And again I?m completely blameless since I almost never buy new games at full price, and if I do want to buy a brand new game I?m going to wait for the reviews to make sure it?s worth my money.
Ground Zeroes is Only Worth What You'll Pay For It
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
You're wrong. The gameplay in the Metal Gear Solid games is great. There's nothing wrong with it. Problem is, is it's now the ONLY good thing about them. Everything else is where the problems are, and that's what gets talked about.SKBPinkie said:
If Kojima were demoted to Gameplay Director and let competent people take over Producer and writing roles the games would be so much better off for it.
Are you being serious, or making a joke? Because I honestly can't tell. Seriously, try reading what you wrote out of context. The soldier pooping himself is a serious plot point in a serious game about the horrors of war, and this is why Metal Gear is a Staple of Gaming! I couldn't stop laughing as soon as I read that!Kopikatsu said:
Vampwizimp explained it better than I did, but there's a difference between breaking the tension and shattering it into a thousand pieces, gluing it back together, then shattering it again. MGS doesn't have light moments*, it splices together Dumb and Dumber with Hotel Rwanda and expects players to just accept it rather than getting emotional whiplash from the abrupt shifts in tone. There's a long road between "War never changes" and "poop jokes", and MGS4 hopped in a drag racer and went screeching from one end to the other and back before you could get comfortable at either end of the spectrum, or somewhere in between.Kopikatsu said:
*which are all over the place in Western media, too. I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that Western stories maintain a super-serious tone without break if they want to tell a serious story; other than the most poorly written grim-dark, everything from horror movies to thrillers to the aforementioned Hotel Rwanda have moments that aren't relentlessly serious, because that's just good pacing and storytelling that prevents apathy.
Well, the gameplay doesn't cause controversy. People don't tend to talk about things don't have cause controversy.SKBPinkie said:
The gameplay is amazing, but the controls tend to be bad. The exceptions being GZ, PW, and 4. For instance...in 3, you can't walk while crouching and it takes a long time to shoot your gun (You have to go into first person mode, hold square to draw the gun, aim, release square to fire, then repeat. This is actually intentionally since the game wants you to avoid combat, but eh). Circle also has about twenty eight different commands bound to it. Hold it hard to slit someone's throat, hold it semi-hard to hold them, mash hard to choke them, mash lightly to do something else, mash and press up to interrogate them, hold and analogue stick to throw them, hold and press triangle to disarm them, etc. There have been numerous times when I'm trying to interrogate someone and then accidentally slit their throat instead of just holding the knife against them.
Johnny ate food in a foreign country and got food poisoning because he lacked nanomachines to deal with all that for him. That's a serious issue in real life (not lacking nanomachines, the other bit) and a serious plot point, yes. More important back when people would die from dehydration due to Montezuma's revenge and such, but still kind of important.Fai57 said:
The issue with the MGS franchise is that as it continues, it is getting more self aware of it's wacky side, to the detriment of its sincerity.
What MGS is popular for is hardly unique to that series alone. Loads of popular Japanese games threw in the odd screwball moment from time to time. In Resident Evil 2 you could play as a giant block of tofu, and the Silent Hill games are famous for their optional joke endings.
Metal Gear Solid 1 was no different, apart from reveling in it a bit more. But it was always a quick little moment that took you by surprise. Now it's become routine, and each new entry has to out-quirk the former. That's why before we had small moments like the memory card being read and holding the controller to your arm, and now have dudes shitting in a barrel ba-dum tish.
When the quirk become routine it just becomes childish and boring. But I have the same problem with Platinum games and Suda 51.
What MGS is popular for is hardly unique to that series alone. Loads of popular Japanese games threw in the odd screwball moment from time to time. In Resident Evil 2 you could play as a giant block of tofu, and the Silent Hill games are famous for their optional joke endings.
Metal Gear Solid 1 was no different, apart from reveling in it a bit more. But it was always a quick little moment that took you by surprise. Now it's become routine, and each new entry has to out-quirk the former. That's why before we had small moments like the memory card being read and holding the controller to your arm, and now have dudes shitting in a barrel ba-dum tish.
When the quirk become routine it just becomes childish and boring. But I have the same problem with Platinum games and Suda 51.
Reading you mention Chris-chan was too much for today. I thought I forgot all about it.
Back on Topic; it's true that MGS gets away with some shit that we would bury any other game, and that's gradually changing from what I see, and it has to, since Kojima new approach to the series is turning it into more grounded elements.
I still want Hayter back, thou'.
Back on Topic; it's true that MGS gets away with some shit that we would bury any other game, and that's gradually changing from what I see, and it has to, since Kojima new approach to the series is turning it into more grounded elements.
I still want Hayter back, thou'.
