Is the Metal Gear Solid series overrated?

[CharrHearted]

There are cool things going on here, but none have to do with the gameplay: it just consists of running from place to place and not shooting.

I fire a few shots, and the soldiers are alerted. I kill of a few of them before reinforcements arrive. I die. Otakon shouts my name.

Again. I fire a few shots, and camp in a darkened corridor that converges with the street. I kill a few more soldiers--this is all bread-and-butter, tiresome stealth stuff--before moving down the street. Another cutscene happens somewhere--I may have the sequence of these confused. Now I glide through an alleyway, emerging onto the street where I pick off a few soldiers crouched behind sandbags. After that, I reticently cross the street--bullets are flying off in every direction--before picking off a few more soldiers, like every action game I've ever played before finding a confusingly-place stairwell that leads to a new area.

Citizen Kane to know it isn't). Any suggestions?

Ok you know what, do you have any idea why it's called tactical *espionage* action?

IT'S A GODDAMN SNEAKING GAME! you don't kill soldier your tranq them in the face and SNEAK your way around for god sake. How can you know know this? IT isn't suppose to be centred around bloody action ,you're suppose to use your eyes and ears to hide and crawl to safety, Like in MGS 1 on the box it says "If he enemy sees you they will call reinforcements, sneaking is your best option" somewhere along those lines. And it isn't packed with cutscenes, you should be enjoying the detail it shows, not to mention the gameplay is far from the worst and the story is GOOD!Stop complaining and just enjoy a good game.

 

[Thunderhorse31]

I don't think the first three are overrated, but Metal Gear Solid 4 is. I feel like the majority who people who played it hadn't played the other three and deemed it 'best game evarz!1! best story evah!1!' even though it destroyed the series and blew it into a million pieces just to be sure.

Frankly, I don't think anyone who liked MGS4 is a true fan of the series - call it elitism, or whatever, but eh. Kojima lost all my respect as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: MGS3 is one of the best story-driven games ever, imo. MGS1/2/3 all have their flaws; the story can be kind of messy and sometimes it doesn't really make sense, the gameplay isn't that great, but the overall arching plot (of the first three) is pretty damn good, and the characters, for the most part, are very well developed and/or at least interesting. The voice acting doesn't hurt, either - MGS1's voice acting is still probably the best in the series and that came out around the time of reaaally bad voice acting in gaming.

Agree with all of those points (MGS4 most overrated, MGS1 most memorable dialogue, etc.), but I wouldn't exactly say anyone who liked 4 isn't a "true fan." A lot of people liked that game for whatever reason, it's probably best to just leave it at that.

Though again, I too felt it spiraled completely out of control with the dialogue/story/characters/etc. The gameplay? Sure, that was the best in the series. But the setpieces were so contrived and wonky. It just doesn't stack up to the previous games - one thing in particular bothered me: Liquid Snake, Revolver Ocelot, The Boss, etc. are among the best antagonists in gaming, period. Liquid Ocelot, however? One of the dumbest. But that's just my opinion.

Anyway, on topic, is MGS overrated as a whole? Maybe a little. But only because of MGS4.

 

[jrubal1462]

They're not overrated for the people that like it!
I've loved every hour that I've poured into those stories (especially MGS3...the plot, the sneaking/stabbing, the characters, the MUSIC!...every once in awhile I still think of the ending.....what a hero... )
The MGS games, and that one in particular, just really strike me and draw me in, so I would think they're worthy of whatever praise they're given. At the same time though, they're not for everybody. I have a lot of friends that I would never ever recommend the game to. It's not that they have poor taste, or I'm selfishly keeping the secret to myself, it's just not a series that everyone will love. So...I guess my experience with it would be 10/10, but depending on the person I'm talking to, I wouldn't always recommend it as a 5 star game.

