The whole "monster represents depression" schtick has ruined 95% of horror fiction, but it's still pretty effective in capturing the horror of post-industrial America.

Despite Vice City ripping off the movie wholesale, it took an actual video game adaptation to get the whole "so sick of winning" satire of the movie.

I like John Woo man, what can I say?

Michael Mann but instead of borderline gayness we get hypermasculinity in full death-drive mode

2013

The ultimate parody of retarded video game design

Miss the days of goofy ass FMV games

Faux-surrealist drivel. Seriously, this equivocation of surrealism with 'wackiness' and 'trippiness' in contemporary culture needs to fucking stop. Surrealism is Stroheim and Chaplin, not this hot garbage.

Important in the revival of 1980s aesthetics, so it's culturally significant, if destructive. Still, wasn't this whole game's 'message' summed up in a cutscene in MGS1?

Perfect game for the digital epoch, mimics the hyper-acceleration of thought and liquid flow of information that the human race is currently experiencing.

Like all truly visionary works of art, it takes time for the audience to calibrate to what the artist is attempting to communicate. I may prefer MGS2, but this is Kojima's masterpiece.

Kojima's most cynical and scathing criticism of video game fans. The stealth 'playground' is a detention center modeled on Guantanamo Bay/Abu Ghraib, the collectable items are recordings of the horrific rape and torture of two teenagers, and you're on a rescue mission to save said teenagers because they might just spill the beans on this whole extra-governmental, Geneva Convention breaking private military enterprise you're running in the middle of the ocean.

This critique was expanded and formalised in a more sophisticated way in The Phantom Pain, but damn, do I appreciate the sheer vitriol of this game, Kojima held back NONE of his contempt for the average Metal Gear fan in this one.