I don't know how this got made to be honest. So when people talk about Kojima as a brand all his own, I think it's important to understand that somehow, this pop culture philosopher military nerd got a triple A budget and used it to make art games. If you strip out the precision and polish and hours upon hours of voice acting from these games, the Metal Gear franchise would be most at home on itch.io with the other Esoteric Weird Games.

MGS2 is the pinnacle of that. Konami said "hey Kojima, here's an enormous budget and huge team, make a sequel to that game everyone likes" and Kojima said, "Sure but its going to be a game about how none of them really want a sequel to MGS1 and how such a thing is intellectually impossible," and Konami went, "whatever dude so lone as it sells."

And boy howdy did it sell. And singlehandedly define the PS2 generation and its capabilities.

Anyway, four stars. Snake and Otacon's handshake is the konami code.

I have no idea if I want to rate this 5 stars or 2, because it's flawed as hell. We have here maybe the apex of Kojima's weird uncomfortable sexism. We also have the apex of his gamecraft. It has sequences that are unearned and dreadful and make me frustrated, because Kojima, you asshole, I know you can do better! You gave us the Boss for god's sake, I know you got it in you!

But it also has maybe one of The Actual More Affecting Sequences In Metal Gear, with The Hospital Sequence. Not the opening one, the other one. Yeah.

There is so much here. To me, this feels like the final draft to MGS4's original conceit. The hugeness, the refinement, the emotional growth, the maturity of the themes. I said that MGS4 was like a creator tantrum. With MGSV, I feel like I'm in perfect sync with Kojima and the pathos he wants to lay out. In the same way MGS4 made me rolls my dang eyes out of my head, MGSV works. For someone who has been influences by Metal Gear for most of my life, MGSV feels like... a moment of mutual respect.

Screw it, five stars.

This one is so solidly an emotional precursor to the actual trauma of MGSV, it's hard to measure it on its own story merits. I enjoyed it greatly, however a lot of it just feels like Kojima Productions flexing how much they can pull off with the PSP. The fact this game exists, that it's functional, that it pulls off everything it does, that the multiplayer works so well, that there are literally so many fucking mechanics the game is still lightly tutorializing you hours and hours into the story, it's incredible. How did they do this?

Like here's the thing about Hideo Kojima, is that in an industry that hemorrhages talent, Kojima has been actively making games since before 19fucking88. And it shows. Give him a talented team and he can make absolute goddamn magic. That is what really sets him apart.

And MGS:PW is not my favorite Metal Gear but it is the apex of that talent. This game is a flex.