 

[Fuselage]

I like it so I don't really care if its overrated, I like the stealth sections and certain parts of the story (Cutscenes less than 5 minutes).
EDIT: Metal Gear Solid 3 is still the best of the series.
EDIT 2: Oh and Peace Walker is awesome, Would be more awesome if not on the damn PSP.

 

[Flauros]

Yes, theres alot of cutscenes. But it also sounds like you suck at stealth games, to be honest.

Its not my fault im an MGS fan. I would rather Silent Hill or Bionic Commando come out with consistently good games, but they decide not to do that for some reason. So i go where the good games are. Metal Gear Solid.


Protip: Use the tranquilizer darts or the knife, and dont get caught. Its a bad thing in stealth games.

 

[Fuselage]

EDIT: I'll throw this in though, MGS3 is one of two games I would compare favourably to the best action films.

What's the other?

Probably CoD4, I would toss HL2 in but I found the pacing a bit slow for an action film substitute. It's more of a TV sci-fi series like V.

Both CoD4 and MGS3 were high octane, well paced and evoked the feeling of a hardbitten hero struggling against a war machine.

Modern warfare is an immersive, tense military thriller and I view snake eater as a perfect substitute for James Bond.

Yep, I still reckon that MGS3 is the best of the series.

 

[Nico4]

It has flaws, yea, but I think it's rated accordingly.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

MGS as a series? no.

MGS4 is fun fanservice that ties up the series nicely, but compared to MGS2 or 3 is pales in comparison. To many cutscenes combined with the asinine way they choose to install the damn thing. I'd replay it more often if I could just jump to the parts I liked, also it feels a lot of the stealth is gone. MGS4 for better or worse, plays like an action game or a game where your crawling on your stomach for hours.

I think the series peaked at MGS3 tbh

 

[migo]

I'm starting to think it is. I've been giving my best shot at MGS3 Subsistence, which some people say is the best in the series. The controls are clunky, CQC barely works, every time I talk to the medic to find out about an animal I've killed, or plant I've harvested, I get some long dialogue about a horror flick.

It also has a bizarre mix of realism and fantasy, which I find disconcerting. Aiming with the pistol seems realistic enough, but the inability to sidestep is completely disconcerting. Having to adjust camo according to the environment makes sense, but it's just an exercise in going into the menu, turning it into a chore since the game could just do it automatically or just default to a single type of camo (which would also be more realistic). And for some reason, eating a reticulated python heals you.

Having my stealth game introduction being Thief, I'm thoroughly underwhelmed. MGS is supposed to be the shit, but I'm getting a strong impression there's just a lot of nostalgia from people who played it in the PlayStation era, and people who say it's a love it or hate it game probably mean you either have the nostalgia or you don't.

The interesting thing is MGS for N-Gage played much better, so I'm curious to see if MGS3 was just a bit too ambitious. I'll be giving The Twin Snakes a shot, since I already bought it. If not, it has great trade in value at EB.

 

[Snotnarok]

These overhyped threads are very much pointless for 2 reasons: 1 it comes down to personal preference whether a game is liked or disliked, and 2 this can be done with ANY popular game series.


Example---------------
Mario is so overrated because every game that has come out is the same thing, save the princess while stomping on peoples heads. And let's touch on that, why is it always stomping peoples heads? The gameplay is JUST TOO simplistic, how do people not get bored playing the same thing over and over.

Sometimes the enemy has spikes on it so you have to jump on ANOTHER enemy and then throw it at the spiked foe, ingenious. It's repetitive, the cutscenes are lacking and the characters are so 2 dimensional.
End Example-----------

See anyone can talk poorly about a game series and just note what things COULD be taken as bad.

Is MGS overrated? No because that's peoples personal opinions on a game and if they enjoyed it you'd be in the wrong to say they were incorrect.

I feel it's a fun series with way too many cutscenes and too much repeating of the same dialogue we got in the first cutscene. They have always been a stunning graphical masterpiece on every console they've been on when they were released, did fun cool things and impressed.

