NGL this game is completely and utterly carried by it's story and creativity.
Been wanting to get into this franchise for a while but could never start cuz the franchise never got ported over to modern consoles, and then I was hoping to play it when the master collection finally got announced.
And then the master collection sucked, so I just like, yknow, (legally) downloaded it on my computer through very normal and (legal) means.
I knew I was gonna love this franchise but this one was gonna be a bit rough, cuz I was born in 2006 and pretty much grew up with the "every video game babies you" era, anything before the 2000's usually bothers the fuck out of me. I can't get into most older games cuz of how difficult and tedious they are. yes I know the reasons for why they were made like that, but that doesn't stop me from still hating it.
This game definitely suffers from the tedium. I had to use a walkthrough pretty much the whole way through (sorry) to make sure I didn't miss a key item that would completely ruin my playthrough if I didn't pick up, bullshit things were thrown at you for no reason such as off screen turrets in sections without your radar, janky enemies and mines sometimes being in random spots indoors with no indication that you should've checked for them, leading me to paranoidly use my mine detector almost every time I entered a room afterwards. Oh and the back tracking, not a huge amount but definitely a notable amount of useless backtracking (going up and down the metal gear at least four times so you could coordinate the keys at the end made me lose my MIND)
I didn't like most of the bosses either, they were all either really stupid and tedious or just bullshit jank (looking at you metal gear rex and liquid snake), the only bosses I really liked were Grey Fox (which was actually super fun) and the Raven rematch and so, other than a few simple stealth portions, I spent most of the time kind of just annoyed at the game. Never mad enough to give up, it wasn't impossible, and when it was I used save states (sorry. I don't play games to challenge myself, life is already hard enough I just wanna chill).
If this game was purely gameplay, akin to the original Metal Gear, where there's little to no dialogue and you're just walking around shooting people, I would despise this. but instead it's a 10/10 because holy fuckkkk could I ANALYZE the plot of this game. Might be one of the best stories I've seen in any game ever. Every character is great, the themes are surprisingly deep for a video game (I tend to not find most "deep" games to actually be as deep as people say they are. consider Lisa, Omori, Nier automata, undertale, etc. Some of these games are go o d I guess but they're all really shallow from a thematic standpoint and get dickrided for some reason), in just ten hours (and really maybe 3-4 hours of story) in manages to tackle and juggle so many themes from the impacts of war, love, nature vs nuture, how our genes influence us, finding meaning in a world you feel abandoned by, and so many more. It's absolutely beautiful and I feel like I could really sit down for hours and pick this story apart, it's wonderful.
And of course the other amazing aspect of this game is how unique it is from a meta standpoint. Kojima is completely unafraid to be different. The world is nonsensical yet grounded, combining an ultra gritty, realistic war plot with seemingly random fantasy elements. There's a psychic? Sure. I'm okay with that, that can happen, that's cool. Or the little details, like of course everyone talks about how awesome Psycho Mantis is (he wasn't fun to fight but whatever), but there's other things. Characters will very casually break the fourth wall a surprising amount of times, like Ocelot asking you why you won't save before he tortures you or Meryl's codex frequency being found on the physical disc of the game, which was annoying to figure out for me who didn't own the game physically but once I looked it up I couldn't even blame the devs, that shit's awesome.
To imagine that this game is usually not even considered the best MGS game is insane and I'm so excited to play 2 and 3. Based on what I heard about 4 I'm excited for that too, most of the complaints seem to be about the LACK of gameplay. Ok? Sign me up man, I'm 100% invested I could watch 1,000 hours of cutscenes and be satisfied.
Been wanting to get into this franchise for a while but could never start cuz the franchise never got ported over to modern consoles, and then I was hoping to play it when the master collection finally got announced.
And then the master collection sucked, so I just like, yknow, (legally) downloaded it on my computer through very normal and (legal) means.
I knew I was gonna love this franchise but this one was gonna be a bit rough, cuz I was born in 2006 and pretty much grew up with the "every video game babies you" era, anything before the 2000's usually bothers the fuck out of me. I can't get into most older games cuz of how difficult and tedious they are. yes I know the reasons for why they were made like that, but that doesn't stop me from still hating it.
This game definitely suffers from the tedium. I had to use a walkthrough pretty much the whole way through (sorry) to make sure I didn't miss a key item that would completely ruin my playthrough if I didn't pick up, bullshit things were thrown at you for no reason such as off screen turrets in sections without your radar, janky enemies and mines sometimes being in random spots indoors with no indication that you should've checked for them, leading me to paranoidly use my mine detector almost every time I entered a room afterwards. Oh and the back tracking, not a huge amount but definitely a notable amount of useless backtracking (going up and down the metal gear at least four times so you could coordinate the keys at the end made me lose my MIND)
I didn't like most of the bosses either, they were all either really stupid and tedious or just bullshit jank (looking at you metal gear rex and liquid snake), the only bosses I really liked were Grey Fox (which was actually super fun) and the Raven rematch and so, other than a few simple stealth portions, I spent most of the time kind of just annoyed at the game. Never mad enough to give up, it wasn't impossible, and when it was I used save states (sorry. I don't play games to challenge myself, life is already hard enough I just wanna chill).
If this game was purely gameplay, akin to the original Metal Gear, where there's little to no dialogue and you're just walking around shooting people, I would despise this. but instead it's a 10/10 because holy fuckkkk could I ANALYZE the plot of this game. Might be one of the best stories I've seen in any game ever. Every character is great, the themes are surprisingly deep for a video game (I tend to not find most "deep" games to actually be as deep as people say they are. consider Lisa, Omori, Nier automata, undertale, etc. Some of these games are go o d I guess but they're all really shallow from a thematic standpoint and get dickrided for some reason), in just ten hours (and really maybe 3-4 hours of story) in manages to tackle and juggle so many themes from the impacts of war, love, nature vs nuture, how our genes influence us, finding meaning in a world you feel abandoned by, and so many more. It's absolutely beautiful and I feel like I could really sit down for hours and pick this story apart, it's wonderful.
And of course the other amazing aspect of this game is how unique it is from a meta standpoint. Kojima is completely unafraid to be different. The world is nonsensical yet grounded, combining an ultra gritty, realistic war plot with seemingly random fantasy elements. There's a psychic? Sure. I'm okay with that, that can happen, that's cool. Or the little details, like of course everyone talks about how awesome Psycho Mantis is (he wasn't fun to fight but whatever), but there's other things. Characters will very casually break the fourth wall a surprising amount of times, like Ocelot asking you why you won't save before he tortures you or Meryl's codex frequency being found on the physical disc of the game, which was annoying to figure out for me who didn't own the game physically but once I looked it up I couldn't even blame the devs, that shit's awesome.
To imagine that this game is usually not even considered the best MGS game is insane and I'm so excited to play 2 and 3. Based on what I heard about 4 I'm excited for that too, most of the complaints seem to be about the LACK of gameplay. Ok? Sign me up man, I'm 100% invested I could watch 1,000 hours of cutscenes and be satisfied.