Ok, first up, you're review is very, very long. If you expect people to read and get anything from it, I would suggest cutting it down significantly (I could be wrong in assuming you write with the motivation of someone reading, but that's the only actual motivation I can see anyone having).
It jumped out at me early on the you used the term "interesting and dynamic" twice in a few lines, this kind of repetitiveness makes things difficult to read, especially large blocks of text (that was the only example that jumped out at me, but it was badly articulated enough for me to bring it up).
Everyone else seems to have pointed this out, but I will again because that's kind of annoying person I am, if you intend to label something as 'intelligent' make sure you have solid points, do not focus on game play elements you dislike as there is no doubt other people do like them, and you're implying they are unintelligent. People dislike this (even if they are). You also seem to be judging the game on an unfair bias, such as the limited movement of the character and his inability to replicate real life scenarios such as entering the opening as you lowered yourself into the flat position. Hardly fair and if you judge all games by this criteria you must surely hate all games, especially platformers.
You also spend a lot of time talking about specific scenarios where things could work better, such as snake sneaking out behind boxes to see what's around the corner etc. You should avoid this and keep criticism more simple, especially when you are revisiting a point you have suggested earlier.
steamednotfried said:
Another disgustingly unintuitive ?puzzle?, is when you are faced with a fat man prancing about, laying bombs, on roller-blades. He is, on the whole, immune to bullets, but if you shoot him enough times in quick succession, he will fall and lay on the ground waiting for you to shoot him in his exposed head, only to take a little of his health before the process repeats. How is the player supposed to know to do this? There is no way of working this out with your brain, you could only discover it out my accident. And so, what?s the point in presenting it as a challenge at all? The puzzle can only be solved by luck, and so it is not interesting! So do not waste our time with it! But the one thing that frustrates me more then the development team thinking they can insult my intelligence with such a task, is that many of the writers for popular videogame websites and magazines pay particular praise to these boss battles. What is wrong with them?
If that wasn't obvious, the is always to option of calling someone on (I forget what it's called) the nano machine phone thing, and they will tell you or at least hint at the bosses weakness, although you have listed a particularly weak example as if you shoot the fat man with an rifle or automatic weapon, you can see him getting pushed back and losing his balance, suggesting that if you hit him consistantly he will fall down. This whole point is fairly poorly researched, you clearly didn't give this particular boss fight any time or attention. It also suggests that you haven't played through the entire game (and possibly not the entire first game) as there were far more, for lack of a better word, retarded bosses than the fat bomb man like the undead vampire man with magic water that for some reason can't die or the phsycic that makes you switch the controller port, ruining the immersion of the game.
Finally you overuse loaded language, describing flaws as ?crippling? or ?terrible? at the top of the paragraph but failing to demonstrate how they are anything more than minor annoyances (such as the AI being unpredictable, bad camera angles etc). These problems are not unique to metal gear solid and certianly do not render the game completely unplayable. You come across as having a blind hatred for the game and seem to eager to highlight minor issues, making the whole reveiw feel shallow.
Alright thats it, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on other games, because I actually tend to agree that the whole metal gear franchise is immensely overrated, and everyone likes hearing people say what they think.