Do I like the series? Yes but I hate playing them.

 

[SoulIsTheGoal]

The series is definitely overrated, but whatever you get your kicks from I suppose.

 

[sheah1]

I adore all MGS3 games. They're awesome and all have unique, living game styles.

 

[Alphavillain]

The thing with MGS4 is that it is pretentious. It tries to be a thought-provoking treatise on the violence of war, AND a blockbuster Hollywood film. The problems with this are twofold:
1. It's a game, not a film.
2. The script is rubbish.

Also, the gameplay has not moved on significantly since the PS2 days.

 

[gardyna]

it´s a good series with some genuinely great games (third being my favorite)

but it is severely overrated by the internet fans, it is great but it is still not perfect

 

[wolf thing]

yes, but there still bad ass

 

[omega 616]

snip

First of all, your playing it wrong. Your meant to get past everybody quickly and without being seen, not lay waste to every fucker with a pulse or if you kill the guys with black helmets, the rebels will thank you, give you weapons and help you out later in the game.

Second, the game does start out with tiny amounts of gameplay with serious cutscene time but more gameplay does come in.

The story is only really great if you have played MGS1-3 (not so much MG and MG2), there is also loads of hidden funny things, like there is a bed in a mansion that you can lay on and face up, when you look through snakes eyes you can see a poster on the ceiling of a model (it fills psych really quickly).

There is also a section were you have to track a kidnapped person, looking for foot prints and clues to were they went, like trampled grass or a discarded pink bra.

 

[Sejs Cube]

I wouldn't say overrated. The series was very solid good up until 4.

4 wasn't even really bad exactly, it definitely had some good points (when you could actually play the game), some very nice refinement and innovation for the series, but it suffered from Kojima crawling up his own ass.

For something genuinely overrated I'd look more to a game like Heavy Rain. Heavy Rain isn't a good game, but it's pretty so it gets more praise than it really deserves. The MGS series do a good job earning the praise they get.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Anyone who is playing MGS for the gameplay is doing it wrong. The gameplay isn't good (and I say that as a fan of the series, sans MGS4) and the stealth aspect is crap. Play Splinter Cell if you want a stealth game.

Splinter Cell isn't that great, it's all about hiding in the shadows with bright green goggles. Splinter Cell's levels are more linear than MGS3 and MGS4, part of being a good stealth game is giving you options to move around your environment. There's so many more options in gameplay in the MGS series; you can hide in the shadows and shot people (like Splinter Cell) or you can sneak up and CQC everyone. Hell, you can use the right radio frequency to call off guards in MGS3. Metal Gear's gameplay has always been top notch for its time and the games always have great boss battles; it's the story and cut-scenes that make or break the series for people not the gameplay.

How isn't Metal Gear's gameplay good when the online portion of MGS4 (Metal Gear Online) is the deepest and most innovative online shooter this gen?

I've been giving my best shot at MGS3 Subsistence, which some people say is the best in the series. The controls are clunky, CQC barely works, every time I talk to the medic to find out about an animal I've killed, or plant I've harvested, I get some long dialogue about a horror flick.

How are the controls clunky? I CQCed and knife slit every guard in my first playthrough of MGS3, and I was then punished for that during The Sorrow "fight." CQC takes some time to get used to; it's a bit complicated because you have so many things you can do to a guard while they are CQCed. The only major control complaint about MGS3 is the fixed camera, which was remedied in Subsistence.

 

[Denamic]

Entirely subjective.
The game is highly rated.
If you don't like the game, the game is overrated from your point of view.
While someone else may think it's a thing of worship, in which case it's underrated.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Overrated? No. It gets plenty of hate, but also a lot of love from fans. It's seems a bit marmitey in that respect.

Personally I love all of them, and to be honest, I'm not massively bothered by the cutscenes because I love the story so much.

And amongst us MGS fans, I have to say I prefer the gameplay in MGS4. Just sayin'.