What's even more telling to me than the fact that there is a market buying the game is that the publishers pushed it expecting a market for the game. That seems to say a lot concerning the franchise, its fanbase, and its developers. Whether the successful sale of a forty-dollar demo is a good thing or a bad thing is up to the consumer in the end, but it's unlikely other developers with less clout will be able to push games like this at similar prices.
As to measuring content, that's also up to the consumer. The problem is that it's difficult to do so before you make the purchase, and I imagine a demo for this game would run a little short.
As to measuring content, that's also up to the consumer. The problem is that it's difficult to do so before you make the purchase, and I imagine a demo for this game would run a little short.
Going from "endearing" to "creepy"... Yeah, that about sums up Metal Gear Solid for me at this point.
I fell in love with the series based on its rather cheesy, yet moderately serious, save-the-world scenario straight out of Michael Bay (they even used the same composer as "The Rock" for the sequel). It was wacky, tongue-in-cheek, yet played just straight enough to be intense and partially gripping. It was a blockbuster game that felt like a blockbuster movie.
Well, we're far from "The Rock" and we're far more into "Zero Dark Thirty" and "The Hurt Locker". I'm not having "fun" like I used to. It was only a few short years ago that Snake was skateboarding, backflipping off rockets, rubbing elbows with Pikachu and Kirby, and wrestling with robot ninja best friends and evil clone brothers, all with the amount of shock a man typically reserves for being told he has to wear a tie to work.
Now we're dealing with gang rape of underage girls, extremely graphic torture, and villains shoving explosive devices up a girl's wazoo.
Hideo Kojima may be many things, but someone with the maturity level and competence to tackle legitimately disturbing, brutal, and sensitive topics like that he really isn't qualified for. To paraphrase another journalist, it's shock value that doesn't feel earned in a series that hasn't proven it's capable of dealing with these issues in a mature way. It still parades its women around in cleavage-bearing jump suits (in the ARCTIC)... I don't expect it to tackle the issues it raises with any level of competency.
We used to have Silent Hill for that, before Konami ground that series into the dust. It was a dark, DARK series that dealt with all these issues... but it did so with such shocking maturity and sympathy that it earned my respect. It never made something as serious as child abuse, rape, suicide, depression, or torture something that merely existed to shock and "motivate" the player to get revenge... it was elements that helped inform the entire plot and became integral parts of each and every character and their personal journeys (either towards redemption or damnation).
Silent Hill dealt with those issues by saying so little and doing it well... more so than Metal Gear Solid ever did in any 50 minute-long cutscene.
I fell in love with the series based on its rather cheesy, yet moderately serious, save-the-world scenario straight out of Michael Bay (they even used the same composer as "The Rock" for the sequel). It was wacky, tongue-in-cheek, yet played just straight enough to be intense and partially gripping. It was a blockbuster game that felt like a blockbuster movie.
Well, we're far from "The Rock" and we're far more into "Zero Dark Thirty" and "The Hurt Locker". I'm not having "fun" like I used to. It was only a few short years ago that Snake was skateboarding, backflipping off rockets, rubbing elbows with Pikachu and Kirby, and wrestling with robot ninja best friends and evil clone brothers, all with the amount of shock a man typically reserves for being told he has to wear a tie to work.
Now we're dealing with gang rape of underage girls, extremely graphic torture, and villains shoving explosive devices up a girl's wazoo.
Hideo Kojima may be many things, but someone with the maturity level and competence to tackle legitimately disturbing, brutal, and sensitive topics like that he really isn't qualified for. To paraphrase another journalist, it's shock value that doesn't feel earned in a series that hasn't proven it's capable of dealing with these issues in a mature way. It still parades its women around in cleavage-bearing jump suits (in the ARCTIC)... I don't expect it to tackle the issues it raises with any level of competency.
We used to have Silent Hill for that, before Konami ground that series into the dust. It was a dark, DARK series that dealt with all these issues... but it did so with such shocking maturity and sympathy that it earned my respect. It never made something as serious as child abuse, rape, suicide, depression, or torture something that merely existed to shock and "motivate" the player to get revenge... it was elements that helped inform the entire plot and became integral parts of each and every character and their personal journeys (either towards redemption or damnation).
Silent Hill dealt with those issues by saying so little and doing it well... more so than Metal Gear Solid ever did in any 50 minute-long cutscene.
This doesn't really change the point, but the game sold for $30, not $40.
I've never gotten people's disdain for and ridicule of the series. I have nothing against other opinions, but they just make no sense to me. Yes, MGS has 80's action movie camp. That's the point. Yes it's self-referential. Yes it's VERY Japanese despite being marketed towards Americans.
