I understand now why Kojima is so insistent that MGSV isn't actually "5". This is clearly the culmination of the series, the final and total statement after which anything else is just an elaboration on an existing theme. MGS4 is so thoroughly and maddeningly crafted from hundreds of layers of metanarrative, it almost doesn't matter that the actual play you do is only barely present within. All previous Metals Gear Solid were in a sense sequences of set pieces that blended the gap between play and cinema, so it makes sense that this goes hardest of all on the overlap. All the cutscenes are playable, and all the moments of play are just moments between cutscenes.

This isn't a complaint, by any stretch of the imagination. Without any shred of irony, I'll say I consider Kojima an auteur and this game a masterpiece. From the opening, where you flip through FMV channels including David Hayter being fictionally interviewed as David Hayter, it sets out to reproduce, parody, and critique a whole world of information technology and the culture produced by it. And somehow it succeeds! This one relatively short game embeds within itself all the manic violence on the battlefield of thought that the characterizes the 20th century. Even its labyrinthine plot with double-cross atop double-cross serves as a mirror of the care and attention that must be paid to understand the complexities of our own world.

As a cinematic experience, I prefer Metal Gear Solid 3. In terms of raw fun of play, I'll always pick Metal Gear Solid V. But as an art object, it's hard to imagine a game more complete in itself or absurdly competent in its work than Metal Gear Solid 4.

Incredibly cute and sweet, but also unimaginably tender and surprisingly profound. The lowkey drama found throughout A Year of Springs is something that’s not quite easy to see. Like, there are a lot of cozy games, games that in some ways have similar vibes to this one, but which couldn’t be more different in terms of the effect that cozyness has on the player. When I play something like Animal Crossing I don’t feel at all like when I played this. One feels like a neverending winter with unlimited hot chocolate while the other feels like holding hands with your favorite person on a rainy day, each doing different things but nevertheless feeling like that company is the better part of the experience. I don’t know.

I love how every chapter plays with the dialogue mechanics, from the multiple ways you can affect the story in the first one, in contrast to how the state of mind of the main character in the third one basically locks you from diverging from the one path, to the second one, which has one BIG choice masquerading as multiple little ones. But that works in service to the writing and the very human and serene way the relationships between these three women changes over the spring. I was left wanting more, but in a good way. Have you eve watch a movie and felt that you just wanted like a sitcom made out of it? Like, fine, the story is done, but you just couldn’t let the characters go? I wanna know not necessarily what happens next, but what these people do with their lives. I don’t care if it’s boring, I just wanna know. In a matter of an hour the developer made me care, made relate, made cry and made miss three people that don’t exist but I have met.

Genuinely one of the best games I’ve ever played.