumes we have more questions than we actually do, often feeling the need to explain shit nobody was asking such as “why does Emma wear glasses?” As for Kojima “predicting the future”, while I doubt he was the only one at the time to have these observations about internet misinformation and the military industrial complex, it is still extremely forward thinking to include these topics in a big budget video game in 2001, especially when you consider this thing released 2 months after 9/11.

With Kojima you gotta take the good with the bad. You can’t have the inventive gameplay and clever meta-commentary without the drawn out conversations loaded with awkward dialogue.