But there's always been a sadder, darker story behind the cheese and camp, ever since the first MSX2 Metal Gear. POWs, child soldiers, sleeper agents. Oppression. Trauma. Betrayal. Lives and cultures forever ruined and tainted by nuclear war. Hell, whether a legit fear or not, the Patriots fully embody many people's fears of Big Brother or the Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, etc. We may not feel it anymore, since our history education is so bad, but the Cold War was a terrifying time for most of the world and profoundly affected our culture even down to books and cinema. I personally feel that while yes it is a bit goofy that the villain looks undead or whatever, the implied rape and the prison camp were never meant to be silly or tongue-in-cheek. They were meant to be dead serious, and someone who's followed the plot instead of emptily consuming the game for mechanics and the random cheesecake shot would see that.
I've never gotten people's disdain for and ridicule of the series. I have nothing against other opinions, but they just make no sense to me. Yes, MGS has 80's action movie camp. That's the point. Yes it's self-referential. Yes it's VERY Japanese despite being marketed towards Americans.
But there's always been a sadder, darker story behind the cheese and camp, ever since the first MSX2 Metal Gear. POWs, child soldiers, sleeper agents. Oppression. Trauma. Betrayal. Lives and cultures forever ruined and tainted by nuclear war. Hell, whether a legit fear or not, the Patriots fully embody many people's fears of Big Brother or the Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, etc. We may not feel it anymore, since our history education is so bad, but the Cold War was a terrifying time for most of the world and profoundly affected our culture even down to books and cinema. I personally feel that while yes it is a bit goofy that the villain looks undead or whatever, the implied rape and the prison camp were never meant to be silly or tongue-in-cheek. They were meant to be dead serious, and someone who's followed the plot instead of emptily consuming the game for mechanics and the random cheesecake shot would see that.
You thought the gameplay was bad in those games.SKBPinkie said:
I'm sorry.
I'll go play my shit games now, with their shit stories, in my shit house. And love it. Now where did I put Skyrim?
EDIT: If that came off as confrontational, the friendly version: no one talks about the gameplay because only bad gameplay is worth discussing. No one complains about a door that doesn't squeak or a used car that actually runs kinda nice and doesn't suck.
Oh sure. Lots of people challenged it. And every single one was shot down for being an sjw warrior, a no-fun loon, or "not getting" Kojima.Thanatos2k said:
Good gameplay can also be worth discussing. But if the story is all that people talk about, it's fairly clear which aspect of the game got the better treatment.Nieroshai said:
Plus - the other games I mentioned have decent stories. MGS doesn't even have that from the sounds of things.
Yeah, I'm not convinced. If you were to compare MSGs ridiculousness with popular serious anime/manga (both in general and critically) such as Evangelion or Code Geass, Death Note, or Attack on Titan, all those are extremely serious. There is some slapstick, but it is incredibly minor and used as character development and not plot development. A character being in mortal danger is more interesting when you like them first, which can be because they are somewhat goofy (for example potato girl from Attack on Titan), but that's different than the levels of extreme slapstick you see in MSG. Those levels are found only in some anime such a Naruto and Pokemon, often aimed at children or preteens, that have some seriousness. However, neither of those ever get as serious as MSG or the 4 anime I mentioned earlier.Kopikatsu said:
By the way, I am no expert on Eastern story tropes, I am just saying that I am not convinced because of what I've seen as limited as it was. Maybe though the problem is that video games are just not at the same level of quality as traditional media yet so he gets way too much praise for at least trying.
Not people on the internet. People on the dev team, who have meetings with him where he shows them the storyboards. THOSE are the people too cowardly to say "Really sir? This is a very bad idea to include in the game. Sorry sir, but having multiple 50 minute cutscenes in this part with very little gameplay in between ruins the pacing. Also, no, we are not implementing an up-skirt cutscene cam, and you are making everyone very uncomfortable."Dragonbums said:
I'm surprised Kojima hasn't gone full George Lucas mode and started re-releasing old Metal Gear Solid game "special editions" with nonsensical changes sprinkled throughout and more perverted camera angles, the ones he always wanted to include!
Again, you're just wrong. The gameplay always gets the better treatment. The problem with Metal Gear is it tries to pretend the story is SO VERY IMPORTANT when it's always so poorly done. You'd know this if you played the games, but you admit you have not, so you literally don't know what you're talking about.SKBPinkie said:
Nearly every critical review of Ground Zeroes has at least praised the gameplay, and every review for every other entry has done the same. The entire reason I play MGS is specifically for it's gameplay. The only one I didn't like was MGS4, which I found incredibly boring.SKBPinkie said:
The reason you don't see many many actual discussions about the gameplay is because they tend to be less interesting than discussions about the insane plot. If the plots were just normal-good or normal-bad, the discussion would probably be more even but this is a series with hours of cutscenes that attempt to tackle post-modern, "war is hell" and cyberpunk themes all at once whilst rapidly switching between fourth-wall breaking comedy, horror and tragedy.