Awesome game. I'm glad everything is finally wrapped up, the gameplay was the best yet and I can't think of many movies that offer that much entertainment and polish in production values. A brilliant end to the series, which makes me happy and sad at the same time. I'm glad they didn't go out and milk it, like some EA whore and that we finally get closure, but on the other hand, if they kept remaking the series over and over with little tweaks, I'd still buy the damn things.
The Kernel wrote:So I just finished playing MGS4 and I have a few observations...
1) Graphics were amazing. Not from a sheer beauty level like Crysis (although there was some of that certainly), but mostly because of the quality of the animation and action on screen. Dozens of people engaged in combat was handled flawlessly; a lot of love went into the motion capture and it shows.
The polish and attention to detail. That's what Kojima is all about.
2) The story, while not nearly as tight and interesting as Snake Eater, wrapped up a lot of the craziness of MGS2 quite well. I didn't feel for the characters nearly as much as Eva, Adam/Ocelot, Boss and Naked Snake, but it was still well done for the most part.
I find MGS3 is quite a unique one, along with MGS itself. While they are still part of one main plot, they can stand on their own very well and are quite self-contained. Plus, MGS3 is just so different to the others, but not in a way that pissed fans off like replacing Snake with Raiden.
3) Sunny pissed me off. What the hell was this character doing in the game?
She kind of saved the day, dontchaknow?
4) Although the overarching story was interesting about the AI cluster, the neverending war economy, pulling back the curtain to find the shell of Zero, etc, the ins and outs were really strange to say the least. Why have Ocelot pretend to be Liquid? Why did Naomi behave the way she did? What was Vamp's agenda? Why was Big Boss sitting around in a hospital waiting to be awakened?
All of these things are explained using overly convoluted reasoning which assumes that the grand architect for this master plan was a grade A moron. Surely there were easier ways for the former Patriots Eva, Ocelot and Solidus to take down the AI's than the plan they formulated. If they came up with a virus that could spread from GW, why didn't they just upload it to begin with? Why go through all the bullshit? Why do ANY of this?
Play the game again. You must've missed something (read: all the plot). If it was just as easy as "Oh, hey Zero. Mind if I stick this floppy disk into your AIs and erase them before they control us?", I'm sure they would have done.
5) Someone else got Snake's girl. That pisses me off.
Snake has always been the unfortunate anti-hero. That this happened is not surprising, especially since Snake was potentially a walking WMD and going to die very soon anyway.
6) How the hell did Big Boss survive and what the hell has he been doing for the last 20 years since Zanzibar? Why didn't Eva revive him before this?
Been hiding away, trying to help out with the plan to take down the Patriots eventually. It took until Shadow Moses to set things in action. If I were him, I'd be keeping a low profile since pretty much the entire world would be after you. As for why Eva didn't revive him before, it's unclear.
7) Raiden was fine as a character, although his purpose in the game seemed rather superfluous and I'm not sure at all what he or Rosemary added.
Closure to their characters, perhaps? If they'd just left them out, that would be another question in your list. It's nice to actually know what happened to someone who rode a giant fucking submarine into Manhattan and killed the president.
8 ) Wow Otacon, your life sucks donkey balls. Not only did you come down with a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome and fall in love with your stepsister after banging your stepmother, you have had the last three women you had the hots for die rather suddenly.
True. On the plus side, he did bang Naomi. And that has got to be worth something, even if his otaku personality needed her to physically grab him to drop the hint.
9) Speaking of Naomi's death, why the fuck did she kill herself? Suddenly the nanomachines she spent her whole life researching are evil? Stopping her cancer from killing her is somehow immoral? Give me a fucking break.
Guilt.
10) Dreben, you aren't interesting or cool.
So you say, though I found his insights to be useful along with the weapons. And he has a monkey in a custom Stryker. Do
you have a monkey and a custom Stryker?
11) Dreben's monkey, you are mildly amusing. Suggest that when MGS4 "Supersistance" is released a bonus scene of you killing your master with one of the guns he sold to African militias to murder children would be both hilarious and ironic.
Or, for added irony, a Narc can and a fag. Andy Serkis should do the motion capture too.
12) The weapons available in the game are just fantastic. I actually want to play through the game again just to experiment with some different guns, especially in Act I.
Fuckin' A. There are more weapons and equipment in this than any FPS you can get. I knew from the start that I'd complete the game without really getting to use half of them, so I'm going to definitely make use of Drebin more in the harder replays and MGO.
13) The fight between Metal Gear Rex and Ray was FUCKING BADASS. I don't give a flying fuck how unrealistic Metal Gear are, this boss battle was BRILLIANT.
Indeed. Something I have long since wanted to do after MGS was pilot REX (and play as Cyborg Ninja which we sort of got, albeit, too short) and see RAY get fighting. Although I can't help but think RAY, a machine designed for amphibious assault and specifically to take out REX knock-offs, was beaten too easily by the original REX that was not only sitting in a hangar for nine years, but had the shit beaten out of it, an open cockpit, no radome and piloted by a guy with no real experience in the system.
I presume they took the tail off the RAY prototype to avoid sucking up loads of CPU time with its movement (and maybe Liquid wanted rid of it for his needs or whatever).
14) Mei Ling has a really nice ass. The one redeeming thing that Johnny/Akiba brought to the game was trying to give it a squeeze. A pity Meryl cockblocked him like that...
I expect the secret peeper game no doubt stuck in somewhere will get a lot of use given how fine the laydees are in the MGS-verse.
15) Speaking of Meryl and Akiba...yeah sure, you guys gunned down 40+ super soldiers armed with P90's from bad cover with nothing but a 50 caliber sniper rifle, and a couple of pistols. Totally believable.
I hear total realism is the order of the day in MGS. Psychic soldiers, walking nuclear tanks and the Illuminati-cum-AI network gone wrong is almost Tom Clancy material.
EDIT: Also, Harry Gregson-Williams once again proves how much of a fucking god he is when it comes to composing music. The track "Metal Gear Saga" that plays as you start the final fight with Liquid Ocelot brought a tear to my eye.
Wow Otacon, your life sucks donkey balls. Not only did you come down with a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome and fall in love with your stepsister after banging your stepmother, you have had the last three women you had the hots for die rather suddenly. 